Ferus : Book 6 of the Heku Series (23 page)

“Stay here with me,”
Chevalier said, and pulled her close to him.

She rested her head against his chest, “I
don’t belong here.”

“Yes you do. Give it
another try.”

“Did you kill Wade?”

He kissed the top of her
head, “Not yet, he’s still giving us information.”

“There’s going to be a big V.E.S. fight on
the island isn’t there?”

“I wouldn’t call it big.
They are only sending around 800 people.”

“Like cattle to the slaughterhouse… can’t
you just lock the island and ignore them until they go away?”

Chevalier shook his head, “That’s the
problem… they won’t go away.”

“I can’t ask your peaceful coven to go to
war over this.”

“First off… don’t mistake
quiet for peaceful, they are still heku. Secondly, they saw what
the V.E.S. did to you, and because you’re one of us… they want
revenge.”

Emily frowned, “Still…”

“Don’t worry about Island Coven, this is
nothing compared to what we’ve encountered before.”

“I guess there’s no chance
the heku will just scare them away?”

Chevalier chuckled,
“No.”

Emily was pulling weeds in
the garden when she heard the island’s alarm go off. She sighed and
set the shovel down. She’d noticed more excitement than tension
while the coven waited for the impending V.E.S. attack. Chevalier,
Kyle, Mark, and Kralen were with the 100 members of the army that
Council City sent over. The last few days were spent waiting and
watching the seas.

Anna appeared among the
tall rows of corn, “Time to come in, Ma’am.”

“Take Dain,” Emily said,
and handed the baby to Anna, then stood up and brushed the dirt off
of her jeans.

“Hurry, we need to go to the cave room.”

Emily frowned, “Go… take
Dain. I’m going to the pier.”

Anna gasped, “No, Dear, the Elder
specifically requested you stay away from this fight.”

“When’s the last time I did what the Elder
said?”

“I don’t think you understand… this isn’t
something you’ve encountered before and you can’t help.”

“I bet I can, they are fighting because of
me… now take Dain and go. Make sure Alexis goes with you and find
Allen.”

“Allen is already with the
Elder,” Anna said, and turned nervously toward the
castle.

Emily sighed, “Of course he is… get the baby
to safety.”

“Please… this once… come
inside.”

“Go, Anna.”

Anna started to argue, but
Emily took off running for the pier. The closer she got, the louder
the sounds of blood-curdling screams grew. The city was empty. She
didn’t run into a single heku as she rounded the corner and headed
down the last road toward the island’s gate. The city alarm stopped
just as she stepped onto the pier and looked around.

The sheer violence hit her
immediately, the menacing growls and snarls of the heku, the bodies
of humans piled carelessly along the sand, and their boats floating
empty along the beach. Emily watched, horrified, as a man was
drained in front of her. The teeth of the heku was at his neck as
his eyes began to glass over and become lifeless, the color
draining slowly from his face. He watched her with unseeing eyes
and was callously dropped to the wooden planks.

There was no blood, with
hundreds of bodies lying on the beach; there wasn’t the dark
scarlet of spilled blood anywhere in sight. The hisses, growls, and
snarls began to fade as the last of the humans were drained, their
eyes going from frightened to motionless before her
eyes.

Emily took a step back.
She was finding it hard to breathe and the ruthless way the heku
beat and then drained the mortals shocked her. The once friendly
members of the coven had turned into evil, heartless killers who
discarded the bodies when they were done, like tossing leftover
trash into the garbage.

These were her people, her
species, and their brutal deaths could be in her future. Many tried
it, so far they all failed, but someday, it could be her body
dropped unceremoniously to the sand. She took another step back as
another body was dropped beside her, her unseeing eyes looking up
at Emily accusingly. The woman looked like Jess, her dark hair and
caring face now pale and forever frozen in horror.

Chevalier scanned the
beach, no mortals were left standing. The only ones still alive
were already in the grips of a heku, slowly being drained. He
turned to watch Mark, who was facing the pier, frowning.

