Bloodline Academy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 1)

by Lan Chan

  The monster would have dug deeper but my mind was already working. I drew the circle closed as the manticore whipped around and struck out again. This time it hit the invisible shield. A screech of claws against magic boomed in the night. Sparks of bright blue ignited. Fred lay beneath the protective circle, his mouth open wide in a silent scream. He clutched at his chest, breathing ragged.

  The manticore turned mid-air. Its leonine head cast about and landed on me. Uh oh. Somehow, the beast knew that I was the source of the shield. It dove as I pushed myself to my feet and ran. Based on what I’d seen of the monster’s flight, there was no way in hell I was going to be able to outrun it.

  I sprinted in a long zigzag pattern, hoping to throw the monster off course. It was a pointless exercise.

  “Lex!” Sophie screamed. Despite my better judgement, I turned around only to watch as the manticore’s tail whipped down on me. It was going to skewer me through the middle and I wasn’t going to have enough time to evade. Closing my eyes seemed like the only way to stop the thundering of my heart. I braced for the impact, but when I heard a thwack and it wasn’t followed by pain, my eyes snapped open. Two axes lay on the ground. They had pushed the tip of the manticore’s tail off course.

  Instead of trying to retrieve their weapons, the dwarves took off in separate directions. I did the same. While they raced off to the side, their primary goal to avoid death from the manticore, I pushed towards the burning pyre.

  Like Sophie’s mum, Nanna was out cold. The flames were now surrounding the base of the pyre. Soon enough they would be licking at her feet. I grit my teeth and kept running. A scream tore me from my single-minded sprint.

  Sophie was pressed against the wall of the trial building. Her position told me she’d been attempting to cut a path around the perimeter. The black tail flashed. I drew the circle once more. When the point of the manticore’s tail hit the barrier, a shrill explosion burst in my mind. Something wet and metallic slid down my nostril.

  Instead of being discouraged by the magical rebuff, the tail reared back and stabbed at the air again and again. With each strike, it felt as though something clawed inside my mind. I fell to my knees.

  Dizziness stole the rationality from my judgement. There was no way we could win this based on sheer force. Bradley had been right. My circles might be strong on the defensive front, but I didn’t have the strength to hold them intact while a supernatural creature of this calibre bore down on me relentlessly. Soon, I would be out of luck.

  The manticore wasn’t giving up. It was a beast that seemed to have been honed for fighting. There was not one scrap of its body that held any weakness. Sophie was attempting to do something with her own magic. It glowed like rose-pink fire in her hands. She tossed grains of salt in the air and forced them into a circle. When the manticore snapped its teeth in her face, Sophie shoved her magic at it. The thing sneezed. Sophie’s magic dissipated.

  She squealed as the manticore swiped at her with claws alternating with its tail. My shield was becoming weaker. The perimeter of protection around her retracted. The next time it struck, it almost looked like the thing grazed her face. Sophie dropped to her knees, her arms throwing up to cover her head.

  A shudder ran up my body. Behind me, someone was using the manticore’s distraction to slip past. I heard a yelp as they tried to leap over the wall of flames engulfing the bottom of the pyre. The manticore heard it too. It reeled around and let out another roar before swooping on its new prey. I allowed the circle to dissipate and collapsed onto the grass. A moment later, shaky arms dragged me up.

  “Thanks.” Sophie’s lip trembled.

  I could only nod at her. My stomach grumbled something fierce. “Good grief.” Sophie pointed to the air above the pyre in which the manticore was being attacked by the remaining Fae girl. She held up a flaming stick. It was a match next to the creature. She looked like a tiny doll compared to its bulk.

  As she fought with it, the vampire raced around the pyre trying to find a spot where the flames weren’t as thick.

  “He won’t be able to get through,” Sophie said. “Vamps burn in magical fire just like anyone else. So do shifters.” The Tasmanian tiger stood a distance away from the flames. I’d seen him take a running start and try to leap over them. But they were too high. Now he was baring his teeth, his ears flattened against his elongated head.

