Chapter 9

"I'll be just over there." Vanessa nodded and gave me a nervous smile. I sat just out of earshot beside the lair entrance and waited. I tried to listen in to snippets of their conversation but all I could do was look back to make sure they weren't trying to kill each other.

"Stop worrying." I snapped my head back around to see Tooth hovering beside me.

"I'm not worrying." I denied, flat out lying.

"You think the Guardian of Memory won't know when someone's lying?" I rolled my eyes and smiled,

"I don't have any choice but to worry. I made her talk to him; if anything happens to her it's on me." Tooth stopped hovering and sat beside me in the snow.

"What happened to you hating her?" I shrugged, looking back over my shoulder again to see the same scene I've looked back on for the past 10 minutes.

"Manny told me I have to trust her. So I did and now she's like a sister to me; the complete opposite but still my best friend. I don't understand it either but what can you do." Tooth put a warm hand on my shoulder.

"This is a good thing, Jack. You two can do great things apart and even greater things together. You should never have been enemies." With a fleeting smile she left me to watch over Vanessa. I looked over my shoulder and saw Pitch twitching. I sat up straighter, turning around more. Vanessa took a few steps back and Pitch clutched his head, backing away from her and he started screaming. I got up and started running over to them.

"Jack, what's happening to him?" I put a hand up to her telling her to wait behind me and I moved closer to Pitch, who was still screaming.

"Pitch?" I asked, not getting too close to him.

"Back. Away." He spat from his teeth.

"You need to tell me what's going on, Pitch. If I don't know what's happening I can't keep Vanessa safe, is that what you want?" He stood up a little straighter, but he was still unstable and on the verge of screaming again.

"Temptation. He can latch onto it. Once he has, he can take over the body whenever he wants." Pitch grunted with effort and went down to his knees, screaming again. He stopped screaming and was able to look up again. "He's had hundreds of years to wire himself to me. If I die, he'll still live on – possessing people to get what he wants. You'll never find him and you'll never stop him." He groaned, burying his head in the snow for a moment.

"How can we stop him?" He growled and whipped his head back up,

"Weren't you listening? You can't!" He calmed down some. "Just protect her." I nodded and he went down again, though this time I knew he wouldn't be coming back as the Pitch I just met.

"I'll give you one chance." Pitch's voice came out of his mouth, but they weren't his words. I backed off, backing close enough to Vanessa to grab her arm. Pitch's face was plastered with a smirk when his head came back up to look at Vanessa and I. "Run." I bolted, pulling Vanessa after me, back to the sleigh where the others were waiting.

"North, go!" We jumped on the back and the sleigh took off in an instant, shooting us away from the lair and Pitch, or Sin technically. I looked back at Pitch's body, a menacing black form against the backdrop of the white-blue Antarctic scene. I looked over to Vanessa on the opposite side of the sleigh who was looking out into the distance, her eyes painted with thoughts. She looked over at me and gave me a weak smile and a thank you nod. I smiled back and knew, before Sin got involved, she and her Father worked things out. We landed at the pole and Vanessa pulled me aside.

"I heard what my Dad said to you." I looked over to the others before turning back to her,

"And?" She looked out at the snow covered landscape,

"I lived with my Uncle for 15 years." My jaw dropped some and I covered my face with my hand, groaning. "He could have tapped into my temptation. He can possess me whenever he wants and you could be dead in seconds."