Bloodline Alchemy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 6)

by Lan Chan

  Diana cocked her head to the side. “We know you can. But that doesn’t mean you have to. And besides, we miss you.”

  She caught me in a quick hug before disappearing through the portal as well. The problem now was that I was stuck with Noah through lunch until my final class. And to make it worse, I was starving. Even if they weren’t serving food in the dining hall anymore, somebody was definitely still preparing meals for the faculty and the infirmary staff.

  Knowing that there was no way my access to the dining hall kitchen was still valid, I snuck around the back of the building and bingo! Bruno was standing at the top of the steps to the cellar having a terse conversation with Peter about the quality of the latest crop of silverbeet.

  “How many times have I said to just use high magic?” Bruno lamented.

  “About as many times as I’ve said we would prefer not to,” Peter countered.

  Bruno grunted. He ducked inside, and I heard wooden boxes being dragged along the ground. “Preference isn’t really my concern right now. Nobody is really looking for a gourmet meal!”

  “Be that as it may, Thalia needs to conserve her strength and we don’t have the students to use as labour...”

  Ah-ha! I knew they did that on purpose. Feeling a wave of affection for both of them, I knocked on the side of the building. “Maybe you shouldn’t say any more in case you incriminate yourself,” I said.

  Bruno appeared again. Both men glanced at me. Their gazes flicked over to Noah looming in the near distance. Peter’s lined face split into a smile. “Hello, Sophie.”

  Bruno rolled his eyes at me. “You’d better not be here looking for a job. Or to help out in the kitchen.”

  “Uh, no. I think that would probably be a bad idea at the moment.”

  He huffed and shook his head. “It’s like history repeating itself, isn’t it? Though right now, I wonder if we should be considering injecting essences into the food.”

  Peter blanched. “Don’t even joke about that!”

  “Who’s joking?” Bruno groaned as he straightened. “Damned slow healing. How do you humans do it?”

  I cocked my head to the side. “We don’t. By your ages, we’d be dead three times over.”

  “Three times! Exactly how old do you think I am?”

  Oooh. Even I knew to steer away from that topic. Although Professor McKenna had let it slip once just how old Bruno was. Let’s just say he’d been alive when my great-grandfather was causing mayhem. Hoping to redirect his line of thought, I asked, “Is there any chance I can steal some ingredients? I didn’t realise the dining hall was closed and there’s no food at the Thompsons’.”

  An odd look passed between them. A mix between concern and...I wasn’t sure. Whatever it was, it seemed to make both of them suddenly reticent to keep eyes contact. “Maximus isn’t being...” Peter started to say but trailed off and coughed. It took me a second to catch on and then mortification washed over me.

  “No,” I said hastily. “And I don’t really want to talk about it.”

  In the end, I think Bruno agreed to hand over some kitchen scraps just to move us past that very uncomfortable topic. “May I use the kitchen in the garden?” I asked Peter.

  “Of course.” And then, “The garden could use a bit of tidying up too.”

  Right. You didn’t get anything for free in this world.

  Halfway to the kitchen garden, I was sick of having a stalker. Turning, I glared at Noah. “Listen. I know you love the idea of catching me out, but I don’t particularly enjoy having a wolf snapping at my heels. So either walk beside me like a normal person, or bugger off.”

  “I’m your guard,” he said evenly. “Not your friend.”

  “Yes, of course. We wouldn’t want to forget that distinction.” I tried another tactic. “Wouldn’t it be easier to catch me out if you’re in closer proximity?”

  He couldn’t argue with that. Though I had second thoughts almost immediately because having a silent shadow was worse when he was close. Especially when he preferred not to speak. That just meant I had to do double the talking.

  “Are you hungry?” Like a lot of people, when I was nervous, I tended to babble. I couldn’t think of anything dumber than asking a shifter if they were hungry. And yet, all I got was a blank stare.

  Rolling my eyes internally, I battered the chicken wings Bruno had graciously offloaded to me and went searching the kitchen garden for potatoes and salad leaves. My jaw dropped at the number of weeds that had popped up. Peter wasn’t kidding about the state of the place. My heart ached at the thought of the Academy in ruins.

