Valle : Book 2 of the Heku Series

by T. M. Nielsen

  “It fit,” she said, grinning slightly.

  “You’re going to kill yourself trying to break that monster. He turned into one huge horse,” he said, starting to get worried.

  “Oh I can take care of that,” she told him, and headed out of the room.

  Chevalier picked up Allen and followed her, “Oddly enough, I’m feeling sorry for the horse.”

  “You should, because your Arabian is next.”

  “My Arabian is already broken,” he reminded her.

  “Yeah, but he needs some manors.” The way she walked, the way she spoke and carried herself was impressive to Chevalier. He’d never seen such a tiny figure command so much respect and authority. He knew she was going to fit in perfectly in the palace, but couldn’t tell her that.

  “Try not to kill him, Em,” Chevalier said, taking Allen and heading for the kitchen.

  “Damnit,” Allen said, pointing to Emily.

  He sighed, “Yes I know.”

  Chevalier sat Allen down at the table and watched as he began to eat his peanut butter and jelly sandwich happily. Gordon hated how he wouldn’t eat anything more intricate, but finally caved when Allen would look at him with his beautiful green eyes.

  “Is Emily packing?” Kyle asked, joining them at the table.

  “Sort of… and I need you to get ready to move also,” he said, not taking his eyes off of his son.

  “Yes, Sir, for how long will I be gone?” Kyle asked, knowing better than to question any further.

  Chevalier looked at him, “Permanently”

  Kyle cringed and nodded. Chevalier couldn’t tell him anything else, and he knew Kyle wasn’t happy about moving away from the island. He also knew Kyle would be ok with it when he found out the reasons.

  Kyle stood up, but Chevalier held out a hand, “Stay, please… there’s more.”

  He sat back down slowly, and Chevalier continued, “I’m going away for a few weeks.”

  Kyle nodded.

  “I would never tell Emily this, but there’s a chance… however small… that I won’t be back,” Chevalier whispered. He watched Allen to make sure he hadn’t heard or understood.

  Kyle nodded again slowly, “Let me come with you then. It will up your chances of whatever it is you’re doing.”

  “I can’t, I have to do this alone,” he said, and caught Allen’s sandwich moments before it hit the floor. He handed it back to him and returned his attention to Kyle.

  “I understand,” Kyle said, but he wasn’t happy.

  “This is just between us. I need help with Emily,” he said, and when he had Kyle’s full attention again, he continued. “If anything happens to me… if you don’t hear from me by day 15, I want you to take her away. I have a house on one of the islands in Palau. Take her there… no one knows I have it, I’ll get you directions. Once you get there, stay… never come back.”

  Kyle dropped his eyes and nodded.

  “No one, not even the Elders, can know where she’s gone.”

  “I will do as you ask,” Kyle said. Chevalier knew this was an enormous personal risk for Kyle. Whisking away the Winchester would be grounds for banishment, and out on that small remote island, Kyle would be a factionless heku, a great danger.

  “Be ready to move in two weeks, but don’t make it too obvious,” Chevalier said after a few minutes of silence.

  Kyle nodded.

  “Here, take Allen up for his nap, I need to go to the office for a bit,” Chevalier said.

  Kyle took Allen and left the dining room. Chevalier thought for a moment, and then went to his office to prepare.

  Chevalier was just finishing up his plans for taking out Selest when there was a knock on his door.

  “Enter,” he said, quieter than usual.

  Kyle entered, “I’m running Em to the mainland, but I can have the helicopter back by morning.”

  Chevalier sighed, “What’d she do now?”

  Kyle grinned, “She got into a fight with your horse.”

  Chevalier raised an eyebrow, “How bad?”

  “I think she dislocated her shoulder, Dr. Edwards is waiting for her at the hospital.” Kyle fought not to grin.

  “How bad is the horse?” He grinned.

  “Oh your horse won, she says it’s because breaking in Damnit... erm… the colt, wore her out. I’m pretty sure you’re going to need a new horse when she gets back, she’s pretty mad.” Kyle started to shut his door.

