Ferus : Book 6 of the Heku Series (8 page)

“Maybe nothing. We need
you to come see something.”

Kralen sighed, “Sure, I was just
reading.”

The Commander led Kralen
into the study where the Captain of the Guard was knelt beside the
woman.

“We found her while out on
patrols and…” the Commander stopped when Kralen gasped.

“My God, Emily,” Kralen
said, and knelt down beside her. “Get blankets, warm up this
room.”

“Yes, Sir,” the Commander
said, and ran off.

“Call and get Chevalier
here,” Kralen ordered, and pushed Emily’s hair to the side. Her
neck was riddled with small puncture wounds.

The Captain ran off to
notify Council City.

Kralen looked her over. He
was furious at how much blood someone drained from her. Her pale
complexion and cold skin had him worried that she may not make it
until Chevalier arrived. He ordered one of the hallway guards to
find some clothes, and tore her wet nightgown off underneath the
blankets, then tossed it onto the fire.

“Em?” he asked softly, and
touched her shoulder.

“Please, not my neck,” she whispered, never
opening her eyes.

“Council City said that
Chevalier is unreachable right now, they’re sending the Chief
Enforcer and Elder Quinn… they should be here in about 4 hours,”
the Captain said. “Is that really the Elder’s wife?”

Kralen nodded, “Yes, where did you find
her?”

“Two guards found her out
in the woods while on patrols. She was just lying in the mud,” he
explained.

Kralen pulled her hands out from under the
heavy down blankets and hissed when he saw more puncture wounds on
her wrists, “Did they feed?”

“No! She was already like
this… the Commander said he smelled the Encala around
her.”

“Get something for her to
drink, water’s fine.”

“Right away,” a servant
said, and appeared with a glass.

“Emily, you need to drink
this,” Kralen said, and reached an arm under her shoulders to lift
her up. She wouldn’t wake up enough to take a drink, so he gently
laid her back down.

“Sir, we don’t have anything even close to
her size,” the heku said. Kralen just nodded and pulled another
blanket over her.

He watched over her until
he heard the helicopter arrive outside of the coven’s cement walls.
He turned when Kyle and Quinn walked in, and then looked back at
Emily.

Kyle sat down on the couch
beside her and growled, “Who the hell did this?”

“Guards found her out in
the mud. She’d already been close to drained. They said the Encala
scent was in the area,” Kralen explained. “I had to take her
clothes off. She was wet and shivering.”

Kyle picked her up,
blankets and all, “We need to get her back to the doctor. Call
ahead and have B+ waiting.”

The Captain nodded and
followed them out.

“Kralen, search those
woods,” Quinn finally said when his temper was under control. “Find
the Encala if you can… see if you can find anything that will tell
us what happened.”

“Yes, Elder,” Kralen said,
and watched the Council City heku get into the helicopter and take
off.

The sound of Equites 1
taking off filled the woods that were full of heku looking for any
sign of where Emily came from.

Kyle glanced at Quinn. His
eyes were solid black and a dark shadow was over his features,
“Elder, she couldn’t have turned anyone to ash or fought off a
heku… How do you think she got away?”

“I’ve been thinking about
that,” Quinn said, calming some. “All I can come up with is that
someone in the Encala palace didn’t like what they were doing to
her, and brought her to that coven to be found.”

“It could be one of our
spies.”

“I don’t think so. One of
our spies would have stayed with her.”

“She has no scent.”

Quinn growled, “I noticed.
They’ve drained her to the brink of death… I just hope the doctor
can help.”

“I don’t like how fast
she’s breathing, or how fast her heart rate is.”

“Have you ever watched as a mortal was
drained completely?”

Kyle frowned, “Yes, but
never paid much attention.”

“Toward the end… that’s
what happens. Their heart speeds up, their breathing, too… they get
confused, and then they get sweaty, cold, and pale.”

Kyle leaned his cheek onto her forehead,
“She is sweaty.”

