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

by Lan Chan

“You know you could have just teleported us right where we needed to be.”

  “Not everything is meant to be easy.”

  “Yeah right.” If I didn’t know any better, I’d think he was trying to show off.

  To prove my point, the next room we entered was full of pristine winged Nephilim. Some of them were in flight. The others simply floated on the marble floor with their wings held close to their backs. They were all in these weird flowing clothes like Michael and Raphael had worn. Some of them turned towards us. They smiled in recognition.

  “Malachi,” a young female said. She brushed past and clutched his hand. “It’s been a long time.” I tried to find a single blemish on her skin and came up empty. Stupid Nephilim.

  Kai just smiled at her and inched his head towards another small room. Inside, the walls were lined with portraits. I was going to make a crack about upgrading into this century but then I remembered supernaturals and technology didn’t mix. He led me to the left wall away from the door.

  “Look at them and tell me what you see.”

  What I saw were catwalk models. Every single one of them was undoubtedly a Nephilim. Whoever had painted the portraits was skilled beyond belief. They’d captured perfectly the essence that radiated from these beings. They were all of unnerving height. Their features were delicate and graceful. They were almost elfin but with a sense of agelessness.

  I was slowly making my way from the left to the right of the room when one face in particular caught my eye. The green eyes were a dead giveaway. As was the strong jaw and slightly upturned mouth. I didn’t need Kai to confirm it for me but I felt like I had to say something to cut the oppressiveness that had suddenly descended on the room.

  “Your dad?”

  In response, he reached out and placed a hand on the portrait. This was obviously one of those places where touching the goods didn’t get you kicked out. “What do you notice about them?”

  It didn’t take long for the shoe to drop. I turned to the wall behind me to confirm my suspicions. Now these were the Nephilim you heard about in the myths. They had been painted with their battle armour on, their gleaming broadswords on their backs, or in some cases, in their outstretched hands.

  “They’re not fighters,” I said, moving back to stand beside him. He was quiet for a second, his gaze resting on the portrait of the female beside his father. His fists balled and he dropped his forehead so that he was leaning against the wall.

  “No, they’re not.”

  He pointed to the picture of a little boy about ten or twelve. His outfit was almost identical to the sweats he had on right now. He just didn’t fill them out nearly so well. I could actually see some of Cassie in that cherubic face.

  I glanced back at the children in the portraits on the other wall and frowned. “They have to be on some kind of steroids,” I said.

  He shook his head, his focus still on the pictures of his dead family. “Every one of them is born that way. With one purpose.”

  “But you’re better than they are. I heard you beat them all in your trial.”

  “Only because I was angry. I wanted it more. And I wasn’t going to let something as trivial as my size get the better of me.” He turned to me then, his green eyes blazing. “So, what’ll it be, Blue? You wanna curl up into a ball and cry, or do you want to make sure nobody ever stabs you again?”

  “Both?”

  He screwed his face up at me. “This isn’t going to be some kind of picnic.”

  I gulped but nodded. If there was one thing I was used to, it was life not being a picnic.

  30

  I wished life could be like a movie montage where I could skip all of the training and just get to the part where I was a sword-wielding badass. But after two and a half months of training after class every weekday and sometimes on the weekend, I was still barely able to block Kai’s attacks. He wasn’t even using his broadsword. Just a crappy sword he got from the junior campus armoury.

  “You’re leaving your side open!” Kai barked at me. It was a familiar reprimand.

  “I’m not leaving it open! You keep blocking me!”

  We were in one of the Academy’s training rooms. The nymphs got sick of my cursing and Kai’s exasperated sighs a couple of weeks into our training sessions. Plus there were one or two incidences where I’d lost control of the weapon and it went flying into the long borders and sheared off the flowers. We were ostensibly kicked out after that.

  Since most of the blades were too long for my reach, I was practicing with sais. I could see the problem immediately, but Kai was running out of alternatives.

