“You seem a little overwhelmed, Nash,” Saint said with a shrug. “How about we leave you to think about it and you let us know tomorrow? But I’m warning you… once you accept, you’re all in. No backing out. You live by the rules of the Night Keepers. You’re one of us for life. Blood in, blood out. That means if you’re ever in need, you have us to back you ‘til death. But we’ll expect the same in return from you. I won’t promise it will be clean, or honest. In fact, I can guarantee that the other night won’t be the only time we get our hands bloody. We’re not nice people, we will never claim to be. But our family is pure and our bond unbreakable. Monsters thrive in the company of their kind and I know that we can help nurture yours.”
He turned and headed away from me before I could respond to that insanity with Blake on his heels. Kyan smiled broadly and clapped me on the back as he leaned close to speak to me.
“There’s no turning back now, brother,” he said. “You’ve made your bed with the devil. Time to come lie in it with us.”
My jaw ticked as they strode away from me and I blew out a breath as the door swung closed behind them. Was I really going to go through with this insanity? Bind myself to those fucked up boys and their cruel existence? It could certainly help me to further my plans. And I didn’t want to admit it, but the idea of having what they had tempted me too. It must have been nice to live a life where nothing you ever did could be seen as wrong, where no one could hold you accountable. At least not yet. But I was determined to make Saint Memphis’s family pay for their crimes. So maybe taking them up on their offer was the right move.
Before I could give it any more thought, the door swung open again and Kyan stuck his head back through, the look in his eyes promising bloodshed as he grinned.
“Do you wanna come on a trial run with us, Nash?” he asked, dangling a key from his finger like I was a horse and it was a carrot.
“What kind of run?” I asked.
“The kind where you get to see how the Night Keepers deal with our enemies.”
“I’m not interested in your stupid bully games,” I replied as I strode towards him. I had a video meeting in an hour with the school governors and I needed to go over a few things before it.
“Not even when the target is Bait?”
“Jeremiah Cocker?” I asked with a frown, realising I hadn’t seen the little asswipe who’d let those fucking looters into the school at assembly. “Where is he anyway?”
“When you were rounding all the students up that night, I escorted him to his own personal quarantine quarters. Now that we know he’s not infected, we’re ready to let him out for his punishment.” Kyan’s eyes were hard and dark, a glimmer of excitement in them as he geared up for a fight. Not that I imagined that kid would pose any kind of challenge to him.
“I’ve got a lot going on,” I began as I tried to move around him, but Kyan stepped into my way.
I could see Saint and Blake waiting for us down the hall, watching with interest to see how this would play out. Whether they could bend me to their bullshit or not.
“Maybe we misjudged you then,” Kyan growled, rolling his shoulders back like he was willing to go to bat with me over this. “Because I assumed that the man I saw slide a knife into that fucker in the catacombs was standing before me now. The man who was willing to kill for Tatum Rivers. The same girl who only got attacked in the first place because that cowardly shit eater Bait let those motherfuckers into our school. The same girl who was exposed to the Hades Virus during that attack and could have fucking died?”
I wasn’t surprised by the violence in his posture, but the utter rage in his voice as he spoke about what had almost happened to Tatum took me by surprise. I’d known Kyan for a long time and I’d never known him to care about anything enough to get this riled up over it. Sure, he flipped out and attacked people all the time, using them as an outlet for his rage. But he never gave a shit like this.
And to make it worse, he’d landed on the one fucking thing I cared about in this place too. I’d been so busy being pissed at the residents of Murkwell for showing up here and causing all of that destruction that I’d totally forgotten we had a traitor in our midst.
So if the Night Keepers wanted to draw me into one of their cruel games, they’d chosen the perfect fucking one to tempt me with. In fact, he’d landed on my kryptonite. Tatum Rivers. I’d sworn to help her and protect her at all costs in the mission to bring down Saint and the Night Keepers. So if I had the opportunity to take out someone else who had hurt her then I was more than okay with that. In fact, I was quite looking forward to seeing him suffer.
“Lead the way,” I commanded and the smile that lit Kyan’s face was all beast. But I didn’t mind that at all.
Blake grinned like a kid on a Christmas Day as I approached him and even Saint cracked a smile.
