Ancients and Old Ones : Book 8 of the Heku Series

by T. M. Nielsen

  Tears streamed down Emily’s face. She couldn’t turn all of Thukil to ash, not after all they’d done for her. It was hard to breathe as she waited for the stretching pain to begin, something she’d experienced before at the hands of Exavior.

  Kirt sat down beside the rack, “I’m disappointed in you. I thought you claimed to be an Equites. Equites do as they’re told and honor the wishes of the Council.”

  She screamed as the Chief Interrogator turned the crank and stretched her limbs painfully.

  “Stop!” Kirt yelled, and then stood up and looked down at her. As her body stretched, he noticed the slight bulge in her lower abdomen and his eyes narrowed.

  “What?” the Chief Interrogator asked.

  “You kept this from us!?” Kirt yelled at her.

  Emily was in too much pain to answer, and only a slight groan escaped her lips.

  “How far along are you?” he screamed.

  The Chief Interrogator gasped and finally saw what the Elder had. He turned the crank back and loosened the ropes that were pulling at her limbs.

  “Answer me!” he yelled.

  She screamed when the Interrogator again tightened the ropes and stretched her body.

  “You will stop defying the Council!” Kirt screamed. His eyes showed exactly how furious he was over Emily’s secret, “Hang her up until she decides to talk.”

  The Interrogator nodded and untied Emily from the rack. She was in too much pain to fight back and within only a few minutes, was hanging from shackles high on the wall.

  “You can stay there until you talk,” Kirt said, and stormed out of the interrogation room.

  “Sir, Silas wants to speak to you,” one of the prison guards said to him.

  Kirt nodded and walked over, “What?”

  “Please let me talk to her. I can get her to tell you,” Silas said. He was panicked to get to Emily. Her screams echoed across the palace and he needed to tell her to get away and never come back.

  “She’ll talk without your help,” Kirt snapped, and then left the prison.

  “Why isn’t she taking off?” Kralen whispered to Silas, who was in the next cell.

  “I don’t know. I thought when Chevalier was scattered, she would disappear.”

  “They don’t have the kids… nothing’s holding her here.”

  “Unless she’s hoping to save us.”

  “Which is why we need to get to her. She has to get out of here or they’ll kill her.”

  Silas nodded, “I know.”

  “Damnit,” Kralen hissed when the strong smell of Winchester blood filled the prison. As the prisoners began to throw themselves against the bars, fighting to get to the source of the scent, Silas sighed.

  “Why the hell is she still here?” Kralen whispered as he sat down on the hard cot.

  Silas was too upset to answer.

  ***

  Barely able to move, Emily was dropped to the floor of the council chambers. She was finally able to prop herself up with one elbow and look up at the heku with her one good eye.

  “The staff is acclimated,” Kirt said, irritated. “You are now confined to the council chambers during our regular hours.”

  As he spoke, Emily’s left ankle was shackled to the wall with a thick chain.

  “When we are not in here, you are confined to your room. You are no longer trusted by the Council and will be treated like nothing more than a broken weapon.”

  “You will do as you’re told,” the Chief Investigator said calmly.

  “No more disobedience will be tolerated.”

  Emily’s strength gave out and she laid back against the cold dirt floor. The rest of the trial day, she stayed there and ignored the boring trials and faction business. The hard floor was making her back ache worse, pain that started with the rack and got continually more severe as she hung from the shackles.

  When the Council began to leave, Kirt stood up and called for the Door Guard.

  “Yes, Elder?” he asked.

  “She’s too weak to walk, get her to bed,” Kirt said, watching Emily with disgust.

  The heku sighed and then roughly picked her up and blurred her to the tiny room she was assigned. This one had a partial bathroom installed in haste and was her new living space. Once he dropped her onto the bed, she rolled onto her side and pulled the blanket up to her shoulders.

