Eternity of Vengeance : Book 7 of the Heku Series (17 page)

“You can’t shoot us all,”
a woman said from behind her. The woman grinned and took another
step forward.

“I can take some of you
out,” Emily said, and pointed the gun at the tall, blonde
woman.

“For the price on your
head, it’d be worth it.”

Emily screamed when she
felt arms wrap around her. She struggled to get free as she heard
the bloody screams of Kralen’s victims.

“Let me go!” Emily yelled.

“No way, Sweetheart,” the man holding
her said.

Emily pulled the trigger
on her gun and shot him in the foot. He screamed and fell backwards
away from her. She took aim and was able to shoot three of the
approaching men before her gun jammed. Spinning quickly, she ran
back towards Kralen, but stopped when she saw no one along the
trees that once held most of the mortals.

“Kralen!?” Emily yelled,
and turned to face the eight mortals left.

“You don’t have a gun
anymore. Might as well come with us,” a woman said,
grinning.

***

Chevalier slowed down in
the Humvee and looked across the Interstate, “See that?”

“Yes,” Kyle said, spying the broken
down fence.

He drove through the
Interstate’s median, followed by Silas and Mark in Kralen’s Ford
F450. They took off over the broken fence, following the massive
muddy tire tracks that all headed in the same direction.

“This has to be them. This
is right where Kralen said they were,” Kyle said, carefully
scanning the trees.

“There,” Chevalier said
when he saw Emily’s Jeep surrounded by dune buggies.

“Damnit,” Kyle hissed, and
then got out. He looked around the trees, and then yelled for
her.

Silas stopped the Ford and
got out of it, followed by Mark. Mark walked over to a group of
bodies and knelt down, “These are mortals. They’ve been shot
mostly. This one has a broken nose.”

“Not these mortals up
here,” Silas said from just south of them. “These are heku
kills.”

“Elder?” Kyle said, and
handed him some papers from one of the dune buggies. He had Emily’s
shoes dangling from one hand, “They are bounty hunters. The Encala
put out a price on Em’s head.”

Chevalier growled and crumpled up the
papers offering $2.5 million for Emily caught alive.

“Maybe they got her,” Kyle
whispered.

Chevalier shook his head
and scanned the trees, “No, she’s afraid, but not captured… More a
frantic panic kind of afraid.”

“So she’s out here in the
forest.”

Chevalier nodded.

Mark yelled from almost a quarter of a
mile into the trees, “Elder!”

Chevalier, Silas, and Kyle
blurred to Mark and saw Kralen unconscious at his feet.

“Is he alive?” Kyle asked,
and knelt down.

“Yes, he was electrified,”
Mark said, and motioned to a gas generator.

“Stay with him,” Chevalier said as he
and Kyle blurred back to the Jeep and began to follow Emily’s trail
deep into the forest.

Kyle opened his phone and sighed, “No
signal up here.”

“Go back to the road. Call
in the Ratliff and Kimber Covens to come help,” Chevalier ordered,
and kept following Emily’s trail.

Kyle nodded and headed
back for the Interstate.

***

Emily slowly made her way
up the face of the small cliff, using her fingers and toes to grasp
the nearly flat surface. Her gun was tucked into the back of her
pants and she was frantically moving further away from where the
mortals attacked. Now she was afraid of the police, too. She’d
killed numerous of them to get away, and figured the Encala
wouldn’t be far behind them.

She finally managed to
pull herself up onto the top of the cliff and rested for only a few
moments before continuing deeper into the trees. Her feet were
bloody and painful as she ran through the dense forest.

In a small clearing, she
glanced around quickly and pulled out her cell phone, then sighed
when she saw it had no signal. Looking around, she got her bearings
and again headed south. She knew the Encala were after her, and she
also knew they would bring enough that she couldn’t ash them all
without risking falling unconscious.

***

“They’ll be here within
the hour,” Kyle said when he caught up with Chevalier. He looked
around when he caught not only Emily’s scent, but the scent of
fresh Winchester blood on the forest floor, “She’s
hurt.”

Chevalier nodded and
touched a blade of grass. He brought his hand up and looked at the
blood on his fingers, “Not bad, I think… but still
bleeding.”

“It’ll be dark soon,” Kyle said,
looking up at the sky.

“I can smell rain, too,”
Chevalier said, and walked up to the face of a cliff. He looked up
the sheer rocks, “She climbed this.”

They both turned when they
heard footsteps and saw Silas, Mark, and Kralen coming up behind
them.

“What happened?” Chevalier
asked. It was obvious that Kralen was upset with
himself.

“The Ferraris began to box
us in, so she put it into 4-wheel drive and took it off-road. They
had dune buggies full of mortals waiting though, and we were
trapped,” Kralen explained. “I headed off to fight the larger of
them, and was hit with 17 Tasers. All I remember was the sound of
gunshots.”

Mark sighed, “That’s all
he knows. They must have taken him away from her before hooking him
up to the generator.”

“Elder…” Kralen started.

“It’s not your fault,”
Chevalier told him. “Just help us find her, she’s hurt.”

Mark looked up the sheer
face of the cliff and touched a bloody footprint on the rocks above
his head, “It’s her feet. She’s not wearing shoes. I’m going to
start gluing shoes on that girl.”

Silas didn’t hesitate
before starting up the cliff carefully, followed by the others.
They easily maneuvered up the rocks to the top and looked
around.

“Emily!” Kyle yelled, and
waited to hear anything.

“How far of a head start does she
have?” Mark asked.

“I’d say three hours,”
Kralen told him, and looked around. “Here’s her scent.”

