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

by Lan Chan

  40

  Kai unfurled his wings. He used them as a shield to block out the sun from around Desi. Evan crouched down and swore.

  “You’re afraid of heights?” I asked him.

  His face had turned green. Gwen had taken a few tentative steps towards the edge of the plateau. When she peered over, the hairs on the back of her neck rose. She retreated and collapsed onto the ground. Double crap.

  “Please tell me you’re not afraid of water.”

  “That isn’t water,” she spat. “It’s a bloody tidal river. There are rapids just below us. If we fall, we die.” She was naked and shaking. By now I’d learned that most shifters didn’t have any hang-ups about modesty. But I didn’t know where to look. Kai’s wings disappeared for a moment. He stripped off his T-shirt and tossed it to her. His shirt came halfway down her thighs. Now his chest was exposed. Was this better or worse?

  Isla couldn’t take her eyes off the hard muscles of his stomach. I crawled to the ledge. Gwen was right. White foam dashed against the sides of the mountain as the water below us tripped and fell over itself to rush by. The foam turned into a mist that obscured the shapes of the birds that circled around the cliff.

  “Triple threat,” I muttered. My eyes almost crossed looking down at the distance below. If we hit the water from this high, death was guaranteed.

  “We can’t die in these exams, right?” I asked. I thought of the Fae who had sort of been crushed by the manticore. She’s been whisked out of the trial.

  “We’re not supposed to die,” Kai said. “But accidents happen.”

  “How can accidents just happen?”

  “They can’t account for everything. In real life, nobody just magics things away.”

  “What happens if we forfeit?” Isla asked. Her jaw was set in a hard line. She could easily fly over to the other side of the rope bridge. But I could imagine her wondering what the consequences would be for her if she left us. For one, I’d definitely punch her again.

  “If we don’t finish, we fail the exam,” Kai said. His expression was grim. “We’re not failing.” He picked up Desi like she weighed nothing. His wings still covered her but she was growing weaker by the second. It really was insanely bright up here. The sun beat down on us mercilessly. There wasn’t a single cloud in the sky.

  Even I was getting hot. I thought about taking my hoodie off, but then I got close to the edge. The spray was freezing. We just couldn’t win.

  “I’ll go first,” Kai said. “Isla bring up the rear. Don’t let anyone fall.” There was an edge to his voice. An unspoken threat that if she didn’t obey, he would make her sorry. Neither Evan nor Gwen looked like they wanted to move. Kai didn’t wait for them. He held Desi with one arm and used his other to steady himself across the bridge. It swayed like crazy. I wasn’t all that thrilled to be doing this. Evan was practically white.

  I placed my hand on his arm. “We have to go,” I said. “The sooner we get started, the sooner it’ll be over.”

  “You think you can draw a circle that can stop me from falling?”

  “I’m not sure that’s how the circles work. How about you just close your eyes?”

  He allowed me to steer him towards the ropes. I could see Evan swallowing as he reached out to grip the coarse threads. His brow was sweaty. But he grit his teeth and made his legs move forward. I could see why Kai had taken him demon hunting. Even though terror was sloughing off him, Evan put one foot in front of the other.

  I followed behind him. For once in my life, I was so grateful to be small. My body weight barely displaced the ropes. Unlike Kai who was less than graceful.

  “Couldn’t you just fly us over?” I heard Evan say.

  There was a moment of silence. It was like Kai was weighing up the cost of answering. “I can’t fly,” Kai said.

  “What do you mean you can’t fly?”

  “I mean when I try to lift off, I can’t move.”

  Isla’s voice piped up from the back of the line. “He’s right,” she said. “I can’t fly either.”

  That seemed like a stupid rule to enforce. I supposed the point was that we had to get past the obstacle on our own. Except that Desi was pretty much out for the count. Kai was carrying her.

  Suddenly, I became very aware of the fact that there were shadows lurking in the mist around us. I had thought they were big birds. Maybe buzzards or vultures. I stopped moving forward for a second to listen to the sounds they were making.

