Eternity of Vengeance : Book 7 of the Heku Series (5 page)

“Nope… can I get down?”

Kralen set him down, still chuckling,
“No luck there.”

Mark finally regained his
composure, “If there’s heku ash in that house, we would know
it.”

“So maybe it’s not in the house, maybe
it’s out here.”

“Gah, Dain!” Silas yelled, and ran
after the naked boy.

Kralen picked up Dain’s clothes and
then frowned slightly, “If she has Frederick as ash… that could
cause one huge problem for the Council.”

“What would you do if you found him?”
Mark asked.

Kralen thought for a moment, “I think
I’d probably bury him out in the middle of nowhere and hope he
didn’t remember who burned him.”

“She asked the Elder about
a heku that’s been turned to ash.”

“Did he answer her?”

Mark nodded, “Yes… damn, this is all
starting to make sense.”

Kralen glanced over when
Silas came up, holding Dain’s hand. He tossed the clothes over to
Dain and Silas helped the toddler get dressed.

“It makes too much sense,”
Kralen said. “We have two options. We either break protocol and ask
her, or we tell the Council what we suspect.”

“She can’t know we’re going to the
Council,” Mark told him.

Silas nodded, “You two go.
I’ll stay here with the other three… We can watch the perimeter of
the house.”

“Let’s go,” Mark said, and he and
Kralen blurred away.

***

Derrick stepped into the
council chambers three hours after Mark and Kralen arrived, and
requested an audience. The Council had just finished a
trial.

“Sir, General Mark is requesting to
speak to the Council,” Derrick told them.

“Is Emily with him?” Chevalier
asked.

“No, Sir, and they’ve been here for a
while.”

“Let them in.”

Mark and Kralen walked in and stood
before the Council, bowing slightly.

“Is there a problem?” Chevalier
asked.

“We have some suspicions we want to
inform the Council of,” Mark told them.

Zohn nodded, “Ok, what
suspicions.”

Mark glanced at Kralen.

Kralen took a deep breath,
“Silas and I have been talking, and we’re starting to see a lot of
signs indicating that Lady Emily… well… that she may have
Frederick.”

Chevalier frowned, “What makes you
think that she has him?”

“There are a few things,”
Mark said. “Her nightmares, most of them are about Fredrick… She’s
been asking a lot lately about how and when a heku can recover from
being turned to ash.”

“We’ve all been so
concerned… watching and waiting for her to seek revenge for Jaron,”
Kralen told them. “She hasn’t done it, and we wonder if that’s
because she’s already in the middle of getting revenge.”

Chevalier fell deep into
thought and after almost twenty minutes, he sighed, “They’re right.
She’s hiding something and I wrongly suspected it was something
she’d found in that house.”

“Hiding something?” Quinn
asked.

He nodded, “Yes, her poker
face. She used it while we were talking this morning.”

“If she has him, it could start a war
that we aren’t ready to face,” Dustin growled.

“We don’t know anything
yet,” Quinn said, and turned to the Chief Interrogator. “If she’s
using what the Elder calls her poker face, can you tell if she’s
lying?”

“Sometimes, she has a problem keeping
it for long.”

“With all due respect,
Sir,” Kralen said. “If she sees the Chief Interrogator coming,
she’ll clam up and we won’t get any information.”

Chevalier nodded, “He’s
right.”

“However,” Mark said, and smiled
slightly, “I think she tends to forget that Elder Zohn used to be
the Chief Interrogator.”

“She might get suspicious
though. I’ve never been to that house,” Zohn told him.

“We can think of
something,” Chevalier said. “The hard part is how to casually bring
it up without her turning defensive.”

“It’s an emergency that
calls for drastic measures,” Dustin said. “I suggest you control
her and ask.”

“That seems a little
harsh,” Quinn said to him. “We’ll simply ask her and see if Zohn
can pick anything up.”

“And if she does have him?” the Chief
of Staff asked.

“Then we’ll handle that
when we come to it,” Chevalier said, and stood up. “Shall
we?”

Zohn nodded and they all
walked out of the council chambers. Ten minutes later, the Humvee
pulled up in front of Emily’s house and they were met by Silas and
the other Cavalry guards.

“Why are you outside?” Zohn asked,
frowning.

Silas glanced at the
window, “She’s making popcorn.”

“This early? That’s odd,”
Chevalier said, and walked into the house. He covered his nose with
his arm and looked around before calling out for her,
“Em?”

Dain ran in and stopped at the door
leading down to the ceremonial room, feeding room, and the
interrogation chamber, “Mommy!”

Chevalier looked over at him, “Is
Mommy down there?”

The tiny heku turned back
to the door and inhaled, and then nodded and called down to her,
“Mommy!”

“Why in the world would
she be down there?” Chevalier asked, and he led the way as they all
went down into the dungeon. “Em?”

He first opened the
Interrogation chamber door and found it empty. She’d already tried
to throw away all of the devices, and wasn’t aware that Mark simply
moved them to the palace.

Kralen opened the feeding
room and looked inside, “That leaves just… that one.”

Everyone turned and looked at the shut
ceremonial room door.

Zohn slowly opened the
door and looked inside, then gasped and quickly walked in with the
others. Emily was in the exact center of the room, lying on the
floor with her arms crossed and her eyes closed.

“What’s going on?” Mark
whispered.

Chevalier knelt down and
touched her, “I don’t know.”

“I’ve never seen anything
like this,” Zohn said, and looked down at her.

“Em?” Chevalier said, and
shook her arm lightly. When she didn’t move, he turned to the
others.