  “There has to be some way to beat it,” I said. Just as I spoke, the manticore lashed out. The Fae attempted to evade but she was too slow. The thing caught her in its deadly grip and squeezed.

  “No!” I screamed. We all heard the crunch of bone. An emerald burst of light ignited between the manticore’s palm. For a second, my chest exploded with relief. Emerald light meant only one thing. Malachi was here.

  Except he never materialised. All that happened was that the manticore tossed the Fae girl over the top of the pyre. The vampire jumped and caught her before her body crashed. He set her down, his hideous expression twisted into a mask of simmering fear.

  Screams broke out on the pyre. The flames had reached their intended target. Sophie and I both tried to step forward but we stopped at the same time. The manticore swung in our direction, its black eyes seeming to reach into my soul and amplify the fear racing through my veins. It told me that even if I did manage to get past, how was I going to save Nanna? The flames were already lapping at her feet. She might be unconscious, but somehow, I still heard her wailing. It told me the only way I would live was if I ran.

  Nails dug into my palms. The shocking burst of pain helped to dispel the avalanche of despair. This was not happening. I would not abandon the woman who had given up everything to raise me. When the manticore bellowed again. I opened my mouth and screamed with it. There was a moment of sheer fury coming from both ends. And then I started to run towards it.

  “Lex!” Sophie called.

  “Get your mum!”

  The manticore whipped over my head as I ducked and rolled. Two other bodies landed on the grass beside me. The dwarf girl uncurled on my left, the tiger on my right. The manticore swooped on us once more. The dwarf hefted her axe and tried to take a swipe at its underbelly. Her blade made a direct hit but the sound that rang out was that of metal on metal.

  “Please don’t tell me it has a metallic hide!”

  “There’s nowhere on its body that is soft,” the dwarf said.

  That was complete bullshit. Maybe I was stupid, but there was no way in hell a creature could be utterly impervious. If that were the case then it would mean the world should have been overrun with them. My stomach rumbled again.

  As usual, all I could think about was food. Ducking to the left to avoid having my face torn off by six-inch claws, I watched the thing sail, turn and come back for us. “So you’re telling me that this thing has a metal stomach?”

  And that was when I remembered the rosehips in my pocket. I heard Peter’s voice in my head. An army marches on its stomach. Surely, this creature was as soft on the inside as the rest of us.

  “Cover me!” I stepped out in front of them. The dwarf yanked me back.

  “That usually means you get behind us,” she screamed in my face. She tossed me back and they stood guard. Not that we were doing anything particularly useful besides ducking and covering. I ripped the rosehips out of my pockets. The hips were small and red like elongated currents. Inside, I could feel the ripened seeds pulsing. Jacqueline and Raphael had declared me a hedge witch. It hadn’t really come as a surprise. Nanna had beaten a fondness of plants into me. I hoped it would save both of us.

  When the manticore swooped again, the female dwarf lashed out with her axe. The tiger jumped up and corralled it so that it couldn’t get too close. I waited for its mouth to get in the right angle and....now! With all of the strength I could muster, I threw the hips into the open cavern as it roared.

  “I can’t protect us and do this at the same time,” I told them. Given the choice between offense and defence, I only had the strengt
h for one thing.

  The dwarf grabbed my arm and tried to drag me away. I wrenched her off and pushed them. “Run!”

  “Lex!” I heard Sophie scream my name but I shoved it all away. I scrambled for the words Thalia had said to me. Reach for the well of power. Hold it tight and ask the earth to work with me. Frantically, I closed my eyes and tried to find the well she was talking about. The roaring of water in my mind was tremulous. I wasn’t sure what Thalia classed as a well, but the ocean I saw scared the crap out of me. I didn’t like big expanses of open water. Nanna had taken me to the beach once as a child and the unpredictable vastness of it had made me cry.

  Now I dropped to my knees and begged for the well to help me save her. The rushing in my ears turned into a tsunami. As I felt the manticore’s presence bearing down on me, the hundreds of potential rose bushes inside its belly reached out to me.