  Their wings swooped but they weren’t chirping or calling out in any way. In fact, they were silent aside from the displaced air sliding against their wings.

  “Ummm,” I said, moving forward once more. “What’s with the birds?”

  “Keep going,” Kai said. I could almost feel his jaw clamping. Evan’s shoulders went taut in front of me. He too had caught on that something wasn’t quite right. He came to a stop. I shoved him in the back.

  “Evan,” I said. “You have to move.”

  He did the worst thing he could possibly do. He looked down. The knuckles of his right hand turned purple where he gripped the ropes. At that precise moment, something swooped down on us. I ducked and dragged Evan down with me. His body became petrified so that the bird thing smashed into his side.

  It wasn’t a bird. It was a winged creature with a hideous feminine head and chest. It opened its mouth and screamed. The sound disorientated me. I was barely able to keep myself upright. Evan pitched forward. I reached out and grabbed the back of his shirt.

  “Harpies!” Gwen screamed.

  The half-woman, half-bird creatures began to attack us. They somehow sensed that we had three weak links and tried to take them out. The ones around Kai were met swiftly with the tip of his blade. They regrouped their efforts towards the rest of us. Why the hell had I thought it would be a good idea not to come to this armed?

  A harpy dived behind me. Gwen inhaled and sank down as Isla struck out with her knife. She sliced the harpy in its bare breasts. Blood spattered Isla’s face. She grimaced. Evan made a retching sound.

  Our flailing was making the rope bridge sway. The movement caused Evan to become dizzy. In front of him, Kai was pulling way ahead. I knew he would double back once he got Desi to the other side. The problem was staying on the bridge until then.

  “Evan,” I yelled. “Keep going.”

  His muscles locked. He didn’t move another inch. The river below us roared.

  “Oh shit,” Isla said. “The water’s rising.”

  Why did she have to go and say that? As if we didn’t have enough problems! I was unarmed. We had two dead weights and we were being attacked. I thumped Evan on the back. Shadows swarmed above us as the harpies regrouped.

  “Throw some fire at them!” I screamed at Evan.

  He glanced down at his hands. They were holding onto the rope for dear life. There was no way he was going to let go. Right now he couldn’t throw anything. I inched forward and locked my arms around his waist.

  “I swear I won’t let you fall,” I said. It was maybe forty-percent of a lie. My body weight was much smaller than his. If we happened to topple, he would take me with him. But he didn’t know that. I was betting on him being too terrified to think straight. All he heard was the conviction in my voice.

  “Come on, Evan,” I said. “I haven’t left anyone behind before. I won’t let you fall.”

  Sweat dripped down his nose. I remembered the moment inside Nanna’s cell when he had appeared. He’d seemed so indomitable. At the moment he looked like a frightened twenty-year-old. I felt a wave of something soft flutter in my chest. He had to have been scared in the cell as well. But he’d gone with Kai nonetheless.

  Just like he let go of the ropes right now. I bit my tongue at the sign of trust. My arms winched around him. I twined my leg around the rope. I would not let him fall.

  The next time the harpies swooped, Evan shot a beam of blue light at them. The ball enclosed around the nearest harpy. It opened its mouth to scream but no
sound came out. The blue fire solidified. It dragged the harpy down to the water. The foam came up to meet it, engulfing the harpy in less than a second.

  I would have been happy except it only highlighted just how quickly the water was rising. Another harpy swooped behind us. Isla tried slicing at it with her knife again. But instead of ducking, the harpy allowed itself to be stabbed. It latched on to her outstretched hand and yanked. She was being pulled up.

  Isla screamed. She grabbed the rope with her ankles. Gwen was busy trying to climb up the side of the bridge to keep her feet from touching the water.

  I had to let go of Evan. Turning, I stepped onto Gwen’s back, using her as a stool. Seconds before Isla’s feet were ripped from the ropes, I snagged the hem of her jeans. My body weight was negligible. This tug of war was no competition.

  “Evan!” I screamed.

