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

by Lan Chan

  As the demon came into full view, the crowd rose to its feet and stomped. Magic swept through the arena, scraping its ill intent over my skin that was already so raw. The demon raised its head in the air. Its grey skin looked like bumpy sandpaper. Its forearms were longer than its legs, the powerful muscles dwarfing even its head. A flat brow plate sat on its forehead, and to the side, a pair of blackened horns protruded. At the base where they connected to the demon’s head, the horns were a light grey. It made me think that their original colour had been drenched in blood and blackened over time. The demon’s tail was serpentine. It curled around the thing in a protective circle. The same protective plating that was on its head also adorned its tail and back. Those too were covered in dried blood.

  Raising its head to the sky, the demon let forth a bellow that sounded nothing like anything I had ever heard before. It was both deep and high-pitched at the same time. The sound reminded me of the noise the elephants made, only this was followed by a stampede of rustling. As the noise sank into my mind, I was hit with a needle of fear that burrowed into my brain. Through it, I saw my own body lying crumpled in a pool of blood on the sand. I saw my dead eyes staring out at nothing, as the demon tore Noah from the pole beside me. It was projecting its thoughts on me.

  Gripping onto reality, I used the same trick I’d done to stop Agatha from invading my mind. Sunshine. The first blossom on the jacaranda tree outside the Academy dorms. Charles snoring softly in his sleep, the demon blade clutched in his hands. The rise and fall of Lizzie’s tiny chest while she slept after her ordeal. The blood-heating brush of Max’s gaze.

  Something popped in my psyche. The demon spat a wad of black sludge from its mouth as I threw off the last of its mind control. Gripping the dwarfs head in one hand and its body in the other, the demon wrenched and decapitated him.

  I screamed, my stomach lurching at the same time the crowd erupted in cheers and whistles. Behind my back, I heard the envious keening of the enslaved demons.

  Tossing its dwarf toy aside, the demon stomped its way towards Celeste. Her wings had now wilted against her back. Even in their semi-retracted form, they were a burst of warm colour compared to the sallow grey of the demon’s skin. It didn’t appear to appreciate that very much. Slicing out with its claws, the demon tried to grab Celeste. Unfortunately, my blood circle got in the way.

  It cleaved its claws against the circle, dragging a scream from me as darkness burst in the corner of my eyes. Knowing that an offensive attack was the only way I would ever win against a demon, I swallowed the screaming in my head and ran at it full pelt. Up close, its arm was about three times the width of my waist. The eternally irritating thing about demons and supernaturals was that bulk didn’t seem to hinder their speed a great deal. Professor Eldridge’s voice bellowed in my memory.

  She’d been shouting at me and Lex for fooling around. “You have two choices in a fight with a demon, ladies. Either you learn to run very quickly, or you attack first with everything you have in the hope that you can incapacitate it. And then you run like hell.”

  I had no option of running. Throwing everything I had into the protective blood circle around me, I ducked when the demon lashed out with its tail. The pointed tips slammed into the pole above James’s head. It sliced clean through the silver metal and came sweeping back for another round.

  Ignoring the way the crowd jeered, I dived for the spear still in the dwarf’s grip. Trying to fight back my revulsion, I grabbed the spear and ran. Without contemplating how much it would hurt, I sliced the palm of my hand over the sharpened tip of the iron spear.

  A whooshing sound made me flatten myself on the ground. I ate sand and rolled again as the demon’s tail whipped too close to my face. It played whack-a-mole with me until I dropped the spear because I could no longer afford to have my hands full.

  Stomping over, the demon gouged a hole in the ground where my body had been just a millisecond before.

  The muscles in my legs screamed as I forced myself upright. There was literally no cover. The only thing I had was the blood circles, and those were a pipedream, because I was bleeding profusely from the spear cut in my hand now. The scene in front of me wobbled.

  Once more the demon lashed out with its tail. I jumped. Not high enough. The tip of its tail clipped me in the side. That small contact sent me sprawling head over ass. My back smashed into the brick wall.

