Words of Power (Alice Gray Book 3)

57

Thomas's deep brown eyes held mine. I pushed at his chest even though it was a pointless gesture. I still straddled him, but I had to do something to wipe that smouldering look of satisfaction off his face.

That kiss was designed to wake him up. Nothing more, and the sooner he got with the programme, the better. There was a congregation of mesmerised paranormals to save, and nobody but us here to do it.

My eyes flickered around the building looking for something, anything that would help us fight off the hoard of monstrous bogeymen that were coming our way.

"Alice," Thomas said, his deep voice more lothario rumble than lively superhero.

Thomas's hands clamped onto my hips that were balanced on his lap, my legs straddling either side of his. The heat of our connection travelled through every part of me; every cell in my body filling up with fiery lust.

I wiggled my hips trying to dislodge myself from his grasp, but that only made it worse, shooting that sweet but unbearable sensation straight to my core. Hissing out my frustration while I diverted my eyes to keep myself from drowning in his beauty, I stopped struggling and tried to pull myself together.

Why the hell did I still want him so much? Why did my magic respond to his after he'd betrayed me?

The scratchy growls of the drugged up wolves were getting louder, and the crash of an overturned chair told me that the bogeymen were nearly at the Quire. Still Thomas clamped me to him like an incredibly good-looking vice, holding tight to a plain plank of wood.

When I placed my hands either side of his face, his long dark eye-lashes fluttered closed, brushing the tops of his cheeks. He slowly leant forwards, thinking that I was going to kiss him again. Instead, I focused inwards, searching out and then analysing the intricacy of the silver sequence that was all my own, accepting its potency and allowing it to feed on the force of my desire for Thomas.

The heady sensation of adrenaline that accompanied my frantically multiplying life-force was close to euphoria, and when the energy found its symbiotic link to Thomas's vampire power, the burst of magic was like a million tiny orgasmic stars forming a constellation that was all our own.

However pleasurable the reunion, I wasn't doing it for the rush. Link re-established, I looked over his head at what was coming for us, and sent the full force of my horror straight to his brain. The sight of those not quite human things bearing down on us, an army of slack-faced, stitched together bogeymen, was enough to terrify me even though I'd seen what horrors lurked in the dark corners of the world.

But these things were different.

They weren't the creatures I was used to; vampires and shifters, preternatural beings unexplained by man, but as much a part of the world as humanity. No, these monsters were an unholy mix of magic and science. Something new. Something that shouldn't be possible.

The freshly forged connection between our magic was raw and painfully intense, but it meant that I felt it, the moment of his realisation. The glimmer of confusion and hint of disappointment were momentary, but I caught them. The bastard had the nerve to feel affronted that I'd used him, that the kiss had an ulterior motive.

I couldn't help the snort that exploded out of my face. It was the last kiss that he was getting from me, so he'd better find a way to appreciate it.

Luckily our personal drama was a fleeting consideration. The planes of his beautiful face sharpened, and when his eyes met mine, bright, hungry crimson shone there.

Caught in the magnificence of his ferocity, I flinched when Thomas's arm shot up and caught a rabid wolf by its neck. A split-second later it would have collided with me, latching onto my throat with slobbering jaws that were now snapping furiously a couple of inches from my face. Pink spittle frothed around pulled-back lips, as though its insides were slowly melting and trying to escape its body in a bubbly, foamy mess.

Watery red eyes rolled back in the wolf's head as Thomas squeezed its neck. There might be similarities in the colour, but this poor animal's eyes held nothing of the calculating intelligence that shone in the deep crimson orbs of the vampires. These washed out coral eyeballs held no reason or purpose, and not much power past the initial burst of rabid ferocity.

Whatever the DPA had given these shifters was eating them from the inside out, and it had started with their brains.

Thomas flung the mangy looking wolf to the floor. Its head bent awkwardly to the side, clearly visible rib cage collapsing in on itself with the shudder of its last breath. That animal was used up well before it was sent to attack us. Thomas had just put it out of its misery.

Thomas pushed me behind him as the first bogeyman reached us. Its massive body swayed with unbalanced movements, clumsy like a pendulum that gravity had forsaken. It might look pudgy and apathetic, but the person giving the orders wasn't. I already knew that these things could pack a punch and their grip was unshakeable.

"Don't let it grab you," I hissed.

Thomas swung a fist, but all that his vampire strength could do was send them flying back, one at a time, and when one flew, another took its place.

Grabbing his arm, I pulled Thomas back with me to some stairs that led to a raised pulpit at the Quire's side entrance. It acted like a fort, giving us a wall at our backs and a vantage to fight from. Thank God for the Minster's grandeur, it was the only thing working in our favour right now.

As soon as I'd taken a breath, I realised that our effort was pointless. We weren't the target anyway. Once we were out of sight, the bogeymen started dragging the mesmerised crowd out of the Quire one by one.

These creatures were just like those sick poppets that Mary had made from human and shifter parts in the cemetery that night. The same but for one fundamental difference. Whatever animated these things wasn't witch magic. There was no life-force. It was dead energy, corrupted, warped and twisted into something that resembled life but wasn't.

And just like Mary's poppets, the parts had to come from somewhere.

As they pulled away the people that I loved and feared, friends and enemies and pack, dismay filled me at the magnitude of the plan that had been set in motion today.

Whoever had done this had known about the angels.

They'd had time to make an army of these monstrous men-poppets in the DPA laboratories without Emily's knowledge.

They'd managed to get a load of wolves jacked up on some mind-controlling drug without alerting Becca, the Beta of the British pack.

They were powerful and old, and so deeply entrenched in the DPA, that they could pull the strings of the operation without creating suspicion.

Leaning out of the pulpit, I followed the slow procession of bodies being dragged out of the side door of the Quire into the Aisle. Down the stone steps a dark figure loomed waiting for his pets. A brown cassocked man, voluminous hood shadowing his face.

Brother Jerome.

But he hadn't counted on anybody being immune to the angels' glory.

Not least a dysfunctional witch and vampire duo.

But will they be enough...
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