Chapter 27 The Prince and the Lord of Shadows #2
Adriana screamed as she watched Xander convulse on the floor, his eyes wide open as Caligo used his Succuba ability and began to drain his power.
And behind them, she saw the Court leaders losing their fight with the Umbranimae.
Deion was doing his best to help Edward who had collapsed to his knees, Kadeem was struggling with three Umbranimae at once to keep them away from Niamh and the two other Lupi, and Nicolai was acting as a shield for Cass who was bleeding from a wound on the side of her head.
She felt someone come behind her and threw her head back to try to hit them, but they easily dodged her attack and held her still with a hand in her hair.
“Stop, I’m trying to help you!” Norman’s voice hissed in her ear.
He tore the tube from her neck, stopping the flow of Lupus venom, and used his Igni power to burn away the chains that bound her to the post, carefully absorbing any flames that sparked from the flammable liquid that covered her body before they could do any damage.
“You can control shadows too, right?” he asked. “Do you know how?”
As her hands were freed, she turned to face him, not bothering to hide the rage she felt growing inside her now that her connection to her magic was no longer diluted by the Lupus venom. Norman flinched and stepped away, holding his hands up in surrender.
“I can do more than that,” Adriana sneered at him.
She stepped down from the pyre and faced the room, letting the anger boil inside her as she watched Xander continue to thrash on the ground until it fuelled her entire body with a powerful heat.
Her neck cracked as she stretched it to the side, feeling her body healing itself from the last few hours suffering from the venom.
Rook was the first to notice her from his cowardly position behind his Liberators, his eyes widening as he took in her appearance.
Her body glowed with Luciferus light from head to toe as she regained her full strength, her hair shone a bright gold and she seemed to almost float across the ground as she made her way towards them.
Shadows curled around her, forming a dark sphere of protection of their own accord that only her light could break through.
She was the radiance of life and the shadow of death all in one.
She was salvation and she was destruction.
She was the first of her kind, the only Lamia Incantrix, the Blood Witch. And she was not afraid of what she was.
Rook shouted in warning, but Caligo was too slow to dodge the beam of light that Adriana threw at him. The hot, searing magic hit him straight in the middle of his chest, throwing him backwards to slide across the floor several feet away.
Adriana breathed a sigh of relief as Xander gasped for breath on the floor, finally free from Caligo’s hold. Without hesitation, he threw his hand towards the Umbranimae, pulling on their shadows to leave them vulnerable.
Once their bodies were exposed, Adriana could see the light of their trapped souls, desperate to be freed and sent to rest in the Land of the Dead. They sang out to her, crying for their freedom, begging her magic to sever the prisons Caligo had created with their own corpses.
She threw her light at them, allowing it to reach every single one of their souls.
As her magic reached them, she felt a warm sensation in her fingertips, as if it were her own hands touching their remaining souls.
And then she pulled. She pulled until the light within them dispersed and was sent into oblivion, to freedom.
Their soulless bodies dropped to the floor, once again resembling who they really were as the shadows evaporated into the air.
Xander caught her as she stumbled, her body’s glow slowly dimming until she returned to her normal complexion. His eyes, the familiar warm brown with flecks of green, bore into hers, bringing her back to herself.
“Are you alright?” he asked, his voice laced with concern and relief. “Are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay.”
“I’m fine, I’m—”
Adriana’s words were cut short as she let out an ear splitting scream of agony.
She dropped to the floor, her whole body convulsing as Caligo stalked towards her, his hand outstretched in her direction as he subjected her to his Dolor magic. An intense nausea grew as she realised the pain focused onto her scars—the same scars that Xander had given her all those years ago.
“Do you feel that, Adriana?” Caligo asked from across the room.
She tried to block him out, but it was too late, he had already found her weakness. Xander.
“Can you feel his teeth tearing through your skin? Can you feel your bones breaking all over again? Can you feel his hands around your throat?”
Adriana clawed at her neck, desperate to remove the sensations Caligo was forcing her to experience, to remove the reminder of Xander’s hands choking her.
She wanted to fight back, she tried to force him out, but the pain was too much.