  “I’ll be gone when you get back,” Chevalier said, following him out. “I’ll go say good-bye to Em.”

  They walked in silence up to the small infirmary on the 3rd floor. Chevalier was dreading telling Emily good-bye and Kyle was afraid of losing a good friend and Commanding Officer. He also dreaded having to make the decision when it was time to move Emily out of civilization.

  “No, Emily,” Sam said. Kyle and Chevalier heard them yelling from down the hall.

  “You can’t tell me no. I tell you what to do,” she ordered.

  “Fine then… but I have a feeling in a few seconds it won’t matter what you want.” Sam sounded pleased.

  Chevalier and Kyle walked around the corner and saw Emily standing close to Sam, glaring up at him.

  “What’s wrong?” Chevalier asked, watching them.

  “He’s going to hire someone to break that colt.” She glared at Sam.

  “Emily…” Chevalier turned to Kyle and Kyle ushered Sam out of the small room.

  She looked at him sideways, “What’s wrong?”

  “When you get back from the hospital… I’ll be gone. I need to get this all taken care of,” he said, wrapping his arms around her.

  “So soon? Don’t go, please. If you wait until I get back I’ll go with you,” she said.

  “I’ll be back before you know it. Try not to give Kyle and Sam a hard time and do what the doctor says,” Chevalier told her, and kissed the top of her head.

  “Please don’t go,” she begged.

  “I have to. Be good.” He took her face in his hands and kissed her passionately.

  She pulled away and looked into his eyes, “I changed my mind, let me do it.”

  He grinned, “And let you take the credit? I’ll be back soon, I promise.”

  She frowned, “You don’t know that. I can see it in your eyes.”

  Chevalier kissed her forehead and left for his mission.

  ***

  Chevalier watched from outside of the city. He could see the regular happenings of Selest’s coven. Heku everywhere were doing their everyday things, shopping, training, spending time with their family. He truly hoped he wouldn’t have to kill too many of the innocents. He’d been to the castle in the center of the city many times, but showing up uninvited would surely cause panic.

  This wasn’t the first time for him to banish a member of the Council. It was his job to banish them any time a council member was slated to be replaced, but never before had he been given the task to take out an Elder, let alone to replace her. Things were different now, now he had Emily and Allen, a reason to return.

  Chevalier’s plans were well laid out and precise. He was going to take his time, slowly moving through the city and taking as few innocent lives as he could. He hoped that the six days of recognizance would pay off, and he wouldn’t run into any surprises. Tonight was the night he chose for the attack. A storm was coming, the high wind would help mask his scent and hopefully buy him a few extra seconds of lead time.

  Chevalier put on his black jacket and quickly painted his face with black paint. Stealth would be the trick here, especially when he entered the castle. He knew that Selest was never heavily guarded. She was safer at the Council City Palace, but Selest had chosen to spend some time with her coven for the next few weeks. It would be easier here to find her unguarded, but also would be harder to keep from killing the innocents.

  Crouching low, Chevalier moved from tree, to rock, to tree, keeping out of sight yet moving slowly closer to the city. This city had no high cem
ent walls, careless on her part as far as Chevalier was concerned. His first staging point was just beyond the first house, an alcove between several small commercial buildings, all but abandoned for the night. He made it there slowly, taking extra time to carefully watch his step and avoid contact with the heku at all costs.

  From the first alcove, there was a straight shot to his next well-planned out location, an abandoned store. There, he could set up a secondary staging area. Making it to the store without any difficulty, he sat down his backpack and waited. He had two hours to go before the row of houses to his south would turn out their lights and pretend to sleep for the night to keep up the mortal pretenses. Chevalier preferred his island, mortals didn’t make it past the pier. There was no reason to put up the façade.

