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

by Lan Chan

  “Do you know how to create blood chains?” Professor Mortimer asked. His lips were a thin line. Blood restraints were another big no-no in the supernatural community. Since blood transcended life, if somebody was shackled by blood and the magic user died, there was every possibility that the spell might never be broken.

  I tried very hard not to glance at Basil when I said, “I have a little bit of experience.”

  If Andrei had been here, he would have scoffed. Blood restraints were our primary method of questioning people once upon a time.

  “We can also try a draining,” Professor Suleiman said. “It might hold him off long enough for us to make a decision about how to proceed.”

  I picked at my nails. “What do we do if Apollyon just sics Kai on us?” I asked. “How do we fight Apollyon when he’s not in a corporeal body?”

  “That’s up to the Nephilim to figure out,” Professor Mortimer said. “We must stick with our task or we’ll never be ready. I suggest we spend some time going over the various tactics and spells we’ll need to use. And those of you who aren’t well versed in Angelical symbols needs to do so immediately.”

  By the time we broke for the evening, I was brain dead. I was following Basil’s lead back to the portals when the stunning galaxy of stars overhead began to shift in sickening swirls that made me dizzy.

  Looking down at my feet, I tried to stop my head from spinning. I was staring at a speck of russet brown on the ground when the night began to seep into daylight, even though it wasn’t yet midnight. Forcing myself to look up, I saw the sun was a dirty red in a sky tinted light brown.

  “What in the world?” Professor Mortimer said.

  The sound of trumpets alarmed in the air as Nephilim guards teleported into place all around us. The ground rocked beneath our feet as a singular entity with silvery wings sailed into the air. He wore the golden armour of the Nephilim, but the way the guards reacted made me think this wasn’t part of their emergency drill procedure.

  Nephilim guards teleported beside the being, their angel blades drawn. It wasn’t until the entity came to a screeching halt that a collective gasp went up in the air. Kai.

  My heart stopped dead in my chest. The thing about best-laid plans was that they always seemed to go to shit where the Hell dimension was concerned. So much for bringing the fight to them. Kai was here and he was possessed, but not by Apollyon. I knew that when the first sweep of my magic touched him and came away brimming with condensed white light. Malachim.

  The plan remained the same. Basil and Professor McKenna drew an enormous blood circle around us the size of a football field. It encompassed everything from the door of the ballroom to the small grassy landscaped area and the staircase beyond. Professors Mortimer and Suleiman sank down onto the ground and began to draw a summoning circle. I skirted around the edge of it and drew out the vial of Lex’s blood.

  “Why is he looking this way?” Giselle hissed. The Nephilim were now a dense cloud around Kai, their weapons drawn but not advancing.

  This was going to be a huge problem. Hurting Kai meant hurting themselves. He was the last of Raphael’s line. If they destroyed his body, Kai’s soul had nowhere to reside. “Just cut off his head already!” Giselle hissed.

  “G!” Matilda shouted from where the Evil Three were beginning to construct a soul circle. How in the world we were going to get him inside it was another consideration. Giselle snapped her teeth once and turned her back to focus on the task at hand.

  Done with the blood circle, Basil peered at the surrounding area, a frown etched over his features. “Why aren’t there more guards arriving?”

  He waved his orange-bathed hands in an attempt to open a portal inside the circle. The curse word that he spat was laughably human. Professor Mortimer attempted the same thing just in case. He yielded the same result.

  Hands shaking, I lay the vial of Lex’s blood on the ground for fear that I would crush it and lose our best resource.

  Up in the air, Kai hung suspended, his white eyes serene as though there was nothing in the world that could touch him. The question was, if he was here, then where was Apollyon?

  Over on the side of the circle closer to the field, Cordelia let out a sharp hiss. Sluggishly, I turned my head in time to see a cloaked figure appear in a puff of red smoke. Movement on my right revealed another figure. And another at our back. And another closer to the horde of Nephilim guards.

  “What the hell?” Winnie gasped.

