“Oh. Right. I keep forgetting you are more seventeen year old American teen than ancient warrior.”
“Yeah well just give me a few days.” She grinned cockily trying to shake off the pall cast by Stellan's memory.
Cyrus didn't smile back. “This is serious, Eden. Your training here will be pivotal. I cannot send you out to hunt if I am not absolutely confident in your abilities.” She felt her defences rise. After all, hadn't she already fought off Neith by herself? She had done pretty OK in the past, and now that she didn't have the hunger messing with her she was able to concentrate fully on all the skills she would need to acquire to hunt down monsters.
“Fighting Neith is not the same as fighting soul eaters. Soul eaters are stronger than Neith; that is why Neith train twice as hard as we do.”
Perturbed by his intuition Eden glowered at him. “What, have you been taking lessons from Noah on mind reading or something?”
“No.” Cyrus smiled now. “But I am coming to understand you, and what I do not know, Noah has told me. He knows you very well, Eden.”
The thought of her ex-best friend sent her heart into palpitations. To forgive or not to forgive, that is the question. “You know it's really clear whose side you're on.”
“I am not a teenager, Eden, I do not take sides. I would just like to remind you that Noah was under orders and he disliked lying to you. He does care about you.”
“You think I should forgive him?”
“Enough to let him prepare you. He is excellent at what he does, Eden. He will make you an excellent hunting partner if you can allow yourself to trust him.”
“I trust you.”
“Then trust me when I say you can trust Noah.”
Cyrus came to a stop outside McLeish's home and Eden slowed to a halt beside him. She found herself staring at the ground in concentration, chewing on her lip as she thought over what Cyrus was suggesting. Noah had hurt her. In fact she was pretty sure Noah may have broken her heart. There was no way you could just shrug off that kind of hurt like it had never happened. But she also knew in that rational part of her brain she now owned that Noah hadn't meant to hurt her. He was just doing his job and, from what she had witnessed so far, the Ankh were kind of big on duty… even to the point of being arrogant elitists. Was it possible to come to some kind of halfway point concerning the first guy who had ever crushed her?
“OK.” Eden nodded, lifting her head to meet Cyrus' dark gaze. “I'm not quite ready to be friends with him but I will… I will trust him. I can do that.”
The Princeps face softened. “I am glad. Inside this training centre are some Neith aware of what you are. We need to be careful. We need to be together in this.”
“There you are.”
Eden and Cyrus looked up toward the house to see McLeish stepping out of his front door. She followed Cyrus as he made his way towards the Councilman she didn't trust.
“Good morning, Councilman,” Cyrus greeted him formally.
McLeish nodded, his lips set in a grim straight line. “Mornin', Princeps. Ms MacDouglas. You've caught me just in time. I have to leave for work in ten minutes.” Eden furrowed her brow as her eyes swept his attire. He was dressed in a dark navy suit.
Somehow she couldn't see him as the businessman type.
“Councilman McLeish is a police officer. A Detective Inspector with the Lothian and Borders Police,” Cyrus explained as they stepped inside the house. “We have many Neith in positions of authority, Eden, in case incriminating discoveries are made and we need to cover them up.” OK, that sounded creepy and ominous. “Incriminating discoveries?” It was McLeish who answered, his eyes washing over her face with little expression, “Bodies of soul eaters. We need to be able to dispose of them. We have people on local boards of authority who deal with the cemeteries, so we can usually bury soul eaters there without recourse. Sometimes, however, we don't have time and if those bodies come back to haunt us we need people, like myself and others, who can make the questions go away.”
Eden gulped. How had she not thought about all of this? You were pretty preoccupied with your own crap, remember. Torture chamber in the basement. The hunger to kill your best friend. PSAT's.
You know, the usual. “Gotcha.”
“It's a good thing your eyes have changed colour,” McLeish suddenly said, and she found herself abruptly caught in his burning gaze. “They were unnerving.” The reminder that he didn't trust her because of her heritage burned. It wasn't like it was her fault.
She had been born that way and she had done her damnedest not to hurt anyone. She had fought against her nature and she was trying goddammit! Before Cyrus could remark (and she could feel his own bristling tension beside her) Eden stepped forward, narrowing her eyes on the Councilman. “I expect that to be the last comment you ever make about my heritage, Councilman McLeish, or I'll consider it a breach of our agreement to keep what I am quiet.” She watched as his jaw clenched, his arms crossing over his chest defiantly. He clearly didn't like being dressed down by a teenage girl. He shot her a withering look before turning to Cyrus as if expecting his reprisal on his behalf. One casual look at her guardian and all she saw was onyx pride in his eyes. She turned back to the Councilman, her eyebrow quirked up expectantly.
Glowering, McLeish lowered his crossed arms and nodded tightly. “Understood.”
“Now that we are all clear, I would like to take Eden into the training centre.” Cyrus took hold of her arm gently to guide her through the house.
“I'm afraid it's busy this morning. It's a bank holiday so some of my people are off work today and the kids are off school… word spread about Noah being here yesterday and well… they're all excited at the possibility of training with him.”
“Well, they will have to wait their turn. Noah is promised to Eden.” She shivered at Cyrus' word choice. It sounded so romantic and enticing… and she completely hated the little treacherous butterflies that emerged out of their cocoons in her stomach at the thought of her and Noah in a sentence together, as if they were a couple.
“Of course,” McLeish growled and strode past them out of the kitchen door and into the large backyard. A high wooden fence bordered the entire yard from their neighbours, but the theatre next door was pretty hard to miss. At the end of McLeish's yard was a large wooden shed. “How are you going to explain the fact that she's not already trained?” Eden looked to Cyrus. Yeah, how were they going to explain that?