  The two hours passed quickly, his thoughts shifted between his mission at hand and his family back on the island. He smiled when he thought of Emily getting hurt trying to tame his wild horse. He knew it was wrong, but he liked his stallion ornery, it suited him well. Still, he hated when Emily was injured, though it happened often enough. He wondered, jokingly, if she could get injured in a padded room and figured she of all people could. Her green eyes filled his mind as the night grew on, those flowing, piercing eyes that somehow managed to drill deep into his soul with a simple glance.

  Chevalier heard the sounds of the evening coming to a close. The heku were now in their houses and the lights slowly turned out. He peered around the door and saw a clear pathway to his next stop, an alleyway behind a small tailor’s shop. He almost ran into a group of heku coming out of a bar, but managed to slip into the shadows as they passed him, unknowing how close they came to dying. He smiled at the thought of a heku bar. It was a place for donors to gather because they were well paid for their services.

  The night drew on, and Chevalier counted himself lucky as he ran into no one, and went undetected through the night. He was over halfway to the palace when he heard the sounds of the city coming alive. He made it to his third staging area, a place he planned to spend the entire day. He’d seen the area when he last visited Selest and she had given him a tour of the city. He thought it was a dangerous spot, a place for someone to hide and it came quickly to his mind again when it was he who needed to disappear.

  He crouched in the small area just below one of the city streets. The area was to collect excess rain water during flooding season, but was perfectly dry during this time of year. He watched as people passed and talked about their day. He carefully listened to their conversations, seeing if there was anything he could find useful. He could gather from their conversations that Selest was only planning on being there for another few days, and then she was heading back to Council City. Little did she know that she wouldn’t be returning to her beloved palace, she would be banished just outside of this city.

  Chevalier had already prepared the ground. The hole was 6 feet deep and surrounded with runes. A simple wooden coffin sat in the hole with the top laying off to the side. Once he put her inside and sealed the coffin, she would be unable to escape for the 525 years that the Elders decided on, slowly regaining most of her natural form over the first ten years. It was a horrific experience. The heku banished would spend that time with the pains of hunger and the memory of their life slowly fading. It was a punishment that was too harsh for the infraction, but needed to keep peace within their species.

  Darkness fell on his seventh night away from his island and he set out again. Tonight he would reach the castle and would either drag Selest’s dead body away, or they would drag his. Either way, it would be over. His first obstacle was only a hundred yards away. The castle in this city was surrounded by a sharp iron fence with two guards at the entryway. He knew he could easily handle two guards, his experience taught him that. Once he had them dead, he could take one of their robes and more easily walk through the castle.

  He watched as the changing of the guard occurred and saw that the two in the front were young and seemed inexperienced. He understood further why it was time to get rid of Selest. She should have known better than to post anything but the most experienced guard at the entrance to where she stayed.

  Chevalier was at the first guard before the young heku could even turn his head. His strong hands wound around the heku’s head and tore it off in one swift movement. The second guard was stunned and only brought his sword up when Chevalier appeared at his back and tore at his neck with his teeth. The second guard fell easily, and Chevalier was able to move them out of sight and steal a robe from the taller one. The robes were dark green and smelled of strange incense.

  With the robe on, he covered his face with the hood and crossed his hands in front of his chest, as was customary in this coven. He’d seen the entire guard staff walk in this form, though he wasn’t sure why they did it, it wasn’t hard to imitate. He was surprised at how easily he walked through this castle and his desire to get Selest off of the Council grew stronger. She was careless, and her security was lacking, an inexcusable offense.

  He wondered if the two guards would be the only innocent lives he would need to kill today as he stopped in front of her office. He could hear her inside, talking to someone with a soft, timid voice. They were just visiting, casually. He picked up no conversation of any importance. He knocked hard, and their conversation stopped.

  “Enter,” she said, and he opened the door and stepped into the room.

  “Yes?” Selest asked the one she thought was a guard.

  Chevalier reached behind him and locked the door. The mortal in the chair looked at him coyly. He had a new bandage on his wrist. Chevalier thought quickly that at least she went to banishment with no immediate thirst.