  “The Four Horsemen,” Professor Mortimer said. “Lucifer’s most trusted acolytes.”

  “Necromancers,” Eugenia spat. “This is not good.”

  Every word of what they said made ice gather in my veins. Necromancers were adept blood-magic users. I thought of the blood wards that had been erected around Seraphina in order to protect them against the malachim.

  The futility of it slugged me so hard, I almost toppled over. How in the world were we going to fight against beings who had once been celestial? They might be twisted by the Hell dimension now but that didn’t mean they were weakened. Their destruction no longer wrought the breaking down of the dimensional barriers, but destroying them was still a problem.

  I glanced up to the sky. Up to Kai. He hung there like a terrible and beautiful painting. His wings spread out on either side of him. Just like in my dream, they weren’t the pristine white of his Nephilim wings but the silver-tipped ones. He was both Kai and not. His eyes narrowed at the Nephilim around him with no more than a second thought.

  There were almost a hundred Nephilim in the air, but their numbers weren’t increasing. The trumpets continued to sound but no more guards rose to the sky.

  “It’s now or never,” Eugenia said.

  Professor Mortimer nodded.

  Pushing everything else out of my mind, I was about to draw blood to start the exorcism when thunder clapped in the air. Not allowing it to distract me, I raised the knife. Behind me, the high-pitched scream of a child tore through the landscape. It was followed by a blinding flash of white light. My insides clenched as I recognised the spell being unleashed by the necromancers. The destroyed human soul fluttered through my chest and rocked me forward. That was when every high- and elemental-magic user around me fell to their knees.

  49

  “Basil!” I screamed as he toppled over.

  “What the hell is this?” Giselle snapped. I whirled around in time to see one of the necromancers drop the body of the human child on the ground like it was a ball. Giselle shouted something beside my ear, but it was eaten up by the sound of high magic eroding as the blood circle they had erected began to degrade. Around us, Nephilim plummeted from the sky. My relief that they didn’t have far to go was short-lived. The necromancers around the perimeter of the circle began to walk towards us.

  “Inside the soul circle!” Matilda shouted.

  There wasn’t enough room for all of them. Dread sank claws into my throat as I shot up and made an awful decision that left dozens of supernaturals unprotected. Dead weight was super heavy. It took both Harlow and me to drag Basil within the confines of the soul circle. The Sisterhood took pains to expand the circle but there literally were only five of them.

  There was too much happening around me. Alison gave a pitiful whine as the necromancers inched closer. They were unhurried.

  Winnie gasped where she was trying to recon the field. I turned to where her attention was held and felt the strength leave my body. The beautiful mosaic brickwork of the Seraphina square was collapsing in on itself. The blue, white, and gold tiles that depicted scenes from their history cracked in a million places. The ground beneath it began to sink as decomposed fingers pushed through the dirt and clawed their way up from magical graves. Undead.

  As I watched, they dragged themselves from the ground and stared about them with unseeing eyes. The speed with which they were birthed from the ground was unnerving. More and more of them spat out, as though their numbers were unlimited. That tended to be the case with u
ndead. The stronger the necromancer, the more dead they could raise. Looking into the shadow-covered face of the closest necromancer, I didn’t doubt his strength.

  “What do we do?” Harlow asked. Out of misguided instinct, the Sisterhood crouched down like they were hiding, despite the fact that the soul circle was transparent and shimmering in translucent white.

  “We need to take him out,” Giselle said. She inclined her head towards Kai.

  Matilda raised her face to the sky. “And then what? Even if we succeed, he becomes a killing machine, and we have no way to get him in here.” Her head swivelled. “And then we’ll be left at the mercy of these monsters.”

  To be fair, we were already pretty much at the mercy of these monsters. The sound of the trumpets was starting to grate on my nerves. Behind the wall of undead, there were now Nephilim guards rising in the sky. I squinted. No, not just guards. While some of them were in battle armour, the rest were in civilian clothing.

  A stone lodged in my throat. My thoughts harkened back to the Reserve when all of the submissives had to rally and fight. There were only Nephilim in the air, which meant that no portals could be opened up anywhere else inside Seraphina either.

