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

by Lan Chan

  “Cry me a river, ya big baby.”

  He’d said the same thing to me once after Sapphire House lost the trials in first year. He’d only said it because Obsidian House won. It felt good to throw it back in his face. His pale, ghostly white face that was beginning to twist into a grimace. That’s right, I thought. Get pissed at me. Anything other than this dead-eyed lethargy that seemed to be dragging us down to the bottom.

  “I thought things with wings were supposed to have hollow bones!” I grumbled. He was so friggen heavy. Everything was heavy. My arms. My legs. My eyelids.

  “Let’s just sleep, Max,” Kai said.

  “Get stuffed! If I’m going to sleep for eternity, it wouldn’t be with you!” But my eyes were closing too.

  “Sophie is coming soon.”

  A fireball exploded in my mind. My eyes snapped open, the protective rage burning away the tips of the cold. I was going to rescue him, and then I was going to strangle him for even thinking it. Threading my arm over his chest, I struggled to get us towards the shore. A hand held on to me. What the hell? One of the others was trying to keep me there. Was it possible to kill someone twice? Because it was going to happen.

  The thing was, if they could touch me, then I could touch them too. Shrugging off the hands in question, I started using the other bodies as floats. Bit by bit, I waddled to shore with Kai’s useless dead weight in my arms.

  The bloody bastard did absolutely nothing to help me. When I finally dragged him out, I dropped him harder than was necessary. He didn’t even notice. Typical. Hooking my fingers into the collar of his T-shirt, I pulled him as far away from the edge of the water as I could before my legs collapsed.

  I was kneeling and trying to take a breath when Azrael finally showed up. “Your timing isn’t great,” I said. I was too puffed and too pissed to care much about ceremony. Why did I still need to breathe after dying? Nothing made sense!

  “A great deal is occurring in the dimension,” he said, his cloak swaying around him. “The malachim who are saved need sanctum.”

  “You did a great job helping them the first time.”

  Logically, I knew I should try and be a bit more respectful. But seeing him here really hit home that I was dead. That Kai was dead. And soon, Sophie might be dead too.

  No.

  Azrael sensed where my thoughts were. “Come,” he said. “There’s no need to be upset. You played your part–”

  “Yeah, I’m not going anywhere.”

  He gave me a look then. The light rippled around him and my mind felt like it was cascading. Not quite sure how it happened, I found myself on my knees in front of him with my head bowed. “Be calm, Maximus. You will be safe and well now.”

  His hand came down on the back of my head. Absolutely nothing happened. He tapped me again. Still no reaction. After the third time, he was just hitting me really.

  “I don’t think it’s work–”

  A burning pain shot through my chest at the site where Lex had given me that messed-up tattoo. Speak of the Devil’s scion, she appeared in a ripple of sapphire light behind Azrael.

  The sight of her knocked me flat on my ass. Everything about her was the same. Same dark, wavy brown hair that was always a bit messy. Same sapphire-blue eyes that said she didn’t give a damn who you were if she wanted something. Same fake innocent smile that covered up the fact she’d done something she wasn’t supposed to do. And yet, everything was also different in subtle ways that hurt to see. She seemed...older. The light inside her no longer as bright.

  I swallowed hard, trying to get a grip on the lion clawing at my gut. I should have gone after her, the beast said.

  “Blue?” Kai sat up. Of course. I couldn’t get five seconds of effort pulling him out of the Sea of Souls, but he caught a whiff of her and suddenly Malachi bloody Pendragon was all ears. Served him right when she ignored him.

  Azrael turned to her. He pulled his cowl down and his face was all kinds of disapproving. “You did this?”

  Lex nodded. “Guilty.”

  “Why?”

  She strolled between us. “Felt like it.”

  “Alessia.”

  “Azrael.”

  He sighed. With me he’d been nothing but commanding. With Lex, he was stern but also malleable. “We’ve had this conversation before.”

  “Correction,” she said. “You talked at me before. The way I see it, I have too many daddies and none of them show up when it counts. So consider this my first act of rebellion.”

