Words of Power (Alice Gray Book 3)

38

"We need you to find him."

"Fine, but I'm no private investigator, you should have chosen Emily."

"No. It has to be you."

"Right," I muttered, cursing my fate, and my ancestry, and, well, everything. Including the two beautiful beings that stood before me.

"We can guide you. You're already projecting, it'll just take a little nudge and a drop of blood to send you on your way," Brad said, oblivious to my internal blasphemy.

Blood. Of course.

Before I had time to object, a sharp pinch on my forearm made me jump. Brad looked at a smear of blood on the knife that he'd just jabbed into my skin. My eyes widened as I watched his tongue dart out and slowly lick the red liquid from the knife as his eyes met mine.

"Gross, that hurt you bas..."

The rainbows in his eyes swirled faster and faster and I was falling, colours flashing past me in a kaleidoscope of brightness.

I popped out in a release of suction, but before my stomach could catch up with me and return to normal I realised I was suspended in a massive panorama of blue.

The sky.

The bastard had released me directly into the sky. Bracing myself to hit the floor, it actually took me a few seconds to realise that I wasn't plummeting to the ground. I was gliding.

Gliding like a fledgling parachutist with the instructor strapped to my back. But instead of a parachute keeping us afloat, it was wings. Massive rainbow coloured wings. Shifting my head to the side I got a glimpse of Brad's beautiful face, his eyes resolutely refusing to meet mine while his magnificent wings spread out either side of us.

Great. Why did it have to be the super-hot, witch-hating one? And did his arms really have to be wound around me quite so tightly so that I could feel every muscle in his chest flex and relax with the beat of his wings?

A flash of purple, rich and bright, tore through sky, totally out of place in the blue expanse. Ralph circled above us, his beautiful lavender and black wings stretching wide out of his back. Their span was so great that they seemed to own the sky, vast and magnificent as it was on this clear sunny day.

Angels.

The word reverberated through my skull in time with the Brad's massive rainbow wings cutting through the air. Sure, I was willing to accept their existence. I'd always believed in something else, some higher power directing things from up there. But interacting with them? Flying with them?

No way.

Suddenly the magnitude of what was happening to me became too much. My head spun and my skin came over hot and feverish. Even though in some corner of my mind I knew it was a bad idea, I couldn't stop myself struggling in Brad's tight grip. His arms inched up my body, their vicelike grip clamping my limbs in place.

Terrified at my helplessness in the vast sky and claustrophobic that my body was bound and restricted from movement, there was little space left for reason. Kicking my legs and throwing my weight from side to side, Brad lurched violently, his massive wings flapping to counteract the imbalance of my movement.

"Keep still you idiot," he yelled in my ear, the fast air whooshing past distorting the sounds into slow-motion moans.

That's when I started to scream.

Brad brought his hand up to my mouth to silence me, but when it covered my nose and restricted my breathing, I finally lost it altogether. Clamping my jaw shut I bit down on his hand. Impulse made him pull away, hand, arm, everything.

I spun in the air as I hurtled down to earth. My mind raced as I tried to find some way to save myself.

But then I saw it spinning out of me like web from Spiderman's wrists. Hundreds of strands of my life-force shooting out in all directions from every bit of exposed skin.

Ralph and Brad hovered upright in the air. Brad sucked his hand where I'd bitten him while Ralph watched me, a look of intense satisfaction on his face.

Neither of them were going to catch me, I realised, as thread after thread of silver life-force spun out of me, jumping ship before its vessel sank.

This had been the plan all along. They'd intended to murder me from the start.

I closed my eyes, accepting that this time, I'd done it. There was no way that I could fight my destiny against these two.

Some Special Providence I turned out to be.

Just as I accepted my fate as food for the fishes, the strands of my life-force tightened. I was suspended just yards from the water's surface. The seconds stretched out as I stared into the choppy waves below, until suddenly my body was catapulted back up to where the angels casually waited for me.

"What the Hell?" I yelled, as I fell back down again before begin caught by the bungee-like strands of magical energy. Two of the brightest, thickest, most elastic bands of silver anchored me to the angels who watched my struggle with something akin to boredom.

They waited for me to bounce back up before Ralph caught hold of me. The silver threads adjusted with the movements of my body. Light refracted from each one like a prism, sending it both towards and away from me in a spectacular light show.

"Told you it would work," Brad said, self-satisfaction oozing from every pore.

"Lucky for you it did," Ralph replied, brow drawn into deep lines as he held out a finger and smoothed it along my sweaty cheek.

"What did you do," I ground out, shirking Ralph's gentle touch.

"We needed your life-force to reach out and make its connections," Ralph said, tone quiet and calming.

"And you thought releasing me into the sky was the way to do it?" I screeched.

"We didn't have time to use more gentle means, you needed to fear. Our work here tonight has only just begun," Ralph warned.

I was about to let my temper get the better of me altogether when his words unfurled in my brain and I realised that I should be taking notice.

"What do you mean?" I asked cautiously.

I was still suspended in the air, held in place by Ralph's grip on my arm. If he let me go, I'd spend eternity being bounced up and down on the bungee ropes of my life force. I couldn't afford to piss them off. They'd already dropped me from the heavens once. There was no doubt in my mind that they'd do it again.

"See all these threads, these are your life's connections. If we follow each one of these, eventually we will find him," Brad said, rubbing his hands together in readiness for the task.

"Who?"

"The one who enriched your blood," he finished, with an eye-roll at my slowness.

"Jennet Device's father," I said, realisation finally dawning as I gazed out at the hundreds of silver strands that travelled in every direction from where I waited.

Not sure this is such a good idea...
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