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Three Days Later
Ihad barely walked through the front door before I heard my name being called. "Father de Leon!"
I stopped walking and braced myself for incoming Eddie. When I turned around, he was wearing his street clothes, a blade and sidearm strapped to his hips.
"Wait up," he called, running over to me. "You didn't tell me we were leaving."
"Because we’re not," I informed him.
He frowned. "It's been three days since the sonic mindfuck thing. I'm your partner. I'm supposed to go out on hunts with you."
"You are my student," I corrected him. "You go on hunts when and if I say so. I'm not obligated to take you along."
Not yet, anyway.
His brow furrowed even harder. "You didn't have any problems before. I was going out with you every night. This is about what happened with those creeps from the Order, isn't it?"
I just continued to stare at him, neither confirming or denying it.
"It's not fair," he protested. "You said it yourself, we're both lucky to be alive. I didn't do anything wrong."
"I never said you did," I answered. "But it put you on the Order’s radar, and now they think you're a hybrid. My bluff got us out of that situation, but there's no guarantee about the next time.”
"That's all the more reason you shouldn't be going out alone, then, isn't it?" he challenged.
I sighed. Stubbornness was by far the most infuriating trait a person could possess. I had just never been on the receiving end of it to this degree.
"This isn’t up for debate, Eddie."
His eyes narrowed, and rather than backing down like he usually would have, he stared me down. "You said it yourself—I need experience if I'm going to be useful to anyone. And I'm already well behind the others. You can’t just keep me locked up in here forever."
He had a point, as loath as I was to admit it. He was wrong about being behind the others, though. Hell, he had come further than I had by the time I had been with the Order for six months. I just wasn't about to admit that.
Before I could say anything else, Baker walked through the front doors, a look of relief on his face. "Oh, good, I caught you," he said. "Father Marius wants to see you."
Of course he did. I turned to Eddie. "Go train with the others. We'll continue this later."
I could tell he wanted to argue more, and I wondered whether he was going to challenge me directly in front of another hunter. If so, there were more than a few things we were going to discuss later.
Instead, he nodded and said, "Yes, Father."
He turned and stalked back down the hall. Baker gave me a curious look, but he didn't question it. That was fortunate for him, since I really wasn't in the mood to tolerate any further insubordination.
"Did he say what it was about?" I asked.
"No," Baker said, hesitating as if something was troubling him. "But there's a guy from the Order with him."
"The Order?" I echoed in disbelief. Before he could elaborate, I made haste for the patriarch's office.
Sure enough, sitting in the high backed chair across from Father Marius’s desk was a man I didn't recognize. He wore the riveted blue-and-gold uniform of one of the higher-ups in the Order. A major general. Now, that was strange. The man was unarmed, though, and as far as I could tell, the meeting was going amiably enough.
With dark brown hair just starting to gray around the temples and a thick beard, he didn't look anything like the usual well-kept soldiers of the Order. He looked like a man in his early- to mid-forties, although that meant little when it came to the paladins. He didn't seem quite as comfortable as Father Marius did, but he didn't look outwardly hostile, either. Not at the moment.
"Father de Leon," Father Marius said in a pleasant tone, his hands folded in front of him and his posture relaxed, as if he was just enjoying a visit with an old friend. "Perfect timing. I was just telling Major General Bartlett about your recent encounter with Atticus."
"That's one way to put it," I muttered, bowing to Father Marius.
"Castor is my most promising pupil, and in the running to be my successor," Father Marius said, giving me a smile that belied the shocking nature of his words.
