Eternity of Vengeance : Book 7 of the Heku Series (52 page)

He shook his head, “Clean out that
room did you?”

“This box,” Emily said,
and sat down on the nearest bed with the box on her lap, “Is
fighting stuff that I thought you all might want.”

“Fighting stuff?” one of the Powans
asked, and looked into the box.

“Yes, help yourself,” she said, and
tried to pull on a pair of brass knuckles with spikes, but they
didn’t fit.

“Nice, let me try those,”
another guard said, and she handed them over as the guards looked
through the box.

“What’s in these?” Silas asked, and
motioned to the 3 boxes for Kralen.

Emily grinned, “I told you,
porn.”

“There’s no way you
brought the Captain three box of porn,” one of the Commanders
said.

“Open it,” she suggested,
and pulled out a weapon she didn’t understand. She ran her fingers
along the sharp white spikes and cut her finger slightly,
“Ouch.”

“Give me that before you
kill yourself,” Kralen said, and took it from her. He looked over
it and smiled, “It’s a leiomano, haven’t seen one of these in a
while.”

“I had one of those about
500 years ago made of real sharks teeth,” Silas said, and opened
the top of the three boxes. “Ok, so this is porn.”

“Told ya,” Emily said, and
looked into the box again as she blushed.

“This stuff is pretty
nice, a lot of antiques,” one of the guards said as he tried on a
pair of shiny brass knuckles. “Most of it’s been used
too.”

“What else did you find in the room?”
Kralen asked as he threw the leiomano at the wall, where it
stuck.

When Emily didn’t answer, he looked up
at her and took a step towards her, “Em?”

The others turned toward
her. She had a dazed expression and blood trailed from her
nose.

“Emily?” Silas asked, and
moved to her quickly.

She looked up at him and
the whites of her eyes were turning blood-red. As the guards
gasped, she fell back onto the bed.

“Get the Elder and the
doctor,” Silas ordered, and pulled the boxes off the bed beside
her.

“Em?” Kralen asked, and
took her head in his hands. “Can you look at me?”

Emily’s breathing slowed as she
relaxed into a deep sleep.

“What happened?” Dr.
Edwards asked when he blurred in and sat down on the
bed.

“I’m not sure. She was
just talking, and all of a sudden, got a bloody nose and fell
back,” one of the Cavalry told him. They all moved back when
Chevalier entered.

“What’s going on?” he asked, not
seeing Emily.

“She just… passed out,”
Kralen said, and moved aside so Chevalier could get to the
bed.

Chevalier sat down, “Did she turn
someone to ash?”

“I don’t think so. She was
just talking to us,” Kralen told him.

“Search around here, see if there are
ashes.”

“Yes, Elder,” Silas said,
and the Cavalry spread out around Council City.

“Her blood pressure’s
pretty low,” Dr. Edwards said, and looked over at Chevalier. “This
looks like that time when she was pregnant and we flew her to
Bangor.”

“That was when she
interrupted a turning though,” Chevalier said, and took her hand.
“There are no turnings here today.”

Dr. Edwards pulled her
eyelids back and then sighed, “According to Dr. Cook, we let her
sleep it off.”

Chevalier nodded and picked her up,
“We need to find who she turned to ash.”

Kyle appeared in the
barracks, “I heard what happened. Did they find
anything?”

“Nothing yet,” Dr. Edwards
said, and followed Chevalier back to the palace. He arrived in the
room just as Chevalier laid Emily in bed and covered her with a
blanket.

Chevalier waited with
Emily while the Cavalry searched Council City. Four hours later,
Mark came into the room.

“What did you find?” Chevalier
asked.

“Nothing, there are no ashes in this
city or in the woods,” Mark told him.

The Elder sighed, “Then
what caused it?”

Mark shrugged, “I talked
to each member of the Cavalry, and no one saw anything. Emily
brought four boxes in from Exavior’s old house, and they were going
through them when she just quit talking.”

“Well, maybe when she wakes up she’ll
know.”

“Maybe, but just in case,
I’m putting upper-ranks only as her guards,” Mark said, and then
grinned slightly. “She turned Tate to ash when she left
here.”

“Why?”

“She told him to leave her
truck. He said she’d have to ash him.”

Chevalier chuckled, “Give
him leave. Not many would have stayed in the truck.”

“Yes, Elder,” Mark said,
and moved outside of the bedroom door. He shut the door just as
Silas and Kralen arrived to take up spots in the
hallway.

Early the next morning,
Chevalier was just shutting the curtains to keep the sun out of the
room when he heard Emily shift slightly. He quickly moved to her
bedside.

“Em?” he whispered and took her
hand.

She slowly opened her eyes and looked
up at him, “Good morning.”

“To you too. How are you
feeling?”

“Fine, why?” she asked,
and sat up to stretch.

“What’s the last thing you
remember?”

She frowned slightly, “Come to think
of it, I was in the barracks.”

“Did you ash anyone?”

“Just Tate.”

“Nothing after going into
the barracks?” Chevalier asked, and called silently for her
breakfast.

“I remember being in the
barracks. We were going through boxes of stuff from Exavior’s
house. How did I get here then?”

“You passed out.”

She sighed, “I hate when I do
that.”

Chevalier grinned, “We’re kind of
getting used to it.”

Emily hit him on the arm, “I’m not
that bad.”

He suddenly turned
serious, “You don’t remember anything? Anything at all?”

“Not a thing,” she told him, and
crawled out of bed.

