“Where are we going?” Nicolai asked, as he and Edward ran to keep up with him as he made his way down the side road he’d seen Adriana disappear to.
“To find her,” Xander replied, tugging on his jacket. “If you don’t want to come with me, feel free to stay back at the station to help the others.”
“Xander,” Edward said softly. “She could be anywhere by now, and we don’t know if she even wants to be found. We don’t know what we’re walking into.”
Xander stopped and turned to him, his face twisted in pain at his words. “I am going to find her. I have to.”
Neither of his brothers said anything as they shared a worried look. Edward stepped towards Xander and moved to rest his hand on his shoulder, his face bearing the same expression he wore whenever he was lecturing one of his children, when they heard a scream from a nearby alleyway.
They ran to the alley entrance and saw a girl with dark curly hair leaning over a figure that was doubled over on the ground. She was shaking them, begging them to get up as they cried in pain, their body heaving and twitching.
“Come on!” the woman yelled, a hint of a Scottish accent in her tone. “I know it hurts but we need to go, we need to go right now!”
Xander stopped in his tracks, his body going tense. He knew those cries. He knew that scent of blood.
“Addie, he’s nearly here, we have to leave! You have to get your shit together, we have to…”
The girl stopped shouting, her head whipping round to focus her gaze on Xander. He recognised her as the Incantrix that had helped Adriana escape the Liberators at the station.
She stood and faced them, her arms outstretched with her palms facing them, ready to use her powers and attack. Whoever this woman was, Xander got the sense she was not to be messed with. But it wasn’t her that caught Xander’s attention, it was the smaller figure behind her that had slowly begun to stand.
“Oh shit,” Edward breathed out. “Adriana? Is it really you?”
Xander watched her look up at the mention of her name, her eyes widening as she took in Edward and Nicolai standing besideone another. And then she trailed her gaze to him, and her entire body began to shake.
Xander stepped past his brothers, stopping a few feet away from her. His usual calm demeanour had vanished and was replaced by a nervous wreck. His hands trembled uncontrollably at his sides, his eyes stinging as he took in her bloodied appearance.
While her shoulder seemed to have stopped bleeding, her arm was slick with blood, and the rest of her body was littered with an array of scrapes and bruises. But it wasn’t her injuries that made him cry… it was the terrified look on her face as he had stepped forward.
“Adriana,” Xander spoke, unable to hide the mixture of emotions in his voice.
He was elated to finally be able to see her with his own eyes, to finally see for himself that she was alive. But he was devastated at the same time. It meant that she had hid from him all this time, that she wanted nothing to do with him.
Xander couldn’t blame her. He despised himself for what happened. He’d lived every day in misery without her, left to suffer with the memory of watching her die beneath him. But he couldn’t leave her now, he couldn’t give up.
Slowly, he took another step forward. “Adriana, please, it’s me.”
“I know it’s you.”
Her voice was cold, distant, making him stop his advances. She sounded nothing like the girl he knew, nothing like the passionate woman he had fallen in love with so long ago. This was someone completely different, someone who had lived through years of pain and loneliness. Xander knew the feeling well.
“Leave,” she said through gritted teeth. “Get away from me, get out of here.”
Xander shook his head. “No.”
“Get. The fuck. Away from me.”
“No. I’m not going to do that.”
Xander continued to edge closer, holding his arms to his sides as if he were trying to tame a fierce predator. He knew she could tear him apart, she could blind him with her power and destroy him, and he would let her if that was what she wanted.
“I’m not leaving, Adriana. I won’t leave you again.”
Adriana stepped backwards, clearly desperate to put some more distance between them. Her foot caught on a bottle on the ground and she fell backwards. The dark haired Incantrix knelt down beside her to try to calm her down, but she dragged her body back and away from her, away from everyone.
“Stay away from me! Stay the fuck away from me!”
She sobbed and screamed loudly, her hands frantically reaching out behind her, nails clawing at the pavement as she pulled herself further away. The ground began to crack under her fingers, the wind picking up to wail down the alleyway and blow her hair across her face. She was losing it, she was losing her control because of him again. Only this time, Xander wasn’t sure he was ready to handle it.