Chevalier turned toward
the pier when Mark ordered all heku to back away. He immediately
saw Emily as the heku moved away from her, watching her carefully.
She was breathing rapidly, her eyes fixed on a dead woman ahead of
her on the sand. She was pale and her face was a mixture of
confusion and terror.

“Emily?” Kyle said softly.
He was the closest heku to her.

She heard her name called,
but couldn’t pull her eyes away from the woman. Her once blue eyes
watched Emily as if condemning her for the death of
hundreds.

“Em? Look at me,” Mark said, appearing
beside Kyle.

Emily heard an angry hiss
from ahead of her, and she looked up quickly to see a young heku
crouched, facing her. He was watching the vein in her neck, and as
she took a step back, he moved forward. She saw a flash, someone
slammed into the hissing heku and Emily turned, and then took off
running up the pier and toward the castle.

“Damnit,” Chevalier
growled. He turned just as Kralen and Mark tore apart a heku, the
heku that dared to hiss at the Lady of the coven.

“Do we follow her?” Kyle asked.

“Not unless you like being
ash,” Chevalier told him, and turned to the heku. “Clean up this
beach and go general quarters until further notice.”

Kyle turned to the pier guards, “When the
last heku comes through, lock down the island.”

“Storm?” Chevalier said,
and turned when she appeared at his side. “Find her. Stay far away
from her, but make sure she’s ok.”

Storm nodded and blurred away.

“I didn’t see her in
time,” Mark said, concerned.

“No one did… how much did she see?” Kyle
asked.

“A lot,” Kralen told him.
“She saw the last ten minutes or so… who the hell hissed at
her?”

“That was one of the new members, still
probationary,” Chevalier said, still watching the doorway to the
pier. He kept waiting for her to come back.

The Council City heku
watched as the beaches became clear of the bodies and the boats
that brought the mortals were sunk far away from the island. As
they stepped off of the pier, the iron bars were shut behind them,
blocking off the island from the outside world.

“Storm lost Emily’s scent at the river,”
Kyle said. “Emily knows we don’t track well through running
water.”

“She is terrified… maybe
we should just let her go for now. She’s safe here and can’t get
over the wall,” Chevalier said, and started back for the
castle.

Kyle sighed, “She’ll rot before she’ll come
out on her own.”

“That’s true… take Mark
and Kralen, see if you can find her.”

Kyle, Mark, and Kralen met
up with Storm at the edge of the river.

“I haven’t been able to find a trace of
her,” Storm told him.

“Mark, Kralen, you head
north toward the waterfall… Storm and I will head south,” Kyle
said, and took one side of the small river.

As soon as they were out
of Kyle’s hearing range, Kralen stopped and turned to Mark, “Why
did this even scare her? She knows we feed from
mortals.”

“All I can figure, is
she’s never seen one drained.”

“Still… she knows why.”

Mark shrugged, “True… but
we’ve kept a lot of the brutality of mortal draining away from her.
She’s never seen it or its aftermath as far as I know, except in
one picture.”

Kralen started back along the river, “You’d
think after the beating she took, she would be glad to see them
dead.”

“These specific V.E.S. didn’t do it
though.”

“Same cult.”

“Not sure she sees it that way… there’s the
waterfall, I haven’t caught anything.”

Kralen put his hand up and inhaled, shutting
his eyes.

“What’d you find?” Mark asked.

“Blood… not fresh, it’s
not hers though,” he answered, and looked toward the waterfall. He
followed around the small pool at its base and caught her scent on
the rocks, “Found it.”

Mark followed him as they
scaled up the side of the cliff and through a small opening,
appearing behind the waterfall. The smell of death and decay
assaulted them, and they had to cover their noses against the foul
stench.

The area behind the
waterfall was only about 10 feet by 10 feet. There were old boards
lying across one end, and a small outcropping in the far
corner.

