However, one crucial fact occurred to Kit: he was stronger than Quin.
When Kit submitted to Quin, when he played as Quin’s boy, he wasn’t doing it because he was the weaker one. Hechoseto do that. And he could fight him off at any point. Even now, he could sense how easy it was to halt Quin’s movement.
“You’re not deserving of that title,” Kit said, before twisting Quin’s arm behind his back and reversing their positions. Quin’s body went rigid as Kit pinned him against the wall.
“So, what next, darling?” Quin—no,Lawrence—asked. It might have been Quin’s mouth that was moving, but it was Lawrence’s mocking words that were spoken. “I can still hurt his body like this, you know. Biting off his tongue won’t be fun for me either, but it’s possible.”
Kit jolted backwards, hands raised. “You don’t need to do that.”
Lawrence turned, a satisfied smile on his face. “You’re not in control here, Christopher. I am. And I always have been.”
Kit hated hearing his full name being spoken in Quin’s Welsh lilt. “How are you here? What are you?”
Lawrence made a dramatic flourish of his arms. “I never did tell you enough about our world, did I? You were far easier to deal with when you knew little of our kind and others. It’s funny, though, how easily you accepted the existence of vampires, yet the concept of ghosts eluded your tiny mind.”
“I would have thought having your head severed from your body might have resulted in a permanent death,” Kit said. Quin had mentioned how the werewolves’ forest was haunted, but he hadn’t considered that the same rules would apply to Lawrence. Of course they did, though, because if anyone could cheat death for a second time, it would be his creator.
Lawrence, to Kit’s surprise, flinched. It was minute—so small that Kit might have missed it had he been able to tear his gazeaway from Lawrence’s face. And itwasLawrence’s now, even if Quin was still there underneath the sneer that had replaced Lawrence’s brief loss of composure.
“I confess it hindered me at first. But I’ve been recovering nicely, thanks to you. Had you not noticed you were hungrier? That you were losing time?”
Kit’s ankle burned where Lawrence had left his mark. “But if you can make yourself corporeal,” he said slowly, turning over in his head, “why can’t you just stay as you are?”
“It’s exhausting to do anything in that form. No, a body is far easier.”
“But why Quin?”
Lawrence looked delighted to have been asked. “Darling, I cannot be expected to take permanent control ofyourbody. It would be rather inconvenient, given what I want to do to it.”
Kit’s feet itched to run. But Lawrence had him over a barrel—he could maim Quin in retribution for any of Kit’s actions.
It was then that something equally awful occurred to Kit. He listened out but couldn’t hear anything over the frantic buzzing in his ears. “You didn’t hurt Mabel, did you?”
“The dog? What do you take me for?”
Kit opened his mouth to tell Lawrence exactly what he took him for, but Lawrence continued before he could speak.
“It’s not like I would eat adog. I shut her in the utility room when she wouldn’t stop barking at me.”
Kit sagged in relief. “She knew you weren’t Quin.”
“It took you longer than she did to realise. Now, what did I ask you to call me?”
Kit pressed his lips together in defiance, staring Lawrence down.
Lawrence approached, and Kit fought to stay rooted to the spot. He stared into Lawrence’s eyes, trying to find a trace ofQuin. But all he saw was the familiar frosty blue that he’d never be able to forget, no matter how many decades passed.
“Darling, I can’t believe you’ve already forgotten what will happen if you decline me.” Lawrence waggled a finger in Kit’s face. “How about for each time you refuse to call me by the correct title, I break one of Quin’s fingers? It would be rather apt, wouldn’t it? As I recall, I did the same to you the first night we met.”
The memory was so vivid that it was like watching a film play out in his mind. The snap of his bone. The shock of the pain. The sheer terror that had filled him. It all came flooding back at once, and Kit cradled his finger like he had decades earlier. It still had an odd bend to it where it hadn’t healed properly.
“Oh, Christopher,” Lawrence cooed. “You didn’t think you’d ever escape me, did you?”
There had been two times Kit had thought that very thing. The most recent being when Shaun severed Lawrence’s head from his body.
But he’d thought he might be free when he’d first fled from Lawrence, leaving him busy with his plans to take the new boy that he’d had his eye on. Kit had planned it for months, setting several false trails leading to different cities to throw Lawrence off his scent. He’d been a coward for leaving Shaun to fall into Lawrence’s clutches and had regretted his actions every day since. It had been why Rake and DJ had so easily convinced Kit to help them. Shaun may have forgiven him in the end, but it had taken a lot longer for Kit to forgive himself.
It didn’t matter that Kit had been like a fox caught in a trap, ready to gnaw his own leg off if it meant his survival. Kit hadn’t suffered for his freedom. It had been Shaun then, and now Quin was hurting.
