Ferus : Book 6 of the Heku Series (65 page)

Chevalier suddenly disappeared from the
room.

“Very well, are all Elders in agreement that
I am no longer bound by the restrictions set forth by the ancients
over Yisolatara?” Sotomar asked.

“Yes,” Quinn whispered.

“Yes,” Zohn, William, and
Frederick said together.

“Go on…” Exavior told him.

Aaron nodded,
“Yes.”

Ryan glanced around, “I agree.”

Sotomar sighed, “For seven
days, she’ll be starved, no food, no water…”

Kyle hissed softly.

“During that time, she’s
to be bound, forming a Y on the floor of the ceremonial room, and
kept conscious,” he continued in a whisper. “On the eighth day,
they play on fears, by the ninth day the human is starving and
almost mad from the lack of sleep and food.”

Dustin growled, “That’s enough!”

“No, we have to know what
we’re up against,” Quinn said, and turned back to
Sotomar.

“It’s on the ninth day
that the blood of the human’s closest friends begins to flow. They
have to be near the human, so he begins to crave it,” Sotomar said,
and shut his eyes before continuing. “On the tenth day pain is
inflicted, it doesn’t matter how, but the pain has to be unending
for 12 hours. On the eleventh day, the turning ceremony is done
with the human restrained. Even those performing the ceremony would
now be at risk from what they have created. On the last day, day
twelve, the new heku is released and set to kill 3 of their closest
friends. Once they are dead, it’s complete. After that time, the
only way to stop… her… will be to kill her.”

“No!” Kyle growled and
stood up. “We won’t kill her.”

“We won’t have a choice,”
Zohn whispered. “If they succeed, she will be the most powerful
Yisolatara ever created… an unfeeling monster set to kill both the
immortal and the mortal. Yisolatara are massive heku with an
appetite and anger beyond your imagination.”

“I won’t let you kill
her,” he yelled, and his hands balled into tight fists.

“You won’t have a choice,”
William told him softly.

“So she could be on day 5
of the process already. One week to find her to stop it,” Ryan
said, and turned to Sotomar.

“There are preparations to be made, those
that cannot be done in advance,” Sotomar told him. “That may buy us
a couple of days.”

“However, we have no idea where she is, not
even a continent,” Zohn reminded them.

Kyle slammed his chair
back, shattering it against the wall, and disappeared from the
room.

“Good, we need him gone,”
Quinn said sadly. “If we have to kill her, we may need to get
through Chevalier and Kyle to do it.”

“We can just imprison her… keep her alive,”
Ryan suggested.

“She’ll most likely still be able to turn a
heku to ash… that would risk the entire city,” Sotomar replied.

“You’re all assuming that the turning
ceremony will work on her,” Exavior said calmly. “What does history
tell us if the turning ceremony fails?”

“I’ve never heard it to
fail, as we’ve… well most of us… have never tried to turn a
Winchester.”

“What do you mean by most of us?” Frederick
asked, frowning.

Exavior smiled slightly, “I tried to turn
Emily when she was 3.”

“You what!?” William growled. “You attempted
to turn a child?”

“10 times in 4 days,”
Quinn said.

“Minor details, it didn’t work,
obviously.”

“You’re pretty calm about this,” the Chief
Interrogator said. “Aren’t you all upset about Emily being a
Yisolatara?”

“Oh, yes I am, though getting irate about it
won’t help,” Exavior told him.

***

Emily had never before
felt such hunger or thirst. Her entire body ached from being
restrained on the cold, dirt floor, but the worst pain was in her
dry throat and aching stomach. She’d lost track of how long she was
there. Every few hours, a heku came in and gave her a shot of
something that paralyzed her body, but kept her mind alert. She
could hear her heku guards talking to her through the day, but they
fell silent at night, hoping she was asleep.

Her parched lips were
cracked and bleeding, and she could taste the salty blood on her
tongue. She could feel her resolve weakening and began to beg for
death. She could no longer feel her legs. The back spasms caused
them to fall numb after a few days. Her arms ached in the position,
and she could feel her wrists swelling beneath the iron
shackles.

