Quin strained to form a coherent response.It’s my fucking body, and I’ll pout all I like.
“Look at you, learning how to speak in your own head. Congratulations.” Lawrence began to take him out of the garden, walking with purpose.
Quin didn’t need to ask where they were going.Don’t you dare, he yelled in his mind.
Lawrence didn’t even dignify him with a response.
Quin raged against Lawrence the entire way to the cottage, but it was no use. Lawrence entered the front door like he owned the place, striding in through the hall. There was a scant moment when he approached the bedroom where Quin swore his steps faltered. But Quin wasn’t able to take back control, so Lawrence pushed the door open with no resistance.
Kit lay in the bed, just where Quin had left him. He looked deliciouslyvulnerable.
Quin realised that wasn’t his opinion.
“Hello, darling,” Lawrence said.
Kit didn’t stir. Quin had hoped whatever vampire instincts Kit possessed would sense the threat in the room, but Lawrence’s presence didn’t seem to trigger it.
If you touch him?—
“You’ll do nothing,” Lawrence replied. “I can do what I want to you, and I can do what I want to Christopher.”
Quin wanted to throw up.
Instead of going after Kit like Quin expected, Lawrence rifled through the side table drawer, drawing out the necklace that they’d gone to such lengths to procure. “I’ll be getting rid of this. Oh, and…” He pulled the box Quin had hoped he wouldn’t notice from his pocket, laughing when he flipped it open. “It’s so small.”
Sick with worry over Kit, Quin couldn’t formulate his thoughts into any coherent response. It was like he was only an afterthought in his own mind.
Lawrence put everything back into his jeans pocket. With one last glance at Kit, Lawrence skulked out of the room and down the hallway to the other bedroom. He opened the door to revealRake, DJ, and Shaun lying tangled together, dead to the world. Lawrence loomed over the bed, a hand reaching towards where Shaun was tucked into Rake’s side at the edge of the mattress. Quin tried with all his might to stop from moving, but he wasn’t able to.
His hand landed on Shaun’s head, fingers tangling in his red curls. Quin’s revulsion couldn’t overwhelm Lawrence’s delight at Shaun being in his power once again. He stroked Shaun as one would a treasured pet, his proprietary attitude growing with every touch.
“Perhaps I can take him with me.” As fast as Lawrence considered it, he decided against it. “No. Too risky.”
Quin’s stomach tied itself in knots as he tried to focus enough to figure out what Lawrence was planning, but his thoughts were too jumbled to parse.
Lawrence pressed his hand to his abdomen. “You’re going to make us vomit. Again.”
Stop being a sick fuck, then.
Displeasure rumbled through his body. He took a long look at Shaun’s unconscious form. “Goodbye, pet.”
Lawrence went to the kitchen next, rummaging through the drawers until he found what he was looking for.
A box of matches.
“Perfect.”
No!Yelling inside his own head felt like banging against a locked door, the desperate echo reverberating through his mind.
Lawrence looked at his reflection in the toaster, a warped smirk on his face. “Oh, yes. It’s only fair, isn’t it?”
Quin needed to do something—anything. He raged inside his own mind, but his body felt like a separate entity. Even though he knew it was his limbs that were moving, he wasn’t the one pulling the strings.
Quin hadn’t had this rationality the last couple of times he’d been possessed. His moments of clarity had been fleeting. Then, it had been like a lucid dream. Now, it was a waking nightmare.
Lawrence hummed a tune Quin didn’t recognise as he went outside. It stopped Quin from being able to focus at all. Whether it was a convenient side effect or a deliberate action on Lawrence’s part to obfuscate his plans, Quin didn’t know. All he could do was linger in the back of his own mind as Lawrence opened the boot of the car, pulling out the little fuel can that Quin always kept there as part of his emergency kit.
Lawrence stalked back into the house, heading straight for the room Kit was in. He poured the petrol over the end of the bed, soaking the sheets. The pungent smell coated his nostrils. Quin screamed and shouted and shrieked, but not so much as a whisper left his mouth without Lawrence’s approval.
