Bloodline Diplomacy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 3) - Lan Chan (thriller books to read .txt) 📗

“You should have led with that.”

She scratched at her cheek. “I thought perhaps given where you’ve been living, something a bit more mystical might have appealed to you.”

They really did think I was some kind of monster captive. To be fair, from the outside that’s how it would appear to me as well. I went to Bloodline Academy, but it hadn’t been through my own choice. I’d gone because there were no other choices besides possibly the Dominion prison.

Nora tapped her spoon onto the side of her cup. She set it down when our attention returned to her. “What would Lex be doing once she does finish school?”

Samantha pulled out one of the leather-backed chairs and sat facing them. “She could integrate back into the human world like many of our students have in the past. Her skills could be utilised for various jobs.”

“And if she chooses not to get a job?”

“Terran could provide her with employment.”

Nora stirred her mug as though it was the most natural thing in the world. “And what job would that be?” She took a sip. Her eyes never left Samantha’s over the rim of her cup.

“She would assist with the protection of the human species.”

If I had a drink, I would have spat it out at this point. “You mean you hunt demons too?” I asked.

Samantha nodded. “Not just demons, though.”

The pointed look she gave me said it all. They didn’t consider demons their only enemy. I would be expected to hunt down the supernaturals as well. “How do you distinguish between which supernaturals are doing harm and which ones are just minding their own business?”

“We leave it up to the individual to make that assessment.”

“And if they assess wrong?”

There was a collective shrug from the Terran natives. Right. So this was a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ kind of establishment.

“I know it goes against everything you’ve been taught for the past year,” Samantha said. “But given the current climate, we can’t afford to be discerning. That’s where we went wrong in the past. We allowed the compassionate side of us to forgive too much, and now we’re paying for it.”

“What do you mean ‘the current climate?’” Mani asked.

Samantha cocked her head to the side. “You haven’t heard?”

He shook his head. Sean got up and went to grab some of the newspapers sitting in the magazine racks by the other entrance. He brought two issues of The Age newspaper back and set them on the tables in front of us. The headlines splashed across the front of the papers were about a cyclone that had come from nowhere and was currently destroying the coast up near Port Douglas.

“This is the sixth natural disaster in the past year,” Samantha said. She flipped open the first page of the newspaper and then pointed at another piece. The headline was about a school shooting in the States. In another couple of pages, there was a piece about a man who had taken people hostage in an office building in New South Wales. Closer to home, there were reports of the overcrowding in some of the psychiatric hospitals. Two men who had been arrested and charged with possible terrorist attacks in the city were recently diagnosed with mental health issues. They were being treated at the same psychiatric hospital where Nanna had been living.

“This is a clear sign of imbalance,” Samantha said. “These disasters and the behaviours are out of the ordinary. Too many of them too close together.”

“You think they’re demon-related?” Nora said.

Samantha blinked. She threaded her hands together in front of her and rested them on the newspaper. When she opened her eyes, they found me in the group. “We think it all started with that first demon in your grandmother’s psychiatric hospital,” she said. “Something was triggered that day that has led to the build-up of demonic energy in the Earth realm.”

“Is that why you’re back?” I asked through the stone in my throat. If what she was saying was accurate, it meant that I had been the one to start all of this.

“We never left,” Jessica said. “We’ve kept a watchful eye on things for centuries. But now things are hurtling at a pace beyond even our control. We need Gaia.”

Nora turned her head to the side. “What do you mean you need her? She’s been gone since the Dimension wars.”

Samantha’s attention hadn’t left me. “That’s where all your legends are wrong. Maybe the invention of technology and the pollution of the oceans angered her, but Gaia has always been amongst us. Until recently.”

“Recently?” I stuttered.

“As recent as seventeen years,” Samantha said.

“What are you trying to say?” Nora asked.

“Your friend the mage with the wrong body must have told you by now that your great-grandmother was one of us. She held this post, Grand Mistress of the Sisterhood, for over four decades. She betrayed us by making a pact with a demon. When she defected, Gaia disappeared.”

I tried to pick my jaw off the floor. “You’re not trying to say…” I couldn’t finish the sentence.

“Yes, Alessia. Your great-grandmother bound our deity and hid her from the world. We believe these natural disasters are a result of Gaia’s attempts to break free. The only problem is that the more she fights, the more destruction we will see. Lucifer is using the fear of the humans to manipulate them. If this goes on for much longer, he will find a way to breach the barrier.”

“That’s impossible,” Nora said. I wanted to contradict her but my throat locked up tight. The thought of revealing what the Morning Star had said to me made pain shoot behind my left eye. I pressed my lips together. It was only when I forced my thoughts away from Lucifer that the pain subsided.

Samantha stood and picked up a tablet that had been charging on the long table pushed up against the window. She brought it back and switched the screen on. “We’ve been cataloguing everything we believe to be