He laughed then, a softer, more bitter echo of the hyena cackling between his ears. There was a madness in his empty eyes that he didn't seek to hide anymore, and he turned back to Jefferson with some deranged, amused sort of look. I was worse off when I wasn't alone,
he told the other, lips now curled into some half-grin. And so was everyone else.
The demon was rioting in his head at the audacity the other hybrid had in telling him how he thought and felt when he had been gone so long, when it had been lifetimes since they had known anything about each other. Laruku didn't assume anything about Jefferson, and he was only half-lying when he asserted that he didn't care. Maluki was dead; they'd agreed on that. So why should Jefferson mean anything to him? And why should he mean anything to Jefferson? They were strangers. Perfect strangers with a coincidental past of absolutely no consequence.
Really, though. Things would have been worse if it really was Maluki speaking to him now.
You're bothering with a dead man's dead relatives,
the blind man said. What do you want me to say to you?