Equites : Book 4 of the Heku Series (11 page)

Chevalier shrugged and whispered,
“Sleeping still.”

Quinn whispered to Chevalier, “We’re
contacting our attorneys to see how we can release that Emily is
back, without the ATF questioning her.”

Chevalier nodded.

“
Is there anything we can
do?” Maleth asked.

“
Do you know yet if he is
Valle or Encala?” Chevalier asked, his eyes narrowing.

“
Not yet, Zohn will be here
within the hour to interrogate him,” Quinn said.

“
You trust him for that?”
Chevalier questioned.

“
I will be there, as
well.”

Chevalier nodded and turned back to
Emily.

“
It’s so cold,” she said,
still mostly asleep.

“
Tell me again why I can’t
go?” Chevalier asked as he watched Emily hook up the
trailer.

“
Because I want to do this
alone,” Emily said, smiling at him. She was enjoying seeing
Chevalier’s discomfort at watching her hook up the trailer. She
knew he could do it twice as fast, but there were some things she
enjoyed doing herself. She also knew that her limp caused by the
cast was bothering him more than anything.

Chevalier sighed and looked around the
lawn, “Take Kyle then.”

“
No,” Emily
said.

“
Mark?”

Emily looked over at Chevalier, “Are
we going to go through the entire guard list?”

“
Maybe”

“
Mark doesn’t want to drive
for three hours each way, just to pick up some horses,” Emily said
to him.

“
Mark does too, he’s taken
your safety personally,” Chevalier said, grinning.

“
He’s done enough,” Emily
told him, hooking up the wires for the turn signals and brake
lights.

“
Mark,” Chevalier said
under his breath.

Mark appeared and leaned up against
the horse trailer, “What’s up?

Emily glared at Chevalier, “Don’t do
that.”

“
What?” Chevalier asked
innocently.

“
I’m going out to buy some
horses, Mark… alone,” she added, and struggled to haul a bale of
hay into the trailer. Mark tried to help her, but she glared at him
and he backed off.

“
Em,” Chevalier sighed.
“Your back.”

“
It hurts, big deal,” she
said, going into the stable.

“
Mark,” Chevalier whispered
again. Mark grinned and stepped into the horse trailer, ducking
behind the pile of hay.

Emily came out of the stables carrying
three bridles. She let Ford into the back of the trailer and went
around to the Durango, “I think that’s it.”

“
Last chance to take a
handsomely dashing heku with you,” Chevalier said,
smiling.

“
I apparently am, and he
should at least come ride up front. It’ll get cold back in the
trailer,” Emily said, hoisting herself into the Durango.

Mark chuckled and blurred to the side
of the Durango and stepped inside. As soon as the Durango was out
of sight, Chevalier went back inside and met up with Kyle, and then
they both headed down into the prison.

“
Let me talk to her!”
Exavior yelled at them.

“
You know, we could start
an Emily wing of the prison. Lock all of her suitors in there,”
Kyle said jokingly.

“
That’d save her from
having to search for them when she visits,” Chevalier
chuckled.

“
Hello, Greg,” Kyle said,
turning to the shackled heku in the cell.

Greg looked up at them
wearily.

“
We are here for some more
fun. With Emily out of the building for seven hours or so, we have
plenty of time,” Chevalier said, unlocking the door. Kyle turned
the electrical current off to the shackles and unlocked them. He
and Chevalier each took an arm and roughly dragged Greg to the
interrogation chamber.

“
We don’t spend nearly
enough time in here anymore,” Kyle said, shutting the door behind
them. He looked around the room, smiling.

The perfectly square room had dark
rock walls and a plain dirt floor. Several tables stood toward the
center, each with varying amounts of wires hooked up to it. One of
the tables had ropes along the top and bottom, and could double as
a rack torture if the need arose. An iron maiden stood up against
one of the rock walls, and a guillotine sat across from
it.

“
I’m actually afraid if I
come here too often, Emily will find it,” Chevalier said, forcing
Greg onto the rack torture table.

“
No!” Greg
screamed.

“
Maybe we need to reinforce
the door somehow. Just in case she stumbles into it,” Kyle said,
fixing Greg’s arms to the ropes as Chevalier tied his
feet.

“
I’ll tell you anything you
want to know, I swear,” Greg pleaded.

“
Good idea. I’m so afraid
she’s going to stumble in here someday. I know for a fact she
wouldn’t understand,” Chevalier said, leaning back against the
wall.

“
Please… don’t do this!
I’ll cooperate,” Greg begged.

“
We don’t need information
from you. Zohn got us what we needed to know,” Kyle told him, and
sat down comfortably on a chair.

“
Then why are you doing
this? Please stop,” he screamed.

“
The problem is, Emily’s
stubborn. If she sees the door, she’ll wonder what’s inside and
then she’ll find a way in,” Chevalier tried to explain over the
sounds of Greg’s screaming.

“
If she finds it, just tell
her it’s Damon’s playground.” Kyle grinned.

“
What is my playground?”
Damon asked, stepping into the room.

“
This place. If Emily ever
finds it, we’re going to say it’s yours,” Kyle told him.

Damon nodded, “Fine by me.”

“
What’s up with you two
anyway? Damn, it gets annoying,” Kyle asked Damon.

“
Ask the spoiled mortal.
She starts it.”

“
Damon,” Chevalier
growled.

“
Sorry, I mean… ask Emily.
She starts it,” Damon said, grinning. “What are you two up to? I
thought we got the information we needed out of this brave heku…
who, I might add, spilled it before any torture actually
happened.”

“
We’re here for fun.” Kyle
smiled chillingly at Greg.