  Giselle swore with such vile hatred that it made me flinch. “These monster bastards,” she said. “They keep dragging us into this and then leaving us high and dry. I’m going to enjoy killing them.”

  It was a futile attempt to lash out in the face of absolute defeat. The soul circle would remain intact for a time. They were stronger than arcane circles. But what about the supernaturals we’d had to leave outside. What about those Nephilim in the air? What about the Nephilim in the rest of the city?

  My heart bled for all of them. And for myself. And for Lex who had done everything she could to protect us in the only way she knew how. Giselle’s hand drew into a fist. She smashed it onto the brick and turned to Matilda.

  “Take my soul,” she said.

  Matilda blanched. “What?”

  “Unstitch me. When my soul goes off, you can make a break for it.”

  Winnie really wailed this time.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, G!” Matilda snapped. She turned her head to show she wasn’t even going to consider it.

  Giselle grunted. “How else are we going to get out of this?”

  My gaze swept over Giselle. Something Lex had told me once settled in my mind. That while Giselle was formidable because of her spirit in general, Matilda’s soul was actually the stronger one. Cold settled over my mind.

  While they were arguing, I grabbed hold of the knife and sliced my palm open. Matilda’s face was screwed up in distaste. The Evil Three were distracted by the oncoming march of the acolytes, and Giselle was trying to shake some sense into her friends. Nobody noticed me pulling my arm back until the knife bit into Matilda’s wrist and I jerked it.

  She screamed. I wasn’t sure if it was from shock or pain.

  Blood spurted from her wrist and splattered my face where I was bent over. A hand clamped on my shoulder as the Evil Three screamed in sympathetic pain.

  “You little bitch!” Giselle snarled in my ear, but the look on my face said I would take no shit right now. My eyes were already half closed as I drew the blood circle in front of me and in my thoughts. And then, Giselle shoved her own wrist in front of my face. Reluctantly, so did the Evil Three. Matilda’s bleeding wrist laid out in front of me, her teeth gritting in pain.

  She is so ridiculously human, I heard Lex spit in my head.

  Tears pricked my eyes as I glanced inward. My soul was already beginning to discolour. Pushing all of it aside, I trickled Lex’s blood onto the circle and set the alchemy free. It whipped out with unrepentant glee, a sickening happiness, as though a darker side of it had been let off a leash. In my mind, I heard a lion growl in distaste. Against the blinking golden thread of the mating link, my soul felt stained and dirty. For the first time, I realised how much I hated the blood alchemy. It gave me strength, but at the same time, it sullied my soul.

  Don’t let them make you forget who you are. I heard Max’s deep voice in my ear telling me that I was strong for all of the ways that had nothing to do with this corrupt power.

  As the alchemy ate up the essence leaking out of Matilda and lapped at Lex’s blood, I knew I was done. If we got out of this, I was done with blood and death.

  But that seemed to be all that was in front of me at the moment.

  Cutting deeper into my palm with the knife, I gathered all of that magic up into a spear of pink so dense, the Evil Three staggered backward.

  Overhead, I heard an unnatural thing bellow. “Now!” Giselle shouted. “He’s noticed what you’re doing.”

  He could notice all he wanted. When I pulled the Ley sight around me, Kai was an orb of darkness encasing a white light that was shooting straight for me. The necromancers raised their arms. The members of the Sisterhood who weren’t bleeding out shoved the last of their strength into the circle.

  And I breathed out the word of light. Takhalah: Remove. I threw the blood spear at Kai. It sliced through the soul circle and sailed through the air. The spear itself was just a physical manifestation of my power. My intent was locked on the malachim inside Kai’s body. The inevitable impact was always going to happen.

  A part of me was grateful that Apollyon wasn’t the one inhabiting Kai at the moment. He would have been much harder to exorcise. The moment the alchemic spear collided with Kai, his trajectory came to an abrupt halt.

