Words of Power (Alice Gray Book 3)

41

"Who?"

"The Scapegoat," Brad said, twisting the word around his mouth and spitting it out in a tangle of hatred. He finished by glaring at me, as though I was somehow responsible for his distaste in the name, and that this should be enough information for me to understand why Jennet Device's father, my ancestor, should be feared and mistrusted.

I was no Bible expert but weren't scapegoats usually innocent? An innocent that takes the blame for somebody else's sin. He didn't sound like somebody to be feared, but rather a figure to pity and help.

"It's not what you think," Ralph said, correctly interpreting my scepticism from my twisted mouth and narrowed eyes.

"Explain it to me then."

"Azazel was one of us. He left the higher planes to mingle on Earth," Ralph said, not bothering to provide any further information.

"Why is that a bad thing? Maybe he found the primitive living quarters galling," I said, raising my eyebrows at the bare log walls and basic furniture of the hut.

"PRIMITIVE?" Brad yelled, his deep voice reverberating around the small room. "You don't know the meaning of the word primitive. How could you, being the very definition of the term yourself."

Anger heated my cheeks. "If I'm so inferior, why the hell do you need me so much?"

"He's right," Ralph said, pouring water on my bluster before it had time to explode in another torrent of expletives. "What you see around you here is created by choice. This is Brad's personal sanctuary. It is exactly what he needs it to be to find peace after thousands of years of existence. We each have our own place to call home, and they are all very different."

I raised my eyebrows at Ralph's solemn explanation, and then shrugged, swallowing my anger for something more deserving of my concern.

I didn't have to be a genius to realise that there was going to be something worse than Brad's lame prejudice against all Earth-dwellers to contend with before I'd heard the end of Azazel's story.

I could live and let live, even though that was a philosophy that the angels clearly had a problem with. If Brad wanted to languish in a bare wooden cabin with zero modern conveniences, then each to their own. I didn't see what all this had to do with Azazel's great sin. Maybe he found his solace on Earth mingling with the commoners.

"I don't get it."

"It is forbidden," Brad stated implacably.

"Ok, why?"

"That is not for you to question."

"Why?" I asked again, feeling like a three-year-old pestering her mother at the supermarket when she'd been denied the sugary cereal.

"Look," Ralph said, slowly and gently, "if you are going to participate in our plan, then you will have to have a little faith."

"Hmph."

It was all I could manage. I wasn't willing to enter into another discussion about divine providence with two angels who had been honing their arguments for centuries.

I didn't stand a chance.

But yet, I hadn't accepted their version of reality either. I'd fit everything that they'd said into my vague understanding of Christian values from the teachings that I'd received in my Church of England primary school. But Brad and Ralph hadn't actually called themselves angels or described whoever the hell was calling the shots as a Christian God.

What they had done, already in my limited time with them, was warp time and space into an explanation of reality that I recognised. One that my small witch mind could accept within the confines of its tiny experience.