Eternity of Vengeance : Book 7 of the Heku Series (19 page)

“Stop, don’t move closer,”
she told her guards. She watched them, studying their faces.
Something was wrong and she couldn’t figure it out.

“Why? Why stay here when we can go?”
Mark asked.

“Something’s not right.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know,” she
whispered, and watched her two guards.

“We called the Encala in.
They were close and they’ve been helping us.”

“They told me you weren’t even here,”
she said.

“They’re idiots too, what
can I say? Let’s go… Alex and Dain are waiting for you,” Silas
said.

Emily frowned, “Alex?”

“Yes”

“Not Lexi?”

Silas stopped moving forward and
glanced at William before looking over at Emily, “We’re all just
worried about you, what does it matter if I called her
Alex?”

Emily looked at Mark, “I’m
sorry.”

“For what?”

“That I can’t trust you
two… something’s not right… and I can’t trust the Encala. We’re
enemies.”

“We don’t have to be,”
William said.

Emily wiped the blood from
her nose onto her hand and then onto the grass at her feet. She
walked forward and looked at the fourteen sets of ashes, then took
three of the red capes and wrapped them around herself before
running off from the remains.

***

The heku leading the
Kimber Coven knelt down by one of the piles of ashes, “These are
recent.”

“Sir, there’s a bloody
handprint over here,” one of them said, and turned to the
leader.

He stood up and walked
over, touching it lightly. He brought his fingers to his nose and
inhaled, shut his eyes, and then whispered, “It’s her.”

“Two of these uniforms are
Equites,” a female heku said, and turned when she heard the Elder
coming.

“I saw that,” the leader
told her. “We’ll see what the Elder says.”

“What did you…” Chevalier
stopped when he saw the ashes, “Damn.”

Mark frowned and grabbed one of the
green capes, “There are Equites with them?”

Kralen grabbed another and
smelled it, “Equites uniforms, but they smell like
Encala.”

“Give me that,” Chevalier
growled. Kralen handed the green cape over and Chevalier smelled it
briefly.

“There’s a bloody
handprint over here,” the Kimber Leader said.

Kyle went over and touched it softly,
“She would get a bloody nose from this.”

“So they are trying to
trick her now… by telling her the Encala have joined the Equites,”
Mark growled.

“She obviously didn’t
believe it,” Chevalier said. “Revive them so we can get some
answers.”

Kyle nodded and began to
revive the Encala, one at a time. The fifth one he revived screamed
angrily, and when he stood up, the Equites all gasped.

“What the hell?” Mark yelled as the
reformed Encala looked exactly like him.

He grinned, “Your little bitch isn’t
going to last much longer out here.”

“Why do you look like me?”

“You figure it out,” he
said, and stretched as the burning pain began to fade.

“Damn,” Kyle said when another of the
Encala revived looked like Silas.

“Hey!” Silas yelled.

The Encala Silas sighed and shrugged,
“Guess we got a few things wrong.”

“Meaning?” Chevalier
growled.

“Who the hell calls an
Alexis, Lexi?” he asked, amused.

“I do,” Silas growled.

“Apparently, damn. She’s
the most untrusting mortal I’ve ever met.”

Chevalier stood before William as he
reformed, “You have a hell of a lot of explaining to
do.”

William groaned and put
his hands against his knees, “I’ll never get used to that
burn.”

“I hope not,” Chevalier
said. “What did you do?”

William stood up and
looked around, “We want our Elder back, and as you don’t seem to
want to return him, we took it into our own hands. Course, there is
one consolation, now when you find her, she won’t trust even you,”
he said, and then grinned.

Chevalier growled, “Get these fourteen
back to the palace, hold them until I get there.”

Powans appeared and pulled the Encala
from the area.

“Now what?” Kyle asked, looking out
over the tree filled valley below them.

“I’m not sure. William was
right. She’s not going to trust even us now.”

***

Emily was following the
sounds of men talking and finally saw smoke rising from a campfire.
She lowered to the ground and peeked out from around a thick
evergreen tree, then watched as four men sat around a campfire
while a fifth cleaned out a poached deer. They were drinking and
laughing about eluding law enforcement.

One of the men reached
into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone when it rang. He began
talking to what sounded like a wife or girlfriend. Emily moved back
behind the tree and pulled out her own cell phone. She checked, but
still wasn’t getting service from her cell phone
company.

“Spying on us, Beautiful?”
Emily heard from behind her. She sighed and turned around to face a
tall, thin man. He was bald, with a swastika tattooed across the
side of his head and a vicious scar on his chin.

“No, I’m lost and I need
to borrow a phone,” she told him, and took a step
backwards.

He ran his eyes down her
and grinned, “Where’s your clothes?”

Emily looked down at the
huge guard uniform, “They were wet, and I found these.”

“What did you find,
Barry?” another man asked as he rounded the tree.

“A spy.”

The man smiled at Emily,
“Interesting.”

“Listen, I don’t want any
trouble. I just need to borrow a phone,” Emily said, and fell back
into an attack stance that the Encala taught her.

“You ready to fight us?” a
third man asked, and stepped out from around the tree. This man was
shorter with a thick neck and broad shoulders. His brown hair was
greasy and hung down to the middle of his back.

“Just let me use a phone,
please,” Emily said, and clenched her hands into fists.

“You done seen us breaking
the law. We c’aint let you go now,” the first man told her, and
took a step forward.

Emily slipped the gun out
of her pocket and pointed it directly between his eyes, “You don’t
have a choice. Now you can give me your damned phone or I’ll take
it.”

