Blood Past - By Samantha Young Page 0,76
two Warriors of Neith, awoke her with a jolt, her brain unfuzzing and focusing on the two men who strode towards Cyrus with purpose. The older of the men reached Cyrus first, his black jeans and sweater reminding her of the garb Noah favoured.
Thinking of Noah brought on a maelstrom of angst she just didn’t want to deal with at the moment.
When Eden had returned to the mansion with a barely conscious Val and Cyrus and a very groggy Noah, Emma had gushed all over her, thanking her for returning them all safely. Alain hadn’t said a word to her, just helped put Cyrus and Val to their beds. When she’d stood and explained to him what had happened, he hadn’t responded. Instead he’d silently put an arm around Noah and half-carried his son to his room too. Emma had tried to apologise for her husband’s behaviour but Eden had waved her off. Alain blamed her for Noah getting taken in the first place. The fact that the reclusive Darius of Mesopotamia had had to be called in to save their asses hadn’t gone down well with him either, although he hadn’t actually looked all that surprised by what she’d told him.
Eden on the other hand was still surprised. In fact, she was pretty sure she’d never get over what Darius had done in her parent’s mansion. The carnage was the kind of imagery that didn’t dissolve from the memory very quickly.
The last few days she’d kind of avoided Alain, which meant in turn avoiding Noah. She’d hung around Cyrus and Val as they slowly came too. They were stronger and older than Noah, so it hadn’t taken them long to get back on their feet. Cyrus refused to discuss Darius so she was stuck with the terrifying mystery that was He. Darius had contacted Cyrus to let them know the mess had been cleaned up.
Without Noah, Eden was left alone in her grief, and found it more than difficult to pick up the phone to inform the Douglas’ of Mhairi’s death. Tobe had dropped the phone, refusing to speak to her, and Eden had burst into real tears for the first time in a long time. What made it worse was that Tobe didn’t even know the extent of Eden’s failure.
For a moment… just a moment… while Teagan had delivered his ultimatum and they’d seemed so impossibly outnumbered, Eden had considered giving herself and Mhairi over if it meant saving Noah. She couldn’t even begin to comprehend that. Tobe would have killed her. Luckily, although no less unsettling, Eden hadn’t had to make that decision. For a few days she grappled with what it meant. Being Ankh had become the sole core of her existence. Or so she’d thought. She’d actually been willing to give up the one thing that meant the world to her, to save Noah’s life. On the one hand it made her want to run in the opposite direction from him, get as far away from such messy and overwhelming feelings as possible. And yet on the other, she couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing him again. Pondering the complications of life and love ( you know the little stuff) was put on hold as Cyrus brought news of everyone back in Edinburgh. Tobe still wasn’t speaking to her. She and the Douglas’ were trying to work their way through their grief at the moment. Cyrus and Eden had both agreed that explaining to them about how their death meant Eden’s reversal of fortune wasn’t the best idea, so they kept that to themselves. Eden had argued with Cyrus for keeping the information to himself in the first place. She made him promise not to ever keep something so huge from her again and was relieved by the promise – Cyrus was too honourable to break it.
As for McLeish and Mary, things were still up in the air on that one. Now that they were back in the States and the whole Teagan mess was over, Cyrus was concentrating on hunting down Cosmina Arcos before she could hunt down Eden. For him, that was the priority. He had decided leaving McLeish to deal with his sister worked two-fold. It was one less thing for The Circle to worry about and it was also a gesture of respect towards McLeish. He already seemed to view the Ankh as overbearing, arrogant, elitist authority figures (and Eden wasn’t saying there wasn’t some truth in that); Cyrus reckoned