Chapter 29 Kit
TWENTY-NINE
Kit
Kit opened his eyes to his own reflection staring back at him in the darkness. He blinked, taking a second to process that he stood in front of the bathroom mirror. His other senses crept in slowly, but he couldn’t seem to move.
Something was very, very wrong.
It didn’t come to him immediately, but then realisation dawned. It was still daylight. No sunbeam could sneak past the thick curtains—they’d checked multiple times—but he knew it deep down. And then a smell hit his nose. Acrid, cloying petrol.
Pressure built in his centre, and he went to press a hand to his sternum. Except, his hand didn’t move how he wanted it to. It travelled in front of his body instead, flexing.
“Interesting.” The words came from his lips, but Kit wasn’t the one to say them. “Apologies, Kit, but I was unable to think of another way to wake you up.”
Kit wanted to whimper, or cry, or scream, but he could do nothing but watch his eyes widen in the mirror.
“Don’t be alarmed. It’s me, Jack.” Kit’s lips moved, forming the words and speaking them to himself before letting loose a childish titter that felt alien in his mouth.
Jack was…possessing him. Right. Kit had little time to process what that meant before Jack spoke again.
“We need to stop him.”
Him? Lawrence? It was strange to think like this in his own head, but he imagined how his tongue might form the words and tried to project coherently.
“Who else?”
Kit, or rather, Jack, turned around, his movements uncoordinated. It was like his limbs were simultaneously too long and too short.
Aren’t you going to give me back control of my body?
“I worry you might fall asleep again. The sun has not yet set.”
I’m awake, dammit. And given what Lawrence is likely trying to do, I’ll stay that way.
Jack paused in his slow move towards the bedroom door. “I’m not quite sure how to leave your body.”
Fantastic. At least in his head he could still sound sarcastic. Are your brothers here? Are they waking up the guys?
“Unfortunately, they’ve had no luck on that front. For lack of a better way to explain it, there was a door left ajar in your mind that let me slip inside.”
So, it’s just us?
“I’m afraid so.”
Kit tried to project confidence. The oversized T-shirt of Quin’s that Kit wore felt like the flimsiest suit of armour as he prepared to face down his creator once again. We can handle him. Lead the way.
Kit felt the corners of his lips lift in the tiniest of smiles. “I hope so.”
The sight that greeted him upon opening the door was of a sneering Quin, an expression that could only belong to Lawrence. He faced Matthew and Thomas, who flickered in and out of existence in the hallway.
Kit couldn’t see any sign of Xavier’s ring. Not around Quin’s finger, or anywhere on the petrol-sodden floorboards. The stench was overwhelming, making his already addled mind swim.
“Is that you, Christopher?” Lawrence asked.
“Yes?” At Jack’s response, Kit wanted to close his eyes in frustration.
Lawrence cocked his head. “Seems you’re learning new tricks, Jack.”
Jack scowled.
“What’s your plan?” Lawrence asked. “All I need to do is open the shutters, and Christopher’s body will burn.”
Thomas bolted at Lawrence, passing right through him and out the other side.
“Oh, that felt fucking weird,” Lawrence said, and then slapped a hand over his mouth.
Kit’s eyes widened. Quin?
“Quin?” Jack echoed aloud.
Quin’s mouth moved behind his hands. Kit didn’t understand what he said, but there was something in his voice—even muffled—that was distinctly Quin.
Kit tried to take a step towards him, but Jack held firm. “We can’t.”
I need to go to him! Kit forced his way forward, bulldozing over Jack’s wish for them to stay where they were.
However, Quin, or Lawrence, sidestepped away. Kit stopped in his tracks, waiting to see which one of them was in control. The ghost brothers drifted forwards, flanking him.
When Quin’s hand reached towards the window, Kit had his answer. Lawrence undid the latch on the wooden shutters and threw them open.
Kit had expected streaming sunbeams from the window.
Instead, only a few faint rays spilled light across the petrol-covered wood.
Still, the sudden brightness had Kit stumbling backwards.
Jack, however, sent some sort of opposing signal to his brain, so he fell in a heap, hands too uncoordinated to catch himself.
The shock of hitting the ground with such force had him gasping in pain.
“Kit, are you all right?” Quin asked, sounding concerned.
Jack got them to their feet, but Kit remained cautious. “Are you actually Quin?”
Quin opened his mouth, but spoke out of sync with the way his lips moved. “It’s me.”
Go to him! Kit urged. I’m strong enough to take him out.
“He’s standing in the sun,” Jack pointed out.
