The Lost Prince

by Edward Lazellari

  “No mistake,” he told the half-troll. “The ancients kept the creature lines pure because they sought to preserve some capacity for reason. Our creations will be given but one single unyielding directive with no restraint in ferocity. We are returning to Aandor without these creations. Let this wretched world deal with them after we’re gone.”

  What made this spell different was the nature of its accelerant. Radioactive isotopes as a catalyst would supercharge cell mitosis. Dorn whispered a spell to create a bubble of hyper-dense air around the lead container. It would protect him from the radiation. Opening the container, he removed a few small bits of fissionable material with some lead tongs and plopped them into the beaker. He quickly shut the container.

  “The girl,” Dorn said. Hesz lifted Ilyana with one hand and lay her on her back with her lumbar region across the arm of the couch. With his powerful arms, Hesz held her legs and chest down. Dorn ripped off her micro skirt, exposing her midsection, and she screamed. He ripped her underwear off next and stuffed it into Ilyana’s mouth. Symian cranked the stereo to drown her muffled screams. Cat jumped up to confront Dorn, but Lhars grabbed her.

  “Please, Lady MacDonnell … now is not the time for hysterics,” Dorn said. “You are about to witness my endgame … my final solution.”

  Dorn sliced a line across Ilyana’s lower abdomen from right to left between her belly button and mons veneris.

  “Sadist!” Cat screamed, struggling and kicking. “Leave that girl alone!” she cried.

  Dorn produced a pair of long-handled tongs with tiny cupped ends and carefully inserted it into the gash. Ilyana’s cotton gag absorbed her horrific screams. What little noise she produced accompanied the soundtrack of her vivisection—“We Used to Be Friends” by The Dandy Warhols. Dorn peeled away her flesh, slicing deeper with the knife when needed, searching for his prize. He searched and searched, prodding through her guts, pulling everything out—to no avail.

  2

  “Leave that girl alone!” Cat screamed. But even as she said this, the thing that had nagged at Cat all this time became horrifically clear—the thing she would have realized much earlier if not for all the fear and tension distracting her—Ilyana’s large hands, huge feet—and Adam’s apple.

  Dorn, agitated, continued to pull pieces of Ilyana out like a child ravaging a toy box for his favorite ball. Her cries of protest grew weaker until they were barely a moan.

  “Dorn, stop!” Cat yelled. “She’s transgendered!”

  “What?” asked Symian.

  “She was born a man and changed into a woman by medical procedure,” Cat explained.

  Dorn’s hands and clothes were covered in blood. Ilyana had gone completely quiet—her head dangled limply off the couch, her deathly stare pointed toward Cat. It was too late. From Dorn’s expression, one would think his head was on the verge of exploding. He stepped away from Ilyana as though repelled by something repugnant.

  “My lord,” said Symian. “I did not know such things were…”

  Dorn put up a single finger as if to say not one word more. “Find me a new source of magical energy,” Dorn said softly, almost too soft to believe given his disappointment and precarious mental state. Cat heard what was not spoken at the end almost as clearly as if it were: And I’ll let you live.

  Symian left quickly, as though his boss might change his mind at any second. Whatever the sorcerer had intended, Ilyana was pivotal to his plans. Maybe the guardians could turn this delay to their advantage, Cat thought. The very next moment, Cat realized she was wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong. Dorn looked at her like a starving man looks at a roasted turkey leg. Whatever it was he needed from the tranny, Dorn had resolved to take it from Cat.

  “I apologize, Lady MacDonnell,” he said, almost sounding sincere.

  Hesz grabbed Cat and pulled her toward the couch. He placed his toe underneath the front of the couch, and kicked it up until it fell backward. Ilyana rolled off and onto the carpet with a bloody splat. Hesz righted the couch with a foot again and placed Cat in the same position over the armrest. Ilyana’s blood seeped into Cat’s clothing, even as Kraten cut her blouse with a knife, like a paramedic in triage. She was stripped to her panties and secured; Dorn approached with a smaller, clean scalpel.

  “Oh God, please,” Catherine begged. She cried uncontrollably. “I’m pregnant. Please. Please!”

  Dorn considered this for a second. “I have no intention of killing you, my lady. I simply cannot keep my promise not to hurt you.”

