Ferus : Book 6 of the Heku Series (29 page)

“You can’t put a
14-year-old in prison!”

“We can and we have, just until Chevalier
gets back.”

Emily swung her legs out of bed, groaning at
the pain in her stomach.

“Would you please, not get
up?” Quinn asked, and moved to her side.

“Touch me and I’ll ash
you, Quinn. Step back.”

He sighed and stepped away from her, “Where
are you going?”

“Allen and I are getting away.”

“To where? The island?”

“No, I have a place no one
knows about,” she said, and stood up on shaky legs. She steadied
herself against the wall and gripped a small pillow to her stomach
as she inched out of the room.

“It’s too dangerous. Just
stop,” Quinn growled when she got to the door.

“Back off,” Emily said to the strange guards
at her door. They looked at her and took a step away.

“What’s going on?” Zohn
asked when he appeared on the fifth-floor landing.

Emily caught her breath before speaking,
“Move back or I’ll ash you.”

“What? Why?” he asked, and
took a step back.

“She’s running off with Allen before
Chevalier gets back,” Quinn told him.

Emily took a step down and
moaned as the pain in her abdomen shot into her chest. The
fourth-floor guards glanced at her nervously.

“Em, you need to lie
down,” Zohn told her.

The Elders followed behind her as she made
her way slowly down into the prison.

“Ma’am?” one of the prison
door guards said nervously.

She passed him and sweat
dripped down her face as she moved toward the cells,
“Allen?”

“Mom?”

Emily ignored the growing pain and the feel
of wetness below the pillow as blood soaked through the bandages.
She stepped to his cell, “Open it.”

“Mom, what are you doing?” Allen asked,
coming to the bars.

“I can’t open that until Elder Chevalier
gets here,” the guard told her.

She was able to release
the smallest bit of burn, and he fell back against the wall,
clutching his chest.

“Damnit, just open it,”
Quinn growled when the guard got back to his feet. Emily sunk to
her knees. The energy it took to burn the guard overwhelmed her,
and it was too hard to stay standing through the pain.

Allen rushed out of the cell and picked her
up, “Let me get you back to bed.”

“No, we have to run,” she whispered.

Allen looked up at Zohn.

“Put her back in bed.
She’s trying to protect you from Chevalier,” Zohn
explained.

“Mom, I can take it. It’s
ok,” he told her, and looked down at her shaking hand.

“Go, to the helicopter… I have a house…” she
said, trying to catch her breath.

“I’m not afraid of Dad.”

“I am… I’m afraid…” she
whispered, and the Elders were shocked in the sudden change in
Allen. His features grew dark and he stood taller and looked over
at them with malicious eyes. A low growl started from deep within
him as he took a step towards them.

“Allen, listen to me… she
needs to be in bed. She needs to rest,” Quinn said, and anger
filled his voice. He saw Chevalier’s rage come through in the young
boy, and knew there was no way to convince him now, they would have
to stop him.

“Please…” she whispered,
and then groaned. The pain was growing worse.

“Get back,” Allen hissed.

“We’ll stop you,” Zohn
said. “We can’t do it without hurting your Mom though, so let her
go, and calm down.”

Allen unexpectedly shot
past the Elders. They hadn’t seen him move that fast before, and
didn’t know he could do it. They easily caught up with him in the
main foyer and froze. The 14-year-old was now face-to-face with his
Dad, and the first-floor filled with the scent of fresh
blood.

Kyle and Chevalier were blocking the
stairway and instinctively crouched when they saw Allen and the
rage in him.

“Get back,” Allen growled at them, his
posture ominous and tense.

“What’s going on, Allen?”
Chevalier asked angrily.

“We’re leaving… now.”

“Car,” Emily barely managed to moan.

Allen turned and blurred
toward the garage, but Mark stood in his way.

“You’re not taking her out
of this palace, Boy,” Mark said, his hands balled into
fists.

“Allen, you can’t fight us with your Mom in
your arms,” Chevalier said from behind him.