  Having to get in close to an opponent to strike was really the pits. It didn’t help that he was not only bigger and stronger, but he was fast too.

  But if I showed even a hint of giving up, I’d never hear the end of it. He came at me again, his sword arm behind his back, taunting me. I grit my teeth and sidestepped, thinking I would use his momentum to trip him up rather than go for a full-on attack. It might have worked too if the door hadn’t slammed open and distracted me at the last second. My attention flickered to the door. In one fell swoop, he kicked out and swept my legs from beneath me. I landed hard on the mat. Even though it was cushioned, the impact still jarred along my spine.

  The curse was on my tongue, but he came to stand over me, his eyes hard. I snapped my mouth closed.

  “You know what you did wrong, don’t you?” he said, holding out his arm. As much as I hated accepting the help to get up, I’d learned that biting off my nose to spite my face wasn’t a good way to learn or improve. I slotted my fingers into his and allowed him to yank me to my feet.

  It was meaningless for him, but the look on Sophie’s face where she waited for me by the door was priceless. “This totally sucks,” I said, throwing the sais onto the mat.

  “Don’t blame the weapons. You got careless.”

  “I’m trying the best I can!”

  “I didn’t say you weren’t.”

  This was the problem. We were wholly incapable of being in the same room without bickering. What annoyed me the most was that I wasn’t his only student anymore. He also did training sessions for some of the kids in the junior Academy. I’d watched them once when I was actually early for my classes. He didn’t lose patience with them even though Charles was clearly fooling around. But I stepped one hair out of line and he cracked it like it was a mortal sin. My stomach grumbled. It was the only thing that kept me from snapping at him.

  “Do not say a word,” I said to Sophie who by now was bursting with comments.

  She made a gesture as though she was zipping her lips but her eyes were way too expressive. Neither of us spoke as we made our way to the dining hall for dinner. Partly because she was still inflated with mirth but mostly because Kai was following behind us.

  As per usual procedure, he acted like he didn’t know me when we were in public. Sophie and Diana said it was because he couldn’t be seen showing preferential treatment towards me. I knew that was a crock. He was just being a massive jerk.

  As if he cared what anyone else thought of him.

  We were in the middle of the buffet line before Sophie couldn’t take it anymore. “I don’t know how you stand it!” she squealed.

  “Shhh.”

  “If he ever takes his shirt off, you’d better memorize that image so you can give me a detailed picture.”

  I ground my teeth. “For him to take his shirt off, it would have to mean that he’s breaking a sweat. That’s never going to happen because I am so bad at combat it isn’t even funny.”

  Just then the lines turned the corner. The rest of the Nephilim were ahead of us. Bradley was saying something to Adam. The two vampire girls in front of me sighed. All I could think about was what Bradley had said to me during the demonstration for my trial. My circles were only good enough for defensiveness. If ever I were attacked, all the demon had to do was wait me out.

  When I said this to Sophie, she snorted. “Give you
rself a break, Lex. You’re getting a lot better than you think.”

  When we reached our table, Diana agreed with her. “I mean, at the start I had to totally hold back when we sparred. Now I use like sixty percent effort.” Roland and Trey thought this was hilarious.

  I was still glaring at them when Fred joined us. He sat down next to me and pressed a finger to the new bruise that decorated my left wrist. “Isla or Kai?”

  “Isla.”

  When Kai hit me, usually as a result of my own negligence, we ended up having an argument about whether he should heal me then and there. It was ridiculous. When Isla hit me, she skewered me with her eyes. I thought for sure she definitely wanted to do it again but couldn’t. Brigid came back to school after a month. Thankfully, they had both steered clear of me for the most part. I couldn’t help feeling like they were plotting something, because every time I looked up, they were whispering to each other.

  Fred made a sympathetic face. I noticed for the first time that he wasn’t as nervous as he had been before. He’d gotten a new roommate about two months back. Ever since then, the hazing from the other boys seemed to have stopped.

