Equites : Book 4 of the Heku Series

by T. M. Nielsen

  “No,” Emily said, and looked up at the I.V. “What is that?”

  “Nutrition”

  Emily laid back down and rolled onto her side to look at Chevalier, “Where did you go?”

  “I needed to take care of a coven in Iowa.”

  “Did you kill all of them?” She studied his face.

  Chevalier nodded, “Yes.”

  “When can I go back to the island?”

  “What if I told you that I need you here for a while?” Chevalier asked.

  Emily frowned, “Do you or do you just not want me to go?”

  “I need you here.”

  “I’m confused about… some things.”

  “What things? Maybe I can help.”

  “Is Damon dead?” she asked softly.

  “Yes”

  “Are Quinn and Zohn building a house for me in the city?”

  “No”

  “I saw them though.” Emily frowned, vividly remembering the images, “Now, I’m not so sure.”

  “It was all a trick. That’s why you were slipped belladonna, to weaken you so they could control your mind and feed stories to you.”

  “Who?”

  “We think it was the Valle,” Chevalier said.

  “They aren’t going to leave me alone, are they?”

  Chevalier shook his head, “Probably not.”

  “I could go coven to coven and wipe them out completely,” Emily said, still whispering.

  “Yes, you could, but I’d rather you not.”

  Emily gasped and her eyes grew wide as she looked over Chevalier’s shoulder. He turned and saw a strange heku standing in the room with a tray. He stood suddenly, still managing to hold onto Emily’s arm.

  “Who said you could come in here?” Chevalier growled.

  “I have food for the Lady,” he said, bowing.

  “That doesn’t answer my question. Who said you could come in here?”

  “The Chief Enforcer did,” the heku said, looking nervously at Emily.

  “Kyle?” Chevalier asked. It was a few minutes before Kyle walked in through the shattered door.

  “Yes, Elder?” Kyle asked, and then glanced at the heku. “Who the hell are you?”

  “He said you told him he could come in here uninvited,” Chevalier said, his hand tightening on Emily’s arm.

  “Chev, that hurts,” Emily whispered, still watching the heku with the tray.

  Kyle raised an eyebrow, “I did, eh?”

  “Bring that tray to me,” Chevalier said, and the heku slowly approached him with the tray.

  Kyle stepped closer to them, standing behind the heku.

  “Lift the lid,” Chevalier said, and watched the heku pull the lid off of a pile of steaming pancakes, drenched in butter and syrup. “Kyle?”

  Kyle bent down and smelled the pancakes and then stood up quickly, “Belladonna.”

  The heku dropped the tray and tried to run, but Kyle had him in a choke hold.

  “Don’t kill me! I had to do it,” the heku yelled, and put his hands up, pleadingly.

  “Who told you to do it?” Kyle asked, tightening his grip.

  “I don’t know! He threatened to kill me if I didn’t bring this to the Lady.”

  “Who did?”

  “Just a heku, I don’t know him, please don’t hurt me.”

  “Take him to Zohn,” Chevalier growled.

  Kyle nodded and pulled the heku roughly from the room.

  Mark and Quinn blurred into the room, “We heard.”

  “Just walked right in here,” Chevalier hissed.

  Emily was watching a heku clean the floor, “Damn, those smelled really good.”

  Chevalier turned to her, “You would eat pancakes?”

  Emily nodded, and tried to pull his hand off of her arm, “You’re holding too tightly.”

  “I’m not letting go,” he said, and turned to Mark.

  “One stack of pancakes coming up. I’ll make them myself,” Mark said, and disappeared.

  “I say we re-staff the entire palace,” Quinn said, sitting down in a chair by the bed. “We let everyone go, absolutely everyone, and rehire from trusted sources.”

  “We may have to if no one can be trusted. This had to take a lot of time to orchestrate,” Chevalier said, and then turned to Emily. “Stop it.”

  Emily stopped pulling at his hand and looked up at the I.V.

  “We can set a time limit, had to have lived in Council City for at least… say… fifty years,” Quinn suggested.

  “Can we find enough help though?” Chevalier asked.

  “No, probably not.”