  Grow, I urged them.

  Life burst forth from every seed. I fed them with the waters from the reserve of power until the seeds became thick canes of briar. Long spines with thorns twisted and curled until they were eviscerating the manticore from the inside out. Still they continued to grow. I heard screaming all around me as something enormous collided with the earth.

  My eyes were still closed. In my mind, all I could focus on was the rush of life feeding into the canes. They throbbed for an instant and then I felt them flourish as they sent out roots to anchor them to the earth. Once the roots hit the dirt, their canes grew so thick they could have held up the foundations of the Academy.

  A hand landed on my shoulder and shook vigorously. “Blue,” a deep voice spoke. My eyes snapped open. Kai sank into the grass beside me. My vision swam with images of an enormous amount of twisted thorns to my right and a pyre of sticks burning in front of me. The masts were now also aflame.

  “Nanna!” I pushed off the ground and tried to get to her. Kai grabbed me around the waist and held me back. I thrashed in his hold but his grip was iron.

  “Let go!” I screamed. My foot connected with his shin, but he didn’t so much as flinch. As my fury unleashed, the thorned branches around the mound contracted. The earth groaned. I continued to kick and punch the Nephilim who wouldn’t leave me be.

  “Calm down, Blue,” he said again.

  “Shut up! Is that all you can say? Where were you?” I was screaming in his face. His hardened expression never wavered but something in his deep green eyes unlocked. “We were being attacked and you did nothing. You promised to keep her safe! You promised!”

  I tried to head butt him but as usual, he was too fast for me. While I squirmed, he calmly placed his palm on my forehead. Where he touched me, a balm of drowsiness turned my limbs into jelly. A second later, I was unconscious.

  16

  There were voices in the room and they were speaking too loudly. I groaned and tried to turn over but my body wouldn’t move.

  “She’s awake,” an unfamiliar male voice said.

  My head was stuffed with rocks and my throat with glass. One eye opened at a time to see yet another room with a high ceiling. It stank of sulphur in here. I made an undignified sound. Something heavy landed on the base of the bed, sending shockwaves through the covers.

  “Urgh.”

  Arms wrapped around me. “Thank goodness you’re awake,” Sophie said. She squeezed so hard I felt my eyes popping out of my head. I thumped her on the back.

  “Can’t breathe.”

  She backed up immediately. “Oh, sorry!” Scooting back, she sat on my bed with her legs crossed beneath her. When I tried to sit up my arms trembled. Somebody reached out to assist me. The face I came into contact with was grey. Not a sickly grey but one that reminded me of the skin of some of the reptiles in the zoo. Except the man who owned the skin was humanoid with a thick, protruding forehead and pointed ears. His hands felt cool and rough on my elbow as he helped to prop me up with pillows behind my back.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked. When his mouth opened, his teeth showed through. They were sharpened.

  “Lex,” Sophie hissed out of the corner of her mouth. “Stop staring.”

  The man-creature smiled, showing his rows of teeth. “It’s quite alright. I imagine she’s never seen a basilisk before.”

  “I’m sorry.” I didn’t stop staring. His skin was shimmering like an oil slick in water. I didn’t flinch when he cupped my face in his leathery hands, his thumbs pulling up my eyelids.

  “How’s your head?” His voice was a low baritone, soothing but with a touch of command. It was nice after all the bellowing and shrieking from the manticore. My memory came back in one painful gut punch.

  “Nanna?”

  I tried to wriggle out of his hold but I was weak as a kitten. He held tight, the coolness of his fingertips making me less anxious.

  “She’s fine,” Jacqueline said. I heard the telltale click of heels across tiles. Out of the corner of my eyes, I watched her walk into the room. The man let go of me. “Doctor Thorne,” Jacqueline said. She nodded her head at the doctor. “How is she doing?”

  “Exceedingly well. She appears to be almost fully recovered. Besides a little confusion.”