Quinn nodded and turned back to the window,
too angry to speak.

Equites 1 landed softly on
the roof, and the doctor ran out of the palace with the guards as
they lined up. Kyle jumped out of the helicopter and blurred into
her room.

“Get those fires going,”
Quinn growled, and stood back to watch the doctor as a servant
brought the fires back to life.

Dr. Cook hissed as he took
her blood pressure and listened to her heart, “Get me 4 bags of B
positive.”

“Yes, Sir,” a servant
said, and disappeared.

Dr. Cook brought out the
I.V. supplies and pushed her hair off of her neck,
“Damnit.”

“What?” Kyle asked, stepping forward.

“Please, don’t bite my neck,” she whispered
softly.

“I need a high flow vein.
Usually we use the jugular, but look at her neck… my God, what did
they do?” the doctor asked, frowning.

Kyle growled, “We’ll know
soon enough. Can you not put an I.V. in there because of the
bites?”

“I’m afraid the vein would be too weak and
might blow.”

“So now what?”

Dr. Cook pulled the blankets off of one of
her legs, “We go femoral.”

Kyle winced and watched as the doctor felt
for the vein.

“This is going to hurt, hold her down,” the
doctor said as he swabbed the area with betadine.

Kyle sat on the bed beside Emily and pinned
her upper body to the bed. Quinn, silent up until now, moved
forward and held her feet. She gasped and arched her back slightly
when Dr. Cook inserted the large needle into her thigh. He quickly
taped it down and she settled back onto the bed.

Within minutes, Emily had
two bags of blood simultaneously being fed into her body through
the I.V. in her leg. The heku stood back and watched to make sure
she didn’t wake up and pull the I.V. out. Once she looked deep
asleep, the doctor asked the others to leave and then gently pulled
a clean nightgown on her, and re-covered her with
blankets.

When two bags of blood
were emptied into her, the doctor was able to put a second I.V.
line in her arm where he started clear fluids. Kyle pulled the
heavy curtains shut when the sun came up. The heku were
uncomfortably hot, but the fires roared on and Emily stayed under
thick blankets.

“Kyle, go,” Quinn ordered
when he heard the Humvee pull into the garage. Kyle nodded and
disappeared from the room.

Dr. Cook took another blood pressure and
sighed, “It’s a little higher.”

Chevalier appeared in the
door a few minutes later and looked into the dark room. Dr. Cook
had a stethoscope at Emily’s chest and didn’t look up.

He took a few steps into
the room. His keen senses quickly picked up everything about Emily,
from her pale complexion and sweat covered body, to the numerous
puncture wounds on her neck and wrists. A soft hiss escaped him and
Quinn walked up and put a hand on his shoulder.

“He has a femoral I.V.
going that’s putting blood back into her. The other I.V. is just
fluids. She’s only woken up long enough to ask us not to bite her
neck,” Quinn explained. “The doctor said she’s in end-stage
hypovolemia, but she’s slowly coming out of it.”

Chevalier nodded, “Kyle told me they found
her out in the woods in the mud?”

Quinn nodded, “We suspect
an Encala freed her, and put her where they knew Equites guards
would be. I don’t think she was left in the woods to
die.”

Chevalier walked over and
sat on the bed opposite the doctor. He took Emily’s cold hand and
checked to make sure she had enough blankets. He noticed how thin
she’d become, and realized she must not have been eating while she
was away.

“No, not my neck,” she whispered.

“You’re ok, Em, you’re
home,” he said, and touched her cheek lightly.

“Her blood pressure is
coming back up, heart rate is slowing too, things are looking
good,” Dr. Cook said, and stood up to change one of the empty bags
of blood. “This’ll be the last one. The rest she’s going to have to
make on her own.”

“Please, Aaron, not my
neck,” she said again, and jerked slightly.

Chevalier growled and looked at Quinn.

Quinn’s eyes narrowed, “I’m going to talk to
the Encala Elders.”

Chevalier nodded, and
Quinn stormed out of the room.