  “Can we just let anyone go from the palace that has worked here for less than fifty years?”

  Quinn nodded, “Yes, that’d leave us less to bring in.”

  Quinn blurred around the bed and caught Emily’s other hand as she tried to get to the I.V. bag.

  “Em, leave it in.” Chevalier frowned.

  Emily stared at Quinn’s hand on hers. She couldn’t look away. It was hard to breathe with him this close, and her heart threatened to pound out of her chest. He frowned and let go of her arm, and then moved the I.V. bag higher.

  “I’m sorry,” Quinn said, and stepped further away from her.

  Emily leaned her head against Chevalier’s chest while they waited silently for Mark. He came in finally, covered in flour with syrup on his shirt.

  “Did the kitchen attack you?” Chevalier chuckled.

  “Ha-ha, it’s not as easy as it looks,” Mark said, and sat the pancakes down on the table.

  “I changed my mind,” Emily told them, looking at the pancakes.

  Mark glanced at them, “They aren’t that bad.”

  “Take out my I.V. and I’ll eat,” Emily said. The smell of the pancakes made her stomach growl.

  Chevalier grinned, “No, eat first and then we’ll take it out.”

  “I don’t trust you,” she told them.

  “Yeah, well I don’t trust you,” Chevalier said, amused.

  “Let me go.”

  “No, now calm down.”

  Emily looked at the plate of pancakes, and how the syrup dripped from the side, and the butter melted slowly on top. She turned and glared at Chevalier.

  He cringed and then smiled, “Stop trying to ash me and go eat.”

  “Let… me… go,” Emily said through gritted teeth.

  Chevalier glanced at Quinn and Mark when they were called to the conference room. They called for the doctor to take Chevalier’s place, and he placed his hand over Emily’s I.V. so Chevalier could leave and the rest left for the meeting.

  “Were you going to eat?” the doctor asked, looking at the pancakes.

  “No, I feel dizzy,” Emily said, and collapsed back onto the bed.

  “Emily?” the doctor asked, and pulled her eyelids up to see her eyes. When he moved away from her, he saw her hand holding the I.V. and he gasped.

  “Here, this is yours,” Emily said, and handed it to him.

  “You… you… oh my God,” the doctor said.

  “I forgot to grab…” Mark froze and looked at the I.V. in the doctor’s hand, “Well that didn’t take long.”

  “She tricked me!” the doctor said, still shocked.

  Mark laughed and grabbed a notebook and then blurred down to the council chambers. He walked in, still chuckling, “She got the I.V. out.”

  “Already? I was sure it would take her at least 10 minutes,” Chevalier said, shaking his head.

  “We called this meeting to go over the palace staffing,” Kyle said sternly. Chevalier knew he was taking this attack personally.

  “We’ve gone through staffing, and if we get rid of anyone who’s been in Council City for less than 50 years, we will need to find 12 in laundry, two cooks, sixteen housekeepers, and almost twenty guards,” Quinn said.

  “Damn, we really have that many new ones?” Zohn asked.

  “Yes, hard to believe, but we do,” Quinn said.

  “I’m
mostly worried about the guards,” Chevalier said. “They are our first defense, yet she’s been attacked by them.”

  “Even without Emily in the picture, we still can’t have disobedient guards on staff. We discussed briefly, with Mark, appointing the Cavalry to the palace. They are the elite… but we decided it is their place to keep the city safe,” Quinn explained.

  “So what did you come up with?” Chevalier asked.

  “I suggested we stick with the 50-year rule, but then I think we need to set up a… what shall we call it… trap?” Quinn asked Kyle.

  “Sort of. What we want to do is hold a kind of interview with the guards and give them some alone time with Emily, completely controlled of course,” Kyle said, and glanced at Chevalier before continuing. “We can weed out the mortal haters that way.”

  Chevalier sighed, “That could turn bad, quickly.”

  “We’d be very close, I swear, and watching every move. My days in prison gave me the idea. Every time someone visited, we were watched from one-way mirrors,” Kyle said, grinning slightly.

  “And the rest of the staff?” Zohn asked.