The reminder of everything she had been through, was too much.
She was utterly helpless as Caligo tortured her with her past, her mind automatically bringing forth memories of that terrible night, and pulling her under.
Xander
Xander pried Adriana’s hands from her throat and held them to his lips, kissing the scars on her wrists. “Come back to me,” he whispered. “Adriana, please, come back to me. You are not there, we are not there.”
As Xander connected his mind with hers, he realised she couldn’t hear anything other than the sound of her screams as she felt wave after wave of the same pain she had felt in those last few moments before she died.
And then she felt a cold hand wrap itself around her heart, around her soul, and pull. Caligo was draining her.
Xander heard Cassandra let out a scream as she caught sight of Adriana. Bursts of fire and bolts of electricity left her hands and shot through the air, aiming straight for Caligo’s head. But he threw up a wall of darkness that absorbed everything she unleashed.
His shadows began to crawl across the floor, slowly stretching towards the Court leaders.
Deion pushed everyone behind him and searched for an escape, but the darkness had created thick barriers of shadows to block off every exit as Rook’s remaining Liberators slowly advanced on them.
They were trapped, and without Adriana, they were done for.
Adriana’s body turned limp in Xander’s arms, her eyes staring blankly at the ceiling as the shadows surrounding Caligo grew larger, thicker.
He almost had her, she was almost gone, and he was taking her magic to fuel his own.
He was so close to taking the last Luciferus, and Xander was so close to losing the love of his life all over again.
As he heard Caligo’s laugh echo through the room, Xander laid Adriana’s body gently on the floor before stepping towards the wall of shadows.
It was not of this world, nor had it been summoned by him, but Xander knew darkness far better than anyone, no matter where it came from.
He had carried it with him all his life, only he hadn’t realised until he had been reborn.
Whether it was disguised as the loss he suffered as a child, the self-hatred he’d always suffered, or the burden of his responsibilities, he had always possessed a darkness within him.
And as like called to like, the shadows surrounding Caligo began to swirl in a tornado of dark power, obeying to Xander’s will.
Caligo’s red eyes dulled to their usual black, his Succuba power faltering as he tried to call out to the shadows. “Stop this, stop this right now! You will obey me! I am your master.”
“You should treat them with more respect,” Xander said, as he stepped through the whirlwind, his eyes black as a starless night sky as dark wisps twirled around his fingers. “And you should know by now, the shadows do not appreciate being used as a hiding place.”
Caligo let out a roar of anger, his hands reaching out to grab at the shadows in an attempt to regain control, but it was pointless. They did not answer to him, the darkness did not answer to anyone the way it did to Xander.
Clenching his fists, Xander brought the raging storm towards him, letting the shadows wrap around his body to cloak him in raw power, a dark crown forming over his head.
As the shadow tornado disappeared, Xander caught sight of Rook running out of the room as he pushed his remaining Liberators towards the Courts.
Xander hoped he wouldn’t make it far, but he was too preoccupied with destroying the cherished pet of the witch that had ruined him over and over, that had utterly destroyed him on the night of Winter Solstice in 1884.
Caligo let out a growl of frustration as he called upon his own darkness in the Intermundum to bring him back home.
Before he could summon his safe passage, Xander’s fist collided with his jaw.
Caligo staggered as his head flew to the side from the blow, Xander’s strength powered by the dark fragments of shadows that clung to him.
“You may be a master of the Intermundum’s darkness, Caligo. But don’t forget for one second that I am the first Daemon of this world, the first Nocte Lamia. I am the Lord of the Shadows.”
Xander’s shoulders hunched as he drew the shadows even closer to him, and then he threw his arms forward. Caligo flew backwards, his own darkness transporting him back to the Intermundum before his body could hit the floor.
Xander stood staring at the empty spot where Caligo should have been, his shadows disappearing in the air like smoke as he breathed heavily.
It wasn't enough that Xander had weakened him, it wasn’t enough that he’d sent him running back to his creator.
Xander wanted to kill him, he wanted to watch Caligo die, he wanted to savour every drop of his rotten blood.