  With my additional tutoring, his circle work was coming in leaps and bounds. He was even using his light magic. It was like he was a different person. “Have you guys seen the flyers about the dance?” Fred said.

  I gagged, but the rest of them seemed excited. I raised a brow at Sasha. “You too?”

  He lifted the carton of O- blood and sucked on the straw. His usually pale skin tended to blush when he fed. Today I thought it was a bit rosier than normal. “What? It’s nice to do something once in a while besides learning about all the doom and gloom that might befall us.”

  Trey laughed. “Also, he has the hots for one of the girls in our Dimension Integrations class.” Sasha growled and tried to reach for Trey across the table over Diana’s plate.

  “Will you guys quit it?” she said, swatting Sasha away.

  She looked at Sophie and me. “Do you guys want to go shopping for dresses?”

  “Yes!”

  “No.”

  “Too bad,” Sophie announced. “You’re coming.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “You don’t seem to understand the meaning of too bad.”

  “Come on, Blue,” Diana said. They’d taken to calling me by Kai’s nickname even though they knew it made me mad. “When was the last time we got to do something fun?”

  “I’ll have you know I’m going on a field trip next month with my junior class to Seraphina.”

  “That doesn’t count,” Sophie said.

  “Yes it does! There’s a candy store there where they literally make candy that doesn’t erode.”

  “You don’t even eat candy,” Sophie said. It was true. I had a preference for chocolate. Now that I had food choices, I was actually being picky. But the idea of an endless supply of sugar was too good for this former homeless girl to resist.

  Fred sighed. “I suppose the whole place is going to descend into a frenzy of asking people on dates,” he said. His eyes tracked to where Sophie sat. Subtlety was a skill he was still learning. Someone kicked me in the shin. I winced but turned it into a smile.

  “Anyway, I have to go and pick up some more books for Basil,” I said. “Wanna go to the library, Soph?”

  We were out of there so fast there were still smoke outlines of us. “Thanks,” she said, hooking her arm through mine.

  “Thank you for the bruise I’ll have tomorrow.”

  “Sorry. I just couldn’t think of any other way to get your attention.”

  “Poor Fred.”

  “You’re joking, right? You haven’t noticed how much he’s improved in the Arcane magic class. Some of the girls are starting to notice he’s kinda cute. He’ll have no problem finding a date.”

  “I have a feeling the date he wants doesn’t want him back.”

  She scowled. “He’s a friend. That’s it.”

  I held up my hands. “Okay, no need to bite my head off. I’m just saying, while you wait for Mr. Toothy and Growly to get his head straight, it might be nice to go with a friend.”

  I wanted to add that it would be good for her because I sure as heck wasn’t going. We arrived at the library. The list of books Basil asked me to pick up for him was extensive. I was about to hop on the staircase to the second floor when an alarm blared from the mirrors on the walls.

  “All students to the assembly hall immediately,” the mirror voice said. It repeated on a loop as the doors to all the exits flung open.

  Sophie grabbed me and we exited with the other students who had been in the library. I hadn’t realised we even had an assembly hall, but Sophie seemed to know where she was going. We managed to meet up with Fred and Diana just as I recognised that we were heading towards the junior campus.

  “Holy shit!” Diana said, pointing upwards. I looked to see what I thought was a line of multicoloured shooting stars. The Nephilim darted across the sky in such perfect unison that I didn’t realise what they were until they broke apart mid-air and flew in different directions.

  The ones with the bright golden light unfurled their wings and separated, hanging suspended at the periphery.

  “What are they doing?” I asked.

  “They’re guarding us,” Roland said, coming up beside me with Sasha and Trey. “Something’s gone wrong somewhere.”

  We hit the outskirts of the junior campus. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a blaze of green. Darkness had descended on us during dinner, but the shield of light around Kai seemed to push obstinately against the night. His wings speared out behind him and then retracted and disappeared as he hit the ground. His steps seemed rushed. A small body came hurtling towards him. I watched him drop to one knee as Cassie wrapped her arms around his neck. His lips moved and she nodded.