  He didn’t cut all the way across her as he did Ilyana; instead, Dorn made a small, almost professional, incision on one side of Cat’s lower abdomen. Cat screamed—her voice drowned out by the stereo. The cutting was agony, layer after layer peeled away until he could reach inside with a fresh pair of tongs. When he found what he wanted, he severed it with scissors and pulled it free.

  “A woman is born with all her eggs,” Dorn said to his men. He showed Cat her own severed ovum sac. “Thousands of them,” he said, “enough for her lifetime.”

  “No!” Catherine wailed.

  “Fear not,” Dorn said. “The conceived child is safe.”

  Cat struggled against Hesz, pounding on his massive arms, but it was like beating on concrete pylons. “You son of a bitch! Give those back!” she cried. The pain in her abdomen was too intense and Cat thought she’d bleed to death.

  Dorn produced a small vial and sprinkled a familiar white powder on Cat’s wound. It sizzled and burned like a motherfucker just like the time upstate when Lelani used it on Cat’s shoulder. The cut began to sew itself up. Hesz let her go.

  “Why?” she sniffled. “You didn’t do that for Ilyana? You gutted her like a pig!”

  Dorn rolled the vial between his fingers playfully. “The ingredients of this remedy include a phoenix’s feather, a basilisk’s egg, and the claw of a griffon,” he said. “This vial is worth more than this entire block of buildings. It is not for the salvaging of gutter rats. Being the wife of a nobleman has its merits. You and I are friends, after all.”

  “Friends…? You cut out my ovary you fucking piece of shit!”

  She spat in Dorn’s face, proud of the long hard stream she was able to aim true. He smiled and pushed her spit to his lips and lapped it in.

  “There’s a satisfactory sense of irony in that soon, the good captain will be neck deep in his own murderous stepchildren,” he said.

  Dorn handed Lhars a quart-sized flask to fill with Ilyana’s blood. He poured the blood into the mixture and it turned a muddy purple. Dorn read from the ancient scroll, his hands positioned on either side of the beaker like the open part of a clap, channeling his magic between them. The words Dorn uttered sounded ancient beyond time, simple, sharp, the language of men before they lived under roofs of their own making, the building blocks of all speech that was to follow. As the words exited Dorn’s mouth, they took on a power and purpose of their own, fueled by a spirit within the scrolls. Something took over Dorn’s voice, old beyond imagining; an intonation that could never share a world with men, released from a long sleep. Everyone in the room except for Dorn covered their ears. The sound cut through anyway, stimulating the most primal parts of the brain, the place where everyone’s inner lizard still resided.

  As Dorn read, the fluid emitted a phosphorescent glow. The room went dark like the passing of a storm cloud as the elixir greedily absorbed all light and took on mass. An oppressive painful pressure filled the suite, like the entire room had been expelled to the bottom of the ocean. Even the henchmen shifted about nervously.

  “Dorn! Stop!” Cat yelled. But the wizard was possessed. Dorn cut his finger and dropped his own blood into the cauldron. “Hesz!” he shouted and held out his hand. Hesz produced a ziplock bag from his jacket with hairbrush, pillowcase, and little bits at the bottom that looked like nail clippings and dried skin. Dorn selected some hairs from the brush and ripped a piece off the pillowcase and into they beaker they went. Catherine realized those items mus
t belong to the prince. Whatever Dorn was doing was custom targeted to Daniel. He chanted a last series of phrases and shut off the flame.

  It was an ugly brew, not quite green or purple or brown at first but quickly morphing into a dark crimson. Catherine felt the pulsating vibrancy of life within this creation. It seemed to her that Dorn had placed enough material into the beaker to fill it five times over and yet not a drop spilled over. Dorn added one more ingredient … he dropped Catherine’s ovary into the beaker. A part of her died as Dorn stirred vigorously, breaking up the ovary’s tissue and releasing her eggs into the mix; her babies were gone forever. He poured the final brew into a conical lead-glass flask.

  Hesz placed five petri dishes along the floor next to one another.

  “Farther apart,” said Dorn.

  Using an eyedropper, Dorn deposited a single drop of the compound in each dish, and sealed the remaining elixir with a rubber stop. He poured some water into the dishes.

