Ferus : Book 6 of the Heku Series (71 page)

“We half expected you to
not be able to get away tonight,” William told her as he tied her
horse to the bumper.

“Yeah, I wasn’t sure I
could. Chev threatened to put Mark, Jaron, and Silas as my guards…
if he does, it’ll be a lot harder to get away.”

“How do you elude heku?”
Frederick asked.

Emily grinned, “I can’t
tell you that. I may need it against you someday.”

William grinned and picked
Emily up, “Let’s get going. It’s a two-hour ride
tonight.”

The heku quickly blurred
into the city where their helicopter was waiting. Once inside,
Emily changed in a separate room into all black and came back out
while she tied her hair up. She sat down next to Frederick, and
William started the briefing.

“This coven’s larger than
the others. Emily, can you handle 400 of them?”

Emily nodded, “Yes, is that enough?”

“I don’t want to risk
more,” William told her. “We have two covens helping today, as
there’s probably 2,000 in this one coven. If we get lucky, it’ll be
their main one and we can stop these.”

“I don’t know, they’re
kind of fun,” one of the guards said, and there was a loud round of
agreement.

“Speak for yourself. If
the Equites find out, I’ll be locked up,” Emily said with a slight
grin.

“Then come live with us.
We have to be more fun than those stuffy heku.”

“They’re just… a tad… overprotective.”

“As I said, then join the Encala.”

Emily just grinned and turned back to
William, “Where is this one?”

“Northern Illinois,” he
said, and then paused when the pilot gave the 10 minute warning.
“We’re dropping into the middle. I’ll take Emily, the rest drop in
first.”

She sighed, “Seriously, I hate that.”

William grinned, “You just really hate when
you can’t do something on your own, don’t you?”

She ignored him and
readied for the mission. When the pilot gave the signal, the Encala
began jumping from the helicopter and by the time she climbed onto
William’s back, the sounds of fighting could be heard. She shut her
eyes tightly and couldn’t help but scream when he jumped the thirty
feet down to the ground.

William chuckled when he landed, “Em, let
go.”

Emily opened her eyes and grinned slightly
before crawling off. The fighting stopped immediately when the
Ferus caught sight of her.

“This is new,” Frederick said, looking
around at the Ferus as they fell back slowly.

She frowned, “What do I do now? They aren’t
fighting.”

William shrugged, “Well… we still need to
get rid of them.”

“Please, Lady Emily,” one
of them said, and stepped forward. “We need you to help
us.”

“Do not talk to her,” one of the Encala
guards yelled.

Emily took a step back.

“Go, Emily, we can’t let them go,” Frederick
told her.

She nodded and then fell
to her knees after 400 of the Ferus turned to ash, and the fighting
resumed. William gently picked her up and stepped out of the way of
the fighting. As soon as he was sure things were going well, he
blurred back to the staging location and met up with the helicopter
assigned to return her. He laid her down across the seats and she
immediately fell asleep. Just before arriving outside of Council
City, William quickly cleaned the blood from her face.

“Emily,” he whispered, and
locked her gaze once she finally got her eyes open. “You need to
ride your horse back to the palace, then go inside and lie down.
Tell no one what happened. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she replied.

He blurred her back to the
Durango and helped her up onto the horse, then followed her into
Council City, but stayed at the tree line. When she disappeared
into the stables, he quickly disappeared.

“Out all night again,” Mark commented,
irritated.

“Yes,” she said,
struggling to put her horse away. She just wanted to
sleep.

“We’ve had guards out looking for you.”

“I figured.”

“Where were you?” Chevalier growled from the
stable doors.

“I was just out riding,”
she told him, and leaned against the stall door when she felt like
she might fall.

“I suppose you’ll go sleep now?”

“I am tired.”

He watched her closely, noticing she was
slightly pale and shaky, “Out riding?”

“Yes,” she told him, and
then shut the stall door. She fought to steady her walk and started
for the palace, followed by Chevalier and four members of the
Cavalry.

“Why won’t you tell me?”

“It’s personal.”

“It’s dangerous or you’d
tell me, and to be honest, I’m starting to get angry about
it.”

She looked over at him
when they reached the bedroom door, “Please don’t. It’s not
dangerous.”

“Then tell me.”

“I can’t.”

Chevalier glared at her
and then stormed off. She winced when she heard his office door
slam from two floors away and then disappeared into their room to
sleep.

Emily could feel the
tension in the palace and knew she was the cause. Chevalier was no
longer speaking to her, and her guards were curt and almost rude.
She decided to behave as much as possible until her next mission,
in hopes that everyone would calm down. Even watching a movie with
Dain seemed to make the Council angry, and she wondered how close
the long nights with the Encala were to being done.

In her room late at night, Emily snuck into
her closet and called the Encala.

“Kind of late at night,
isn’t in?” William asked, and she could tell he was
smiling.

Emily whispered back, “We
need to not go out this week. Things are getting pretty
tense.”

“Are you ok?”

“Yes, but everyone’s
really mad and no one’ll talk to me. They know I’m doing something,
and if we can just wait until things calm down a
little.”

“We have the Ferus’ main
city,” William explained. “We wanted to go as soon as you’re ready,
so they don’t have time to move their leader.”

She sighed, “When?”

“Friday, will you be recovered in 4
days?”

“Yes”

“After that, we’ll take a
month off, ok?”

“Things are really bad.”

“We can’t risk him
leaving. They move him around a lot,” Frederick told her. “We need
you, this compound has over 3,000.”

She sighed, “Ok, Friday it is.”

“We’re sorry. After Friday
though, we’ll take a break.”