  She whipped around, grabbed the demon blade by the hilt, and pulled it out of my chest. The squelch of metal through flesh made a disconcerting sound. “Tell Chuck thanks for looking after this for me,” Lex said.

  “Alessia!” Azrael was no longer amused.

  She smiled for the first time, her mask giving way and the old Lex shining through. “A mating link, huh?” Her eyes flicked to the tattoo. “I wouldn’t have given Sophie up for anything less. Tell her I’m so proud of her.”

  “Come with us.” I made to grab her, but a ripple of black-and-silver magic encased her.

  “Not this time,” she said. And then she placed her hand on my chest. “Hold on tight now.”

  I grabbed Kai without thinking. “Blue!” he screamed. And then she spoke a single Angelical word that made my nose bleed and kicked us back through the dimensions.

  53

  Sophie

  The sound of Apollyon’s laughter was the only thing I heard above my own sobs. Max was still warm. How could he still be warm and not wake up?

  “Max,” I cried. “Please wake up. Please.”

  And all I could think of was that I could have told him so long ago how I felt. I could have let the mating link take its natural course and we would have had more time together. The malachim in my chest tried to comfort me with a stroke of her light but I was inconsolable.

  “Ah, Soph,” Charles said. I didn’t move. “Sophie!”

  “What?” I snapped. I hated him. More than I hated Apollyon. If he hadn’t stabbed Max with the demon blade, maybe there was a chance I could have reached him. Maybe –wait, where was the demon blade? When I finally allowed myself to catch his eye, Charles was sheet white.

  Apollyon stepped up to us. He reached out a hand as though to wipe up the tears on my cheeks. “There, there,” he said mockingly. Curling his fist around the front of Max’s shirt, Apollyon raised Max’s lifeless body into the air. I couldn’t breathe past my clogged up nostril. Every time my mouth opened to gasp, I thought I was going to throw up. Sound and colour no longer existed. Inside me, the mating link was crumbling. Desperate to try and hold on, I threw all of my magic at it only for the magic to brush up against nothing.

  Apollyon shook Max’s body gently, peering at it with curiosity. “It’s worthless without a soul,” he said. His head turned towards the malachim and held Max up like a prize. “Anyone want a meat suit?”

  Pink light flared around my palms. It bled into crimson and then threaded through with darkness. Apollyon angled his head down. “What are you going to do, Sophie darling?” he teased. My eye twitched. I could barely see or hear. I could no longer feel. But I would rip his essence from Raphael’s body if it was the last thing I ever did.

  Apollyon dangled Max’s body in front of me. “If you want him back,” he said, “Come and get him.”

  Thunder built in my ears until I heard them pop. At the same time, Max’s body convulsed. I screamed again. My first thought was that one of the necromancers had control of him. And then by some miracle, the mating link snapped taut and bright. Max’s arm shot out. He caught Raphael’s wrist and snapped it back. Apollyon dropped him.

  Flowing to his feet in a move that was definitely very shifter, Max hammered a punch into Raphael’s gut that pushed the seraphim back a couple of metres. “Think about touching her again,” Max said, voice so very filled with mortal rage. “I dare you.”

  I couldn’t reconcile what I was seeing. The pure joy that fluttered through m
e was laced with fear. How had this happened?

  Cassie’s scream almost ruptured my eardrums, but it was the sound of Kai’s voice, his real voice, deep and rumbling, that made the world stand still. “Get these damned chains off me!”

  It was a command that he himself ignored. Instead, he gritted his teeth and pushed out with a flood of angelfire that seared through the magic.

  Kai and Max met in the middle of the courtyard facing Apollyon. “There are demons in Seraphina again,” Max said, his tone conversational.

  Kai flexed his hand as though feeling it for the first time. His angel blade appeared in his palm, the blade bathed in an emerald green. “No staying behind this time,” he said.

  They would have charged at Apollyon if Raphael hadn’t let out a groan that was so in keeping with his persona.