  Cat had never been more frightened in her life. As if the aftershock of her violation and the gruesome death of Ilyana weren’t enough to send her to therapy for life, there was something cursed in those scrolls, beyond evil, older than man, older than dinosaurs, that every living being across the multiverse has been programmed down to their DNA to reject. Even Hesz and Kraten wanted to be elsewhere. Magic had been around since the creation of the universe, used by beings far older than man—Aandor’s stumbling across it was like children stumbling across a loaded pistol. Who decides when a race is mature enough to play with the knowledge they discover?

  “Lelani said these magicks are dangerous … uncontrollable,” Cat told Dorn. “They get away from the wizard’s control. The reactions are too fast, sometime instantaneous … lots of wizards have died trying to do these spells. That’s why your people banned them.”

  Cat’s purpose in saying these things to Dorn was twofold: that by some slim chance, he would listen to reason, and that maybe one of his lackeys would get spooked and turn on him. They looked as nervous as she did … this was beyond normal spell casting. The radio droned, “I am, I am, I am, Superman … and I know what’s happening.”

  Bad call by the DJ, Cat realized. There’s a more appropriate R.E.M. song for this day.

  Dorn approached the petri dishes with all his remaining mana stones. He chanted the third verse in that ancient language bringing back the oppressive, invisible singularity that sucked life and hope from the room to feed itself. Dorn chanted until the room shook and the mana stones cracked and splintered.

  Three stalks sprouted from each dish like tentacles. Dorn looked disappointed. “Only fifteen?” he said, to no one in particular.

  The sprouts continued to grow before their eyes. Plant like appendages unfolded and began to fill like animal-shaped balloons. Sounds emerged from their nascent throats; a high-pitched squeal of pain. The creatures reached five feet, eight feet, ten, dwarfing even Hesz. Dorn continued chanting and their bulk filled out, manlike shapes merged with beasts. The backward bend of wolf legs, massive arms like a bear’s with downy white hair. Heavy brows hung over black deep-set eyes. The creatures lacked a true neck, their heads jutted from immense muscular shoulders. Noses like snouts pushed flat. Fangs competing for space in a mouth surrounded by thin black leathery lips, large enough to bite a human head off. Pawlike hands with black leathery palms, fingers tipped with black talons.

  Dorn performed like a rapturous conductor before a symphony. He was mad. No sane person could bring forth such a thing and think it good. He motioned with his arms. Some of the creatures mimicked him, then finally all of them did. He’d made a connection, like a puppeteer testing strings. The room was filled with drooling beasts. Dorn was joyous.

  Their snarls and grunts drowned out the music; when they moved, the room shook. They were frenzied for the hunt, drooling, flexing, flailing, knocking the walls behind them with their massive feral arms, yet they stayed anchored awaiting Dorn’s word. Cat squeezed into the middle of the crowded space between Hesz, Tom, and Lhars. Even the ever-smirking Kraten looked unsure for once and joined them. Cat would rather have been in a room with a hundred rabid pitbulls.

  “My children,” Dorn cried, tears streaming down a face twisted with rapturous glee. “I can see them in my mind,” he said. “Smell what they smell, hear what they hear. And they hear me. Daniel Hauer is in the city. They smell him.”

  A shudder ran through Catherine. Fifteen, she realized—fifteen of these abominations hunting the prince. And where the prince was, so were Cal and Bree … The last glimmer of hope left Catherine. Her rescue didn’t seem as important anymore … but what could she do? Hesz’s phone rang, and he had the wherewithal to answer.

  Dorn hunched over holding his head, like his brain was growing too big for his skull. The strain of the spell while in the midst of migraines was more than he could bear. In symbiotic unity with him, the creatures roared in anguish. Dorn squeezed his nose between the eyes to drive away the pain.

  “Symian has found another lay line,” said Hesz.

  “Yes! He will die today,” Dorn said, ignoring his frost giant’s message. “Danel must DIE!

  “GO!” he ordered. The creatures burst from the room, some smashing through the window, shimmying down the side of the building, others bursting into the stairwell—all gone in a flash to wreak havoc at the Waldorf—to kill a boy.