The heku headed off,
following her scent to the south.

***

Emily finally sat down to
rest. Her feet were slowing her down and it was starting to get
dark. Rain began to fall and the cold drops almost instantly soaked
her clothes. She looked around as she wrapped her arms around
herself to keep warm.

Deciding she’d rested
enough, she stood up and limped off toward the east. After an hour
of moving, she smelled the familiar scent of decay and covered her
nose, then followed the smell to a bloated Elk lying at the bottom
of a ravine.

“Damnit, this is gross,”
Emily said, and kicked the belly of the elk, which broke open,
sending rotten entrails out along the forest floor. She cringed and
reached her hand into the decaying Elk and brought out a handful of
gelatinous, smelly slime.

***

“Gah, something’s dead,”
Kyle said, and covered his nose.

“Kimber move off to the
west, Ratliff to the east, and we’ll keep heading south,” Chevalier
told the large group of gathered heku. “Make sure you keep your
capes visible. If she doesn’t see green, she may turn you to
ash.”

“Let’s go,” the General
from the Kimber Coven ordered, and his group of 45 heku headed off
to the west.

“Elder?” the General from Ratliff
said.

Chevalier looked over at
him.

“Come see this. It’s kind
of odd,” he said.

The Council City heku
followed him over to the dead, decaying Elk.

“What’s so weird about
that?” Dustin asked, looking down at the entrails. Dustin had
brought the rest of the Cavalry out to help scour the mountains for
Emily.

“This isn’t a natural
break,” the General said. “I’m guessing his stomach was forced open
and look, there’s a handprint of his blood on this
tree.”

Chevalier walked over and
looked at the little handprint. He smelled it, and then held his
hand up beside it, “She’s masking her scent.”

Mark sighed,
“Great.”

Kyle looked around the
clearing, “Silas, go tell the Kimber Coven that she’s
masking.”

Silas nodded and blurred
away.

“So she’s headed east,”
Dustin said, and looked into the trees.

“Not necessarily. Emily’s
very resourceful, and has a lot of survival skills. I don’t think
she’d keep a steady path in any direction,” Kyle told
him.

“Ratliffs out!” the
General said, and the 31 heku from the Ratliff Coven began trekking
east through the trees.

Dustin turned quickly when
they heard a wolf howl to the south of them, “Damnit.”

Kyle sighed, “I’ll take
Silas and Kralen to take care of those wolves. She smells like
rotten flesh. They are going to find her before we do.”

“Go,” Chevalier growled.

Dustin watched them go and
then started moving to the south, followed by the rest from Council
City.

***

Emily looked up at a
crooked pine tree. She grabbed a hold of one of the branches and
lifted herself up high into the tree. It was too dark, and she
wasn’t able to see the ground anymore. It was still raining and
this tree had a thick top, so she decided to climb up to get some
rest, away from cold rain and sleet.

Once she was up high up
and found a comfortable branch to sit on, she took out her gun and
dropped the four spent bullets onto the forest floor below her. She
grabbed more rounds from her pocket and reloaded it. After finding
a little branch covered in pine needles, she started to clear out
the barrel, to see if she could find out why it jammed.

Voices caught her
attention and her heart pounded in her chest. She strained to see
below her, and finally caught sight of four dark silhouettes moving
quickly toward her. She knew they were heku. No mortal could move
that fast, especially in the dark. She drew her knees up closer and
prayed silently that the branches would keep her out of
view.

“Here,” a gruff voice
said, and she saw one of the heku bend down to pick up the bullet
casings. He looked back at the others, “We’re on the right track.
You’re right, she’s masking her scent with a dead
animal.”

“She shouldn’t be that
hard to track then.” Emily’s eyes grew wide when she recognized
William’s voice.

“The others are on her
trail too,” a heku woman said from beside them.

“I hear them, they aren’t
moving any faster than we are though. There are too many scents out
here to track her easily,” William said. Emily sat back against the
tree, afraid if she could see them, that they would be able to see
her if they looked up.

“Damn wolves are on her
trail,” the woman said when a howl sounded from the
distance.

“That could be those
bloody Powans though,” another strange heku growled, and walked up
with the other Encala.

“Damnit, where did she go?” William
hissed.

“Split up, let’s see if we
can find that dead animal scent again,” the man said, and Emily
could hear footsteps as they left the area.

She finally allowed
herself to breathe normally and peered over the branch toward the
ground. One Encala was left behind, the one holding the bullet
casings. Emily waited a few minutes, so the Encala could move
further away, and then she turned the heku below her to ash and
quickly scrambled down out of the protection of the
tree.

Feeling around the base of the tree
for moss, she found north and took off quietly toward the south
west.

***

“Chevalier!” Kyle gasped.
“There are ashes over here.”

Chevalier blurred to his
side followed by Dustin, Mark, and Silas. Kralen was still
following one of the wolves to see if the indigenous predators
could find her. The Elder stopped and bent down by the ashes. He
picked up the four bullet casings and slipped them into his pocket,
then touched the ash and brought some to his nose.

“The Encala are out here looking for
her,” Chevalier growled.

Kyle nodded, “I’m picking up a trace
of them off to the south.”

“And the east,” Mark added.

“West too,” Silas said,
and joined them by the tree.

“So they split up to find
her,” Chevalier said, and looked up into the tree. He reached up
and grabbed a high branch, easily pulling himself up into the dense
pine tree, “She’s been up here.”

“She’s probably trying to
find a safe place to rest and get out of this rain,” Dustin said,
and looked around. “Maybe we should call in Powan.”