Kit looked at where Quin stood, shoes damp with the petrol that had soaked into the floor. The fumes had to be affecting him, especially with his strong nose.
The light at Quin’s back cast a long shadow. Frustration marred his face. “I can’t regain control of my legs,” he gritted out.
Kit propelled himself forward with stilted movements, Jack too uneasy to make the process smooth. They stopped in Quin’s shadow, and Matthew appeared alongside them, a true spectre in his silence.
Quin appeared relieved at Kit’s progress. “You’re going to knock me out again, aren’t you?”
Kit tried to nod, but he only overrode Jack enough to give an odd jerk.
Quin’s shoulders slumped, and he leaned back against the windowsill. “Get him out of me.”
Jack tilted his head. “We can’t. You’re in the sun. You need to move away from the window.”
Tell him to come to me.
“Come to us,” Jack said, raising their hand.
Several things happened at once. Quin lurched towards them, Kit tried to wrench back to stay out of the sun, and Matthew flew at Quin. The touch of Quin’s hand to Kit’s own was only a fleeting relief, however, because before Kit could process what was happening, he was being yanked into the light.
Kit hadn’t felt the sun for forty years.
And this sun wasn’t like the gentle heat of a mild autumn afternoon, the warm caress of a sunny spring day, or even the sweat-inducing humidity of a hot summer evening.
This sun was an oil burn on every exposed patch of his skin; the stinging, searing pain frying his nerve endings.
It was a domino effect, spreading over him in fits and starts as his body woke up to the agony, before starting anew.
Kit tumbled into Quin as a silent scream wracked his body. He caught sight of his own arms—mottled pink and stark, sickly white. He pushed back, desperate to do anything, but Jack was as engulfed in the pain as he was. Neither of them had control. Kit was a marionette with his strings cut.
“Darling, you’re as gullible as when I first took you.”
The words, even murmured as they were, echoed in his ears. Kit shuddered, and he frantically tried to pull himself away from Lawrence’s touch. However, with Quin’s body being the only thing blocking him from the sun once more, Kit found himself stuck in a perverse embrace with his creator.
He tried to speak, but his tongue seemed welded to the roof of his mouth. He couldn’t tell if it was from the burn, or from Jack’s fear, which clouded every other sense.
“I suppose this is a rather fitting end for you, after all.”
Kit blinked up at Lawrence. It was like Kit had travelled back in time as he looked up into the eyes of the monster who’d once stolen him off the street.
Jack, I need control, now!
Jack flailed, but Lawrence held Kit’s arms, keeping him stuck. His fingers dug into Kit’s blistering skin, sending fresh shockwaves of agony through him.
“I blame myself, Christopher,” Lawrence said. “I should have bothered to hunt you down when you left. That was my mistake.”
A part of Kit broke apart at hearing that Lawrence hadn’t even tried to come after him. All those years of hiding, of dyeing his hair and wearing disguises and not leaving a trace of himself anywhere. It had all been for naught; a pointless endeavour that only served to chip away at his soul.
“Oh, have I upset you?” Lawrence’s sneer looked all wrong on Quin’s face, twisting his features into something grotesque.
“What a shame. I hope you’ll at least be grateful knowing that I’ll let Quin live.
Granted, he won’t have freedom, but he’s already a slave to the full moon. It’s not a significant further step.”
Kit’s claws lengthened, and he fought to raise his arms. Jack’s presence inside him was fading, as if he were slipping away. At the corner of his vision, Matthew’s form flickered in and out of existence.
Let go, Jack. Please. Kit tried to keep calm as he spoke to Jack in his mind, not wanting to send him into further panic.
“I’m going to set this place alight,” Lawrence said. “You’ll be my tinderbox, Christopher—the kindling that starts the fire that takes the rest of them out. So good of you to offer yourself up like this.”
Jack, it’s now or never. He enjoys listening to the sound of his own voice, but even he won’t go on forever.
“Let us go,” Jack demanded of Lawrence.
“Never.” Lawrence gripped Kit harder and spun him around, the side of his face and neck dipping into the sun’s rays. Kit’s scream was audible this time, scratching through the silence like the wrong note being played on a violin.
Without warning, Kit was thrown across the hall, hitting the wall with a thud and falling to the floor. Spasms of pain racked his limbs. It felt like his skin had been sloughed off and left raw.
“Fuck,” he swore as he pushed himself into a sitting position, as far as his aching body would let him go. It took him a second to realise he’d said it out loud. “Fuck,” he said again, just to make sure.
He whipped his head up. Quin shook, his chest heaving as he inhaled one shuddering breath and then another. Exertion flushed his face.