Equites : Book 4 of the Heku Series by T.M. Nielsen Page B

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,