Words of Power (Alice Gray Book 3)

54

I knew it was coming.

I mean, it was obvious that they would concoct some kind of story to fit Adelaide's version of events. The conspiracy was pungent between Edward, Adelaide and Knyvet.

And it smelled like crap.

Brad's chair shot back as he stood up, scraping against the Minster's beautiful tiled floor. I couldn't help the wince that crumpled my face. It wasn't just the grating noise; it was the damage to the beautiful building, hundreds of years old.

Yeah, priorities, I know.

But at least he was going to do something at last. Expose Knyvet's claims for the nonsense that they were. Show those gaping holes, like what the hell the Baroness's motive was supposed to be for donating her blood.

Not to mention what I was supposed to be getting out of all of this.

"HOW DARE YOU?" Brad said, his words rebounding around the cavernous Minster, showing everybody that he was something other, something larger, than his debonair appearance suggested.

Knyvet cringed back in his seat, trying to make his large body as small as physically possible.

"Wha...what do you mean?"

"How do you dare to even speak in my presence you insignificant little cretin."

Knyvet glanced to Edward, obviously needing some direction in answering the frightening hatred that Brad was sending his way.

Edward wasn't much help. With his wide eyes and slack face, his carefully made up cheeks slid to reveal the gaping holes in his syphilis-ridden skin.

Azazel, disguised as Hazel's husband, on the other hand, was practically jumping up and down with excitement, the manic grin on his face showing that he sensed the impending chaos just like I did.

And he liked it.

"Order," Emily shouted. "Mr Barachiel, please put your questions forward. Now."

The Minster fell silent.

Trust Emily to be the only person who had the balls to speak to Brad when he was all larger than life bedazzling.

There wasn't much that could intimidate that girl.

Also, Barachiel. Where the hell had that come from? At least it sounded a bit more angelic than Brad. If that's what this guy even was.

I chanced another peek at my so-called defender. He looked at his hands, and I knew that he could see what I saw. The bright sparks of his rainbow fury had burnt away from the spun-sugar tracks that usually kept them orbiting him. They floated out into the atmosphere, leaving fractures in those intricate strands that weaved round and round his body.

He sighed. Knowing exactly what I knew. His energy was depleting, and episodes of anger like this one only speeded up the process.

"Thomas Knyvet, you are as much a liar now as you were four hundred years ago. Pray, tell me, if your Baroness was merely an apprentice in these events, why did she try to kill Alice Gray?"

"Well, you know, it was self-defence, you see. Yes, that's it. It was self-defence but that little bitch got her anyway," Knyvet said, his confidence coming back right alongside his venomous hatred.

"Hardly self-defence when the angle of the wound suggests that her killer was beneath her and stabbed upwards, through the rib-cage and into the heart. Beneath, as though she was laid out on an altar."

"Yes but..."

"No buts," Brad cut in, "you are a fraud and a trickster and I should have struck you down the moment that the people claimed your actions divine."

"What?"

"You're all the same. You think that you own it all. That your religions are yours to play with as you choose. You do not get to decide what is foretold by providence. You think that stumbling upon a terrorist when drunk makes you a special case, a Special Providence directed by your creator?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You stumbled into the basement and found that idiot with the gunpowder, and you told the world it was an Act of God."

"I never said that."

"Maybe not, but you let them say it. You let the slimy little priests claim that God had sent you to save the King. As if any of you dirty little power hungry whores had any idea what God wanted, as if any of you even cared."

"Wait one minute, Sir. I saved the rightful King of England that day, and I defy anybody to claim otherwise."

"You DEFY me?" Brad ground out, his voice growing louder, bouncing off the walls of the Minster and amplifying with each word.

I could see it. Knyvet had pushed him too far with his ridiculous bluster, and now the rainbow particles of energy were flying faster and faster around his form. His body seemed to grow before my eyes.

"You are an abomination. You are all abominations. Selfish, ignorant specks of dirt that refuse to be thankful for the wonder of your creation. You should be wiped out of existence for your sins."

As Brad's face heated, his gesticulations grew more violent. The energy of his life-force brightened to an unbearable intensity as his physical body seemed to fill all the space around me.

My eyes shifted to the side automatically, protecting themselves from getting burnt out by Brad's glory.

It was why I saw the slouching figure of Hazel's husband, the so-called-witch, my angelic ancestor Azazel shuffle his way out of the second-row bench where the Northern Coven had been consigned to watch the proceedings.

His slow clap accompanied his progress, and as he moved it got louder to correspond with his body straightening, smoothing out and growing to a size that seemed incongruous with the human setting that we were in.

"Ah, my brother, such vitriol. It is a shame that you hate them so much. Especially when you need them so."

It's all kicking off now! Hope you're enjoying the story...