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

My experience with bullies was that they either backed down or came back at you with the same treatment. At Bloodline, Brigid would have used her magic on me in a second if she could get away with it. There was no forbidding in this place. Harlow swiped at where I’d landed the punch. I didn’t have much strength, but what I lacked in force I made up for in enthusiasm. The edges of her form blurred.

“Do not make me warn you again,” Samantha said in a tone that made Harlow re-materialise.

“It was a harmless joke,” Harlow snarled. “How was I supposed to know she can’t swim? Jeez. Get a sense of humour. How is she going to join the mission if this is how she reacts?” It was so much more than not being able to swim. But I was damn well not going to tell them so. I was already leery of the way Jessica was watching me. She snuck quicksilver glances at me in between pretending to hold back the other girls.

“That’s for me to decide,” Samantha said. “This stops here. There are so few of us as it is. We must be united.”

I couldn’t even get up the energy to respond. Harlow pouted. Oh for goodness sake. I shrugged Rachel off me. “If anybody else so much as thinks about having fun with me, they’re going to be sorry.”

With that, I marched off towards the kennels. I was stomping my way there when I spotted a figure inside the chicken and goose pen. Ashton was in a pair of tan coveralls. His white shirt was once again stained. He raised his arm and waved at me.

“Glad you’re back,” he shouted. I laced my hands behind my back and kept walking.

Phoenix was inside his enclosure. He saw me coming and did his leaping thing clear over the top of the fence. Why they even bothered to put him in there was a mystery to me. Why he allowed it was another thing altogether.

He raced up to me. I crouched down on my knees. As soon as his face was close enough I buried my head in his hair and bawled. Ever since I’d woken up, my thoughts had been filled with the thousands of tiny voices of those creatures I had snuffed out in my fury. At the time, I had been mad with fear. Now the regret was eating me up inside. I didn’t want these stupid powers if they were so destructive I lost control and killed innocent things.

Phoenix didn’t move despite the fact I was tugging on his hair and shuddering against him. His head dipped onto my shoulder. It occurred to me as my tears finally subsided a while later that he had survived his own frightening ordeal and had come out of it changed. Would I let myself be dragged down by this one experience, or would I try to best it?

I shook myself and decided I needed to take a walk. Phoenix kept company beside me, never once breaking his stride to chase the various wild creatures that crossed our path. It occurred to me that this was my dream situation. I was living in the country away from the smoke and sewage of the city.

I wondered how long they would allow me to walk unchecked on their property. It was about twenty minutes before Sean arrived. He sat down on the grass next to the dam where I’d been contemplating the voice I’d heard in the ocean. The memory of the vast canvas of lights and colours was still very much etched into my thoughts.

“Why the ocean?” he asked casually.

“Why not? Plenty of people are afraid of it.”

“Ah, but there’s fear and then there’s hysteria.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “You weren’t there. How do you have any idea about the way I reacted?”

He brushed a hand over the thick blades of grass. Over in the distant fields, everything was brown. I could imagine we hadn’t had a drop of rain all summer. But Terran grass was lush. “You pretty much annihilated a section of the foreshore,” he said. “Either you were scared out of your wits or there’s something not at all right about you.”

Take your pick really.

“They’re not that bad, you know.” I assumed he was referring to the Evil Three. “They’re just testing you. There are so few of us, the ones that are here have to be strong.”

“I don’t need anybody testing me,” I said. “I’ve had enough of being a lab rat.”

“Well then, you’re not going to like this, but Samantha wants to see you in her office.” Of course she did.

I let Phoenix run off back to his enclosure. Then I marched back up to the building and endured pretty much the same interrogation as the one Jacqueline had given me. Samantha was slightly more enthusiastic about it.

“This core of power that you possess,” she asked with obvious interest, “can you tell where it comes from?”

If I had known that, I wouldn’t be in this predicament! “As far as I’m aware, it’s been handed down to me from Azrael. He said it was something different to the way his brothers blooded their Nephilim.” I fisted my hands on my thighs. “I’ve tried to ask him about it, but he says he’s bound by an agreement he can’t break.”

“Hmm.” She contemplated this.

“How is that even a thing?” I ploughed on. “He’s a seraph. There’s nothing on this Earth that he can’t do!”

This time, she made a dismissive gesture. “There are plenty of things the seraphim can’t bring about. Interfering with our free will being one of them. They claim dominion over the dimensions, but I’ve yet to see any legitimacy in that claim.”

I remembered somebody saying once in class that the Soul Sisterhood did not bow down to the laws of the seraphim. Maddison, one of the Nephilim kids, had been utterly affronted. Now I was being faced with that