  She couldn’t help but let the tears stream down her face. She felt lost and alone in a place now set out to do nothing more than order her around and hurt her. The world seemed a lot larger now, more cold and desolate. Even though she still had plans, she wondered if they would work or just cause even more suffering.

  The baby moved slightly and brought a new round of tears. After a few hours, she finally cried herself to sleep.

  “Get up.” Emily jumped when the gruff voice sounded in her dark room. She turned and looked at a strange heku, “I said get up.”

  Ignoring the pain as best she could, she sat up and then stood, still dressed in blood drenched clothing from the night before.

  “We need the Grand Hall floor scrubbed,” he said, and turned toward the stairs.

  Emily nodded and followed him down. He left her in the massive room with a bucket of hot, sudsy water and a tiny sponge. She knelt down and immediately began to clean. She didn’t mind hard work, but the soapy water stung the deep cuts on her hands and her knees and back still ached from the rack.

  Her arms started to ache almost immediately as she scrubbed. She’d been hung in the interrogation chamber by shackles for almost 12 hours and she was still feeling the effects of that. The soap continued to sting her hands, but she let her mind wander to good memories to try and escape the new horror she found herself in.

  No one came in all day, and by nightfall, she was scrubbing the second corner of the massive room. As she sat back on her feet to look over the floor, the Records Keeper came in and looked closely at her work.

  “That’ll due I guess… We can’t expect much more from a pathetic little mortal,” he said, faking sadness.

  He turned and held the door, then looked at Emily. She forced herself to stand and then followed him out. The next two weeks was spent the same, scrubbing floors and walls throughout the castle, while her nights were spent in various forms of punishment by the Council for minor infractions.

  After having her hands beaten again with a wooden stick, Emily sat down on her bed to see if she could nurse her wounds at all. The new cuts were over the top of old scabs and older scars. It was getting too painful to even bend her fingers. The new fun by the Council was to force her to kneel by slamming a baseball bat against the back of her legs and thighs.

  Today, the Chief Enforcer had crossed the line and it took every ounce of control for her not to turn the entire Council to ash. When asked again where her children were, the Chief Enforcer followed up her silence with a brutal stomach punch, one which left a vicious purple bruise across her expanding middle.

  Emily had also begun to suspect that the Council planned on getting rid of the baby as soon as she had it, because it belonged to a former member of the Council. She figured that’s why they wanted her children too, to dispose of them and erase Chevalier’s very existence.

  Her heart sank when she remembered the terrified look on Dr. Edwards face as the Chief Enforcer banished him right in front of her. The Council realized that he’d known about the pregnancy, but had kept it from them. The all-too brief sound of his scream echoed through her mind as she sat in the dark and looked around the small room.

  The Council had refused to let Emily change clothes and she’d already outgrown the once baggy overalls. Each night she scrubbed them with weak hands and then hung them on the door knob to dry. They were getting too tight though, and it made it hard to even walk.

  While replaying thoughts of her time on the Island with Chevalier, she finally fell asleep, but was woken up before dawn again.

  “Get up, you’ve slept too much,” the Chief of Staff yelled. Emil
y was curious why they assumed telling her something wouldn’t work unless they screamed it at her. She hurried and dressed and then followed him down, wondering what needed scrubbed now.

  She tried not to react when he opened the door to the game room and stepped back, “Clean it all.”

  Emily nodded, hiding the excitement in her face. She cried out slightly when the Chief of Staff’s foot connected with the middle of her back and sent her flying. She crashed into the pool table and heard him laugh as she fought to catch her breath.

  Once she’d calmed down, she rubbed her sore tummy and looked around the game room. One of her eyes was completely swollen shut and the other was puffy enough it was hard to see. She finally found the bucket and tiny sponge and knelt down to begin scrubbing.

  She had to be careful not to rush, not to hurry even though her pulse raced and the excitement grew. Taking extra time to clean behind the one bar, she finally got the courage and tilted the mirror slightly. She wasn’t even sure it still worked, but the fast whoosh of the spinning door threw her into the hidden bar and then shut tightly behind her.