  “Why are you crying?” Noah asked.

  “I’m not crying!”

  “You’re sniffing.”

  “It’s just allergies.”

  He watched me with a solemn expression. “You get allergies a lot.”

  “What are you, some kind of doctor?”

  Annoyed, I ripped butter oak lettuce leaves, rocket, and romaine from the overgrown gardens. I wanted to put something in his food just to mess with him. When I laid the deep-fried chicken, French fries, and salad on the small patio table, his eyes narrowed with suspicion.

  “Come off it,” I said. “You’ve been watching me this whole time. You would know if I poisoned the food.”

  “You could have done something magical.”

  I slammed my fist onto the table, making the cutlery rattle. “You are highly sensitive to magic,” I grated. Thanks to his early childhood trauma, Noah was a sensate. His nose could pick up even the slightest hint of magic. Which was why he knew about the blood barrier even though he didn’t know what it was.

  For the first time, the vein in his jaw clicked. “I’m not going to spend the rest of my life on eggshells around you,” I said. “I’m sorry about what happened to your pack. I’ve been sorry about it my whole life. I’ll probably be sorry until the day I die. But why me? I have a whole family that’s just as connected to him. Why am I the only one you’re torturing?”

  He leaned forward then, his tone unnervingly steady. “I think the question we should be asking is why you feel guilty even though you had nothing to do with it.”

  “Maybe because you make me feel guilty.”

  “How do I do that, Sophie? I’ve moved on with my life. I have a new pack. A new life.”

  He reached over my curled fist and picked up a wing. Watching him bite into it, chew and swallow, the bile on my tongue turned to ash. He’d moved on. So why hadn’t I?

  Because you’re just like him, that voice in my head said. And one day, you will break.

  Noah’s head whipped up all of a sudden, his dark eyes scanning my face. “What was that?”

  “What was what?”

  “I thought I heard something.”

  “That’s what tends to happen when you’re paranoid.”

  We ate in silence. Even though I’d hardly eaten for days, I picked at my food. Yet somehow there wasn’t a scrap of it left when it was time to leave. I took it as a small victory.

  Victorious was the last thing I felt as I made my way to the warded room where Magic Resistance was taught. “Why do this?” Noah asked. “You know she’s evil.”

  It figured that he’d pored over my timetable just as closely as I had. Aside from the Arcane Magic classes that I had with Agatha along with everyone else, I was also assigned to take one-on-one lessons with her. In hindsight, stomping out of the earlier class probably wasn’t the best idea.

  “Better the devil you know.”

  “That’s the stupidest saying humans have come up with. If they’d ever met any kind of devil, they would know there are none that are better.”

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s not supposed to be taken so literally.”

  “Why not put it plainly then?”

  I didn’t have all the time in the world to explain it to him. Especially when I walked into the classroom to find that Agatha wasn’t alone. At the sound of our footsteps, they both looked up. My breath caught. Agatha alwa
ys conjured up a primal sense of fear, but the man, he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Eyes so deep blue they were almost violet. His hair was like silk strands framing a face that was all rugged lines but still managed to be delicate. It was almost sickening to behold.

  Lex had this theory about supernatural beauty. If you punched it and it stayed the same, it was real. If not, it was probably a glamour. She did it once to a mage in Ravenhall after he made a joke about her and Kai during their big breakup.

  The mating link snapped and snarled. I felt something tight bursting just over my third eye. When I blinked, my vision cleared. The man’s face remained the same but the unbearable allure of it was gone. Looking closer, I could see a resemblance between him and Agatha. They must be related. I couldn’t tell how old he was, so he could have been her son for all I knew.

  Beside me, the coarse hairs on Noah’s forearms were standing straight up.

  “You might wish to tell your dog to stand down,” the man said. I reconsidered the punching thing.

  Stepping in front of Noah did very little to stop him advancing. Instead, he ended up kicking me in the shin. “Ow!”

  Noah grabbed my arm before I tripped. “Why did you do that?” he asked.