“Do you have a headache?” he asked,
following her toward the bathroom.

“No”

“Dizzy?”

“No”

“Nauseous?”

She turned at the door to the
bathroom, “No, nothing’s wrong.”

“Any pain?”

“Just you,” she told him,
and shut the door.

He grinned when she locked it and then
went to the door to talk to the doctor.

When Emily got out of the
shower, she threw on jeans and a t-shirt and quickly ran a brush
through her hair. She started out the door and ran into Chevalier,
who was standing in the hallway talking to her guards.

He turned and smiled,
“Problems walking?”

“Well don’t stand so close to the
door,” she said, and pushed past him.

“We’ll talk more when you
are done,” Chevalier said. The three heku guards began to follow
Emily down the stairs.

She turned and frowned,
“Finish your conversation. I’m not going anywhere.”

Mark grinned and crossed
his arms, “If you aren’t going anywhere, why are you trying to get
rid of us?”

“I’m not, you’re just
paranoid.”

“We’re going with you,” Kralen
said.

“For hell sake, go finish
talking to Chevalier. I’ll be right back.”

Chevalier sighed, “Fine, stay here for
now.”

The three members of the
Cavalry returned to talk to the Elder while Emily went down the
stairs. She was surprised he let her go without guards, and her
plan went from getting breakfast, to making the illegal. She walked
faster at the thought that alone, she could sneak a cup of coffee
without the heku cooks around to tell Chevalier.

Once she saw that the
chefs were already gone for the morning. She pulled out the coffee
pot and got her cup ready while it brewed. She inhaled and smiled
at the smell of coffee and poured herself a cup when it was
done.

Leaning back against the
counter, she shut her eyes and smelled deeply. As she brought the
cup to her lips, it was ripped from her hands and she gasped and
looked toward the blur.

“You do realize we can smell that
stuff from a mile away,” Dustin said, still holding the cup of
coffee.

“You don’t give a rat’s
ass about me. Let me have my coffee.”

“No, it will cause the
pain to return. I’m not taking it to be mean.”

“Then give it back.”

“Again, no,” he said, and
dumped the coffee into the sink. “You can’t sneak it.”

Emily watched him leave
the kitchen and then yelled toward the door, “Ego
contemnovos!”

Kyle frowned and turned to
Dustin when he came into the council chambers, “What did you do to
Em?”

Dustin sat down in his chair with the
Council, “I took her coffee away.”

“Interesting that she’s
learned to say she hates you in Native,” the Chief of Defense said,
amused.

“Yes, well, she really
wants her coffee,” Dustin said, and opened up the
roster.

Quinn walked in and sat
down, “Who is Emily screaming at now?”

“That would be me, Elder,” Dustin
said, not turning away from his book.

“Interesting”

After searching the entire kitchen,
Emily left angrily and headed for the stairs.

“Problems, Em?” Mark asked, and
grinned as she reached the fifth-floor.

“Yes, Dustin’s an idiot.”

“So I heard.”

“He took my coffee.”

“Ahh, that’s why you
wanted us gone,” Mark said, finally understanding.

Emily reached out to the
toolbox and grabbed a wrench. Her guards watched her nervously as
she worked on the old Chevy truck. Only her legs and feet were
visible from beneath it. They offered to do the oil change for her,
but she insisted on doing it herself. She was nearing the third
month back with the heku and, as of yet, still felt like an
unwanted guest, and she vowed not to add to the workload of the
heku staff at the palace.

She knew that if the
Cavalry wasn’t away, she wouldn’t have gotten away with the oil
change by herself. She was currently being guarded by four over
anxious city guards, who she suspected were vying for a spot on the
Cavalry, though they denied it.

“Lady Emily?” one of them asked, and
bent down to look under the truck.

“What?” She didn’t look
over when his bright face appeared next to the rusted out gray
Chevy.

“I just confirmed with my General, you
aren’t supposed to be working.”

She grinned slightly, “I’m lying down,
what more do you want?”

“I… well… I don’t think
that’s what he meant. He was pretty adamant that you not work on
your truck.”

“He was?”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“I’m almost done. Why
don’t you four go inside and make sure no one broke in while we
were out here?”

He stood up, “Do you suspect a
break-in?”

She grinned, “Yes, I do.”

Emily’s grin got wider
when she heard the four rush out of the garage. She wondered how
long it would take them to search Exavior’s old house and return.
She was almost finished with the oil change though, but the idea
that these guards were extremely over ambitious gave her an
idea.

“The house is clear,” one
of them said, just after she saw their shoes reappear in the
garage. She wheeled the creeper out from under the truck and looked
up at the guards.

“Good… and I’m done.”

One of them helped her to her feet and
she sighed when another blurred her tools into the box and put it
on the counter before she could stop him.

She shook her head and
walked back into the house. It was just starting to get dark and
she wanted to leave soon. After a quick shower, she walked down the
stairs toward the guards. They looked up at her, frowning curiously
at the black leather outfit.

“Were we going out?” one of them
asked.

“No,” she said, and then
smiled and walked into the kitchen. Right on time, her phone rang.
She looked down at the blank face of the phone and then pushed a
button, “Hello?”

Emily listened to dead silence for a
few seconds, “Yes, four of them are here.”

She started putting clean
dishes away as she spoke to no one, “I don’t want to, though. I
have things to do here at the house and I’ll stay here, I
swear.”

The guards stood back
along the wall and watched her. They strained to hear the
conversation, but assumed she’d turned her phone down too low for
them to hear.