Allen turned and glared at his Dad,
“Alexis…”

“Lexi, no!” Silas yelled,
and grabbed her when Mark turned to ash. He carried her, kicking
and screaming, up the stairs and away from the impending
fight.

“Your sister’s not here to
do your dirty work. Put Emily down, and then you’re mine,”
Chevalier said to him.

Allen turned when he heard
a noise and saw Kyle block the garage door, he was crouched and
furious.

“Mom,” Allen whispered. “I
don’t know what to do.”

“Get me away from
Exavior,” she whispered, and her hand fell limply at her
side.

“She doesn’t even know
where she is,” Quinn said. He was the only one in the hallway that
was calm and thinking rationally. “You can smell her blood, we all
can. We need to help her.”

Kralen appeared when called, unsure what was
going on. He stepped up beside Allen, “Let me have her.”

Allen looked over at him.
He knew he couldn’t win. They were right, he couldn’t fight them
off with Emily in his arms and he knew she needed help. Hesitating,
he handed Emily gently to Kralen and was suddenly pinned against
the cold tile by his neck as Chevalier knelt above him.

“You have a lot of
explaining to do,” Chevalier said, and lifted his head slightly,
then slammed it onto the tile.

Kyle, Zohn, and Jaron
pulled the Elder off of his son, while two prison guards roughly
hauled Allen back down into the prison. Quinn blurred up the stairs
to take care of Emily, while the other three helped Chevalier to
calm down.

Once Chevalier was calm, he started for the
stairs and Kyle began to revive Mark. He appeared in the bedroom
and watched Quinn pull the blood soaked bandages from Emily’s
abdomen.

“What happened?” he asked
irately.

Quinn focused on cleaning
the wound, “She was shot, twice… once in the arm, and once in the
stomach.”

“What?!” Chevalier roared.

Quinn shut his eyes, his hands covered in
blood, “Let me concentrate.”

Chevalier spun angrily
when he heard someone behind him, and relaxed when he saw it was
Zohn.

“That’s a lot of blood.
Let him do that, and I’ll tell you what happened,” Zohn said, and
motioned for the hallway.

Chevalier stepped out of
the room and joined Kyle, Mark, and Jaron.

“Emily slipped out with
the kids to go to a movie,” Zohn explained. “When they came out,
the battery was gone from the Jeep and they were attacked by heku
and humans. Emily immediately took care of the heku, and then she
and Allen fought the mortals. One of them shot her.”

“And the others?” Kyle
asked when he realized Chevalier was too angry to speak.

“Allen was still fighting, and was joined by
Alec, Exavior, and Sotomar.”

Chevalier growled slightly.

Zohn sighed and continued,
“The three heku finished off the mortals and called for an
ambulance. They told Allen to bring Dain back here, and then
Exavior wiped Alexis’ memory, so she couldn’t tell the police what
happened. Quinn was talking to Emily, and she started to panic
about what you would do to Allen when you returned, so she decided
to take him.”

“She was going back to the island?”
Chevalier asked, fighting to calm himself.

“No, she told Quinn that she owns a house
that no one knows about. They were going there.”

“Do we know who the attackers are?”

“Yes, I asked Sotomar. He said they were
Ferus,” Quinn said from behind them. They all turned and saw he’d
cleaned the blood from his hands. “She wants to talk to you.”

Chevalier looked behind Quinn and saw Emily
watching him from the bed.

“Don’t go in there if you’re mad,” Quinn
said. “She’s pretty upset.”

Chevalier nodded, “I’m ok.”

“I want to go talk to
Allen,” Kyle said, and turned around.

“No,” Chevalier told him.
“We’ll bring him before the Council when I’m done.”

“Yes, Elder.”

Chevalier went into the bedroom and walked
over to the bed. He left the door open in case he lost his temper
with her. She watched him carefully as he pulled a chair up to her
side.

“Don’t take this out on him,” she said, her
words slightly slurred.

“Why, Em? Why do you have to slip out and
put yourself in danger?”

A tear fell down her cheek, “I wanted a
normal night with the kids… movie, popcorn, no guards… no palace…
just us as a family… a regular family.”