Emily shut her phone and
went to bed, but stayed awake for hours, tossing and turning. She
knew that Chevalier would be furious when she disappeared for
another night, and she wasn’t sure the Council would be any
happier.

“Can’t sleep?” Chevalier asked, walking into
the room.

She rolled onto her side and propped up on
an elbow, “No.”

“That means you’re about to disappear
again,” he said, irritated, and sat down on a chair by the
fire.

She returned to her back
and stared up at the ceiling. She could feel the anger emanating
from him, but didn’t know how to calm things down.

“I need you to trust me on
this,” Emily said softly.

“I need you to trust me enough to tell me
what you’re doing.”

“Fair enough, but I can’t, not right
now.”

He got up silently and
left the room, slamming the door behind him on the way out. She
sighed and began to think about how to get out of the killing spree
the Encala initiated. If she could do just one more, then things
would probably calm down and her nightly visits would be forgotten.
She hopped Chevalier would trust her, and her guards would talk to
her again.

As soon as dawn broke, she
got out of bed, having not slept at all that night. She spent the
day quietly with Dain. They watched a movie and then played with
the dogs. Dain loved to throw the ball to Encala, the Labrador, and
she was amazed at the strength the almost two-year-old had, though
the guards didn’t seem surprised at all.

She wasn’t surprised when
the change of the guards brought Mark, Silas, and Jaron. She
figured if Kralen was awake, he would be there too. They knew it
was about time for her to slip out for the night, and were prepared
to use their high-ranking guards to keep her in the palace. Tension
grew and Emily began to wonder if she would even be able to get out
of the palace for this important mission.

After dark on Friday night, Emily rode up to
the Durango.

“You made it,” William
said, and smiled.

Emily nodded. She didn’t
like what she had to do to get free, and knew that she was going to
pay for it later.

William put a hand on her arm, “They’ll
forgive you.”

“Let’s get this over
with,” she said, and slid off of her stallion, tying him to her
fender.

“If it gets too bad, we can come help.”

“That would make it worse.”

William nodded and picked her up, quickly
blurring through the woods. She didn’t say a word as she climbed
into the helicopter and changed into black.

Frederick glanced at
William before beginning, “There are over 3,000, and we suspect
this is their main city. If we can find the leader and dispose of
him, we could end this a lot sooner than expected.”

William took over, “The Equites and Valle
have all but extinguished the Ferus in the northern U.S. and
Equites’ Thukil took care of the bigger covens in Texas. Same plan,
we’re going to drop in, let Emily take out as many as she can…”

“I’ll do 700,” she said, watching her
hands.

William frowned, “That’s
too many. We agreed on 400.”

“Doesn’t matter, am going to do 700.”

“The Elder said 400,” one
of the guards told her.

“He’s not my Elder,” Emily
reminded him, still watching her hands.

“Em, you can’t do 700 and get back into the
palace to sleep,” Frederick said.

Emily shrugged. She wanted
this over with and hoped ashing the 700 instead of 400 would make
it faster.

“Stick with the plan. We
take out 2600 and Emily will take care of the other 400,” William
said. The rest of the way was in silence. Emily was normally happy
and chatty, but tonight there was a dark shroud over her and only
William knew how much pressure she was under because of the Equites
suspicions.

“5 minutes, Elder,” the pilot called
back.

“I’m staying in for this
one. Frederick is leading,” William told her. Emily nodded, and
when it was time, she crawled onto Frederick’s back and wrapped her
arms and legs around him tightly. She squeezed her eyes shut and
then dropped to the ground when she felt Frederick land.

“Ouch!” Emily yelled, and
Frederick turned to her, his eyes wide. She reached over and pulled
a small dart out of her arm, then heard Frederick calling a retreat
as darkness engulfed her.

***

Emily felt the fog of sedation lift slowly
and she realized she was sitting on a hard surface with her hands
restrained behind her back. She was finally able to open her eyes
and looked up at the cement cell.

“Are you ok?” Frederick
asked from behind her.

She pulled at her
restraints and felt Frederick at her back. They were restrained
together, back-to-back.

“Yeah,” she mumbled. “What happened?”

“They saw us coming,
reinforced. You were sedated almost immediately, which left us
gravely outnumbered.”

Emily sighed, “He’s going to kill me for
this.”

“I would imagine so.”

“Can’t you get free?” she asked, feeling the
restraints.

“No, if I pull too hard,
it will electrocute you,” Frederick explained.

“Where are the others?”

“I don’t know, dead I suspect.”

***

“Just William is here?” Chevalier asked
Derrick.

“Yes, Elder.”

Kyle returned to his seat, “No sign of her,
just her horse tied to the Durango.”

“Damnit,” Chevalier
sighed. “She’s never been gone for this long before. It’s usually
just at night.”

“I know, I hope nothing
happened.”

“Let William in. Let’s get
him out of the way and we’ll talk about what to do about Emily’s
disappearance,” Quinn said.

Derrick nodded and let William in.

William walked up to the
Council and stood before them. It was obvious he was
nervous.

“What can we do for you?” Zohn asked.

“We were ambushed in the
main Ferus city. They kidnapped our main response team,” William
explained.

“Ok, and we care because?”

William sighed, “Well… Frederick was the
Elder leading this one…”

“Spill it, the Equites don’t care about
Frederick,” Chevalier said, irritated.

William squared his shoulders and took a
deep breath, “Emily… is on our main response team.”

Chevalier’s hands balled into tight fists,
“What?”

“She’s been helping us take out the
Ferus.”

“How dare you!” Kyle yelled. “You had no
right to put her in danger!”

“She wasn’t forced,”
William told them. “In fact, this was her last mission. She refused
to deceive you any longer.”