Words of Power (Alice Gray Book 3)

24

Before my dry itchy eyes had time to drift closed a shadow fell across my cot bed. Several shadows, I realised as I lifted my head to see a group of burly looking men dressed in white scrubs carry someone into the opposite cell.

There goes my illusion of privacy.

I winced as they dropped his struggling form onto the floor. I mean, it didn't have to be the cold, hard concrete, there was a bed right there.

The prisoner leapt to his feet and rushed the closest guard. One of the others pulled a syringe out of his pocket and jabbed the man just as he reached his target. Grabbing the guard by the hair, he slammed down the man's head at the same time as he lifted his own knee. I couldn't hear it, but the crunch of shattered bone still reverberated round my brain.

My face crumpled into a wince. The memory of Emily doing the same thing to me was too fresh for my mind to have forgotten the pain, even after Anne had healed me.

As the injured guard rolled around on the floor, the prisoner turned to face the other two, whose reactions had been far too slow to hinder his frenzied rage. One still held the empty syringe, their glassy eyes focused on it as if that would somehow make the contents work faster. Whatever was in there was supposed to have taken effect already, and the guards had no idea how to respond now that their plan had gone awry.

As the prisoner started forward a flicker of confusion creased his face. He stumbled to the ground, legs no longer obeying whatever message of violence his mind was trying to send them. The two standing guards shuffled to their prone colleague, lifting him by an arm each and carrying him out of the cell.

I watched the show play out in absolute silence. Whatever they used to seal these cells was effective, and probably magic. The whole thing had only lasted about a minute, and in that time none of the actors had bothered to glance in my direction.

What was that about?

Guess I wasn't the most dangerous criminal about these days after all.

Go figure.

The man was lying still where he'd fallen. I moved to the glass wall to get a better look. His clothes were old and worn, but underneath them was a man that could be no older than seventeen. Long limbed and wiry, his mop of dirty brown hair had fallen over his face, but I had a feeling I'd seen this guy before. He'd been flying towards me with a broken bottle in his hand.

Werewolf then.

He began to stir, his shifter metabolism making short work of whatever was in that syringe. Pushing himself onto his hands and knees, he paused for a second shaking his head from side to side. Then he sprung to a crouch and stood facing away from me, tilting his head.

I'd seen that action plenty, he was scenting, using his superior sense of smell to try and understand the situation that he found himself in. The rooms' seals must work against that too, because he still hadn't realised that my cell was occupied.

Finally, after I'd watched the back of his head circle around the ceiling noting the location of the security cameras, he faced me.

I couldn't help the giggle that erupted when his entire body flinched the second that he realised who his fellow inmate was. Eyes widening to an impossible size, his mouth opened and closed like a goldfish.

Lifting my hand I wiggled my fingers in a wave and then blew him a kiss.

Narrowing his eyes for a second, his tightly pursed lips suddenly relaxed into a wide grin before he stuck his tongue out in reply.

I laughed again, relieved that he wasn't hell bent on destroying me like he had been in the club. This guy had a sense of humour, and brief and stunted as our exchange might have been, it lightened my heart enough for a grain of hope to wedge itself in there.

The teenage wolf was still looking at me, brows drawn together and mouth lifted at one side. Raising his hands, he shrugged.

I couldn't work out if he wanted to know why I was here or why he was.

Charades wasn't really my game, but I knew what question I wanted answered. Why had the wolves attacked me last night?

I knew they were pissed that their Alpha had died, but Becca had vouched for me. She'd seen enough of the events that night to know that Dominic's death was the one thing that I was definitely innocent of.

Pointing at him and then at me I mimed the action of smashing something over my head and then mimicked his questioning shrug.
Wolfy couldn't stop laughing for long enough to mime his answer, so I waited, frustration twisting my face into a frown. Finally he straightened up and then stood still for a moment, eyes looking into the distance as he formulated his response.

Slowly he held one hand up, fingers twisted around, thumb held up, then he slowly pushed his thumb down.

Like a syringe.

Drugs.

I nodded my head in understanding. Now I had a problem. Was Wolfy in here because he'd been caught out of control after taking drugs or was he in here because the DPA had drugged him?

I pointed to him and then raised my hands in a shrug. He shook his head, face hardening, eyes sparking fury. I pointed to the security cameras in the corners of the room. Wolfy shook his head again, shoulders and limbs tense with anger. If not the DPA then who?

Wolfy put his hands to his mouth before pointing his two little fingers down from his top lip.

My heart rate slowed as the blood pumping slowly through my veins turned icy.

Vampires. They were experimenting on the shifters.

Wolfy's eyes held mine as the realisation sunk into my brain. The vamps weren't just conducting experiments on Jonathan, but on other paranormal groups too.

Abhorrent as I found it, I could understand what made my father an interesting specimen for study. He was a rare case. A vampire turned without a bite.

He'd interrupted Baroness Knyvet in the middle of a blood magic ritual designed to transfer the essence of my magic to her. Jonathan re-directed the flow of the energy to himself. All well and good until I stabbed the Baroness through the heart with her own sacrificial knife. Our silver magic absorbed the Baroness's potent vampire blood, and when Jonathan called his magic back to him it came with a little something extra.

There had been an exchange all right but it wasn't the usual one between the blood of human and vampire. Instead it was vampire blood and witch life-force, and when Jonathan turned, he wasn't your ordinary vamp.

He was a vampire-witch hybrid. Something different. And nobody likes what they don't understand.

Oh dear, what are those vampires up to now?