  “Because clearly I’m an idiot.” My ankle throbbed.

  The man laughed. “Amusing. Maybe this won’t be such a waste of time. I’m Hugh. Agatha’s trusty sidekick and overshadowed baby brother.”

  He held out his hand which neither Noah nor I accepted.

  “Enough of this,” Agatha snapped. “I assume you’re done with your hissy fit?”

  Still massaging my ankle, I shot her a dirty look. “I’ll be done just as soon as you’re done threatening my best friend.”

  “I see.” She came to stand in front of me. “Is that what set you off?”

  There was no way in hell we would ever understand each other. “Can we get this over with?”

  She crossed her arms. “Certainly. Are you ready to murder someone to ingest their power?”

  Noah was less of a hothead than the rest, but even he had a limit. The brutal snarl that ripped from his throat filled the room with a tense undercurrent.

  “If he can’t behave then he can’t stay,” Agatha said, her tone bored. She raised a hand and purple light gathered at her fingertips. To counteract it, I threw a circle around Noah. She blinked at me. “You think you can challenge me?”

  The aim wasn’t to challenge. It was to distract her for long enough that I could punch her in the face. Sorceresses weren’t known for their physical prowess. If her spell work was concentrated in another direction, then her physical body was exposed.

  “Noah,” I said. “Calm down, please.”

  The yellow eyes that stared back at me were still focusing correctly. That was good. I could work with that. “Is this what this class is supposed to be?” he said, teeth sharp and cutting into his bottom lip. “Training you to steal supernatural essence?”

  “Yes,” Agatha said. “No more tiptoeing around.”

  Hugh smothered a grin behind his hand as the rumble in Noah’s chest escalated. “What’s the problem?” I asked Noah. “You said yourself that I’m weak. That I wouldn’t be able to do it even if I wanted to.”

  He locked his gaze on me. The harsh lines of his face were so tight I was terrified the wolf was going to burst out of his skin. Sweat beaded against my brow. An immense pressure built behind my eyes as though somebody was crushing my brain in their grip. My discomfort was reflected back at me in Noah’s strained grimace. His bottom lip was actually quivering.

  It struck me then what was happening even though I didn’t understand how. I was playing a dangerous dominance game with a wolf who could write the book on childhood trauma. When the muscle in his arm bulged under my hand, the mating link snapped out and a spark of something jumped between our fingers. He broke the standoff, his eyes lowering to the floor.

  “Well,” Agatha said, “would you look at that? The girl just tamed a wolf.”

  I wasn’t so sure. “Noah?” I tugged at his arm.

  When he raised his head, his eyes were back to dark pools. Floating in them was disbelief. “You,” he gasped, unable to figure out why he’d backed down. “You’re not submissive.”

  “I’m not anything,” I said between big gulps. “I’m human.”

  “And isn’t that a shame?” Hugh drawled. “We’d have fewer problems if you were a sorceress.”

  Casting Noah a final, disconcerted look, I squared my shoulders. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Agatha grumbled. “Where is the source of your powers?”

  I tapped my foot on the floor. “The Earth.”

  “And what is this wretched dimension all about?”

  I scratched at my cheek. “Balance.”

  Hugh beamed. His violet eyes danced. “After you use your blood alchemy, how long does it take to recover?”

  I paused, my mouth hanging slightly open. How did they know? When the silence stretched too long for me to deny the truth, I shrugged. “It depends on the spell.”

  “I think we’re going to need a demonstration. You said you’re meant to be transmuting Alessia’s blood. How successful have you been?”

  Again, I clammed up. Agatha’s aura flashed magenta. “For someone who claims she wants to learn, you’re making it very difficult.”

  What could I say? It wasn’t me, it was them. When uncertain, the truth was the best defence. Even if a part of me cringed at the bluntness of my words. “No offense, but I don’t know you.”

  Hugh ambled closer to me. “What does that have to do anything? It was a simple question. How successful have you been at transmuting Alessia’s blood?”

  It wasn’t that simple. But their expectant faces were staring back at me. So I stripped all of the unnecessary peripheral issues and got down to the core of the issue. “My alchemy, even my blood alchemy, isn’t close to being strong enough.”