  Gritting my teeth, I shoved the magic deeper into Kai’s chest. Around the site of the wound, I felt the Sisterhood latch on to the malachim soul with their own bone magic.

  “Now!” Giselle shouted again. As one, we yanked. With a sickening splitting sound like skin tearing, the malachim came away from Kai’s body.

  “Let go!” I screamed at the Sisterhood. They withdrew at once. Pain laced black tendrils around my mind. It shot through the back of my eyes. Somebody braced my body up, but it was in my soul where the true damage was being done. Knowing that I didn’t have much time, I tossed the malachim against the horde of undead. The blast of magic being released rocked the courtyard.

  Somebody threw themself over me as I crumbled onto the ground and covered my head with my hands. Over and over again the ground shook with the residue of the malachim being destroyed. I tasted blood at the back of my throat.

  My sight was a wash of pink and reds once more. The threads around my soul were unbinding. I was down to four, three, two...Too much. That small drop of blood from Lex coupled with the essence of another human soul was too much.

  I was unravelling.

  The mating link kicked in. It grabbed at the last thread of my soul and attempted to hold it in place. My whole body felt like it was disintegrating.

  As the shaking of the ground began to ease, the Sisterhood noticed that I wasn’t moving. “What’s wrong with her?” Winnie asked.

  “Her soul!” Matilda shouted. Her voice was laced with her own pain, but all of a sudden, I felt the five powerful forces thumping me in the chest. Invisible hands the colour of pearls latched onto where my soul tether was unbinding and dragged them back.

  “Hold it,” Matilda gasped. Before my very Ley sight, I watched with both horror and awe as the Sisterhood funnelled their magic into me and attempted to stitch my soul back into place. No, it wasn’t just an attempt. They were fusing their essences with mine, using it like a soul transfusion. A hiccup escaped me, and I wanted to weep because of the purity of their magic. Where mine destroyed souls, theirs pieced them back together.

  When it was done, my eyes peeled open to a world glistening in white gold. Inside, my soul was now intact. The mating link hummed along it, smoothing over any of the frayed edges.

  “Shit!” Giselle gasped. She tumbled onto her back. Matilda lay passed out while Harlow and Alison tried to staunch her bleeding. Winnie was throwing up at the edge of the circle.

  “Thank you,” I told them.

  “That wa
s a one-time deal,” Harlow said. Just as she uttered the words, the soul circle flickered.

  Giselle swore again. She forced herself into a sitting position. Her eyes were two cut pieces of glass. “I hate this world!” She pointed at the blood circle I’d made. “Can you keep this up?”

  I wasn’t sure. Looking inside me at the pool of alchemy, the situation was dire. But I still had my kitchen magic.

  “I guess I can set something on fire?” The look she gave me was murderous.

  Over where Kai had dropped to the ground, he was now doubled over. He spat blood and thumped himself on the temple. My throat became tight when the undead around him lurched back, as though he was giving off bad vibes.

  “Shit,” Harlow cried. “If the circle breaks....”

  There were too many answers to that question. Threats lurked all around us. My heart wanted to explode out of my chest when the necromancer to my left reached where the first body of the supernatural mage lay. I didn’t know him personally. But I’d seen him at one of the insane orgies Eugenia threw in their mansion at Ravenhall.

  Deviant though they were, Ravenhall had come to the defence of their world when it counted. And now, they were going to die for nothing.

  Too late. We were always too late.

  Something slugged me in the chest. My head snapped all around me, fearing that the circle had broken or one of the necromancers was attacking us. But all I saw was the exhausted Sisterhood. Another spear lanced through my chest.

  My back bent as I gasped.

  Looking inside, I watched as the mating link sparked like a live wire. The next time the thump occurred, I sank my consciousness into the link and heard the furious roar of a lion ready to kill.

  Max?

  Where are you? he screamed.

  I didn’t understand how I could hear him, but in that moment, I didn’t care. Surrendering to the link, I projected a mental image of the courtyard. Golden sparks appeared in the air around us. It was chased behind by midnight blue and pink.