Bloodline Alchemy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 6) - Lan Chan (libby ebook reader txt) 📗

But I can feel it. I can feel you wanting to do it. Needing to do it. Just like I felt it that night from your great-grandfather. You destroyed my pack once. I won’t let you do it again.”

This time I pulled my arm away as hard as I could. He finally let go. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

I tried to squeeze past him towards the door, but he hemmed me in. The thing I hated the most was that he was so calm about it. He never raised his voice or showed any signs of actually losing his temper.

“You’re weak, Sophie,” he said. “If you think you can save someone, you’ll do it. Is that friend of yours worth it? She left us all here to die.”

The fury that burned in my chest was too hot to contain. “My friend is worth more than a hundred of you,” I spat before pushing the door open. “And right now, I would murder you if it meant getting her back.”

Ignoring him, I walked back towards the classrooms.

13

I was not in a good mood when we gathered in the class for Arcane Magic. “What happened?” Diana asked me. “You look worse now than when you ran out of class.”

“I’m fine.”

“Right. Well, can you try and appear more fine so people don’t accidentally get the idea that you’re actually going to kill someone?”

It was a poor choice of words, but she meant every single one of them. “If you had to kill someone to get Lex back,” I asked her, “would you do it?”

She contemplated the question. “Who would I have to kill?”

“I don’t know,” I hissed, trying to keep my voice down. “A random person.”

She scratched her chin. “I mean, I dunno. If it was someone annoying maybe, but I kinda have to draw the line at murdering innocent people.”

That’s what I’d thought. It was all so easy with hypotheticals. What I hated to my very core was that Noah was right. I did want to kill someone. I wanted to have the kind of conviction that meant I could do what needed to be done when the time came.

In my head, all I could hear was Andrei’s voice that first time we’d gone bounty hunting. We’d caught up to the vampire, and Andrei had even knocked the guy out. I then stood over his unconscious body for fifteen minutes.

“Seriously, cupcake,” Andrei said. “Do you need me to read his conviction sheet again? Rape. Two counts of murder. One of them a child. All of it perpetuated on humans.”

“I...”

At the half an hour mark, the other vampire stirred. Andrei groaned and beat him unconscious before collecting some of his blood and then turning him over to the Nephilim guards. We didn’t even bother to collect the bounty. Andrei didn’t need it and I didn’t want to touch it.

The extracted blood wasn’t more potent than any other blood in a ritual. The whole point of a blood sacrifice was the sacrifice bit. When it came down to it, I didn’t have the nerve.

I’m so sorry that you’ll have to bear the brunt of this now. Those had been Lex’s words. I was only as good as a sacrifice I was willing to make. Which meant I was no good at all. If I was going to have a chance at transmuting her blood, I would have to take down somebody powerful. More than one somebody. How in the world I was meant to do that completely escaped me.

Our conversation was cut short by Agatha’s arrival. Like Eugenia, she seemed to have a penchant for dramatic costume. Today she wore a headdress that looked like the severed tusks of an antelope but painted silver. It was a good foil for the magenta cloak she wore over a fitted dress of the same colour.

If possible, this room was twice the size of the room where we’d had Potions and it was filled to the brim. What worried me when I looked around the room was that it wasn’t just filled with fourth-year students. I recognised some of the kids from the junior Academy.

Before I had a chance to ask, Agatha drew herself up at the front of the room. She was like the villain in every children’s movie that I had ever watched.

“You.” She pointed to a para-human girl in the front row I didn’t know. Someone from one of the other Academies. “Why are you here?”

“I guess no introductions then,” Diana said out of the corner of her mouth.

The girl’s scaled grey skin turned mossy. “Ummm....”

“Well?” Agatha prodded.

“My dam said that it’s better to be prepared than to die ignorant.”

Agatha’s face contorted. “Your dam is an idiot.”

Turning a shade of scarlet, the girl took exception. “He is not!”

“He is if he thinks preparation is going to get him anywhere.” She straightened up and addressed the rest of the room. “We can be as prepared as we’ll ever be, and it won’t be enough.”

Close to the back of the room, a familiar voice piped up. “What do you want us to do?” Isla Hess asked. “You want us to mount an attack on the Hell dimension? That’s fine with me as long as the fens come to our assistance.”

There was a general buzz of assent. Agatha’s smile could have cut glass. “What’s your name?”

“Isla.”

“Do you think our aid might make a difference?”

“At least it would mean greater numbers!”

“And what do you think of the source of that aid?”

“The source?”

Agatha sniffed. “Where is it do you think the core of the power in the fens comes from?”

“Sinister magic,” a boy from another Academy said. Nightblood Academy, judging by the pale skin and the light amulet he was wearing.

“Very good,” Agatha said, voice dripping sarcasm. “And where does the sinister magic come from?”

“You summon demons,” Orla suggested.

White lines appeared around her mouth as Agatha said, “Not quite.” Orla shrank in her seat. So too did many of the students in her vicinity.

“You really don’t