Xander’s head lowered, his lips skimming her temple with a tender kiss. “That is true, though it would have made it far morefun if you’d tried to run. Perhaps I could have given you a head start? I could have let you think you stood a chance before I caught you.”
He tightened his grip on her chin and forced her to stand in front of him. His Manipuli magic reached out, the full weight of his cold power drumming through to her consciousness like a thousand icy spikes. But he needn’t have done so, for her barriers had been long forgotten. The reason he had not been able to sense anything from her at all was because there was nothing there. She had completely shut her emotions off, and thus the fuel to her power.
She had nothing left. No anger, no sadness, no fight, no fear. Nothing.
“You should be very afraid, Adriana.”
“I am not afraid of you,” she quickly said. “I will never be afraid of you. I am just disappointed.”
His face briefly shifted into an angry scowl, his fists clenched at his sides as he stumbled back. But then his anger disappeared almost instantly, and was replaced by a condescending smile that was not his own as he cocked his head to the side.
“Disappointed? What could you possibly be disappointed in?”
“In you, Xander. I am disappointed in you, in both of us, for ever thinking we could have had anything good.”
The shadows in the room all darted to him, cloaking him in darkness as he advanced on her. He struck her hard across the face with the back of his hand, his ring splitting open her cheek.
She cried out as he forced her to fall back against the bed and stood between her legs, leaning over her. He grabbed the thin silk of her wedding dress and tore at it, shredding the fabric until it barely hung on her with the remaining threads. Her hands instinctively aimed at him to blind him with her light, but he knew she could not feel her power within her, that there was nothing left to fuel her magic.
He grabbed her wrists and pinned them to the bed either side of her head, his fingers squeezing them until he could feel the snap and crunch of her bones beneath his strength. The same unfamiliar smile pulled at his lips as she howled in pain, her hands becoming completely useless as the talons on his thumbs sunk into her wrists and pierced through the tendons.
“Tell me, lightbringer,” he spat at her. “Are you still disappointed?”
She tried to turn her head away as the blood from his cheek dripped all over her face whilst she screamed. Her face looked so beautiful, stained with red. But those drops on her face weren’t enough. She was the perfect, pale canvas dressed in white for his deadly desires.
He captured her open mouth with his, kissing her hard, before he ran his lips down her jaw to her neck, and sunk his teeth in. He didn’t feed, not properly, only burrowed his teeth as deep as he could.
Adriana writhed under him, but she was useless against him. He tore the flesh from her neck before pulling away and biting her again. And again. And again. He left no part of her visible skin untouched, from her neck, her chest, her shoulders, her arms. She was covered in his deep bite marks, so many that it was impossible to distinguish one from the other.
Her body began to shake uncontrollably as he delved into her mind once again. Through the connection, he felt the hot agony of his bites and the freezing touch of his shadows against her bare skin, gradually becoming too much for her to even comprehend. She was going into shock, her heart beating so furiously as her mind struggled to keep up with the pain.
Xander brought his hands to her cheeks and held her tearful stare, finally satisfied with the state of her shaking body beneath him.
“Youdisappointme, Adriana.”
He gently ran his fingers down her face, the way he had when he had worshipped her body night after night, before wrapping his hands around her throat.
“You were so disappointingly easy.”
He kept a steady pressure, letting her body try to fight for the air that she couldn’t quite find. She brought one of her limp hands to his face, her fingers touching his cheek, whilst her other reached out to the side, as if searching for something to hold onto.
He gradually tightened his grip, his face a perfect picture of calm and collected. Her bloodshot eyes slowly drifted shut, her hand fell from his face, and her body finally stopped convulsing.
Xander’s hands stayed wrapped firmly round her neck, waiting to see if she moved again. But she didn’t. He could hear her heart was no longer beating, her chest no longer moving, and her pulse had come to a stop.
She was gone.
He breathed out a long sigh of content, standing from the bed and taking one last look at her body, so broken and bloodied. And then he left. He made his way out of her room and down the stairs, his bloodied hands in his pockets, as he whistled with every step.
End of Part 1
After
Adriana
It was in the early hours of the morning when Adriana awoke, gasping for breath as she coughed and heaved. The air that flowed through her lungs burned her throat and her chest—the bittersweet feeling of life mixed with the loss of comfort from a snatched-away oblivion.
Striga had once told her that when a Daemon died, Mortis would send an angel to accompany them to the Land of the Dead. Adriana did not know if she had seen an angel. The last thing she remembered was Xander, smiling down at her, as one of her hands reached towards his face whilst her other gripped the cold hand of death. Only the Land of the Dead felt very much like the Land of the Living. Her own bedroom, to be exact.