  “We think if the guards are doing their job, the others won’t matter as much. As long as we have veteran city dwellers and… now… a butler for Emily, the same person delivering her meals after checking them, without her knowing of course,” Kyle said.

  Chevalier nodded.

  “What do we do about the Valle?” Zohn asked the Council.

  “Right now, nothing. We still have to handle Ingram and Selhman,” Quinn said. “Once they are taken care of, the Valle may back off.”

  The Council turned around when the back door opened.

  “Em? What’s wrong?” Chevalier asked when Emily entered. She eyed the Council suspiciously and walked to Chevalier, still weak and unsteady on her legs. She sat down on his lap and glanced again at the Council.

  Emily put her hand up and whispered into Chevalier’s ear, “I’m hearing things in the room.”

  Chevalier sighed, “Like what?”

  Emily shushed him and whispered, “I was in the shower and I heard mad voices and a loud crash.”

  “Where did the doctor go?”

  Emily shrugged, “He wasn’t there when I got out.”

  “So you’re alone up there?”

  Emily nodded.

  “The doctor wouldn’t just leave her alone,” Zohn said.

  Emily turned and glared at him.

  “Doctor?” Quinn called out.

  “We’ll find him. I’m sure he was coming right back,” Chevalier said. Emily leaned against his chest.

  “Kyle, Mark, find him,” Quinn said when the doctor didn’t come. Kyle hurdled the desk and they left in a blur.

  “What did the mad voices say?” Zohn asked Emily, ignoring how she looked at him.

  “It wasn’t in English,” she said to Chevalier. He had to fight to keep from grinning. He held her while they waited for the doctor.

  Emily looked up when an alarm sounded. The council members blurred from the room, except for the Elders.

  “What’s that?” Emily asked.

  “Palace has gone on lockdown,” Maleth said, sighing.

  “What? Why?” Emily asked.

  “We will know soon enough. When everyone’s in general quarters, we will be notified,” Quinn told her.

  “So you just sit here?”

  “That is our job as Elders, to wait for information so we can make a decision,” Maleth said, smiling at Emily reassuringly.

  Emily crawled out of Chevalier’s lap and sat on the chair of a council member she didn’t even know. She drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them and waited while the Elders sat silently. She started to get irritated at how patiently they sat, not moving, not making a sound. She was dying to know what was going on.

  After what seemed like an eternity to Emily, Kyle and Zohn came back into the room.

  “The doctor is dead,” Zohn said coldly.

  Kyle glared at him and then to the Elders, “We found him on the back stairway.”

  “Is he really dead?” Emily asked, panicked.

  “You’re the last one that saw him, what was he doing?” Zohn asked her.

  Emily frowned, “Am I getting interrogated?”

  “Just answer the question,” Zohn said, his voice quiet, yet menacing.

  Emily gasped and looked at Kyle.

  “Zohn!” Kyle snapped.

  “He’s sorry, Dear,” Maleth said turning to Emily. “We’d just like to try to figure this out. You said you were in the shower when you heard voices and a crash?”

  Emily nodded, still staring at Zohn.

  “You said they were speaking in another language?”

  Emily nodded again, “Something novus… guber something.”

  “What was happening before your shower?” Maleth asked softly.

  “We were arguing.”

  “You and the doctor?”

  “Yes”

  “About what?”

  Emily finally turned to Maleth, “He was mad that I got my I.V. out, and that I could only eat a few bites.”

  “Did he leave the room?”

  “No, he said he would have, but he was afraid to leave me alone.”

  “Ok”

  “So I told him I didn’t need him and went in to take a shower.”

  “Suggest we evacuate the Elders,” Kyle said.

  Zohn nodded, “Agreed.”

  “It’ll be easier for the Council to come to a conclusion about this, and what happened to Emily, if we don’t have to worry about the safety of the Elders,” Kyle said.

  Maleth nodded, “He is right.”

  “We leave in 20 minutes,” Quinn said.

  The Elders stood up and turned to Emily.

  “What?” she asked.

  “That means you, too,” Chevalier chuckled.

  “No, I’m not leaving. If there’s an attack, I can protect the palace,” Emily said.

