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

by Lan Chan

  On the other side next to the huge bay windows was a long bench set up the same way as the Potions lab at the Academy.

  Ignoring the fine smoky-quartz tabletop that would absorb bad energy if a spell went wrong, I approached the double doors set into the side wall. A gold plaque was bolted to the top of the door. My breath caught when I read the inscription: Sophie’s Ingredients Closet: Keep out at your own risk.

  I reached out gingerly and opened the door. My legs almost collapsed. This wasn’t a closet. It was a walk-in room bigger than our dorm room. Shelves and shelves lined the walls. All the ones on the left were filled with glass and metal jars that held all manner of potions ingredients. Below the shelf on the back wall, Max had slotted my ingredients chest into the spot under the first shelf. And on the right were empty spaces on the shelves. There was a white card sitting on the bench in front of it. My fingers trembled as I picked it up.

  For all the things you find when I take you wherever you want to go~Max.

  It was lucky the doorbell rang at that moment because I was in very real danger of breaking down in tears. And then, when I opened and door and my parents stood there beaming, the floodgates opened.

  43

  A week later, I still hadn’t heard a thing from Max. But the Reserve was now awash with new guards from other factions of the supernatural world. Mages and sorceresses from Ravenhall worked tirelessly to reset the blood barriers. And I had it on good authority that the guards were training day and night.

  “Dorian is a slavedriver,” Charles grumbled one evening in the conference field.

  “You’re telling me!” Luther whined. “The First Order isn’t any better.”

  He did an impression of Basil’s accent that was frighteningly accurate. “Are you fighting demons or having high-tea with the queen?” he mimicked. “What the hell is high-tea? What queen? I don’t know what he’s talking about half the time!”

  I saw Basil had spent his exile productively.

  In the sentiments of the civilians, I was back to neutral territory again. On the one hand, I had fought with them when it mattered. On the other, I was holding out on a mating link.

  When I went to visit Laila at Yolanda’s request, I found myself at the business end of an interrogation from Gwen and Noah.

  “What are you doing here?” Gwen asked when I pulled up short in front of her.

  “Visiting a friend.”

  “What’s in the bag?” Noah wanted to know.

  I frowned. “Did you hit your head too hard in the fight? Can’t you smell what’s in here?” I pointed to the satchel slung over my torso which was full of cookies, madeleines, and health elixir.

  “It could be anything.” He said it to my chin. Everybody was talking to any spot on my face except my eyes.

  “Cut it out!” I stomped my foot. “You can make eye contact!”

  “Until you decide your place, we don’t know where you fit in the hierarchy.”

  “I fit where I’ve always fit!”

  “Okay,” Gwen said, with no conviction in her voice.

  I tried to take a step forward. They barred my way. I breathed through my nose and slipped into my meditation once more. “Yolanda asked me to come,” I said. “So unless you want to take it up with her, get out of my way.”

  They exchanged a glance. “You’re not staying,” Noah said. “This isn’t your house.”

  I channelled Diana and elbowed him in the gut. “I’m not running away, so stop following me!” I turned my back on them. As if I would leave that ingredients closet. I’d kick Max out on his butt if it came to it.

  The pressure did not stop there. It came at me from all sides. The civilians took every opportunity to remind me that the Reserve was tensely waiting for me to make up my mind. I pushed it all aside as I stepped into Laila’s house. She hugged me close, her smile softened with grief. I passed the satchel to her and tiptoed to the living room where the pups and cubs were being watched while Betty was getting Basil’s mansion in order so she could open up shop again.

  The play was sedate. As was the atmosphere. I could hardly take in a breath without breaking down. I passed Betty in the hallway. She hugged me to her side and pressed her forehead to the wall. “I can’t stand it,” she said. “Poor baby. You know I don’t condone violence, but I wished I had been there when Max ripped that woman apart.”

  Her head turned towards the master bedroom where Mark sat huddled in the bed with his back to the wall. His attention was a million miles away. I sniffed. They hadn’t had a mating link, but Cheyenne’s loss was an unbearable pain, nonetheless.

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath before forcing my feet to move. The kids scampered aside as I approached the little ball of fur slumped in the centre of their circle. Edward hadn’t shifted back to his human form. He seemed trapped inside a nightmare of his own making. Probably reliving the moment when Cheyenne was killed in front of him. I knew I had been. The only thing that saved me from the same fate when I woke screaming and covered in sweat was the comforting beat of the mating link.

  Unsure how I could really help, and feeling like this was all my fault, I knelt down in front of Edward and scooped him up in my arms. He didn’t react. His body was cold like he was giving up on life.

  “His link to the pack is fragile,” Yolanda had told me. “We can hold on to Mark, but Edward is still too young to understand.”

  Tired of grief and anguish, I wracked my brain for a way to help. The biggest loss I’d had in my short lifetime was Lex. At first, I survived it because of Basil, Betty, and Andrei. And then I returned to the Reserve and took comfort from the shared experiences of those who were also grieving. If Edward was cutting himself off from the pack link, he would be isolated and feeling so alone. Carrying the dead weight in my arms, I walked quietly to the master bedroom.

