Words of Power (Alice Gray Book 3)

65

"Dramatic much?" I scoffed, breaking the power in the pronouncement of doom.

It was supposed to smother us like a blanket of destruction and misery, and most of all fear, but I knew something about the power of words now.

And the thing about words?

They only worked if you believed them.

What was it that Emily had said right back at the beginning, that long month ago when I first found out about magic?

Religion, politics, belief, control, that is what magic is born from.

That was as true right now when a vampire's face shifted and reformed in front of me as it was for my ancestors, the Pendle Witches.

Just because our not-so-friendly dust monster over here told us that Death was the new King, it didn't mean we had to believe it and lie down and die right here. In fact, as far as I was concerned it was religion and politics that had gotten us into this mess in the first place.

Who was this guy but just another politician that had been biding his time to stage a coup?

He was a vamp, that's what he was, and with that realisation, suddenly a lot of things started to make more sense.

That nasty dust really was death, but only in the way that vampire magic was the antithesis of natural witch energy.

And stood idly by with me trapped in the blood circle were three beings with the most powerful source of natural energy that I'd ever seen. I could work with that, I just had to figure out a way to do it without being pulled apart by corrosive death-dust.

"If anyone ought to know that things are rarely so black and white it should be a man made entirely out of grey," I said, looking back at Brother Jerome, and winking.

The outrage in the ghostly voices made their whispers harsh and biting, trying to touch us with sounds because the dust couldn't reach us through the blood-circle.

Time for sacrifice, he is risen, time for sacrifice, he is risen.

But the words had lost their power because I knew who spoke them, and I knew something that they didn't. Azazel was right, these guys weren't regular ghosts, but they were still dead. They were vampire ghosts, the spirits of those whose essences had failed.

I'd known when I'd sensed the magistrate Edward Turner's vampire magic stutter towards me in fits and starts that it was as unstable as his syphilis-ridden face. I'd understood on some level the truth of what was happening to him, that he was dying a final death.

I hadn't understood how momentous that was to the vampires' very existence. Not really.

They thought themselves immortal, that their existences would span the length of time itself. But vampire life was part of the great plan too, and without the magical balance required by the cosmos, they were as vulnerable as the rest of us.

It looked like the angels weren't the only ones with superiority complexes that didn't match their finite magical resources.

And just like the angels, the vamps had decided to take matters into their own hands. I guess they didn't like the idea that they'd pay for their actions after their deaths. Easier to coast along claiming when you died, you died for real. Especially when that event seems so unlikely that it's easy to ignore.

Souls were pesky things, but that's purgatory for you.

"Erm, your plan seems a bit short sighted. What's the end game, a barren Earth covered in death-dust? How's that going to help anyone?"

"Foolish child, it is time for the balance to change, it is our time now."

And there it was.

Just like everything else in the world, this was all about power.

Brad, Ralph and Azazel all looked up simultaneously as the Tree of Knowledge's boughs crashed together, caught in a gust of wind that we couldn't feel. The chimes of the silver leaves were deafening as the huge tree shook under some invisible assault.

Maybe I'd underestimated the influence of those words. That, or the Tree was super pissed that the dust monster was setting itself up as a false idol. Either way, shit was hitting the fan, and I needed to act before I became a casualty of some fight that swallowed us all and spat us out the other side of a black hole.

Shooting into the sky, huge wings unfurling, the three angels circled the tree as if it called to them.

Now alone on the Minster floor with Thomas, the blood-circle separating us from the leering, ever-shifting face of Brother Jerome, I took the opportunity.

Without a word of warning, I leapt at Thomas, pushing him to the ground. I needed to engage the symbiotic link that had stimulated our magic before, and to do that I needed contact.

A lot of contact.

Um, Alice, now is not the time for that! Or is it?