Proditor : Book 5 of the Heku Series (62 page)

“
You’re Emily’s uncle?”
Sotomar asked him.

“
Yes”

“
Was it
voluntary?”

“
Yes”

Sotomar sighed and turned back to the
Equites, “Is she gone, then?”

Kyle shrugged, “She’s not here. I don’t know
if she’s coming back or not.”

“
She asked that we put him
in prison,” Zohn said. “She wanted to make sure he doesn’t return
to Exavior.”

“
He’s Valle. I’ll take
him,” Sotomar told them.

“
I’m not Valle,” Alec said.
“You have no right to keep me.”

“
Shut up,” Sotomar
demanded. “You were made by one of my Council, and that makes you a
Valle.”

“
As I have no say in it,
then so be it,” Alec said.

Chevalier was struck again by how much Alec
looked like Allen.

“
Exavior has known about
Emily since she was two,” Kyle said to both his Council and to
Sotomar.

Sotomar frowned, “Are you certain?”

“
Yes,” Alec told him. “He
ran into her at my house when she was two and immediately knew who
she and her Mom were.”

“
We have searched for the
Winchester line for hundreds of years, and he knew where they
were?” Sotomar growled.

“
Yes, I would call him when
Allen was bringing Emily to the ranch, and he would come to town,”
Alec explained.

“
We knew Ulrich knew, but
he was too powerful for us to do anything about it, but Exavior was
on my Council.”

Alec nodded, “Yes.”

“
Where is Emily,
now?”

“
I don’t know. She always
runs when she needs to think.”

Sotomar nodded, “Where is Exavior?”

“
I won’t betray him,” Alec
told the Elder.

“
Is he mine?” Sotomar asked
the Council.

Chevalier nodded, “Yes, as long as you don’t
let him go.”

“
Oh, I won’t,” Sotomar
said, and called for the Valle guards by the door. They came and
ushered Alec to the helicopter, “Has she gone then?”

“
We don’t know,” Quinn told
him. “Alec is correct, when she needs to think, she takes
off.”

“
She hasn’t since her time
with Exavior though, she’s been too afraid to be alone,” Zohn
said.

“
Anger won out over fear,”
Chevalier said. “If I had to guess, she’s at the Durango
thinking.”

“
The Durango?” Sotomar
asked. “She still has that old broken down vehicle?”

“
It’s her safe place,”
Chevalier said, grinning slightly. “We’ve left it because she needs
somewhere to go.”

“
Let me know if I can
help,” Sotomar said, and left the Equites palace.

“
Do we go to the Durango
then?” Kyle asked.

Chevalier thought for a moment, “No, leave
her be.”

Kyle spent the next half hour telling the
Council everything he heard in the conference room. Chevalier felt
himself becoming angrier and Zohn decided to change the
subject.

“
While we wait, should we
deal with the Michaels Coven?” Zohn asked.

“
Go for it,” Quinn said,
and leaned back in his chair.

“
Reports came that the
Michael’s guards have staged a mutiny and have overthrown the
Lord…” Zohn looked through the paperwork, “Lord Taylor. He’s being
confined in the castle prison.”

“
What was their reasoning?”
Quinn asked.

“
Lord Taylor is a large
supporter of this Council, and apparently his guard leaders felt
that the Council needs replaced. When Lord Taylor tried to re-shape
his military to bring discipline back to the ranks, they put him in
prison and the General, General Bowman, is now in charge and has
even talked about petitioning to the Valle,” Zohn told
them.

“
How large are they?”
Chevalier asked.

Zohn thumbed through a few more pages,
“There’re a total of 398 of them, including Lord Taylor.”

“
Sounds like a clear-cut
solution… send in Kyle to put Lord Taylor back in power,” Dustin
suggested.

“
I think we should let
Emily take care of it,” Kyle said, and the Council looked at him to
see if he was joking.

“
Why would we do that?”
Chevalier asked.

Kyle smiled, “Think about it… she and I go
to the coven and set them straight… she did wonders for Island
Coven.”

