Words of Power (Alice Gray Book 3)

55

It was when I saw his life-force that I began to understand.

It wasn't their physical bodies that changed, it was their magical energy swelling and surging in waves crashing up against one another like a sea with two tides.

Azazel's rich blue life-force looked like the sky changing from calm to stormy in fast-forward. The crimson lightening bolts that gave away his true identity shot through it with dizzying speed. Jagged, bloody needles splitting the blue sky of his magic.

Instead of the overweight, middle-aged man that had doted on Hazel back at the coven headquarters, the specimen before me was ridiculously ripped with long blond hair falling in waves down his back.

Azazel looked like a Viking Earl, which I suppose was appropriate since he'd been banished to Earth a thousand years ago to wreak havoc as the Almighty's fall guy. A concept that I still had a hard time wrapping my head around.

"Scapegoat," Brad spat. "I knew that you wouldn't be able to resist this spectacle."

"Why, brother. I'm not here to cause trouble. You seem to be taking care of that all by yourself. Maybe He should revise His opinion on who should be the scapegoat and who the guardian angel. I'm merely here to introduce myself to my blood, and what a delightful little Miss that she is," Azazel said, reaching out to grab my arm.

"Not so fast, you've done enough harm meddling with the mortal world. Step away from the girl," Ralph said, slapping Azazel's hand away before it connected with my arm.

Silence fell in the Minster as we waited for Azazel's reaction. The others might not be able to see the lightshow provided by the angels' magic, but even the humans amongst us could sense the terrifying glory of these creatures.

Azazel slowly turned to Ralph, his wings unfurling from his back. Ralph and Brad followed suit, and even as they launched themselves at each other high above our heads, the space my mind had for thoughts was taken up with the beauty of those magnificent wings.

It was only when blood splatter from the battling angels got me in the eye that I realised what was really going on here.

They were going to kill each other right now in the Minster, and I had no idea who would win. I didn't even understand who the good guys were. Binary oppositions didn't really work for me anymore. Not when divine providence seemed to throw the very concept of autonomy into doubt.

It was two against one. There was no way that Azazel could beat off Brad and Ralph. But a tiny jolt of pleasure at each thwarted attack heightened my adrenaline, making me root for Azazel despite how he'd used up Jennet Device, leaving her empty and dry. Not to mention worming his way into Hazel's bed and all the other machinations that he'd no doubt worked in my family tree over the last four hundred years.

But could the other two claim to be innocent of that?

No.

The one thing that I knew these guys shared was their continual interference in the lives of paltry mortals. We meant nothing to them as individuals, not so long as the divine plan unfolded as they thought fit.

As I watched them as they circled each other, the grace of their movements looked like some kind of deadly dance. At times they moved so fast that the only way to distinguish them were the blurred colours of their wings.

Azazel's electric blue feathers, interspersed with a crimson one here and there, flashed around the ceiling of the Minster, fighting off attacks from each side. The colours of Brad's rainbow wings showed him darting for Azazel's head, while Ralph, a rich purple streak, zoomed in below.

They repeated these formations over and over, alternating movements in choreography so complex that my brain had no chance to keep up.

The colours zipped around high in the Minster's ceiling, blood splattering down on us like rain. When a warm drop hit me on the arm, the silver particles of my life-force swarmed the area like flies on a carcass.

I should have been scared that my silver magic wanted to feed from the blood of angels. But why would heavenly magic be any different. The urge to consume had been overtaking me more and more over the last few days, filling my mind, body and soul with the need to convert magical energy into my own sequence. I looked up, into the pale pink air, and hunger roared forth, empowering and sickening me in equal measure.

I was, a leech, more so than any vampire.

That's when I saw it.

The stream of tiny silver particles that multiplied into the air, energized and directed by the blood of divinity. They spiralled up and up, joining together, making a shape so familiar to me that my heart ached to see it.

The angels were not flying to their own pattern. They were circling something that my silver life-force clung to as if it had finally found what it had been looking for all this time, as if it had found its home.

My silver magic was showing me the real site of their battle. The angels were fighting around a silver tree.

The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

Don't succumb to the hunger Alice! You're stronger than that...