He grinned, “You’re pretty small to be
making demands.”

“I may be small, but I’m
armed and grouchy.”

He leaned his head back
and started to laugh, “Feisty, too.”

Emily screamed when a
strong force from behind knocked her down and slam her into the
ground. Rough hands ripped the gun away from her and press her head
against the dirt, “Now you aren’t so tough, are you,
Baby?”

“Let me go,” she hissed,
and he roughly flipped her over and straddled her hips, holding her
down.

The man grinned down at her and began
to unbutton the large guard’s shirt she wore, “I think you’re in
some kinda trouble with the law… just likes us… and I don’t think
you can run and get help.”

Emily managed to pull an
arm out from under his and slammed her palm up into his nose. The
man immediately fell back against the ground, unmoving. She
scrambled to her feet while the other men watched her, too shocked
to move.

She spun on them, “Leave me the hell
alone.”

The shortest man knelt
down by the one Emily punched and then looked up, “She done kilt
him.”

“He c’aint be dead,” the
taller one said, and knelt down beside the dead man. “Fuck, she did
kill him.”

Emily took a step back and watched
them.

The taller man stood up and glared at
her, “You Bitch! Now you’ll pay for that.”

“Stay away from me,” Emily
growled, and began to back up.

“No! You done kilt
Carlos,” he said, and stepped toward her. She tried to dodge him,
but he lunged at her and grabbed her roughly by the shoulders, “You
took our hunting partner, now you’ll repay us.”

Emily tried to pull away from him as
he ran his tongue up her face and then kissed her
forcefully.

She brought her knee up
hard, and caught him in the groin as she bit his bottom lip. Her
mouth filled with his blood and he fell to his knees before her.
Without waiting, she took off running into the trees.

“Hey!” one of the men
screamed, and ran after her. She turned in time to see the heavy
set man falling behind, but ran into someone and fell onto her back
on the dirt.

“Nope, not getting away,”
he said, and pulled her up to standing by her arm. He had a tight
grip on her arm as he hauled her back to camp.

“Bitch!” the man she kneed screamed at
her as he got to his feet.

Emily tried again to pull
her arm away from the one restraining her, but couldn’t get it
loose. She glanced at him long enough to ascertain that he didn’t
have any attack points easily available to her, but she knew he
would eventually.

“Get her back to camp,” he
snarled, and Emily was forcibly pulled into their camp.

“You have no idea what
you’re dealing with,” Emily told them. “Let me go… now.”

“No, I don’t think we
will,” he said, and grinned at her. Walking forward, he began to
unbutton the guard’s shirt again.

Emily tried to kick him,
but the man holding her arm pulled her back and held tightly while
the other removed her shirt, leaving just a thin
camisole.

“I still wish I knew whose
clothes these was,” he said, and pulled the pants out of her grasp
so they slid down to her ankles.

“There we go, that’s much
better,” the restraining man said, and moved her back to a tree.
Her arms were pulled painfully back around the tree and he tied
them tightly.

“Let me go,” she screamed.

“No, I wanna look at you
for a while,” he said, and stood in front of her, running his eyes
down her body as he reached out and softly touched the exposed skin
on her thigh.

Emily kicked out at him
and caught his knee cap, displacing it and sending him screaming to
the ground.

“Stop it!” the tallest man
said, and pressed his body against hers as he forced her face up
with his hand so she was looking at him. “You better watch it,
Princess. You is going to get yourself killed.”

He looked into her eyes
and then pressed his lips to hers as she pushed against him. When
his tongue began to run across her lips, she quickly bit it, and he
screamed and moved away from her. Suddenly, he backhanded her and
she slid down against the tree until she was sitting on the forest
floor.

“You’r ay or at,” he
mumbled, not able to talk properly.

She spit out a mouthful of blood and
looked up at him.

***

“I smell death,” Kyle
said, and looked around the forest.

“Yeah, I just caught that
too… it’s mortal,” Mark said, and started through the trees toward
the smell.

“Hold off calling the
Elder until we find what it is,” Kyle whispered, and followed
him.

Within just a few minutes,
Mark found the body of a mortal man, and he knelt down beside it
and pulled the dead man’s face toward him, “His nose is
broken.”

“Em did it,” Kyle said,
and looked around. “I smell others here, but it’s been a
while.”

“He didn’t die here.
There’s no blood on the ground,” Mark said, and stood
up.

“Here’s a trail,” Kyle
said, and blurred through the forest, followed closely by Mark.
They both stopped when they smelled more mortals and a campfire.
They walked forward slowly, using the night’s darkness to hide them
from view.

Mark hissed softly when he
spotted Emily tied to a tree off to the side of the camp. She was
wearing only the camisole and panties and was bound and gagged. Her
head was away from them, and it looked to them like she was asleep
against the tree, though her arms were bent at abnormal angles
around it.

Kyle’s hands tightened into fists and
he moved closer to hear what the men around the campfire were
saying.

“Are you ok, dude?” one of them
said.

“’
At ithi’ my ongue!” he
mumbled.

Another man laughed, “Man,
she bit you good, you c’aint even talk.”

“Stop laughing, idiot! She
broke my knee and ‘bout busted my balls,” another said,
irritated.

“Feisty that one. What are
we going to do with her?”

“Rest up and then we’ll
have some fun. We’ll kill her when were done,” he said, and shifted
slightly, groaning when he moved his knee. Kyle and Mark saw that
he had his pants pulled up above his knee and it was swelling badly
and bruised deep blue and purple.