“We don’t have a normal family.”

“Just one night, that’s all I wanted.”

“I do everything in my
power to give you anything you could ever want, and it’s just never
enough, is it?”

Emily frowned, “That’s not true.”

“It is… when you’re
better, I suggest you move back into the mortal world. Get a mortal
husband, and then you can have your normal family.”

“That’s not what I want.”

Chevalier stood up and headed for the door,
“Apparently it is.”

Emily heard him send her
guards away, and start down the stairs. She glanced at Kyle, who
shook his head and followed the Elder.

“It’s natural for her to
want a day alone with the kids,” Quinn said as they took their
seats in the council chambers. “It doesn’t mean she’s not happy
here.”

“She’s not,” Chevalier
said. “All she does is undermine what I try to do to protect her.
She spends her day trying to figure out how to escape and do things
the mortal way. I’m tired of it, and if that’s what she wants, she
can have it.”

“You don’t mean that,” Zohn said, frowning.
“You’d be lost without her.”

“Doesn’t matter, I’ll get over her… bring in
Allen.”

“Belay that,” Quinn said,
and turned to Chevalier. “Sneaking out to a movie doesn’t mean she
doesn’t want to be here. We don’t lock her here, she is free to
leave as she pleases, and I don’t see her running off to start a
new mortal life… she’s not even truly mortal.”

“Why else have a secret house then? If she’s
not planning on moving away from us?”

“I don’t know… though we
all have secret houses, and yet we stay here.”

Zohn sighed, “She wasn’t
running to this house to get away from the heku…”

“She was just running to get away from me, I
see that.”

“No… she was trying to protect her son.”

“Our son. She seems to
forget I helped.”

Zohn grinned, “I think we
all do at times. I apologize.”

“I have as much right to punish him as she
does to protect him from it,” Chevalier said, somewhat calmer.

“Yes, you do.”

“Bring in Alexis, let’s start with her.”

Several minutes later,
Derrick opened the door and Alexis came in, carrying Dain. She
walked up to the trial area in front of the Council, looking
fearful.

“Um… you called me?” she asked, unsure.

“Yes, Alex,” Chevalier said. “I wanted to
hear from you about the plans made to escape the guards.”

“No biting,” Dain said,
and shook his head.

“It was actually my idea,”
she said, and looked at the ground.

“Yours?”

She nodded, “We never get
to go out like normal kids… I’m not as… well… heku as Allen and
Dain. For all we know, I could be fully mortal.”

“I doubt that… ok, so you
asked your Mom to go out to a movie?”

“Yes, and she said no… because she didn’t
want to leave the palace.”

“Did she say why?”

“Yes, but I don’t want to tell you.”

“Bad, Daddy,” Dain said,
and pointed at Chevalier.

“Hushup, Dain,” Alexis
whispered to him. “So she said no, and then Allen said no, and so…
I kinda… got mad.”

“So how did you change their minds?” Zohn
asked, now curious.

“I told them that it’s not
fair. I’m mortal, and Allen and Dain aren’t, yet I don’t get to go
out with friends or go to movies or even go shopping.”

“If you told us that’s what you want to
do…”

“Then I’d go with guards.
Yay, that sounds like fun… plus, I don’t have any friends younger
than dirt.”

Chevalier grinned
slightly. Emily used that phrase a lot, “I didn’t realize you had
these thoughts.”

“I wish you’d just turn me
and get it over with, so I can fit in.”

A murmur ran through the
Council, but was silenced by Quinn, “That’s something you can
discuss with Chevalier when you’re older. So you finally talked
Emily and Allen into going to a movie.”

“Yes, after about 2 weeks
of begging. I told them if they didn’t take me, then I’d just go
alone. I know how Mom slips out most of the time, I can do
that.”

Chevalier sighed, “You and I will talk about
that later.”

Alexis nodded.

Dain pointed at Dustin, “E’s a mutt?”

Alexis wrapped her hand
around Dain’s mouth, and quickly carried him out of the council
chambers.