  Emily looked around the dark bar. Now that the windows were boarded up, no light was coming through them. It took a few minutes for her eyes to adjust and she immediately wedged a chair into the door so it wouldn’t spin. She suspected no one in the palace even knew of this room, but she wanted to be safe.

  After stacking two tables and then putting a chair on top of it, she finally managed to crawl onto the ledge and started pulling at the boards. She’d almost given up hope when her fingers dug into the crack on a board and it pulled away from the others slightly. Tugging as hard as she could with painful hands, she managed to pry open the board and looked down into the abandoned Ancients room and onto the banishment sites of hundreds of heku.

  Emily braced herself and then jumped down the 10 feet to the hard ground below. She managed not to scream when she landed and the jarring sent a painful stab up her legs and back. Once she was sure no one heard her, she immediately began moving around the room and digging up the tiny leather bags under the banishment markers of well-known Equites’ criminals.

  When the bags were safely hidden in the baggy legs of her overalls, she dug up the crowbar she’d buried and listened at the door. She heard several heku walk past and then waited a few minutes before she used her legs to open the heavy stone door.

  By the time Emily got to the garage, she’d only had to turn 12 heku to ash. None of the cars looked familiar, but she’d managed to learn a lot about cars in her years with the heku and chose to steal what looked like a brand new Bugatti Veyron.

  When she peeled out of the garage, she sped past numerous heku that tried to jump and stop her, but flew past them and then winced when she hit the two Gate Guards that tried to step in front of her. She knew the damage to the Veyron would be substantial, and that they were sure to immediately get police on her tail, so she kept with the plan to get to Exavior’s old house and see if her car was still there.

  Emily skidded to a halt outside of the mansion’s garage and left the Veyron only after checking carefully around her. No heku came at her from the house and she began to wonder if the Equites had just abandoned it when they thought she was dead.

  The lights in the garage took painfully long to turn on and she sighed when the only thing in there was her Harley. Emily immediately lifted one of the rear compartments and saw the money that Chevalier insisted she carry with her when she went out. It was enough to get a few tanks of gas and food.

  After grabbing her helmet, she slipped it on and was soon out on the Interstate with the Night Rod special pegged as she moved further west. When she left the Interstate for less conspicuous back-roads, she finally began to relax. She had what she needed, now she just needed to make it to the nearby Banks Coven to get help.

  Chapter 4

  “Well look at this,” one of the massive heku said from the gates of Banks Coven.

  “Seems the Council sent us a traitor to deal with,” another said.

  Emily took a step back and her eyes grew wide when she saw the anger in their features.

  “Someone needs to pay you back for what you’ve done… Know what we do to traitors in this Coven?” the first one asked as he roughly grabbed her arm.

  “She even let one of them knock her up… shows how far she’s fallen.”

  Emily tried to speak, but fear gripped her and she felt a sudden sense of loss. Banks Coven was going to help her. They were going to be her safe haven while they found someone to revive the ashes. Now they were angry and she wasn’t sure who to turn to next.

  “Little Bitch, let’s go,” the first one said as he pulled her into the Coven.

  Heku came out and watched as they passed the tiny row of houses and headed for the mansion in the center. Most snarled and hissed at her, and some shouted curses and accusations. Her heart was dropping. She didn’t want to turn them to ash, but she had to get to safety.

  Lord Banks met them at the entrance to the mansion and any hope Emily had that he would help her vanished when he glared at her, “It’s our duty as Equites to seek revenge for the scattered.”

  Emily gasped and shook her head, then finally managed a whisper, “I didn’t…”

  “Don’t speak!” he shouted, and she was immediately gagged with a thick cloth. “You deserve nothing more than pain and suffering for eternity for what you did. Betraying the faction and killing your own husband… it’s disgusting.”

  She shook her head and tried to speak, but the cloth prevented it.