  Mark didn’t stir. His yellow eyes cast a sickly shadow over his pale skin. The curtains were drawn, and the room was steeped in the sour taste of grief. I understood the apathy. That first month, all I wanted to do was curl up in a ball and sleep. I wanted to forget the world was turning and lose myself in mindlessness. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the luxury. At the time, I had resented the burden that I felt had been given to me unfairly. But as time went on, I realised it was a blessing.

  I just wasn’t sure it would work in this instance. Everybody grieved differently. If he were single, I would have just left Mark alone to his own devices for a while. But he wasn’t. So I walked over to the window and drew the curtains back to let in the morning light. Given that he didn’t move, I assumed he was okay with it. Next, I pushed open the shutters so that there was some fresh air circulating. An unusual berry, cinnamon, and apple scent floated in on the breeze. I smiled inwardly. The flowers Lex had created for me were blooming.

  “Mark,” I said. He didn’t react. “Edward needs you right now. I know it’s hard, but can you please snap out of it for a bit?”

  He literally did not move a muscle. His chest barely went up and down as he breathed. Frowning, I threw an invisibility circle around the room. Spectators crowded at the door. Being pack meant a lot of nosy buggers always up in your business.

  They had grumbled when they turned up at the house Max built for me to snoop and I’d slammed the door in their faces. The last thing I needed was for Max to catch wind of the fact that I eased myself onto another man’s bed.

  What got me was that I was very aware of it. The mating link hissed inside me like it was made of static electricity. Goose bumps whispered over my skin. Were it not for Edward’s body curled in my lap, I would have leaped off the bed. Not wanting to risk too much contact, I settled Edward down in between Mark’s bent legs, grabbed his clammy hand, and placed it on his son’s back.

  Biting my lip, I dragged the Ley sight around me and sifted the layers of rosy-pink away until I could see the pack link web that was connected to Mark and Edward. The problem became evident. Caught in their own emotions, the pack had inadvertently r
eached out to Mark after Cheyenne died. But while Durin was still possessed and the Reserve was in danger, their connection had become a jumble of intertwining threads that looped around him like a noose. He was literally choking in their grief too.

  Conversely, the webbed links to Edward all seemed to have been severed. They hung floating in the aura around him like loose sails. The cauterised tips of the link were the same colour as Mark’s aura. It looked like when he’d noticed what was happening, Mark had removed his son from the pack link on purpose. Now they were both suffering.

  “Laila,” I asked, my eyes still steeped in the Ley sight, “can you please contact Yolanda on the mirror?”

  I heard a shuffling sound as Laila made the connection using the small round mirror beside the door. Laila filled Yolanda in, and then I was giving the alpha female of the pack an order without realising it.

  “Can you cut the connection to Mark, please?”

  “He’s unstable,” Yolanda said, “he might go rogue if we don’t hold him.”

  I waved a hand in a displaying gesture. “What do you think this is? Rogue and fugue. It’s different ends of the spectrum but both as detrimental. He needs to be reset.”

  “Do you want me to come?”

  I thought about it for a moment. “Yes, please.”

  There was a chance that when the connection ceased, Mark would fly into a fury and slit my throat. I wasn’t stupid enough not to accept backup. While I waited, I blinked myself back to normal vision and constructed the circle.

  Uncorking the bottles of elixir, I poured a few drops on my finger and smeared it over Edward’s nose. It twitched and my heart fluttered. There was still life in there. He just needed to be reached.

  Laila cleared her throat when I tried to get Mark to drink some elixir. This would definitely involve prolonged physical contact. Just as I was about to press my hand to his lips, Laila jumped into the room. “Maybe I should do that, love.”

  “Thanks.” I couldn’t pull my hand away fast enough. Thankfully, he was pretty suggestible, and Laila had a lot of experience forcing medication on reluctant patients.

  I couldn’t help smiling when I felt Yolanda’s aura when she arrived. It was back to being a fiery ball of red that branched off into a million vines. Each one denoted another member of the pack.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  “I think so.”

  She clasped my shoulder and stood by my side. Sinking back into the Ley dimension, I drew a circle around Mark and Edward. “Now.”

  Yolanda started severing links. I heard the gasps by the door when their connection to him was cut, but nobody made any sudden movements. With each thread that Yolanda removed, the ball of strings around Mark loosened. The moment a thread of red snaked through the yellow of his eyes, I snatched at the alchemy and transmuted the elixir in his blood into the soft scent of lilac and honey.

  Pushing away everything else, I thought of Cheyenne. Not in her final moments but at her happiest. She was always slightly harassed when dropping Edward off to be cared for while she ran liaison with the Fae. As a submissive, she wasn’t burdened by the dominance issues that made communication with the other species fraught with danger. Her smile was always brightest when she spoke of her son. She baked the worst-tasting cookies that had made more than one packmate sick, but she kept at it, nonetheless. Her spirit, so full of light and love, would live on in their memories.

