Page 40 of Incandescence

His cold hands encircled my throat before he thrust me back. I crashed into a wall, the wind knocked out of me. But energy was already beginning to burn through my body, his rejuvenating lifeblood giving me all the power I needed and then some.

I pushed back, my eyes wavering between an intensity of super vision and an aura of red that for a moment blinkered my sight.

“Alexander.”

It was Charley’s strained, hollowed-out voice that caused my stomach to drop with foreboding. Something wasn’t right.

Chapter Nineteen

Maya

Ascream of denialbuilt in my throat, but the sound froze before it could escape. Alexander was now a vampire. The red shadowing of his eyes betrayed his inner monster as surely as the bloodsucker who’d made him that way.

“Charley, what is it?” Alexander asked, sounding alarmed, yet somehow defeated too, as if he knew the awful truth.

“It’s...your eyes,” I whispered.

He stepped forward, but stilled as I retreated from him. He shook his head. “I’m not like him. I’mnothinglike him.”

I glanced at the vampire who’d ruined so many lives. Who’d killed even more. But only the good died young. Already the hole in his head was closing over, his chest wound no longer bleeding. Even his pasty look of death was nowhere near as pronounced. Only when the vampire looked at me, a lazy smile of triumph curling his lips and his eyes deader than a snake’s, did I realize Alexander was right.

He wasn’t anything like this bloodsucker. Alexander still had a soul. A heart.

I drew my gaze away from the centuries-old monster to lock my stare on Alexander. “I believe you.”

The residual red in his stare disappeared, replaced by whatever powerful emotion he was feeling right then. My mouth dried and hope fluttered deep. If I didn’t know better, I’d say love shone from his eyes.

From his soul.

If only my belly wasn’t churning and quivering with need at the scent of vampire blood. It’d taken monumental effort to block my hunger, to deny the scents that pulled at me. It was only my focus on Alexander that kept me grounded.

Jasper limped toward me, pushing his big, black head under my hand with a whine of doggy need. I stroked his soft fur, my stare not once leaving Alexander as I said, “And now we need to finish this.”

Understanding flashed across his face even as the bloodsucker broke out with a belly laugh that chilled me to the bone. “Do either one of you really think you can defeat me?” He smirked. “If it wasn’t for the fact your blood is far superior to any I’ve ingested before, I’d have hunted you both down and enjoyed killing yo as effortlessly as an ant stamped underfoot.”

Alexander straightened, facing the vampire with unflinching vitality. “Power isn’t from how many people you can kill with your bare hands, or how strong you are physically. True power comes from here.” He tapped his heart. “Real strength is the love shared by two people. Love that you’ll never know, no matter how much you might wish for it.”

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