Words of Power (Alice Gray Book 3)

44

The Minster was colder than any building this grand had a right to be. But the lighting was deceptively warm, giving everything a golden glow that emphasised the grandeur of the architecture and the splendour of the colourful stained glass windows.

Really this place was just stone. Frigid pale stone that sucked up the heat that the millions of tourists gave off, and swallowed it into the very bones of the structure itself.

Cold and clammy, I could both feel and smell the stench of my own sweat coating my body. My skin shrank from the stiff blouse and skirt suit that I wore, tender and inflamed by the fear that rankled my blood, pumping through my organs and flushing and freezing my skin in equal measure.

Shivers wracked my body as I walked through the main entrance hall. I tried to suppress them, but I was oddly detached from myself. The last thing I wanted to do was to show weakness to the guards that were stationed up in the pulpits, but somehow I seemed to be half in and half out of myself and could only vaguely control my unruly bodily functions.

Guess that's what an unpleasant combination of fear and panic can do to a girl.

The inside of the building never failed to take my breath away. If the DPA were planning to intimidate me by the magnificence of the resources at their disposal, I wasn't ashamed to admit that they had succeeded.

Walking through the Minster's Nave, the huge arches rising up each side of me brought my own insignificance well and truly to the forefront of my mind.

I really needed to get a grip.

On a previous visit, the intricacies of the Decorated Gothic ceiling had inspired me with their complicated beauty. Now those repeating crisscrossed stone beams looked so much like the pattern of my magic, I was certain that a witch must have had a hand in its design.

The fact that the DPA chose to conduct my trial here made me wonder if the building itself was infused with magic. Not that the thought worried me all that much. My silver magic could unpick the skeins of power knitted by others, and then weave it into my own sequence. I didn't think even concrete could hold off the hunger of my life-force, especially now that the Eye had given me a power boost.

If there was magic in this building's bones, it could only help me now.

I'd taken precautions, done everything that could give me a chance. As long as nobody inspected the centuries old stonework for the tiny symbols that I had carved at intervals in the Minster's pillars and walls all the way up to the High Altar at the East End, I was home and dry.

Or so I told myself, repeating it as a mantra over and over in my mind. My own personal prayer to God that this would work. And it just might, so long as the angels on duty were not Brad and Ralph.

By the time I'd reached the halfway mark of my walk of shame, the Minster's Central Tower, my awe had receded. Why the Hell should I be dazzled by the grandeur of the building, when nobody else here seemed to understand the disparity in bringing me to justice in such a ridiculous setting.

I hadn't even been baptised!

The only people watching my progress were a couple of DPA shifter guards stationed at the pulpits. The sensation of hundreds of eyes boring into me crept over my skin anyway. How could it not with so many grotesques peering down from the Minster's high walls? And then there were the noblemen and bishops eyeballing me from their shrines.

But all that was infinitely preferable to the real-life venom that hit me from every set of eyes when I entered the Quire. It was a closed session with no jury. Too many of the rabble in each paranormal group wanted a piece of me, preferably still dripping with blood. But the key players were all in attendance, and there was no doubting their appetite for violence.

At least the gory practice of being hung, drawn and quartered was off the table as a punishment. If they were going to execute me, it would be done in a bloodless, humane fashion. I didn't really care how macabre the hanging of witches was for the spectators, as long as my neck snapped quickly.

All of a sudden, my collar was too tight, and as I ran my fingers around my neck to loosen it, I didn't miss the nasty smirk from Roger Bingham, woman hating sadist and Prince of the Southern Coven. Thomas Knyvet's crimson beams of hate burnt into me next. He blamed me for killing his wife, the Baroness, who had abducted me and attempted to sacrifice me in a blood magic ritual.

What was I supposed to do, lie back and expose my heart for her delectation?

And let's not forget Kev. Shifter low-life, attempted rapist, and drug addict lab-rat of the DPA's laboratory of horrors. Kev's yellow-tinged skin, mottled with enlarged blood vessels, contrasted horribly with the stringy strawberry blond hair that was combed over his scabby head. It looked like health was seeping away from him by the second.

Couldn't say I was sorry, but it did make me wonder what crap the DPA had been pumping into him. Sam had been given the same stuff, and shifter ex-thug or not, he deserved better than living out his life as a lab rat.

After that silent reception of doom, I didn't want to see who else had been deemed fit to stand witness to the proceedings. Vamps, shifters, witches, all of them were happy to make me the scapegoat of a bloody situation in which I was more a victim than a perpetrator.

The irony of that was not lost on me now that I knew who my ancestor was.

Azazel. Biblical scapegoat to rival all others. And he was right here, along with the rest of the bloodthirsty mob.

Poor Alice, is she really going to end up a scapegoat just like her ancestor? Read on...