  As the pack link threads were slowly whittled away, it revealed the darkness covering Mark in a layer of grief so thick, it was choking him. In their effort to keep him from going rogue, they were smothering him as well. With the threads disappearing, the grey layer dispelled slightly. He took a shuddering breath as though he’d only just remembered how.

  I flinched when his arms reached out, but he only stooped to pick up Edward. Holding the little cub close to his chest, Mark began to speak to him in a guttural rasp that was filled with both sadness and overwhelming love.

  “Mummy loves you, Ed,” he choked. “She loved you so much she died to protect you. That would have made her happy. We’ll remember her happy, baby. Even if we didn’t get to spend enough time with her.”

  Edward gave a shuddering little cry of anguish. And then his fur split and snapped, melting away to reveal the little boy whose whole body crumpled in sobs. In the Ley sight, I saw Mark re-establishing his link to his son. And Yolanda pulling the remaining threads around Mark taut so that it wouldn’t strangle him.

  Slowly, I eased myself off the bed and left the little family to their healing.

  Outside, I sank into the flower border and let my head drop into my hands. “I didn’t realise you see the Ley sight in bonds of love,” Yolanda’s voice said beside me. I glanced up to find her crouched down and peering at me inquisitively.

  “I used to think it was worthless,” I said.

  “How much of the pack link can you see?”

  “All of it.”

  “And you still think the old gods are wrong?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Oh, I think you are, Sophie darling.”

  My eyes narrowed which only made her laugh before she stood up and walked away to shoo the kids back into the house. Out here, the scent of my flower was stronger than ever. The glaucous thick stem and leaves held up a bud that was tinged a deep crimson. One day soon it would burst open. I smiled thinking about when that happened.

  Knowing that I was stalling, I flicked the bud with my finger and let Mark’s words settle into my heart. Cheyenne had died defending her son. His conviction that she would have been grateful, happy even, to know that was how she died kept pinging around in my head. Cheyenne was a submissive, but when it came down to it, her love manifested in the same way as the dominant shifters.

  I’m not human, Max had said. Don’t forget that.

  And then finally, I allowed myself to imagine what it might be like to have him ripped away from me. The feeling of mortal terror threatened to unnerve me. But then I thought of little Edward who was suffering from actual grief and it hit me like a sledgehammer that I had about as much courage as a three-year-old.

  Don’t let them make you forget who you are.

  I realised then that I didn’t need outside influences to make me forget. It’d done it to myself more effectively. Lex’s disappearance had branded me in such a way that I was terrified to lose anyone else. And in doing so, I had forgotten everything about her besides the terrible prophecy that hung over her head.

  I’d pushed aside all the happiness so that I couldn’t be reminded that life was still worth living. I’d been touting it to the kids without really believing it. But I was done being scared. If this life was guaranteed to be short, I would grab at happiness for as long as I could hold it. Taking a huge breath, I forced myself to get up and face the destiny the old gods had placed in front of me.

  44

  Diana and I were walking to the portal field when I noticed we had a tail. Turning, I narrowed my eyes at Anastasia. When she got closer, I saw the scar angling out from her left collarbone to the base of her throat. A demon had gotten her good during the attack.

  “That looks like it hurts,” I said.

  She shrugged. “It looks worse than it is.”

  Yeah, right. I knew how deep a wound had to be for it to leave a permanent scar on a shifter. Leaning my head to the side, I took in her denim mini-skirt and sandals. She would turn heads in a potato sack, but she kept tugging at the skirt uncomfortably.

  “How long did it take to settle on that outfit?” I asked.

  She flashed me her canines. “I’m coming with you whether you like it or not, so you may as well deal with it.”

  I pointed at Diana. “I already have a guard. I don’t need or want you sniffing around, either.”

  Once my parents and the Sisterhood were released, there was no more need for them to be guarded. Having Diana around made me deliriously happy. Unfortunately, the alpha pair seemed to take delight in agitating me ev
en though I had done a good deed.

  “Durin’s orders,” Anastasia shrugged. “If you leave the Reserve, you have to be guarded by one of our own.”

  “Screw that.”

  “Oh, just let her come,” Diana said. “Just make sure you stay downwind.” This last part was directed at Anastasia.

  I flashed Diana my deadliest glare. Through gritted teeth, I hissed at her. “I don’t want her around today.”

  I eyed Diana meaningfully. “Oh, you mean on account of how she kept sniffing around your mate even when he showed no signs of interest?” Diana said loudly. She pumped her brows at me.

  Anastasia’s jaw locked. “If you had told me about the mating link, I would have backed off.”

  I couldn’t deal with this right now. “It doesn’t matter. I’d rather not have you coming with us if you don’t mind.”

  “Do you seriously think the whole place hasn’t caught wind of what you’re doing?” Diana gave me a deadpan look that made the heat crawl up my neck and burn the tips of my ears. “That’s it,” I stomped. “I’m going on my own.”

  I marched towards the portal that was designated for Rivia. Diana casually strolled behind me. “Sure thing,” she said. “It’s a free portal system, though, so if we happen to show up, don’t be surprised.”

  Why had I thought it was a good idea to ask her along?