  “Maybe you’ll meet Chevalier in hell,” he growled, and the guards pulled her down into the prison. Once she was thrown into a cold cell, they locked the doors and she finally untied the gag.

  “Please, help me,” she whispered. “I didn’t…”

  “Shut up!” the guard yelled. “Nothing you can say will help you now.”

  One of the guards grinned, “She’s all bruised up, seems someone else already punished her some. It’ll get a lot worse for you… maybe we’ll have to cut out that baby of yours.”

  Emily gasped, “I didn’t get them…”

  “Shut up,” he said, and both disappeared.

  She didn’t see anyone again until the next morning when one of the Banks Guards threw a t-shirt in at her, “Get out of that filthy get-up and put that on.”

  Emily looked down at her blood covered clothing and quickly put on the t-shirt. It was obviously from one of the guards and came all the way to her knees.

  “Lord Banks thinks you need to suffer before we finally kill you,” another heku said as he unlocked the door. She wasn’t surprised to see he was wearing a menthol mask, “We have an idea that’ll label you as the traitor you are.”

  “They aren’t scattered,” Emily whispered. “You have to believe me.”

  “Believe you?” he hissed, stepping toward her. Emily gasped when she saw a knife in his hand and tried to run past him. A second heku spun her around and painfully slammed her into the rock wall of her cell.

  “Traitor it is…” one of them said. Emily was held down and her screams filled the mansion as the word ‘Proditor’ was carved into her back above the Equites Crest. Other prisoners began to hiss and call for her when the scent of her blood filled the prison.

  When the heku let go of her, she fell to her knees. The pain had drained all of her energy and she slumped down and leaned against the wall.

  “We’re not done,” the other grinned evilly. “You’ll learn not to mess with the Equites.”

  “They aren’t scattered,” she said softly, and then cried out when one of them kicked her in the hip.

  “Just shut up,” he growled, and again she was left alone. She could feel the blood dripping down her back as she finally managed to stand.

  Emily sat on the bed and shut her eyes, fighting to clear her mind so she could figure out how to get out of this. She finally felt the baby move and was relieved that the last few days hadn’t done as much da
mage as she feared.

  It was only an hour later when another mask wearing guard appeared, “Lord Banks wants you interrogated.”

  The second he opened the cell door, he fell to ash and Emily rushed out of the prison. She wiped the memory of any heku she came to and was soon back at her motorcycle. She’d hidden it in the brush with the 13 bags of ashes hidden in the seat. After catching her breath, she sped off into the night.

  Island Coven was much further than Banks, but she decided it was going to be the safest. If she could explain to Storm what happened, she was sure the Island would help her. The ride seemed extremely long and she couldn’t help but check over her shoulder constantly.

  Each time she got gas, she wondered if heku were going to attack her from behind and by the time she got to the ferry, she was shaking and on the verge of a break down. The Captain glared at her, but set off for the Island. After 4 hours, Emily had a plan formed on what she would tell Storm. She believed Captain Darren’s thoughts that the Valle wouldn’t help her, so she hoped to get the ashes to the Encala.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” one of the pier guards growled at her. His dog’s hackles were raised and he was pulling on the leash to get to her.

  “I need help,” Emily said, fighting the internal fear she had of speaking.

  “You’ll get no help from here.”

  “I need you to listen to me,” she said. “They weren’t scattered…”

  “Shut up!” he screamed. “Get back to the mainland and leave this coven alone.”

  “Let me talk to Storm.”

  “Storm’s been banished,” he hissed.

  “Then Walen?”

  “Go away, Island Coven no longer belongs to Chevalier, and you’re no longer welcome here.”

  Emily pulled out a small bag with the name Damon on it, “This is…”

  “You Bitch! You’re really going all out aren’t you? First you get your own husband killed, now you want help for another traitor?”

  “No…”

  The pier guard grabbed her arm tightly and threw her back onto the ferry, then signaled for the Captain to take her back. She watched the island fade from view and her heart sunk further.