Words of Power (Alice Gray Book 3)

70

I prayed for Lucas and Thomas.

I prayed for Anne and the covens.

I prayed for Emily and all the humans that were at the mercy of the magical things in the universe.

I prayed for myself.

And finally I spoke the prayer that had aided my kind throughout the centuries. The White Paternoster, the spell that meant different things for each caster. The Words of Power that for me, right now, asked for mercy and forgiveness, because if this was the end, I wanted the Eye to treat us all as we deserved.

Open, open heaven door keys,

Shut, shut hell door.

Let christened child

Go to its mother mild.

What is yonder that casts a light so farrandly?

Mine own dear son that's nailed to the tree.

The chimes started somewhere in the first line, but the wind, that picked up on the last word. It caught me up in its cyclone, hurling me against the Tree that swayed and crashed in massive wavelike movements, somehow still enclosed in the Minster's tall walls.

Clinging on to the branch where I landed, I twisted around to see the sickly thin bodies of the ancient vampires being picked up by the wind and carried up and up until they were sucked into the fathomless abyss behind the Eye.

Fear froze my limbs monkey-like to the silver branches that held me in their cold embrace as Thomas and Lucas were carried up in the wind.

Just before the Eye swallowed them whole along with all the ancient vamps, Azazel swooped across the opening, and plucked them out of the cyclone's rage.

I saw the unstable mass of particles that made up Brother Jerome, not quite vampire, not quite spectre, get caught up just like everybody else. The wind crashed him against the Tree, exploding the death-dust that tried so hard to re-form into his shape. Each tiny particle fought against gravity, some unseen magnetism trying to draw them back together to the shape of the oldest vampire, the gothic friar who had thought he could use human science to divert the All Seeing Eye.

It seemed like hours but it must have only taken a couple of seconds for all the vampires to be sucked out through the Eye, like so many astronauts lost to the vacuum of space.

Then the wind dropped and the tree stilled. Looking up, the dark abyss was gone.

The Eye had blinked closed.

Azazel landed still holding Lucas and Thomas under each arm. He dropped them unceremoniously on the Minster's hard tiled floor.

My mouth flapped open and closed as I tried to figure out what the hell had just happened.

Why would the Eye bring those long-dead vampires back, if only to suck them into oblivion after only a few minutes reborn?

It didn't make any sense.

"Your questions are many, and in some ways justified. But Alice, blood of my blood, this is a matter of Faith," Azazel said, with a certainty bordering on arrogance.

"You've got to be kidding me? What about you? Are you just going to accept how Brother Jerome manipulated you? That wasn't providence, that was meddling."

"He woundeth them, that he may heal them."

"Bullshit."

"Child, you are so young. There will be many trials and dark times in your life, but you must look at this differently. Haven't the evil been punished?"

"I guess," I said, thinking of Brother Jerome's body being impaled on the Tree and then torn apart by the cyclone, each grey speck of dead vamp pulled in different directions so that there was no way that they'd find each other again in the vast universe behind the Eye.

"Look into yourself. Is the magic still strong and pure?"

I didn't even have to think about that, every cell in my body was supercharged after the Eye's energy had flowed through me. No answer was needed because the truth of his statement shone out at Azazel from my eyes that were still bright silver.

"Well then, balance has been restored. The Eye has brought light out of darkness as is its purpose."

"What about you? Why were Brad and Ralph after you so badly? And where the hell are those guys anyway?"

"Angels are flawed too, they follow their own route in the divine plan, and it can be just as winding as your mortal paths."

"What? You mean you forgive them?"

"I'm a scapegoat Alice. If I wasn't blamed then I could never prove my worth."

A spiral of rainbow and purple swirled downwards around the tree, before Brad and Ralph landed.

"Come brother," Ralph said holding his hand out.

Azazel walked towards them.

"Wait," I shouted, catching him by the arm. "How can you forgive them for doubting you?"

"It's the cycle. The All Seeing Eye has rewarded the faithful, blessing the earth with its magic once again, it is time to start anew."

Start Anew? Come on Alice, you can get behind that can't you?