“Can’t you leave her
alone?” Mark yelled when four heku came into the room.

The heku ignored him and
sat around Emily, “Congratulations, Winchester, you’ve made it past
the first phase. You’re almost there now.”

He took her head in his
hands and turned her to face him. Mark growled when he saw how
easily the heku was able to lock Emily’s gaze and had her fully
under control.

“News from the home front, your beloved
husband came to rescue you and fell at the hands of my guards…
funny how easily his head was removed from his body as his blood
saturated my boots,” he whispered.

“No! Emily, snap out of
it!” Kralen yelled.

“Fight back, Em, come on,” Mark growled.

“Not very smart of them to
allow Allen to also come. He didn’t die as fast as his father, we
had to torture him a bit first. He cried like the mortal he is, sad
really. He didn’t stop until I removed his heart.” The heku’s voice
was soft and flowing.

“Stop it!” Silas yelled.

“Come on, Emily, don’t do this,” Mark said,
frustrated.

“Four thousand and eighty
four Equites died today, trying to get you. I wonder why they would
do that. You’re useless, nothing but a human. You cause more
problems in that faction than you are worth, and now you’ve lost
most of their army. The heku will figure it out, and will kill you,
they hate you… the heku are bad and they want nothing but to hurt
you and cause you pain. Everything that’s happening to you right
now is done by a heku.”

He paused long enough to
regain some lost control, and continued, “That dear daughter of
yours, she’s with the Valle. Last I heard, Exavior was going to
make her his bride now that he’s lost you. She’ll make beautiful
children for him in a couple of years. She’s been taking care of
Dain, that’ll have to stop. A child heku is against everything we
believe in, and I assume the Valle will dispose of him.”

“Emily!” Mark roared.

“Now we release the rats
and the mice, the ants and spiders, the snakes and scorpions… feel
them as they crawl across your body. Feel them as they nibble at
your skin and tear at your flesh,” he said, and grinned slightly.
“They flood in, a never ending parade of them, all bent on coming
to you and feeling your warmth against their wet noses and pointed
claws.”

Another of the heku tore
open the side of her jeans and removed them, leaving her in only a
short halter top and panties, to maximize the amount of skin for
their imaginary horde of scavengers to torment her.

The heku broke his gaze
and glanced up at another, “No more medication is needed. She won’t
be able to focus enough to turn anyone to ash.”

“Yes, Sir,” he replied,
and left with the syringe.

“Enjoy, I’ll be back for
more,” the heku said, and kissed Emily lightly.

Over the next few hours,
the heku guards watched as Emily began to move. At first, slight
movements that built up to blood curdling screams and violent
thrashing as she fought to get away from the imagined rodents that
tore at her skin, and the painful stings and bites of spiders,
snakes, and scorpions.

“Emily, look at me,” Mark growled.

“Can you control her from this far away?”
Kralen asked, pulling at the iron shackles.

“Emily!” Mark yelled again.

Her inhuman screams slowly
faded as her voice gave out, but her panicked movements and painful
whimpers continued for hours as the guards watched her
helplessly.

On the morning of the ninth day, Emily was
still screaming silently on the floor as imaginary rodents tore at
her flesh. She pulled against the restraints and her wrists and
ankles were swollen and bloody.

“Your turn,” a heku said,
and walked in with a scalpel and clamps.

“Let her go or so help me…” Kralen
growled.

“Oh do behave, you’ll be
dead soon enough,” he said, and cut Kralen’s right wrist until his
blood trickled out. The heku then used a small clamp to hold open
the wound and soon, a slow stream of blood was dripping down his
arms.

“What the hell!?” Mark
growled when the same was done to him, and then Silas.

“Enjoy,” the heku said, grinning, and walked
out.

“Why would they… Em?”
Kralen asked when he saw her. She was now perfectly still as she
watched the blood on their arms.

“Emily can you hear us?” Mark asked.