Chevalier grinned slightly, “He has a
point.”

“
We wouldn’t hesitate if
she were a heku commander in our guards,” Kyle said.

Zohn sighed, “She’s too emotional to do this
job.”

“
So she takes her anger out
on a discipline problem or she stays and takes it out on us,” Quinn
said, deep in thought. “I think I like this idea.”

“
We have four mortals
waiting to be turned,” the Chief Interrogator said.

“
So we send Emily with our
Cavalry and let them take care of the guards,” Zohn said. “Gets her
mind off of Alec and Exavior, and we get to turn our
mortals.”

“
Wait until Quinn, Kyle,
and I get back… we’ll talk to her together about it,” Chevalier
suggested.

“
If she comes back,” Kyle
reminded them.

Chevalier sighed, “She will, she’s starting
to panic and I think being alone just hit her. Kyle… go.”

Kyle nodded and called for Mark, then
blurred from the room.

Emily was curled into a ball on the floor of
the Durango. As she considered what to do about Exavior and Alec,
the woods began to get dark and suddenly, it felt like hundreds of
eyes were watching her. She knew she needed to leave, to get back
to the safety of the palace, but opening the door to the Durango
meant being out in the open, with the trees and anyone hiding
within them.

She heard the wind blowing through the trees
and it sounded like someone calling her name. She couldn’t move.
The freezing Durango was her only protection against the eyes in
the woods. She felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up as
she felt someone watching her. The sound of a cracking branch made
her body stiffen. He was out there, and he was coming.

Emily screamed when the door was ripped off
of the Durango. She braced herself for the pain of someone hitting
her, someone dragging her from the car, but it didn’t come.

“
Em… Emily, it’s us,” Kyle
said, and softly put his hand on her arm.

Emily looked up and then jumped into his
arms.

“
It’s ok,” Kyle whispered,
and wrapped his arms around her.

Emily looked over and saw Mark nearby,
scanning the woods carefully. She finally pulled out of Kyle’s arms
and wrapped her arms around herself.

“
Let’s go,” Kyle said, and
got into the driver’s side of the Jeep. Emily crawled into the back
seat and Mark looked around one more time before getting into the
passenger’s seat.

Kyle started up the Jeep and headed back
down the twisted path to the road. He hit the brakes when a robed
figure appeared out of the trees and stood in their path.

“
I just want to talk to
her,” Exavior said, pulling the hood of his robe down so they could
see him.

Before Emily could protest, Kyle was out of
the Jeep and disappeared into the trees after Exavior.

“
No!” Emily called out, but
Mark was already in the driver’s seat and was tearing through the
forest at dangerous speeds.

“
Mark, we can’t leave him
alone,” Emily said, watching behind her.

“
When you get back to the
palace, I’ll go too,” he said, growling.

At the gates to Council City, Mark put the
Jeep into park and blurred back toward the trees, followed by four
of the Cavalry that were mounted. Emily watched them go and then
moved into the driver’s seat. She finally relaxed when the walls of
the garage were around her, and she ran into the palace.

“
Chev!” she called out as
she entered the doors.

Chevalier, Zohn, and Quinn appeared.

“
Kyle went after Exavior,”
Emily said frantically.

“
Where?” Chevalier
hissed.

“
He was on the path to the
Durango. Mark’s gone after him now to… Chev, Exavior will kill
them,” she said, panicked.

Chevalier disappeared, and Quinn put a hand
on Emily’s shoulder.

“
Exavior can’t kill them.
He’s not strong enough,” Quinn said.

Emily nodded, “Yes he is, don’t
underestimate him.”

“
Rest assured, we don’t,”
Zohn said. “However, Kyle has proven before that he can easily beat
Exavior in a fight.”

Emily looked back toward the door, “I don’t
want Kyle alone with him.”

“
I would imagine that Mark
is already there also,” Quinn told her. “If Kyle even caught up
with him. Kyle is stronger, and a better fighter, but Exavior is
faster, and normally just runs away.”