  The room was in shambles. My God, Cat thought, as Kraten restrained her.

  My God.

  CHAPTER 37

  THINGS MEN DO

  Although only days had passed, it felt like years since Seth had been back in the old neighborhood. The usual suspects were there—the shopkeepers, artists, kids, homeless—but they had changed. They were different—distant now, like a mirage of something familiar that never got clearer. His experience broadened his knowledge of himself and the world, changed expectations, but “home” remained fixed to the dimensions of his former life. If mileage took its toll on the soul, then Seth traveled the equivalent of four continents. There was wisdom in the saying, “You can’t go home again.”

  Seth thought he had the right tenement—it was one of the ones to either side of Earl’s building. Half the names were missing from the buzzer directory, and he didn’t see the one he wanted. He knew it was the third floor, but not the apartment number. If he’d been a better man he’d have known … he’d have spent every day there doing what men did. A brightly bundled woman in a knitted wool cap with cat ears rushed out. Seth caught the door, hoping not to have his presence challenged, but she was already on the sidewalk and running down the street, probably late to an audition. It made sense that this was not a secure building since Darcy was too fucked up to get out of bed most of the time. The junk had to come to her.

  He knocked on the door. A girl’s voice responded.

  “It’s Mr. Picture Man,” Seth said.

  Caitlin opened the door, held at a crack by a few inches of chain. Her single eye in the opening looked puzzled by Seth’s appearance. Seth had always been a street buddy, someone to trade quips with when he walked by—maybe score money for pizza.

  “Hey Sassafras. Is your mom home?” Seth said. He knew that she was.

  “She in bed.”

  Seth’s watch said 10:00 A.M. He’d forgotten what day it was, but was fairly sure it was a weekday. “It’s important.”

  Caitlin thought about it. It broke Seth’s heart when the girl granted him access. He could have been a robber or worse.

  The front door led into a small kitchen area that extended into a small living room to the left of and behind the front door. The linoleum was cracked and faded under the kitchen’s single circular fluorescent light. To the right beyond the kitchen were two bedroom doors side by side—one was closed.

  “Nice stick,” Caitlin said.

  Seth handed her his staff. She ran her fingers across the grooves and etchings, examining his workmanship. The staff was almost done, yet Seth already felt a connection to the device
both emotional and functional, like a child’s first key to his home.

  The apartment was a shambles, half empty of furniture; loveseat but no couch, entertainment center but no television, stereo, CDs, or computer. They’d been gone for some time. Caitlin had a schoolbook opened on the kitchen table with a bowl of Cap’n Crunch next to it.

  Seth walked to the closed bedroom door and entered without knocking. Darcy’s bedroom was as dark and cold as a tomb. It smelled musty, like unwashed laundry. Darcy was invisible in bed—black skin, on black sheets, in a black room—as absent here as she was in her daughter’s life. Seth opened the blinds, allowing the sun in. On the bureau was Darcy’s paraphernalia: needle, tablespoon, burner, rubber band, and a tiny plastic bag filled with what Seth assumed was heroin. In the trash were several used condoms of different makes and sizes—he stopped counting at eleven. Caitlin, he realized, remained at the kitchen table, staring into her cereal, which she stirred around in its milk. Again, his heart broke—a strange man showing up and going into her mother’s bedroom was normal to her.

  Darcy slept facedown, legs spread, naked. Her once beautiful, muscular body looked thin, haggard. Seth checked her pulse, which was slow but steady.

  “Darcy,” he said, rocking her gently.

  She moaned.

  He continued until she turned over and took note of him through half-open bloodshot eyes. Her small breasts sagged. Dried semen was clumped in her tuft of pubic hair. Guess some customers were just too stupid for their own good.

  Darcy had been his first nude model. She was stunning when they’d met eight years ago, muscular and radiant—Naomi Campbell’s heir apparent. Her father was a Maasai tribesman from East Africa who had come to New York to study at Columbia on a scholarship. There he met Darcy’s mother, an African-American from Forest Hills, Queens. Darcy’s skin was such a beautiful deep brown as to be a few shades short of true black. Seth couldn’t believe he’d successfully seduced her even after they’d had sex. She even fell for him. He was the worst thing that’d ever happened to her.