“She’s watching the
blood,” Silas said, and tried to get at the clamp with his
teeth.

A slow hiss escaped her
lips as she watched the blood drip to the floor. She could almost
taste it and feel how it would wet her throat and stop the painful
starvation.

***

“How can we not find her?”
Chevalier growled, and threw a chair through the wall of the
conference room. Chevalier, Sotomar, Zohn, Quinn, Kyle, Aaron, and
William were all that was left in the council chambers. The other
Elders had returned to take care of their factions and to send out
new scouts to look for the Ferus.

“We’re looking!” Zohn
growled. “We’ve taken out four Ferus compounds, and we’re still
trying.”

“There are just too many,”
Sotomar whispered. “I keep hoping she’ll tell us where she is… If
she can contact the ‘old ones’ again.”

“She can’t,” Chevalier
said, and leaned his hands against the wall, lowering his head.
“She’s no longer thinking rationally.”

“That makes it day… eight
or nine, correct?” William asked.

Sotomar nodded.

“How is this working?”
Kyle yelled, and stood up to look out the window. “She’s a
Winchester for hell’s sake! She can’t be controlled… she can’t be
anywhere near a turning ritual… how is this working?”

“What I don’t understand
is how she dreamed of this,” Sotomar said, and shook his
head.

“She dreamed of the Yisolatara ritual?”
William asked, shocked.

“Yes, that’s where she first heard the
word.”

“How can she dream about
something that’s been outlawed for over 4,000 years?”

“If we knew that, we could probably find
her.”

“We should have found that
damned painted ceiling,” Kyle growled, and put his fist through the
wall.

“The what?” William asked.

Chevalier sighed, “In her
dreams, the ritual was performed in a ceremonial room where the
runes were painted on the ceiling instead of etched.”

William looked over at Aaron with wide eyes
and then turned to Chevalier, “Was the paint red?”

Chevalier turned to him,
“Yes.”

“We had a coven, hundreds
of years ago, that used a cave… the ceiling was made of something
that couldn’t be etched, so it was painted in red,” William
explained. “We had to kill off that coven about 80 years ago,
though.”

“Where is that cave?” Chevalier asked,
stepping closer to him.

William was on the phone, instantly, “Get me
the location of the Armstrong Coven in Wyoming.”

Aaron turned to Chevalier,
“We were all Coven Lords at the time. We’ll get the location, but
it can take time. Some of those records were sealed by the Elders
that ruled then.”

***

“Want some of the blood
now, human?” the heku asked, grinning. “See… you can’t take your
eyes off of it. Don’t worry, you’ll get it soon enough.”

Emily hissed softly and pulled her eyes away
from her bloody companions to watch the heku in the room.

“Day ten, my dear,
tomorrow we turn the infamous Winchester,” he told her, though she
didn’t seem to understand.

“It won’t work! Stop now before you kill
her,” Silas growled.

“Oh this’ll work. Master
was very sure of that,” he said, and grinned.

“Who is your Master?” Mark
asked scathingly.

“In due time. He’ll be
here for the turning, I’m sure,” he told Mark, and then leaned over
her. “This part won’t be hard at all, not with that back injury of
yours.”

She watched him with angry
eyes. His words were foreign and confusing.

“Course, you have no idea
what I’m talking about, Sweetheart, do you?” he asked, and smiled
at her.

“Stop this! You know it’s wrong,” Kralen
yelled.

The heku took a short log
from a servant and turned back to Emily. He quickly lifted her back
from the floor and slipped the log beneath her. When he let her go,
she screamed in agony as her back began to spasm again at the odd
angle.

“See, easy enough, there’s
more though… 12 hours is all, and we’ll be done with it. Then we
turn you,” he told her, and left the room.

When the spasms began to
die down, the heku returned with a sharp knife and proceeded to
slice long, deep cuts into her arms, legs, and abdomen. He grabbed
a small bag from his coat and sprinkled salt into the bloody wounds
as her silent screams became more harrowing.