  “A little?” I burst out. I saw now he was wearing a white lab coat. The coat did very little to cover what appeared to be a tail that trailed along the floor. “Are you actually a medical doctor? How long have I been here?”

  “You’ve been resting for almost nineteen hours. And no I’m not a medical doctor in the human sense,” he said. He reached out and tapped my nose with one of his claws. A spark of static electricity zapped me. “Malachi took care of your physical injuries. I was just monitoring the supernatural side of things to make sure you were stable.”

  None of what he said made any sense. They all seemed to be speaking in riddles. “I’ll leave you ladies to it. Mr. Mendlesen continues to require soothing.”

  I looked at Sophie who grinned at me. “It’s Fred,” she said. “He can’t seem to believe that it was all an illusion and he wasn’t actually injured.”

  “What?”

  Jacqueline reached out and patted my arm. Today she wore a white blouse and a thin pencil skirt. I remembered the golden circlet around her head during the trials. It reminded me that for all their apparent humanity, these weren’t humans.

  “You performed very well in the final trial.”

  Again my mouth opened but nothing came out. “You can rest assured that your grandmother was never in any danger. Nor were any of you. If you were, we would have pulled you from the arena.”

  “The Fae who was crushed –”

  “Is perfectly fine. Though I should probably think about reassigning somebody other than Malachi to the first tests.” She shook her head but there was a fond smile on her lips. “He tends to push much more than the others.” I was not impressed.

  “You’re saying that all of that was an illusion?”

  She nodded. I glanced at Sophie for confirmation. “I couldn’t believe it at first either,” she said. “But then they showed me the manticore again inside the arena.”

  I blew out a breath. “This is nothing like the exams at home.”

  “I should hope not.” Jacqueline leaned over. She brushed a strand of hair from my face. If my last principal had done that, I would have punched him in the face. But there was something so compellingly maternal about her that I wanted to lean into her hand.

  “The professors and I are very impressed with the calibre of students this year. Never before have so many chosen to remain and fight rather than fleeing.”

  “You trapped the people we love,” I said. “Of course we’d fight.”

  Her smile was soft. Then she pushed off the bed and pulled an envelope out of thin air. I wasn’t sure if I would ever get used to things just magically appearing like that. “Here is your class schedule for the remainder of the semester.”

  She continued to hold on to it even after I’d reached out and grabbed it. “Bear in mind that some of the subjects you’
ve been assigned are unusual. We believe it’s only fitting given your circumstances. If you have any queries, feel free to speak to Alex in my office. Or, given that he will be your mentor, you can take it up with my grandson.”

  My mouth was still gaping open long after she’d exited the huge room that I now saw must be an infirmary. There were rows of beds lining either side of the walls. Staff in medical clothing were tending to the few other patients.

  When Jacqueline had gone, Sophie made an unabashed squealing sound and jumped at me. “Ahh! Did you hear what she just said?” She tugged at my arm. “You’re going to be spending so much time with Kai!”

  I blinked at her. When her enthusiasm didn’t catch on, her smile dimmed a little. “Next time I see that smug bastard, I’m going to punch him in the face!”

  A chuckle floated in the air around us before a shimmering outline coalesced into the unmistakable form of the Nephilim who was fast becoming a thorn in my side.

  I made the leap before any of us knew what was happening. If he wasn’t so fast, and I wasn’t hampered by bed sheets, my fist might have had a chance of connecting with his face. Instead, my foot caught in a tangle of cloth. I pitched forward. Sophie tried to stop me from tumbling over the side of the bed but my elbow hit her in the temple. She cried out, and reeled back. I expected to face plant on the floor, but he reached out and grabbed hold of me around the waist, my chest pressed against the hard muscle of his.

  In the reflection of his too-green eyes, I saw the snarl on my face. “You sick bastard,” I snapped. I pushed against him, wanting to take another swipe but too distracted by the hum under my skin where our bodies touched.

  “Glad to see you’re not taking it lying down, Blue,” he snapped back. Though his voice was barbed, his arms were gentle as he settled me back down.