“Em, we know you’re in here,” Mark said. “We
just want to talk.”

“I need a second alone,”
she whispered from behind a large rock. The heku’s acute hearing
was the only reason they heard her at all over the roar of the
waterfall.

“No one here is going to
hurt you. I know what you saw on the beach looked bad… really bad,”
Kralen said. “But it’s over.”

Emily stood up slowly, her arms were wrapped
around herself and she was watching the floor, “I’m not
afraid.”

Mark grinned slightly, “We know that… but
we’d like you to come back and talk.”

“No, we don’t know that…
you can’t even look at us. Of course you’re afraid of what you
saw,” Kralen said, ignoring Mark’s glare. “You’ve been with us for
17 years, nothing’s changed.”

Mark took one step towards her, his hands
outstretched in front of him, “Just come back, it’s wet and
freezing in here.”

Still not looking up,
Emily took a step away from him, placing herself over the rotting
boards. She screamed and disappeared as the boards gave way,
dropping her out of the heku’s sight.

Emily fell over twenty
feet, landing hard against something soft, but the sound of
crunching echoed through the room. She could barely see. The only
light came in through the broken boards above her. She tried to get
up, but her hand sunk into soft, squishy, goo. She felt something
solid beneath the goo and pushed to sit up, her entire body was wet
and she couldn’t tell with what.

The moment she inhaled,
she began to scream as the bodies of hundreds came into view. Some
were pure skeletons, while others, like the one she landed on, were
bloated and decayed. The bodies were stacked in various stages of
decomposition and the smell made her head spin. She fought to get
up, to get off the bodies, but everywhere she touched, her hands
and feet sunk into one of them and the bones at the bottom of the
pile cracked.

Mark appeared beside her
and finally pulled her off of the pile. He was also covered in
decayed flesh and thick, congealed blood. She couldn’t scream
anymore, she couldn’t breathe, and the feel of Mark’s arms around
her terrified her. She pushed away from him and landed on the
ground, still watching as one of the topmost bodies tumbled toward
her, landing with a sickening thud on the ground at her
feet.

“Em, calm down,” Mark
said, looking around the room, confused.

Emily glanced over at him,
and her eyes grew wide. Her eyes were adjusting to the dark, and
she quickly ascertained that the room they were in was a heku
ceremonial room. The round room with runes carved into the wall was
all too familiar to her, and she screamed noiselessly as the panic
set in. She was once again in the terrifying room heku used to turn
mortals.

“We’re getting a ladder,” Kralen called
down. “The Elder’s on his way.”

Mark turned and knelt down
beside her, “Are you hurt?”

She scrambled away from
him, hitting her back on the wall. Mark lunged to her side and
quickly grabbed a mouse as it neared her. He broke its neck and
tossed it over to the other side of the room before she even saw
it.

“What the hell…” Kyle
said, landing in the room. He had managed to kick away and not land
in the bodies as Mark and Emily had done. He spun, taking in the
runes, and then crouched down beside Emily. “Breathe,
Em…”

Her entire body shook with
fear, and she couldn’t focus enough to take a breath. Her short
gasps were turning into hyperventilation, but she couldn’t control
it. She knew she was covered in decayed flesh and slimy blood. She
could feel it dripping down her back and squishing in her
shoes.

Emily screamed again and
began kicking as a rat ran past her carrying an ear in its mouth.
The entire room was overrun with rodents, all feasting on what was
left of the pile of dead bodies. There were tiny holes around the
base of the room where they would disappear, but more seemed to
come out than were going in, and they scurried across the three in
the room, unafraid as they set their eyes on the feast.

“Damnit, lock her before she has a heart
attack,” Chevalier said, leaning down into the hole.

“Em,” Kyle said, and
forced her to look at him. He growled when, after a few seconds,
she turned and looked to the side as a mouse ran across her hand.
She could no longer scream, but jerked away from the rodents
scurrying past her, her eyes still locked on the macabre
pile.