Emily nodded slowly and wrapped her arms
around herself again.

“
Come, let’s get you warm,”
Quinn said, and he led her up to her room, followed by Zohn,
Kralen, and another guard from the Cavalry.

They walked into her bedroom, and she took a
steaming mug of hot chocolate from the table and cupped it in her
hands. The fires were lit, and she sat on the rug in front of them
to warm up while she waited for Chevalier, Kyle, and Mark to
return.

The three came in a couple of hours later,
laughing about something. Emily stood up from the rug and ran into
Chevalier’s arms.

Chevalier wrapped his arms around her and
kissed the top of her head, “He took off… again.”

“
Just once I want to get my
hands on him… to think how close I was to killing him once,” Kyle
said, irritated.

“
If he keeps hanging around
the city, we’ll get him,” Mark said, grinning.

Emily turned around, furious, “You can’t
kill him! Going running off into the woods alone after him is just
going to get one of you killed.”

Kyle was shocked. He’d never heard that kind
of anger from Emily, “Em, we can handle him.”

“
No you can’t! He’s evil…
and malicious, and all you are doing is playing his game, and one
of these days, he may win,” she yelled angrily.

Chevalier motioned for them all to leave
when Mark and Kyle started to argue with her. She turned back into
his arms when they left and buried her face in his chest as his
arms tightened around her.

Emily looked up at him, “Promise me you’ll
never run off after him alone.”

Chevalier sighed and kissed her softly, “I
can’t promise that.”

She pulled out of his arms, “Promise
me.”

“
Em…”

“
I said promise
me.”

“
I won’t promise you that…
I wish you would trust me. I can handle him.”

“
You all think that. Put
your egos aside for once and realize that he can’t die… he’s going
to torment us forever unless you stop playing his games,” Emily
said, and walked into the bathroom, slamming the door behind
her.

Chevalier walked out into the hallway with
the others, “How does he rank being un-killable?”

Kyle shrugged, “Any one of us could take
him. He’s not all that tough around another heku.”

“
She has a misconception
about us because she rarely sees us angry,” Quinn said. “I suspect
that in her mind, we are weak.”

Zohn growled, “If she thinks I’m weak then
she has another thing coming.”

“
Actually, you, she may not
think of that way,” Quinn said, smiling slightly. “That may be why
she doesn’t like you.”

“
She was there when I
fought him and won. How can she not see that?” Kyle asked,
frustrated.

“
Because you didn’t kill
him… you let him go,” Chevalier told him. “Had the tables been
turned, she knows Exavior wouldn’t have let you go.”

“
So for that, I’m weak?”
Kyle asked, and rolled his eyes.

“
He somehow planted a
supremacy in her eyes, and I’d like nothing more than to obliterate
that image,” Chevalier said. He glanced back toward the door when
the jets in the tub turned on.

“
As badly as I want to go
back out after him, Elders, we have to get going,” Kyle reminded
him.

Chevalier nodded, “I haven’t had a chance to
tell her I’m going. Give me 20 minutes.”

Kyle nodded, and Chevalier went back into
the bedroom. He knocked lightly on the bathroom door.

“
One sec,” Emily said,
covering herself with a towel. “Come in.”

Chevalier opened the door and walked into
the steam filled room. He leaned back against the counter, “Kyle,
Quinn, and I are going to be gone for a few days.”

Emily frowned, “All of you?”

“
You’re protected here, and
if you need anything, Zohn is staying behind.”

“
Let me go with you,” Emily
said, and grabbed for another towel.

“
No, I can’t let you…
you’ll be fine here. Mark, Silas, and Kralen are staying too and,
Em, Zohn doesn’t hate you.”

“
He does too. He just hides
it around you,” Emily told him, still frowning.

Chevalier smiled, “Four days and we’ll be
back. Just hang around here. When we return, we may have a mission
for you.”

Emily glanced up at him curiously, “A
mission for me?”