“Elders,” Silas called
out, and when they turned to him, he held up the sledgehammer. “I
think she was trying to get rid of the room.”

Zohn’s eyes grew wide and he looked
over at her, “She tried to destroy the ceremonial room?”

Mark sighed, “She’s mentioned it
before.”

“She tried to get Miri to do it once,”
Chevalier added.

“So… is she hurt?” Kralen
asked, walking up to her.

“I don’t think so.”

“I’ve never heard of anyone trying to
destroy one,” Zohn said, and looked around the room.

“Did the runes do this
then?” Silas asked, shocked.

“That’d be my guess,”
Chevalier told him, and then glanced at them. “I’m sure they don’t
want to be damaged.”

Mark reached down and
gently picked her up. She lay limply in his arms, “Well that’s a
start. I wasn’t sure we could move her.”

“Take her upstairs to the bedroom,”
Chevalier told him.

As soon as Mark was out of the room,
Emily looked up at him, “What happened?”

“Are you ok?” Chevalier asked, moving
up to look at her.

She frowned, “Put me down.”

Mark gently set her on her feet and
she looked at the heku, “What happened?”

“You tried to destroy the ceremonial
room,” Chevalier explained.

“Yeah, so?”

“It didn’t want destroyed.”

Her eyes narrowed, “Did I just get my
ass kicked by a room?”

“I wouldn’t call it…” Chevalier
started, but then stopped when she headed back for the
room.

Emily got to the door and
headed inside just as a flash of bright light shone from the room
and she was thrown backwards against the stone wall.

She rolled onto her hands and knees
and groaned, “What the hell?”

The heku were too stunned
to help her. They’d never seen anything like what was going on in
that room. Finally, Mark went over and knelt down.

“Are you hurt?”

“Yes, I hit my head,” she
said, and slowly got to her feet. She felt the back of her head and
cringed when she hit a large knot.

“Maybe we should go upstairs,”
Chevalier said, and held his hand out.

Zohn walked up slowly to
the room, braced himself, and then walked in. He looked around,
“Nothing happened.”

“You didn’t try to destroy
it,” Kralen said, and walked in also. He grabbed the sledgehammer
and followed the others up the stairs.

“That room has to go,”
Emily grumbled when they got to the main floor.

“It’s not that easy to get
rid of. Though, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone trying to
destroy one with a sledgehammer,” he explained.

“Then you get rid of it. I
don’t want it here.”

“We’ll work on it. It
takes months, and it will have to be relocated.”

“What? How do you do that?”

He smiled, “Don’t worry
about it. We’ll get it moved.”

“Did Exavior do that?” she asked,
looking back down the stairs.

“I don’t think so. You’re
trying to destroy magic older than your own species using a
sledgehammer. It’s not that simple.”

Emily looked at Zohn and smiled, “Come
for a visit?”

“Yes, I wanted to see what
the big deal was. Glad I did come, that was quite
interesting.”

“For you maybe, gave me a headache,”
she told him, and sat on a couch in the foyer.

Silas appeared in front of her with a
glass of orange juice and some aspirin.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, and
then took it quickly.

Chevalier sat down beside her, “I’d
like to ask you something.”

“Yes, I tried to destroy
it with a sledgehammer.”

He grinned, “That was obvious, but
this is something else.”

“Ok,” she said, and looked over at
him.

He looked into her eyes, “Do you have
Frederick?”

Emily looked up at Zohn briefly before
answering, “Yes.”

“Wait… you do?” Chevalier gasped,
shocked she’d told them.

“Yes, I have him and no, you can’t
have him back.”

“You have Frederick?” Zohn asked,
surprised.

“I just said I did.”

“It’s just… we’ve been
looking for him… the Encala… You’ve had him this entire
time?”

“Yes”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“You didn’t ask, and I didn’t want to
offer up that information,” she explained, and then picked Dain up
when he walked past her.

Kralen chuckled, “That’s
true. We didn’t ask her.”

Chevalier sighed, “We need
him.”

“No”

“No?” Zohn asked, frowning.

“No, you can’t have him.”

“Em, I don’t think you
understand how serious this is,” Chevalier explained. “This is
going to cause a major incident.”

Emily held out her hands, wrists
together, “I’m an Equites and will take the punishment, but you
can’t have him back.”

Mark glanced at Chevalier
and he thought for a moment and then nodded. Kralen stepped forward
and put handcuffs on Emily, and led her out to the
Humvee.

“No!” Dain screamed. He
ran up to Kralen and bit him on the leg.

“Damnit!” Kralen growled as Silas
pulled the toddler off him.

“Dain, stop it,” Emily said
sternly.

“No!” he yelled again, and kicked to
try to get away from Silas.

Emily got into the Humvee
and sat in the middle of the backseat between Silas and Kralen.
Mark took the screaming toddler in the Jeep and Chevalier talked to
him before locking up the house and getting into the Humvee with
Zohn.

Emily smiled slightly, “Am I going to
prison?”

“I don’t know yet,”
Chevalier said. He gunned the Humvee and sped toward the
city.

Chevalier slammed the Humvee into park
and blurred into the palace, followed by Zohn.

“Take a deep breath,” Kralen said to
her.

She nodded, starting to feel
scared.

“We’ll stay with you as
long as we can,” Silas told her, and helped her out of the truck.
They all walked slowly up to the fourth-floor.

Derrick didn’t greet them as usual,
but kept things completely by protocol as he opened the door, “The
Council will see you now.”

Kralen and Silas each took
an arm and led her into the trial area. They gently helped her down
onto her knees and she looked up at the Council.