  “No, you can’t, you haven’t been able to ash,” Chevalier reminded her.

  Emily turned to Zohn and looked at him as he took a nervous step back.

  “Stop, Em, you’re coming,” Chevalier laughed and took her arm. “Let’s go.”

  “I don’t want to leave,” Emily said as he led her out of the room.

  Emily’s protests didn’t help, and she didn’t have the strength to fight back, so she packed hesitantly and then followed Chevalier, Allen, and Alexis out to the helicopters. Kyle lifted her into Equites 1, and they were soon flying out over the palace with Quinn as the pilot. The city looked dead. Nothing was moving, and the houses and stores were all shut up tightly.

  Chapter 24 - Alaska

  Emily slept most of the way. She woke up only the few times they had to stop for fuel. Soon, she saw the dark colors of the mountains turn to white as far as she could see in any direction. Chevalier handed her a warm parka, and she slipped it on while he wrapped Alexis up in a down blanket. Quinn set the helicopter down on top of a large mansion out in the rough wintery tundra.

  “Where is this?” Emily asked, when Maleth helped her out of the helicopter.

  “It’s Quinn’s house,” he said, and walked over to open the door.

  “Isn’t he coming in?” Quinn hadn’t moved from the pilot’s seat.

  “He’s going to get supplies. Come in before you freeze to death,” Chevalier said, and walked inside with Alexis. Allen watched the helicopter take off and then went inside.

  Emily walked in and blew warm air into her hands. Even inside the house she could see her breath. Maleth went over to a fireplace and started a fire easily. She sat down on the floor with Alexis and tried to get warm. The mansion was cold and sparsely decorated.

  “How long do we stay here?” she asked.

  “Just until the Council calls and says it’s safe for our return,” Maleth explained, and sat down on a beautiful overstuffed white couch.

  The whole mansion seemed to shake when the helicopter la
nded on the roof several hours later. When the engines died, the house grew eerily quiet. Maleth and Chevalier went up the stairs to help with the supplies as Allen read on the couch, and Emily and Alexis stayed warm by the fire.

  “Come, I’ll show you to your room,” Quinn said to Emily. She stood up and took Alexis’ hand, and followed Quinn to a stark white bedroom. The bed looked comfortable, but the decorations all looked untouchable and highly breakable.

  Several times, Alexis headed to a large vase and Emily had to lead her away. The fire in the room was roaring, and it was warm enough they could finally take off their coats. Emily thought for a moment, and then took out her cell phone and dialed.

  “Em? What’s wrong?” Kyle asked frantically.

  “Find anything yet?” she asked.

  Kyle laughed, “Do the Elders know you called?”

  “No, I don’t need their permission to call you.” She sounded irritated.

  “Yes you do. You’re gone for your protection, and I can’t know where you are.”

  “I can’t tell you. I have no idea where I am.”

  Emily could tell that Kyle was amused, “No, we haven’t found any leads, but we will.”

  “Emily! Who are you talking to?” Quinn yelled from behind her.

  Emily shut the phone quickly.

  “Who was it?” Quinn asked angrily.

  “I just called Kyle,” Emily said, and stood up when Quinn took the phone from her. “Give it back.”

  “No, you apparently have no idea the regulations in place for our safety, so until you decide to learn them and comply, I keep it,” Quinn said, and stormed out of the room.

  Emily slammed the door behind him.

  “Phone?” Alexis asked.

  “Mean ol’ Quinn took it,” Emily said, and sat down by Alexis on the floor.

  Emily heard the helicopter and ran out into the living room. The only one she saw was Allen.

  “Where’d they go?” she asked him.

  Allen looked up from his book, “They went to feed.”

  “All of them?”

  “Yeah, they’ll bring me back some.”

  Emily yelled, frustrated, and started going through everything to find a phone.

  “Are you looking for something?” Allen asked, watching her.

  “Yes, I want a phone.”

  “They took their phones. Dad said you’d try to find them.”

  Emily went into the kitchen and made Alexis a sandwich. Alexis climbed into a chair and ate while Emily watched her.