“What else can we do?” Chevalier asked.

“Fluids, we need her to
drink and then the normal, eat red meat, B12, and folic acid,” the
doctor said, and checked on the femoral I.V.

Chevalier ordered some
food and held her hand. He didn’t get any of the usual dream
emotions, or even the flowing gray images that he usually picked up
from her while she slept. Four servants came in with trays of food
and drinks. As soon as they were gone, he turned back to
her.

“Em?” he said
softly.

Her eyes fluttered but
didn’t open. Chevalier looked up when Kyle walked into the
room.

“Quinn took Dustin, Jaron,
and Kralen to the Encala,” Kyle said, and sat down in a chair by
the bed.

Chevalier nodded and turned back to her,
“Emily, look at me.”

Her eyes slowly opened and she looked around
the room.

“Can you drink anything?”
he asked her, and touched her hand.

She pulled her hand away from him, “Please,
just not my neck.”

Chevalier sighed, “No… you need to
drink.”

Kyle lunged forward and
caught her hand when she reached for the I.V. in her leg. She
looked over at him, confused.

“I promise I won’t ash
you, if you’ll stop feeding,” she whispered, watching
Kyle.

Kyle leaned down to look at her, “I won’t
feed if you’ll take a drink.”

Chevalier reached over and
grabbed the orange juice from the tray beside her bed, and handed
it to Kyle.

Emily nodded slightly,
“Ok.”

Chevalier slid an arm
under her shoulders and helped her sit up. With his free hand, Kyle
put the glass of cold juice to her lips, and she brought her hands
up to hold it as she drank the entire glass. The doctor quickly
crushed the B12 and folic acid pills, and then stirred them in
another glass of orange juice.

“Come on, one more and we
won’t feed, I promise,” Kyle said, and when Emily nodded, he gave
her the new glass. She quickly drank it all too, and Chevalier laid
her back in bed and pulled the covers up.

Emily started to reach for
the I.V. in her leg again, and Kyle took her hand in his,
“No.”

“So they kept her blood
volume low enough she couldn’t turn them to ash,” Chevalier
whispered angrily.

Kyle nodded, “They
couldn’t use Dain like the Valle did. By that time, she knew that
he was here.”

“She was taken from the palace again.”

“I know. I imagine she’ll
go back to the island when she feels better.”

“I would.”

“We’ll talk to her,” Kyle
said. “We have to let her see that it’s safer for her
here.”

“She has an office on the island.”

“She does? Why?”

Chevalier grinned, “She’s
banned all heku from entering.

Kyle chuckled, “So what
did you find when you went in there?”

“I sent Silas. She has a
bunch of computer stuff in there.”

“So give her an office here… one no one is
ever allowed in.”

“It’s better than the Durango.”

“Yes, it is,” Kyle said.
“The hard part will be keeping heku out… if she goes there to get
away, and we intrude, the safety is gone.”

“Get with Allen. Set up an
office for her and reinforce the door so even we can’t break
in.”

Kyle raised his eyebrows, “You sure?”

“Yes, I’d much rather have
her locked in the palace of her own volition, than out in the
Durango, or alone on the island.”

“You ok here, or do you
want me to stay?”

“Go, it’s ok… right now my temper’s under
control.”

Kyle nodded and blurred from the room,
calling for Allen.

The next evening, Emily began to stir.
Chevalier moved from her bed to the chair beside it and watched
her.

Emily opened her eyes and
looked up at the ceiling and frowned. She reached up and touched
the bandages around her neck, and then reached for the stinging
pain in her leg, but someone quickly took her hand. She looked over
at Chevalier.

“Leave it in,” he said,
and also took her other hand.

Emily looked around the room and whispered,
“Where am I?”

“You’re in the palace in Council City.”

“With the Equites?”

“Yes”

“Did you bite me?”

“No”

“I was in the mud.”

“Yes, in the path of some guards.”

“They were going to leave me,” she
whispered, slowly remembering.