  The crowd’s laughter was a distant consideration.

  “Pathetic!” Agatha yelled. “What are you resisting for? Fight or die!”

  Seeing that it had backed me into a tight spot, the demon took its time herding me to where it wanted me. I had to give it to Agatha, I was pretty pathetic. When a whine tried to slip past my tongue, I bit down on it. I would probably die today, but by Gaia, I would do it with some dignity. Sort of.

  The demon grinned. At least that was what I figured it was doing. The two long ropes of hair on either side of its mouth lifted. Its mouth opened slightly, and a tongue the length of my arm slipped out.

  I felt the scrape of something unbearable against my mind again. It was like the leer of a hundred gross perverts at once. This time, the direction of the thoughts it pressed onto me were of a more sickening nature than my death. Before, I had just been a lowly, brown-fleshed creature that it would fillet for the fun of it. Now that it had scented the richness of my blood, it would revel in tormenting me in worse ways than death. The mating link boiled with rage, throwing itself wholeheartedly at the blood barrier.

  I flinched when the demon’s tail swept up, my arms and legs heavy with terror. Instead of coming at me again, the dexterous tail wound around the spear and lifted the tip up to the demon’s mouth. I sat paralysed as its tongue slid out and lapped at my blood.

  The demon projected its delight as the tang of my enriched blood hit its taste buds. I felt each slide of its suctioned tongue as though it had bent close and licked me from navel to neck. This time when the mating link bubbled its rage, my mind screamed with it.

  I waited a second for my blood to slide down the inside of its throat before I reached out and drew on my blood alchemy. Fire heated in my veins as I catalogued every cell of my blood inside the demon’s body. Forcing them to vibrate against each other, I transmuted the blood into liquid fire. Thinking of the light inside the embers of an everlasting flame, I matched the heat until I heard the demon begin to choke.

  Hotter and hotter, I felt the blood fire go from orange, to red, to a blue so deep it was almost black. I screamed at the same time the demon’s throat exploded. It splattered all over my face and chest, the charred scent forever burned in my brain.

  My legs gave way, and I sank onto the sand, gasping for breath. My head was spinning. Grabbing at my shirt, I cut off a piece of the hem with the knife to use to staunch the bleeding in my hand.

  Agatha stood up again. “How long to do you think you can stall? Nobody is coming for you this time.”

  She shot a beam of purple light at the portal. It tore asunder, opening the small portal into a hole the size of a domestic swimming pool. Gnashing came through from the other side.

  Scrounging around in the sand, I spotted the knife and picked it up. Holding the pitiful little knife in my non-bleeding hand, I turned to face the oncoming demons.

  28

  For some reason I had never really allowed myself to think of my own demise. With Lex around, I had focused all of my energy on worrying about her. Now that I was staring down the portal of my own death, I was completely unprepared. Not one but three demons dragged themselves through the portal. Two were the same kind of demon as the one that I had just killed. The third was a monstrous cross between a satyr and a bull. Its cloven legs were thicker than my torso. They led up into an uncovered groin that transitioned into the chest of a human male. From there, the tanned flesh turned into thick bovine hide as the head morphed into that of a black bull.

  All three of them lifted their noses into the air. I was bleeding out something fie
rce. After it had died, the demon I killed had voided its bowls. The stench that clung to the air along with the sulphuric stink of the fens made my stomach revolt.

  The problem was that demons had keen senses of smell too. While my human nose was just battered by an onslaught of smells, their noses seemed to be able to rifle through the scents until their heads turned in my direction.

  Any hope I’d had of hiding behind the splash of blood and guts of the previous demon died. I couldn’t think beyond the fear that kept slugging me in brutal waves. The knife rattled in my hands.

  Time. I needed time to think.

  That was unfortunate, because the demons launched straight at me once they realised it was my blood they tasted in the air. There was no more room for squeamishness. Sliding my bleeding hand into the mess of black demon blood, I directed a wave of blood magic into it and completed the blood circle.