  “Have you tried taking someone else’s blood by force?” Hugh wanted to know.

  Trying my hardest not to glance in Noah’s direction, I said, “Yes.” Aggression suddenly slapped me in the back. Gripping the edge of the bleachers, I tried not to react to the painful stabbing in my side.

  “Did you actually go through with it?” Agatha ventured.

  “What do you mean?” I squeaked.

  She appeared right in front of me, her clawed nail tipping up my chin. “You tried to take blood forcefully,” she said. “But did you actually go through with it?”

  For some reason, I averted my gaze when I shook my head. Like it was shameful not to have the stomach to hurt somebody.

  “You’re aware that a blood sacrifice is the most powerful source of energy besides the destruction of a human soul, aren’t you?”

  I gritted my teeth and swiped her hand away. “Yes, I am aware of that.”

  “Your great-grandfather was so strong he was able to give himself the ability so shapeshift. He even prolonged his mortal lifespan.” She pierced me with a look so haunting, so hungry, I wanted to tuck my tail between my legs.

  “I don’t want to hurt people.”

  Hugh gave a snort. “This is going to be interesting then. Say a demon–”

  I cut him off. “I have no problems killing demons, but I can’t transmute their essence. I can only use their blood.”

  “What’s the distinction?”

  “If you don’t know the answer to that, I can’t help you.” Lex was the only one who could gather demon essence. Her power came from Lucifer. It was a curse I was glad not to be afflicted with.

  Agatha grew impatient. “Enough. Show me.”

  Blowing out a long breath, I took the vial of Lex’s blood out of my jacket pocket. There was only the slightest bit left. “How did you get it?” Hugh wanted to know.

  Strangely, he was one of the few people to ask. Everyone else had just assumed she’d given it to me. “She was sick at the end. Quite violently so. I collected i
t when she was asleep.”

  “So, she didn’t know?”

  I shook my head.

  “So it wasn’t a sacrifice of any kind?”

  I saw what he was getting at. A blood sacrifice involved a kind of unnatural magic that was harnessed through extreme, distressing emotions. Lex had no idea I’d collected her blood. Some of it I had used in the potion I made to keep her alive. None of it had been taken from her unwillingly. Which meant that it only contained a fraction of her strength. That was the frightening part. If I couldn’t even contain a drop of diluted power, how would I ever withstand the real thing?

  “Let’s get to it before she starts crying again,” Agatha said.

  Maybe I would have a little accident and blow her face off. Kneeling on the floor, I drew a magic circle to contain the inevitable explosion. “You might want to protect yourselves.”

  “I think we can manage,” Hugh smirked. Suit yourself.

  “Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Noah, can you please move to the far corner?” At first he didn’t budge. “Please.”

  After a long beat, he started walking. When he was as far away as possible, I opened the vial and placed a drop of Lex’s blood on the ground. The pool of alchemic magic inside me reacted to her blood like the awakening of a feral animal after hibernation. Even I didn’t know what I was in for.

  Rather than stay away as I’d cautioned, Agatha and Hugh came closer, magnetised by the pulsing power of Lex’s blood. “So little,” Hugh said. “But I can feel the heart of it.”

  Tired of giving them warnings, I engaged the alchemy flowing through my veins. Pink light pooled around my fingers. Where the blood blade might have appeared, I shaved off a tiny slice and it came away in a liquid drop. Combining the drop with Lex’s blood, I then grabbed at the little pool with my magic.

  As soon as the pink light touched the blood, sparks burst behind my eyelids. Gritting my teeth hard, I forced my magic to engulf Lex’s blood. From there, I sank my alchemy into that little drop, trying as I always did to imagine the essences becoming one. Thunder rolled in my ears. The ground beneath me shook and split. Cracks appeared in the cement. Pushing all of the destruction aside, I threaded my magic all around the little drop of blood. With an effort that made the dominance stare with Noah earlier look like a bare sneeze, I forced my will into Lex’s blood and commanded it to furnish me with its power.