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

disbelieve him, then four hours had passed. Four hours where anything could have happened. A Knowing flooded my chest. I was too late. Lucifer had sent me a vision knowing full well I’d be too late to stop anything from happening.

Just as though my thoughts had conjured it up, a deep-throated howl broke the tense silence in the air. Peter flagged me over. “Stay here,” he said. Of the two of us, I had more chance of dealing with this than he did.

“I need to go,” I told him.

He put down his mug. “Then we’ll have to go together.”

He was a lot quicker on his feet than I gave him credit for. The sound had come from one of the many guard posts around the perimeter. In my short stint as a guard, I learned these posts were stationed at intervals to allow those on shift to take a quick break without having to go back to the Academy. It saved the supernaturals that couldn’t teleport a little bit of time. Peter and I were just coming around the side of a copse of fig trees when the sound of raised voices filtered through the air.

“Give her to me!” Bradley shouted. Somebody produced a snarl that sounded like a wild, rabid, animal.

“Step back,” Astrid’s even tone commanded. “Nobody is going to touch her until we can make sense of this.”

“Make sense of what?” a voice I didn’t know snapped. “She killed Desi!”

My heart lodged in my throat. I must have heard wrong. Desi was invincible. She couldn’t be dead. But as I came around the obstructing fig trees, my heart threatened to burst altogether.

On the right side of the lawn Adam had Desi’s limp body in his arms. His usually amused features were stony. A pair of Nephilim guards flanked him. On the other side of the lawn, Astrid stood in front of somebody who was covered in blood. Bradley was floating in the air above Astrid, his sword flaming, his eyes flashing murder. The person behind Astrid turned her head in my direction.

My legs almost gave out.

“Rachel?” Peter said. He ran towards her. Bradley reared. Astrid rose into the air to meet him. That’s when Rachel produced the modified gun concealed inside her jacket. One of the Nephilim guards noticed. He whipped his sword at her at the same time she fired at Bradley.

In my mind, a surge of magic rushed out in concentric circles. I screamed as the dark power took hold of me. It lashed against everyone in the open space. The dark magic flared and became barriers that slowed the trajectory of the angel blade and the supernatural poison. The Nephilim threw their arms in front of them as though bracing against an oncoming storm. I stepped slowly towards them. I was so tired of this. So sick of watching them fighting each other. The waves of glittery black cascaded over the scene. Bradley and Astrid dropped to the ground clutching their stomachs.

“Blue!” Kai’s voice cut through the air. I halted for a second. And then another voice urged me forwards.

Keep going, Lucifer tempted. You’ve kept the peace for too long. Silence them forever.

Kai landed beside me. Sweat crowned his hairline. For some reason his teeth were gritted as he reached out and placed his hand on my forehead. The last thing I saw was an imprint of Lucifer lunging towards Kai on a battlefield. And then everything went dark.

36

I came to inside what appeared to be an infirmary. But it wasn’t the one inside the Academy. The scent of wolfsbane was in the air. The familiar decorative flourish in the corners of the ceiling confirmed it. I was inside the same place where the Council chambers existed. A warm hand swept across my forehead. I turned to find Kai holding vigil in the armchair beside me.

Everything came rushing back. “Where is she?” I asked.

His retracted his hand. They laced in front of him, his elbows resting on his knees. “They’re holding a sentencing,” he said. I tried to get up, but he blocked me from moving. “Only her.”

“That’s not fair! She thinks a vampire killed her grand mistress!”

“He did. But that doesn’t justify what she did. Desi’s patrol wasn’t the only one attacked. They all were. We’ve got dozens of casualties.”

I wanted to ask whether he thought Terran should take kindly to having their territory patrolled by supernaturals but it seemed pointless.

Lucifer materialised in my thoughts. Dense, isn’t he? Lucifer said. I tried to shut my mind off so he couldn’t see. What happened instead was that my airways closed up. I clawed at my throat. Kai’s hands glowed green as he pressed him palm over my hands. It eased the stabbing pain but couldn’t do anything for the locked-up feeling. Or the limb of the wraith compressing my chest.

“Blue!”

I slumped down onto the bed. Lucifer’s ice blue eyes bore into my mine. Get out! I screamed in my thoughts. He refused to comply. There was no way I would be able to resist him. He was seraphim.

“Blue,” Kai pleaded. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

My eyes began to water. Frantic, Kai wrapped his arms around me. His entire body radiated with green light so bright it almost burned through my eyelids. Every nerve ending in my body electrified with glowing warmth. His healing power crept up my neck. The moment it came into contact with Lucifer’s phantom thoughts, a wall of my dark power erected around my mind. The dark power didn’t want Kai to know about the seraph. Because this was a two-way street and there was no way in hell I was going to allow Lucifer access to Kai. Not after all of my nightmares. The darkness curtailed Kai’s healing magic. To him, it appeared as though I was trying to conceal something from him. To be fair, it was true. It just wasn’t the thing he thought it was. His muscles tensed.

The green light dimmed.

“What was that?” he asked. He held me