  She really was small. But I suppose next to him most people were. The urgent throb of his light dimmed, his aura seeming to calm now that he knew she was safe.

  In one of the buildings on the junior campus, the lights had been turned on to blinding. There were guards posted all around the perimeter, both on the ground and in the air. “When did we ever have an assembly here?” I asked Sophie.

  “We had one before you arrived,” she said. “I believe you were being locked up and interrogated at the time.”

  It seemed like a lifetime ago. The interior of the building we entered was nothing like the Gothic-style monolith that it appeared outside. We came in through the side entrance but other students were streaming through from all directions. At the front of the building was a stage and there were mirrors located on all four corners of the square room in the middle of each wall. On the back wall were five giant round clock faces that looked more like sundials. The hands on each were positioned in different quadrants. Each clock was a different colour. Red, silver, blue, green and black. Above each clock was a number counter.

  “What in the world are those?” I pointed to them.

  Sophie bit her lip, distracted by the scene around us. “They’re the House scoreboards.” Now that she’d told me, it seemed obvious. I winced at where the hand was pointed on Obsidian House’s dial. We were smack bang in the middle of the scoreboard. Knowing how competitive Kai was, I bet he loved that.

  We stumbled into the closest seats we could find which was about the middle of the room. I’d lost sight of Kai, but there was something comforting about knowing he was here somewhere. I clamped my mouth shut. I’d never tell him so. His ego was big enough as it was.

  With the addition of the students from the junior campus, I would estimate that there were about six or seven hundred students altogether. We were only one of four such Academies throughout the world. The supernaturals were a much smaller population than the humans. Because they were not meant to inhabit this world, supernaturals had trouble conceiving. They also kept their population low because one supernatural, depending on their strength, could have the destructive capability of a b
omb.

  From what I’d read, the population of the Hell dimension was far greater than even the humans. But I felt like that was merely speculation. Or something that had totally been blown out of proportion.

  Regardless, the younger kids were ushered to the middle aisles. A strategic move on behalf of the guards. The middle rows were the safest from any kind of attack. Once we were all inside, some of the guards remained with us while the doors were sealed. Around the room, the professors now stood to add to the protection.

  Peter and Thalia were just about the most nonthreatening people I had ever met. Herbology was my favourite class aside from Arcane Magic. Tonight they were sombre and exuded an air of gloom.

  “I don’t like this,” Diana said. “It doesn’t bode well that we couldn’t do this through a mirror bulletin.” She’d taken a seat in front of me. Sophie was to my left and Fred to my right. The other boys were in front next to Diana. The hairs on the back of my neck suddenly stood up. I could sense eyes watching me.

  Turning behind, I scanned the seats and found myself face to face with Brigid and Isla. I understood Brigid’s dislike of me even if I thought she was a lunatic. She seemed to have this unhealthy obsession with Kai. Maybe they’d dated and he’d broken up with her. Sophie didn’t seem to think so. But I didn’t understand Isla’s dislike for me at all. Sophie turned around and grunted.

  “Don’t worry about them.”

  “I just don’t get it,” I said for the hundredth time.

  “Sometimes there’s just nothing to get. Some people just hate you regardless of whether you’ve done something to them or not.”

  We’d had this discussion a number of times. So much so that Basil had tried to ban the topic. Until I could make sense of it, I just didn’t know whether I could let the topic go. I was saved from my own obsessing by Jacqueline.

  A hush fell over the assembly as she walked up to the lectern that had been set up in the middle of the stage. Professor Mortimer and Professor Eldridge kept pace a few steps behind her.

  She’d traded in her heels for a pair of boots that managed to be elegant despite their sturdiness. A fitted pair of cargo pants and a white shirt hugged her figure. I hoped I looked half that good when I was however old she was.