“No, I never saw her face. But she spoke to Niamh, they spent a lot of time with one another last night. And there’s something else.” Nicolai paused for a moment, his eyes flickering to the other Lamiae before coming back to Xander. “She said her name was Addie.”
Xander's eyes flared. He flexed his hands, trying to ease the tension in them. He could feel his body start to tremble as a sob threatened to tear its way through his chest. Could it be her?
No, it was impossible. He killed her, he killed her with his own hands. And he replayed that memory every time he closed his eyes, he re-lived every second of it in his dreams at night. She wasn’t alive, she couldn’t be. And if she was, surely she would have found him by now.
“You can look,” Niamh softly said, offering him a small smile. “We need to find her. Whether she’s who you all clearly think sheis or not, we need her power. If looking into my memories will help us find her, then do it.”
Xander stood from his chair, not sure if he wanted to see for himself. If it really was Adriana, then that meant she had been hiding from him for decades, it meant she didn’t want to be found by him. He couldn’t blame her for that, but it didn’t make it hurt any less.
“Are you sure?” he asked.
Niamh nodded. “It’s fine, just please don’t get mad at me if it is her. If I’d known she was your girl then I… well, you’ll see.”
Xander noticed Nicolai struggle to hide a small smirk at her comment. He ignored it, and placed both his hands flat on the table, his eyes closing as he focused on Niamh’s mind.
He entered her thoughts easily, finding the memories of the last few hours at the forefront of her mind. He watched behind Niamh’s eyes as she walked down a flight of stairs and into a dark club filled with red decor. The music wasn’t overly loud, it was a slow beat that you could dance to, and the mix of blood and alcohol flooded her senses.
Nicolai shook hands with a man with dark hair and striking blue eyes who stood in front of the bar, introducing him as Mitchell. They took drinks from the bar and sat down on a sofa, watching as guests arrived, when Niamh’s eye caught on a woman who stood at the bottom of the stairs. She couldn’t see her face, but she was dressed in dark clothes and a black leather jacket. The woman then walked over to where Mitchell stood at the bar, but Niamh lost sight of her when Nicolai made her join in his boring conversation with a group of Lamiae he knew.
“Oh, I think I might have to invite Mitchell’s girl to join,” Nicolai said to her, pointing over to the bar. “He told me he’s got a close friend that comes in a lot with some pretty fun tastes, I’m guessing that’s her.”
Niamh’s eyes followed to where Nicolai was pointing, landing on the couple and spotting the same woman. Even from across the room, she could see her head was tipped back and her back was arched as the club owner stood between her legs and fed from her neck. Niamh wondered what it would feel like.
“Good luck with that,,” Niamh scoffed, as she watched the girl playfully push Mitchell away and turn to face the bar. “It doesn’t seem like she’s interested in much of anything right now. And I don’t think Mitchell would appreciate you hitting on his friend.”
Mitchell beckoned them to the back where the rooms were, but stopped when Nicolai held his finger up as he strolled over to the bar. Niamh watched as he tried to chat to the woman, who remained facing away from him. She knew Nicolai was harmless, but she worried that the woman might have felt cornered, so she followed after him.
She wandered to the woman’s other side. “Oh, leave her alone, Nic. She’s clearly not interested.”
The woman turned to watch Nicolai walk away in defeat as Niamh apologised on his behalf.
“It’s fine,” the woman laughed. “Thank you, though.”
Xander knew that voice, he knew that laugh. And when she turned to look at Niamh, Adriana’s face came into full view.
Her pale blue-grey eyes framed by thick, dark lashes stood out amongst the red lighting. Her dark blonde hair was shorter now, falling in waves to just below her shoulders with a low fringe that split in the middle and fell below her eyebrows, resting just above her cheekbones. The light freckles across her nose were barely visible in the dark room, but he knew they were there.
Her dusty pink lips stretched into a smile as she accepted Niamh’s offer to join her. It was the same way she used to smile at Xander, her top front teeth grazing her plump lower lip as she grinned, the small dimple he loved so much on her left cheek becoming visible.
Xander flitted through Niamh’s memories of their conversation, not paying attention to anything they spoke about as he fixated on Adriana’s beautiful face. She was there—right there. Adriana was alive.
As Niamh’s eyes wandered over Adriana’s body, he could feel the attraction she felt for the woman he loved. She wore a dark shirt tucked into black jeans, with black gloves that extended under her sleeves. The only colour on her was the trail of blood from the bite mark on her neck, and it set Xander’s teeth on edge.
He could feel himself growing angry, knowing that she had been fed from. And his anger only grew when he watched Adriana kiss Niamh and straddle her lap in front of the entire bar.
He questioned whether he could watch anymore, knowing what those clubs were for. But he continued, just so he could see Adriana’s face, so he could feel what Niamh had felt as Adriana fed from her neck.
Feelings of mixed pain and pleasure flooded through him, so much that he almost lost his grip on Niamh’s memories. He watched through her eyes as Adriana stood up and walked to the washroom, her gaze lingering on Adriana’s saunter. Niamh touched her neck and realised she was still bleeding slightly, and so she went after her to clean herself up.
That was when she saw Adriana standing there shirtless, the brandings on her back on full display. Xander caught a glimpse of her Luciferus sun between the strands of her hair, along with the new eclipse moon that sat in the middle of her Incantrix moon cycle. And, as she spun around to face Niamh and begged her not to tell anyone, he saw the brands on her arms. His Nocte brands.
The truth was undeniable; he had turned her. When he had killed her on the night before their wedding day, he hadunknowingly turned her. He had never noticed during his self-torturous recounts of that night that the blood from the cut on his cheek had dripped into her mouth. He had never noticed that she had swallowed that blood in between her screams. He’d been so traumatised by what he had done he could only ever focus on her eyes—on the life that slowly left them as he killed her.
Xander’s heart dropped when he saw the panic in Adriana’s expression when Niamh mentioned his name. She was terrified of him, so terrified that she had hid for over a century.
What had she been doing? Who had she been with this entire time? Had she been all alone? Had she been safe?
So many questions ran through Xander’s mind as he continued to watch Niamh’s memories. He watched Adriana destroy the bathroom sinks and run out of the bar. Nicolai chased after her at Niamh’s request but he fell back down the stairs when a beam of light shot out from the top. Her Luciferus light was still strong, perhaps even stronger now.