  “What do you want? I’m busy,” Selest asked, standing up.

  Chevalier lowered his hood, and Selest gasped, then dropped into a defensive crouch. He reached over and quickly killed the mortal, who put up no fight and his neck was easily broken without so much as a scream.

  “Don’t do it, Chevalier,” Selest hissed at him.

  “You’ve become lax, Selest. The Council has spoken,” he told her and crouched low as his hands balled into tight fists.

  “I’m surprised the cowards didn’t send your mortal to do me in… what an inconvenience to lose their Chief Enforcer when his little girl could have done it,” she said, grinning.

  “Five hundred and twenty five years,” he said to her. He was required to give her that small piece of information.

  “So long? What have I done to deserve such a long sentence?” she asked, shocked.

  “Five hundred and twenty five years,” he said again, and took a step toward her.

  “You won’t get out of here alive, you know that,” she said in a panic.

  “Maybe, but neither will you.”

  “You’ll leave Emily and your son. How can you do that to them? Let me go and I won’t tell anyone. I’ll let you walk out of here and return to them.” Her eyes were pleading. Selest knew nothing could change the Chief Enforcer’s mind. That’s why he was such a strong force on the Council. She wasn’t surprised at all that he had been chosen to take her place.

  “You underestimate me, Selest. That is one of the reasons why you need some time away.” He was surprised at how she froze as he approached her.

  “Please, Chevalier, don’t do this. Emily will…” Her words were cut off by his hand around her neck.

  “If I don’t, then someone else will,” he said, tightening his fingers.

  Chevalier could feel her vertebrae crush under his fingers. Once she crumbled to the floor, he grabbed the dagger from his pocket and pricked his finger, then let a drop of blood fall onto the body of the Elder. Selest healed enough to gasp just as her body turned to ash.

  He fell into a chair. He hated this part, the energy it took to turn a heku ceremoniously to ash was extreme. He sat on the chair and put his hands on his knees, grinning slightly at the thought of how easily Emily could turn a heku to ash. Though he felt weakened and tired, ther
e was urgency. He had limited time to regain his strength enough to make it out alive. He looked around her office as he recovered. She had piles of papers waiting for her attention, papers that would never be signed, orders gone unanswered. The mortal laying on the ground looked up at him with unseeing eyes.

  The few minutes it took Chevalier to regain his strength allowed him to study her room. He smelled incense in here, strongly, and thought it might have been a way to relieve stress. She’d had more than one donor today. The one he killed was the fifth mortal in that office in the past few hours.

  It only took Chevalier a few minutes to move Selest’s ashes into the small leather draw-string bag. He slipped it into his pocket and pulled the hood back over his face. Just as he reached for the door handle, a knock sounded. He froze, unable to even breathe.

  A second knock made his heart race.

  He heard a man outside the door say, “Maybe she left for her room?”

  “No, I checked in there and her guard said she’s in her office,” a female said.

  “Ok, go see if she’s taken her donor to the bus,” the male suggested.

  Chevalier waited until the voices disappeared to slowly open the door and look out into the hallway. He locked the door from the inside and then shut it softly behind him. He slowed his breathing and squared his shoulders after pulling the hood a little further over his face, then took the long way to the front door, going down past the kitchen façade and around through the library. He hoped by taking the back way to the door he wouldn’t be seen and identified as an intruder.

  Chevalier could see the front door from the shadows under the stairs. He was just about to calmly walk to it, when an alarm sounded and the entire castle came alive. All of the robed figures were running toward the back of the castle. He took off with them, needing to blend in with others from the coven. He couldn’t risk be seen as the only robed heku going out the west doors.

  In the mad rush to get to the meeting area, none of the panicked heku saw anything wrong with someone taking off into a side room. Chevalier shut the door softly behind him and opened the large window. He looked down and saw it was only ten feet to the grass. Hoisting himself into the window sill, he dropped into a crouch on the ground below.