  It closed just as the bull demon collided horns first with it. The blood circle thickened as I directed more blood magic into it until it became a ring of glowing pink. Gasping at the overexertion, I fell on my ass again.

  This was it. The extent of my blood magic. I was able to use demon blood like any other blood, but their essences were out of my reach. Their souls, such as they were, belonged to Lucifer. As a low-magic witch, I had no access to them.

  I sat there curled in a protective bubble of my arms and legs. A sitting duck as soon as the blood circle gave way.

  My world became the slash of scaled tails and the boom of horns against the circle. I could no longer hear the crowd above the overwrought thudding of my own heart in my ears. Again and again the demons bashed at the circle.

  I was so desperate that I sank my hand into the dead demon’s guts and shot the alchemy into it. Using all the force of will I could muster, I tried to transmute the demon’s essence into power. Absolutely nothing happened except for a strange tug that seemed to come from a million miles away. An awareness rose up, its senses suddenly alert. Almost like an eye opening in the distance.

  Gasping, I retracted the alchemy. It was just in time to hear the first part of the circle cracking. The bull demon ran headlong into the circle. I tried to throw more magic at it, but I was too weak. Instead of bouncing off, its horns pierced the circle.

  The sound of the crowd inhaling was so loud I heard it even through the circle. Sick of waiting for me to sacrifice one of the supernaturals to defend myself, they were now shouting at the demons to kill me.

  The bull demon latched on to the blood circle by sinking claws into it. The thing turned its head slowly. I felt the blunt, dark force of its own sinister magic grinding against the circle. Black dots appeared in my vision. I raised bloody hands and cupped my head in them as pain exploded inside my mind.

  The blood circle broke.

  Get up! The voice in my head wasn’t very compelling. Not when the pain was still cascading down my neck. Proving that I was good at following orders, I crawled out of the way as the bull demon came storming towards me.

  I made it a few metres before something snagged my left leg. Yelping, I kicked out with my free leg and slammed my foot against the bull demon’s head. It was like kicking a steel rod. Rivulets of pain snaked up my leg as the demon dragged me towards it, mouth open. Before it could chomp down, I whipped out with the knife and sliced it across its nostril. The thing bellowed. Green blood squirted from its wound and decorated my sneakers.

  It pushed itself up to standing and hauled my foot along with it. Blood dripped in a flowing river down its chest.

  The demon held me like a fish caught on the end of a line. It dangled me there as it swiped at the blood. The alchemy fluttered. I grabbed at all that I had left and sank it into the demon’s chest.

  I thought of the burn of the black toxic sludge the Sisterhood used to hurt the supernaturals. Tasting acid on my tongue, I forced the alchemy to transmute the demon’s blood into the corrosive burn of toxins. The demon screamed in a low timbre. Pain raked up its chest making it throw me wide.

  I went flying head over heels. Unable to see where I was headed, I smacked against the pole that Anastasia was chained to without being able to brace for impact. I took the brunt of it on my right rib. The hit stole the breath from my lungs. What came out of me was a pathetic wheezing sound.

  My ears rang and muffled the sound of the approaching demons and the crowd.

  And then, above it all, Noah screamed at me. “Sophie!” I recognised it for what it was: a distraction. As expected, the demons’ heads snapped back in his direction.

  They converged on him. The first swipe of a tail crushed the circle around him like an eggshell. Noah cried out as demon talons bit into his right side.

  Letting go of some of the magic that surrounded me, I tried to strengthen the barrier around him. Unfortunately, once the demons were in, it was impossible to create enough distance for another circle. Professor Mortimer had always said that it was easier to keep something out than to contain something. Arcane circles were fun like that.

  Noah groaned again. “Sophie,” he begged. “Do it. Use me!”

  For a second, I didn’t have the slightest clue what he was talking about. I could barely keep my head upright.