  Without me to hold on to him, Evan had gone back to his imitation of a statue. Crap! I couldn’t hold on much longer. The harpy pulled at Isla’s arm. She swatted at it but the thing wouldn’t be swayed. Something raked at the back of my neck. I cried out as another harpy clawed at me. When it tried to latch on, I reached out and punched it in the boob.

  It bared its black fangs at me. I elbowed it in the face. The momentary disorientation allowed Gwen to kick it away. She immediately went back to burying her head in her hands. The water was now lapping at our feet. The current was so strong that the entire bridge veered to the right.

  Isla gave a startled cry as the harpy holding on to her tried to poke her eyes out. My shoulder ached. I couldn’t hold on much longer.

  Something grabbed on to the hood of my jacket. I was hauled backward. I lost my grip on Isla. I lost my grip on the rope. The way the harpy dragged at my hood was choking me. Worse still, I was being pulled over the edge of the bridge. My body bowed. I flailed my legs in a desperate effort to find purchase. Nope.

  Seconds away from hitting the water, an arm lashed out and caught hold of my side. I was yanked back over onto the bridge. Kai shoved me into Evan and climbed over Gwen. He pulled Isla back down, slicing his blade into the harpy’s chest.

  “Get moving!” Kai screamed at us. I almost had a stroke at his tone but it had no effect on Evan. Kai looked at me. “Just go.”

  I didn’t think twice. Moving around Evan, I raced along the ropes, making sure I kept my head below the sides where the harpies had a harder time flying. The water was now up to my calf, making it hard to put my feet in the right place. I didn’t need to look back to know Kai had probably picked Evan up. I could hear Gwen’s laboured breath. The sob that escaped me when my foot hit a hard surface didn’t embarrass me one bit.

  I would have sunk down to my knees and kissed the ground if I didn’t have to keep moving to make space for the others. As much as I wanted to collapse, I turned around. Kai practically threw Evan at me. Evan’s weight made me topple. We landed on our asses next to a body. I almost screamed until I realised it was Desi. She was out cold. Kai had left her under the shade of a pine, but the blisters on her face were still weeping. Her skin was a mottle of sores and burns. They looked third-degree. Poor thing.

  Now that we were back on land, Evan was able to function. He took Gwen off Kai’s hands as I lay there panting. Kai crouched down beside Desi. Green light glowed from his hands.

  “Do you think you should be doing that?” Evan asked.

  “How else are we supposed to go on if I don’t heal her?”

  Evan glanced down at me. I sat up. I’d only just realised something.

  “If these exams are about overcoming our fears, then you’re the only one left,” Evan said. Everybody looked at Kai.

  “What are you afraid of, Malachi?” Gwen asked.

  For some inexplicable reason, Kai reached out and grabbed me. He pulled me close just as a light flashed. The precipice we sat on disappeared. In its place, a familiar forest emerged.

  “Why are we in the Fae forest?” Isla asked.

  Kai’s arms were like steel around my shoulders. Three figures suddenly dropped out of the sky. Two of them landed on their feet, their wings outspread. The other one landed on his back.

  Bradley looked around at us. His Fae companion sneered. Fred scampered to his feet. “What’s this, Mendlesen?” the Fae asked. “Why are you afraid of the Fae forest?”

  But Fred wasn’t listening. The second he spotted me, the blood drained from his face. In response, Kai gripped my hip.

  “Lex!” Fred said.

  We both saw the circles at the same time. I wasn’t sure if the others could see them. They were black circles of various sizes. Each one was stamped into the grass like the burns of a crop circle. The shapes inside of them were nothing like what I’d ever drawn. They were like nothing I’d read about inside my textbooks. Or what Nanna had taught me. There were signs and symbols that depicted what I could only describe as a sacrifice. Dead eyes and crosses. Blood and broken bones.

  “Do you see that?” I asked Kai.

  His face was set into a steely mask. “See what?”

  “Lex,” Fred said again. He had tears in his eyes.

  I grit my teeth. “It was you. All this time I’ve been helping you with your circles, and you’ve been using them for what?” I shoved out of Kai’s hold. Bending down, I placed my palms an inch away from the dead grass. Something about it tugged at the black depth of the pool of power within me.

