Words of Power (Alice Gray Book 3)

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It was only ghosts.

I knew all about these guys. My ancestors, the Grays, had been haunting me ever since I came into my witchy powers a month ago. They were strangely silent now though.

The laughter died in my throat as I tried to make out the words that flew past my ears on the whirl of unnatural wind. Unfamiliar, ancient sounding words, whispered through the dust that buffeted me. What sort of ghosts cleared a building and left behind only dust?

Suddenly it was coating my tongue, clogging up my throat. Glancing to my left, I saw Sam's eyes bulge as he struggled to draw in air through his blocked nostrils. Emily sneezed before gagging as her airways filled up with the foul-smelling matter.

As my body fought to draw in enough air, energy sizzled and popped in my insides. Magic always lay dense and heavy inside me. Waiting until some external stimulus sparked its response. I could feel it in my blood, multiplying and engorging my organs, the weight lacking its usual reassurance.

The silver life-force was a part of me, inside my body, running through my veins. Now, when the energy was multiplying frantically within me, but finding no outlet in my oxygen starved blood, I realised that the magic was fallible.

Just like my frail human body.

My brain fought to stay alert as my eyes struggled to focus on Lucas. He held a cloth to his face with one hand, and used the other to drag Sam down the long corridor that led to the outside.

Tears streamed down my cheeks as the dust coated my eyeballs. I finally gave in and closed my arid eyes, and as the motion of the room changed to that of a boat rocking on stormy seas, the whispered words of the ghosts finally found meaning in my dying brain.

It didn't seem to matter at the time that the words were in some ancient language that I shouldn't understand. That the long drawn out vowels hissed into my brain as though formed and delivered by a forked tongue, cut up by razor sharp consonants that jarred and jolted. Somehow they resonated in my mind as I lay losing consciousness on the floor, dust lining my mouth, throat, oesophagus.

Time for sacrifice.
He is risen.
Come.

And if I wasn't already dying I might have been worried about who was the sacrifice and who it was that had risen.

His voice was as loud and deep as thunder rumbling through the sky in a heavy storm.

His hand was like the crack of lightning, inflaming the skin of my cheek.

I was the tree, felled in its prime.

I'd traded one monster for another. But this monster, oh how I loved him.

He was everything to me.

My father. My God.

I would sacrifice myself, my bastard child, a hundred times over for him, but it would be for nothing. We weren't enough.

And so I sent him out, the boy; my child. I sent him with the power of my blood to continue the line.

My blood. My power. I gave it for Him.

I gave it with my body and my words.

My Words of Power.

The rush of air blasted through my clogged throat into my lungs like a gust blown by Zeus himself. The gloopy black sludge that I vomited out on my exhale coated the front of my white jumpsuit as I sat up to prevent it going back into my body.

Evan caught my shoulders to steady me.

"Thank the Gods," he said, rocking back into a crouch on the pavement.

"Don't thank those bastards," I muttered, as the details of Jennet Device's memory soured the sweet relief of free oxygen moving in and out of my lungs.

Jennet, my sharp and independent ancestor, had sacrificed herself to her father's wishes.

She was in a state of awe. She'd been mesmerised by her father. Blinded by wonder, she'd offered herself and her child without a second thought.

She's been exploited.

I'd met somebody like that myself recently. Somebody who was more than human, more than a witch or a shifter. More even than a vamp. Somebody who had admitted that those who dwelled on the Earth were dazzled and bewildered by him.

A heavy sense of doom settled into my stomach as I realised that Jennet's father, my ancestor, was something other than witch, vamp or shifter.

He was something more.

He was something bad.

And according to those voices, he was on his way.

Hope you're enjoying the story! Will Alice solve the mystery of her ancestry? Read on...