Blood Son

Prague, present day. "Please, have you seen the person in this picture?" Elizabeth Martin slid a four by five color photograph of her twin brother, David, across the small round table toward the man sipping coffee at dusk. He didn't understand English, and Elizabeth didn't speak Czech, so she pointed at the photo of David, his smile clearly bright enough to captivate a room, then pantomimed looking around for him. The coffee drinker gazed down carefully at the photo and shook his head, giving her a shrug, then resumed staring at his laptop. Elizabeth sighed, scanning the crowded Internet cafeacute; near the Charles Bridge. This was where David had sent the e-mail from. But Prague was a cosmopolitan city full of people from all over the globe, including the Czech Republic's nearest neighbors-- Austria, Germany, Slovakia and Poland. Around her, tongues spoke in so many different languages and dialects, she felt utterly isolated. And then her ears picked up a male voice speaking English. Whipping her head around, she spied a young man with a backpack, scruffy reddish beard, and a tweed newsboy cap, talking with a backpacking counterpart in a thick black fisherman's sweater and sporting a black knit cap. She walked over to them. "I'm sorry to bother you." She smiled at them. "You speak English?" They both nodded. "With a brogue, lass," the one with the knit cap said, clear blue eyes dancing. "I'm looking for my brother. He passed through here maybe two weeks ago, I think. He sent me ane-mail from this cafA. Do you recognize him?" Elizabeth passed them the photograph. "David," the one with the red beard said. "Sweet Jesus, what troubles has he gotten himself into? My name's Finn." He stuck out a hand to her. "Sit down." "Elizabeth Martin," she said, shaking his hand, then gratefully sinking into the wooden chair. "You have no idea how worried I am. When did you last see him?" He stroked his beard. "About three weeks ago. Right, Tom?" He glanced at his traveling companion, who nodded. "He wasn't himself. Looked fooking--pardon the language--tired. I was worried he'd picked up something. Flu--something." "Picked up something?" She tucked a stray black hair behind her ear and gazed down at David's photo. They were so clearly siblings--same shade of black hair, same blue-gray eyes, same pale skin with a rosy tinge around the cheekbones, same cupid's bow forming full lips. She had the faintest smattering of freckles across her nose, and wore her hair nearly to her waist. David kept his shorn close to the scalp, and he wore a simple gold hoop in his left ear. He also had a tattoo, a yin and yang symbol, on his leftbiceps. In profile, though, they were almost identical, with straight noses and strong, graceful jawlines. "He looked shaky. He'd been backpacking way the hell out past the Liberac region. Past the ski resorts. He was in the Karkonosze. It's January, love. You just don't do that alone and outside the resorts. Too cold to be out there for days on end. I didn't understand it. I mean, go off into the mountains and not ski? Just to be alone?" She nodded. "That would be David. Always defying conventional wisdom." She paused and bit her lip. "I have to ask you something." She sighed. "Did he seem like maybe he was ondrugs?" She held her breath waiting for the answer. It wouldn't be the first time David had troubles with addiction. "Could be. Don't know. He was just pale. Thin. Never said anything about drugs, though. We'd even shared a room in a hostel one night just before Christmas. I didn't see anything that made me think he was on something. We each had a pint of ale. That was it." "Thank you. Any bit of news helps." "He was heading back there, you know. I don'tget the allure of the isolation, but maybe that's what he wanOrloff, Erica is the author of 'Blood Son ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780373617562 and ISBN 0373617569.