  “Please,” Fred said. “I can explain.”

  “I don’t care! The voices I’ve been hearing, it was you all along, wasn’t it? You were summoning demons to help you with your schoolwork. But you couldn’t keep them contained because your circle work was so weak. Until I helped you.”

  Bradley and the Fae stepped back from their teammate. It was only then that I realised there were only three of them. Each team was supposed to consist of at least five members.

  “It wasn’t fair,” Fred said. He forgot that he was a strong contender now. In the face of scrutiny, he’d reverted back to the frightened boy I’d met that first day of our trials. “Everybody else was doing so well. I was never going to catch up without help. I just wanted to fit in.”

  Those words mirrored the beckoning of the demon I had been hearing. It wasn’t me the demon was speaking to. It was Fred.

  I thought of all the time I’d spent alone with him going over the circles. I thought of the stories he’d told me about how the other boys had bullied him. “Did the boys leave dead animals on your bed?” I seethed. “Or did something else do it?”

  Basil had told me that sometimes when a demon was summoned by a weak or inexperienced magic user, the demon began to taunt its oppressor. I could just imagine a demon leaving dead things for Fred.

  “All this time you let me believe I was going crazy.”

  The last of the defiant expression left his features. Beside me, Kai’s muscles stretch taut in fury. “You’ve been summoning demons on Academy land?”

  Fred took a step back. Kai drew up. The expansion of his wings feathered air into my face. His angel blade appeared in his other hand.

  Fred balked. He looked to his teammates, but Bradley had a corresponding ominous look in his eyes. “Demon summoning is prohibited,” Bradley said. “By penalty of expulsion.”

  That was it, I thought. That was Fred’s biggest fear. Getting caught. And the person who was most likely to catch him was me. He’d been using the Fae forest to conjure demons to help him learn magic. Was Brigid a part of this? He did say she helped him too.

  Kai took one menacing step towards Fred. The light mage made a circular motion with his fingers. Something pricked along my spine. I locked eyes on Fred at the same time a tearing erupted behind me.

  “What did you do?” I screamed. In that instant, a portal tore open in the space behind me. A deep chuckle that sounded like it was being pushed through hot coals boomed from the portal. I knew that voice. It was the bovine demon. Kai grabbed a hold of me. So did something else. A monstrous arm wrapped around my leg.


  “Alessia!” Evan said. He tried to throw a spell at the portal. I thought perhaps he was trying to close it. But whatever was on the other side was prepared.

  A light flashed. The others screamed. I was dragged into the portal. Kai refused to let go of me. I tried to kick out at my captor but its grip was immovable. Red and black light flashed in my periphery. The demon blade’s steel tip sliced past the end of my nose. It embedded into Kai’s ribs. I screamed as his knees bent. The demon yanked. In his weakened state, Kai lost his grip. The voice laughed again as the portal closed around me.

  41

  I landed inside a rocky cavern. This one wasn’t frosted with ice. Instead, it was littered with bones. Some of them were embedded into the dirt and rock. Others were strewn on the floor. Many of them were in a state of half-decomposition. I would have convinced myself they were animal bones if not for the skull I could see facing out towards me. It was like someone had burrowed into the base of a graveyard.

  The glowing red circles in the ceiling of the cavern reflected the circles on the surface. We were below the Fae forest. I was sure of it. Somehow, Fred’s meddling with dark magic had allowed the demons to transport a section of the Hell dimension into Earth. And his magic kept it hidden.

  My hoodie was still damp from the rain Isla produced. My teeth chattered. Just like in my nightmares, the cow demon knelt a couple of metres in front of me. Unlike in my nightmares, it wasn’t restrained by anything. In its right hand it held the demon blade, tip down, using it like a crutch. Kai’s blood coated the silver metal.

  I bit my lip and tried to move. My whole body ached. It was a monumental effort just to sit up. All of the energy seemed to have leached from me. Red light pulsed beneath me too. I was lying inside the barrier of another circle. I could feel the lines of it scorching my back.