“
He fed off of my wife,
that’s reason enough,” Chevalier said, watching the panicked look
on Greg’s face.

“
The beauty is, we don’t
have to worry about faction issues… he was an Equites before being
banished a few hundred years ago. He’s free game,” Kyle told
Damon.

“
So what’s on the agenda?
I’m assuming Emily is preoccupied,” Damon said.

“
Gone for about seven
hours. She and Mark went to get some horses up north,” Chevalier
said.

“
Why does that make me
cringe?”

“
Because you care as much
about her as we do, you just won’t admit it,” Kyle said.

“
You just keep thinking
that,” Damon growled. “Maybe I’m nervous because any time she
leaves the palace, she somehow manages to find trouble.”

“
She’s with Mark, she’s
ok,” Chevalier said, and looked down at Greg.

“
Please, no,” Greg
whispered.

“
You’re an idiot,”
Chevalier said. “What made you think you could kidnap my family,
and feed off of my wife?”

“
I didn’t know, ok? I
didn’t know they were yours.”

“
Sure you did,” Chevalier
said, and turned the crank once, stretching Greg’s limbs
painfully.

Greg’s piercing screams rang through
the prison.

***

“
Give me the map,” Mark
said, amused.

“
No, I know where we’re
going.” Emily looked both ways, trying to decide which to
turn.

“
Sure you do, so do we go
north or south?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

Emily pulled out the map and turned it
around several times before Mark took it from her.

“
Turn left,” Mark told her,
and handed her the map.

“
I knew that,” she said,
irritated, and turned left onto the county road.

“
What are we getting
again?”

“
Three horses, a palomino
and a paint stallion, and then an appaloosa mare.” She looked up at
the clouds forming.

“
Are you going to breed
Patra?”

“
Yes, this time not with
Chevalier’s Arabian,” Emily said, pulling into a large horse
ranch.

“
That Arabian has
personality.”

Emily stopped the Durango and slid
out, “Stay here, let me go see if he’s here yet.”

Mark watched Emily carefully as she
went up to the house and knocked on the door. An older man answered
and shook her hand, then invited her inside. Mark turned his head
slightly so he could better hear what was going on inside the
house.

“
I’m almost ready, you’re a
little early,” the man said.

“
That’s fine, I’ll go wait
by the trailer,” Emily told him.

“
No, no, it’s going to rain
soon. Wait here and I’ll be right back. Help yourself to some
coffee.”

Mark settled back in his seat to wait.
He could hear the man shuffling around the house while Emily sat
inside and tapped her fingers impatiently against the
table.

A short time later, the man came out,
followed by Emily. He looked at Mark sitting in the Durango, and
tipped his cowboy hat toward him. Mark just nodded and watched
them.

“
Here’s the appaloosa mare.
She’s two years old, but broken, and a very gentle horse,” the man
said.

“
Do you mind if I try her
out?” Emily asked.

“
Not at all, let me get a
saddle.”

“
It’s ok,” Emily said, and
used a bale of hay to hoist herself onto the mare.

The man sat back and watched Emily
maneuver around the front of the ranch, “You’re right. She’s a
beautiful creature.”

“
The other two are over
here,” he said, taking her to another part of his large
stable.

Mark met them inside and took the mare
out to the trailer. Emily didn’t ride the other two. They were a
lot taller, and even though she wouldn’t admit it, Mark knew her
back was still bothering her and it was hard for her to get onto
the taller horses.

Mark loaded the paint and palomino
into the trailer and heard Emily gasp. He looked over quickly, and
saw that her eyes were fixed on a black stallion out in the open
corral, “He’s beautiful.”

“
He’s a handful,” the man
said, coming to stand beside Emily. “Mustang… we caught him down in
Colorado last month. We haven’t been able to break him.”

Emily watched him rear back and buck
when he saw the people watching him.

“
How much?” she asked, her
eyes glued on the mustang.

“
Ma’am, I don’t know if I’d
feel right selling that beast to you. He’s an ornery old fella,
mean as they come,” he said, watching the stallion
wearily.

“
I can handle him,” Emily
said.

Mark cringed. He could just hear the
fight when Emily decided to try to break the mustang
herself.

“
I’ll tell you what. You
promise to not get yourself killed breaking him, and I’ll give him
to you. He’s useless. I can’t train him, and all he does is fight
me,” the man said, glancing back at Mark.

Emily nodded, “I’ll take
him.”

“
Ok, but let your husband
put him in the trailer,” the man said, and Mark stepped
forward.

“
No, I’ll get him,” Emily
said. She crawled through the fence and into the corral.

“
I wish you wouldn’t do
that,” he said, watching her.

Mark sighed from behind the man, “No
use trying to stop her.”

“
Yeah well, she’s pregnant
and that mustang is pure evil, not a good mix,” the man said
nervously.

“
Emily, let me get him,
please,” Mark said, stepping into the corral. He passed Emily
quickly as the old rancher watched. He would tell his friends later
that the man with Emily moved faster than any man he’d ever
seen.

Mark took the rope that was around the
nervous horse’s neck and had to use a lot of strength to get him to
move. The horse reared back, but Mark held him to the ground with
the rope. He was only kicked a few times before he got the door on
the trailer shut and locked.

“
You ok there?” the rancher
asked, worried.

“
Yeah, glancing blows, he
barely hit me,” Mark said, smiling as one of his ribs
healed.

Emily paid the man and headed back to
her Durango as the rain started to pour.

“
Why don’t you come on in
and eat first, it’s lunch time,” the man said. Emily glanced at
Mark, and he nodded.