My heart slams up into my throat. “But he’s alive?”
Magnus gives a single nod.
I take a step forward, staring him down through the fence. “How badly is he hurt?”
Magnus gives me a blasé look. “Honey, it only took three beatings before Cliff fessed up and admitted to being the one to help you get away. Cliff’s been suffering for it ever since.”
The bile churning in my stomach rushes up the back of my throat, and I nearly start gagging at the implications. I knew it. I knew it all along, and yet I stayed away. I ran. I didn’t save him the way he saved me. I’ve been hiding out here with this pack like a coward, while Cliff has been getting tortured and abused because of me.
Scorching tears fill my eyes. “Why didn’t any of you try to help him?” I snap, suddenly furious. If I could, I’d jump over this fence and snap his fucking undead neck.
“And get our own asses beat for it?” he shoots back. “Please. You know the quid pro quo. We all have to look out for ourselves. That’s life, honey.”
I shake my head, causing a tear to spill out onto my cheek that I angrily dash away. “That’s not life. That’s just the life that Kaazu fucking made. At least I learned that much being here, with people who actually look out for one another.”
It’s jealousy that flashes through his eyes this time, and then in a blink, he’s directly in front of me, his vampiric speed taking him from the tree to the fence in a blur.
“Well good for fucking you,” he snarls, his eyes flashing red with rage. “Because you know what? None of us left behind in the troupe give a shit. Every day you were gone, he beat the shit out of one of us. Said we had to take the punishment for you until he gets you back. So fuck you with your newfound expectations. No one wants to step in and help Heath. He’s the reason we’re all in this fucking mess. Him and you,” he finishes, spitting at the ground between our feet.
“The longer you guys let Kaazu manipulate you, the longer you’ll be stuck with him. If you just banded together—”
Magnus lets out a harsh laugh. “This is coming from you? The only thing you ever banded together was your hair, honey. You’re just as bad as the rest of us.”
“Maybe. But not anymore.”
He looks at me with pity. “If you think you’re not gonna be in Kaazu’s clutches by the end of the night, you’re dumber than you look. And if you don’t show up, and you let him kill Heath? Well, then you’re even more of a coldhearted bitch than I thought, and you’ve got no room to judge the rest of us.”
My nails dig into my palms so hard that I pierce the skin. “Oh I’ll be there, but this whole pack will show up with me.”
Magnus doesn’t seem surprised by my words. If anything, he looks like that’s what he was waiting for me to say.
“Really? Because from what I heard, you’re not even part of this pack yet.”
“Doesn’t matter,” I say with conviction, knowing they’ll help.
“Hmm. They might come. If you tell them.”
I sneer. “Is this the part where you tell me Kaazu is gonna kill Cliff unless I show up? Because fuck off. We both know Kaazu is going to try to do that either way.”
Over my dead body, but Kaazu is using Cliff as a carrot to dangle in front of me, but it’s pointless. He’s going to mete out punishment whether I come or not.
Magnus tilts his head down in acquiescence. “True. But the child is another matter.”
My black eyebrows pull together. “Child? What fucking child?”
He glances down at his nails as if he’s appraising his cuticles before deigning to answer me. “A little kid like that shouldn’t be left to wander all alone. He shifted and somehow ended up on the wrong side of the fence while we were here. The opportunity presented itself, you see. Kaazu told us to bring him in.”
My blood goes cold. “You took a kid? From here?”
Magnus gives a careless shrug, something I might’ve even done at one point, before I got to know this pack. Before I realized just how desensitized we are to all the fucked up shit Kaazu made into our norm.
“Said his name’s Freddie. Tried to bite me. I didn’t even know