Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,200

he had. Abrupt, sudden, unexpected joy. He was feeding! He was finally being allowed to feed! Not in little bits and pieces but fully, completely, for the first time ever. It caused a rush of joy so bright, so overwhelming, that it blinded him to what was happening—and to what he was doing. He didn’t understand until the beautiful power abruptly cut out, until he looked about in confusion and loss . . . and slowly, in mounting horror, realized what they held in their arms.

No! No, he couldn’t have done that! He recoiled, even as his master roared in pain and grief. He hid, deep inside, terrified, appalled, sickened by the realization that he’d destroyed his master’s one chance for happiness, and his only chance to ever again feel that wondrous power in his veins.

He’d never be let out now. He saw that with perfect clarity. He’d never live, never thrive, never be allowed to do his only duty, because if he’d been hated before, it was nothing to this! Nothing to the scorn and self-loathing his master felt, that he felt, because they really were one, no matter how much he’d come to think of them as separate beings.

There was no actual divide, but there may as well have been, because the two halves of his nature would never meet after this. He knew that with a certainty he’d never had before. And that one, tiny spark of hope he’d cultivated through all the long years died.

What was there to hope for, to live for, now? He was like a vestigial organ, there but unwanted, unused, a relic from another age. And he deserved it.

He felt that with burning shame, knew it had all been his fault. He’d carried the guilt close to his heart, knowing that his penance was just and right. That he didn’t deserve to taste that flood of life-giving energy, that he should be boarded up, forgotten, left in a cell of his own pain to slowly starve.

And so it had been, day after day, week after week, year after long, lonely year. No respite, no hope, no slight reprieves like in the past, because his master was completely celibate now. There was nothing to feed from, nothing at all, and he had felt life slipping away from him, a slow, steady drip, drip, drip as whatever power he’d once had faded into nothingness.

He was waiting to die.

But then something unbelievable happened. He had been virtually comatose for so long that rousing himself seemed impossible as well as futile. He hadn’t wakened fully in years; hadn’t even opened his eyes to look around. What was the point? There was nothing there.

Only, suddenly, there was. Something had jolted him out of his slumber like a bolt of lightning. Or what it was—a bolt of pure energy, incubus energy, life energy. He’d stared around, confused and groggy, not comprehending what was happening. Even when it hit again, harder this time, hard enough to crack the walls of the prison he’d made for himself and to send them blasting away into nothingness.

Leaving him huddled there in the darkness, all alone, stunned and frightened and unsure what to do.

Until another bolt hit, blowing open his eyes, leaving him looking at—

He wasn’t sure.

A woman, yes, but not human; not human at all.

He didn’t see her with the eyes of a man, because he wasn’t one. He saw her as others of his kind had once seen her mother—a glowing being of pure light, of pure life—only she wasn’t threatening him. She wasn’t trying to hurt him. She was . . . she was . . .

No! It was a trick! She couldn’t be offering herself to him—why to him?

Incubi respected power, and he had none, had never had any. And he was so small, so shriveled, so completely powerless now that his own people wouldn’t have even bothered to cannibalize him, had they been able to get past his master’s formidable defenses, for what would be the point?

He had nothing to give.

But it was irresistible, the lure of all that power. It would have been to any of his kind, but to him it was completely overwhelming. He knew he had no right to it, knew how furious his master was going to be if he so much as tried to touch it. But no power within him meant no power to resist, and it drew him out of the depths like a moth to a flame.

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