  “That’s right, Sophie,” Agatha encouraged me. “He’s sacrificing himself for you. Now that can’t be against your little moral code, can it?”

  I used Anastasia’s leg as a lever to pull myself up to sitting. The pounding in my brain was unbearable. Noah kept screaming at the demons, making sure to keep them focused on him. One of the demons with the long forearms latched its mouth around Noah’s ribs where he was bleeding. My brain became a jumble of terror. Instead of ripping out his torso, the demon bit down and its lips moved in a suction motion. It was drinking his blood. Bile and hatred sank its talons into my throat.

  “Sophie! Now!”

  I glanced down at the knife in my hands that were already soaked with blood. “Sophie!” The urgency, the terror in his voice had me glancing up. Our eyes met, and in them, I saw something that had nothing to do with the demons. His eyes were not yellow or red but a dark brown so punctured with fear that I imagined him as a little boy inside a sacrificial circle. Decades had passed since that night my great-grandfather took everything from him. He’d built a new life and forged a new identity from a nightmare that should have seen him destroyed. And now here he was right back at the start, facing death at the hands of a blood alchemist.

  Only this time, he was making a choice. I couldn’t even imagine possessing a fraction of that kind of strength. My whole body shook with unbridled fear.

  Don’t let them make you forget who you are, Lex had said.

  I found myself gazing up into the mirror, searching for hope because I had nothing left. Looking back at me was Jacqueline’s steely gaze. She’d been right from the start. We had all gotten so desperate that we’d allowed ourselves to be seduced by the power of the fens. I’d allowed myself to stupidly believe that I could circumvent the rules that governed who I was at my basic level: human.

  Jacqueline mouthed my name, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to hear her voice. The look in her eyes wasn’t rage or disappointment or despair. She was clear-eyed. Determined. At the last moment, she held up something in the palm of her hand. It was a frayed piece of black rope. No, it was the remnants of a necklace. The warped bits at intervals used to be knots that had decorated the necklace. Long ago, before Lex arrived at the Academy, before Lucifer became a threat once more, I had stood up to the Hell dimension and survived.

  I had been prepared to sacrifice myself for the Academy. My focus narrowed to the arena. Noah’s head fell to this side, his mouth open as pain lashed at him from where the demons were feasting. Picking up the knife, I allowed myself a second of indulgence.

  Glancing inwards, I brushed my soul against the mating link and wept for a future that might have been had things been different. The mating link tried to hold on to me, but I built up a barrier against it and plunged the knif
e into my chest.

  29

  At first, all I felt was the shock of seeing the knife’s blade sticking out of me. Then came the pain that made a white fog steal across my vision. As I doubled over, the scream I had been suppressing whipped out. It flew across the arena and ate up all the sound. With my dying wail in my ears, I scooped up the power that was slowly releasing from my soul. The pink light that gathered at my palms was more than I could contain. More than the essences of a dozen supernaturals at once.

  The sudden surge in power from my direction had the demons unlatching from Noah. They turned, their black eyes searching, and then—I directed the alchemy at them. It smashed out, tearing through them as I spoke not words of light but words of power. The only words my great-grandfather had passed on to me in his diary. Alaha Shalamah: may you be at rest.

  If rest meant utter annihilation. The flash was blinding. It ate up the world in a scorching fusion of pink and black as the demons were shredded to pieces.

  Lightning coursed through my limbs. I dropped the knife, keeling over onto my back as blood pooled around me. It became a struggle even to blink. I couldn’t take in enough air. All I could hear was my own struggle to gasp.

  There was no sound in the world. And then, a shadow crossed over my dying body. The hem of a red cloak swept across my cheek, covering part of my sight. Agatha appeared on my right. Hugh on my left.

  Her mouth twisted as she spoke something I couldn’t hear. Purple light fused around her fist. She shot a bolt into my chest. It felt like I was being electrocuted. My chest convulsed. She did it again. And again. Each time my body wracked with agony.