  I crawled closer to Charles while the demons were distracted. The Ley sight slipped over me, and I saw it the moment the connection between Kai and Raphael solidified again. As soon as they made contact, all of the threads that had once fanned out from Raphael also snapped back into place.

  Charles smashed his fist into the earth as the demon that had caught me tried to come at us again. He leaped over me with renewed vigour. All around me, supernaturals shrugged off their apathy like they were coming out of hibernation. One by one, the Nephilim regained consciousness.

  Apollyon’s scream of rage and loss was a thing I would remember with glee for the rest of my life. Raphael mouthed a word. It must have been Angelical, because even though it was soundless, I heard a boom that rocked me in place. The demon tore from his body. Kai was about to stab it with his angel blade when Max whipped out and snatched the prize.

  Lightning in alternating gold, blue, and pink cracked across Max’s hands. Though Apollyon was incorporeal, Max somehow managed to hold him. Max brought his mouth up to Apollyon’s ear, a predator giving its prey their last rites.

  “Your mistake was coming after Sophie,” he said. And then he very slowly, methodically, ripped Apollyon to shreds.

  Apollyon’s screaming could be heard all the way to the other end of Sanctuary. It was why they came rushing at us, the Nephilim rising in the air. The looks on the faces of the Nephilim guards said they did not appreciate being knocked out.

  All Hell broke loose. Kai and Max stampeded through the demons, their faces lit with sickening joy as they unleashed violence. Kai appeared in front of one of the necromancers. He stabbed the man through the heart and teleported both of them away before appearing again alone.

  Sensing that the tide was turning, the other necromancers slipped through portals and disappeared. The demons ran back to Hell as well. Supernaturals followed close on their heels.

  The Nephilim wave came to a startled halt when they saw Kai floating in the air in front of them. He had a malachim by the throat, looking at it strangely. “This one doesn’t seem right,” Kai said. Of course. He was a healer at heart. He’d be able to see that some of them weren’t beyond saving.

  “Kai!” I screamed. “Can you hold them?”

  “With what?”

  I scratched at my cheek.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Giselle said. “Why do we have to do everything around here?”

  She erected a soul circle and Kai launched the malachim at it. Once inside, it was unable to get back out again. The ones that didn’t flee fast enough were caught by the other Nephilim for Kai’s inspection.

  When the battlefield was cleared, there were twelve malachim in the soul circle. I approached it gingerly, wondering how long it might take me to transmute all of them. As the slow trickle of my alchemy built back up, the malachim inside me lapped it up. She was almost free.

  All of it was pushed aside as Max appeared in front of me. “You bastard,” I hissed at him at the same time I wrapped my arms around his waist. “How could you leave me like that?”

  The spiral of emotions made me completely unreasonable. I wasn’t able to process it all at once. Tears of fear, of relief, of joy dampened his shirt.

  “Shhh,” he said, holding me close. “Don’t cry, Sophie darling. I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

  That was good, because right that very second, I promptly lost all my energy and fainted. The last thing I saw wasn’t Max’s face but that of the malachim who dusted a kiss to my forehead. See you soon, Sophie.

  I woke to the scent of Max all around me. His thigh was shoved between my legs, his arm a protective cage around me. Like the accomplished predator he was, Max knew it the second I was awake.

  “Hi,” he said in my ear.

  “Hey. What happened?”

  His hand came to rest on my bare stomach. I lifted the sheet, confirmed that I was buck naked, and squealed. “Like I said,” he rasped in my ear. “Clothing is pointless.”

  “You’re a bloody creep!”

  But he stroked his hand up over my ribs and down to my lower back. Surely I could be forgiven for the moaning a little.

  “The malachim sucked all of your energy. I’m this close to telling Kai to just end them all.”

  I swatted at him. “I’ll help them when I’m a bit better.”

  A bit better turned out to take too long for Max’s liking. Despite the fact that Kai had effectively come back to life after six months, Max dragged him home the next day and presented him to me like a prize.

  “Heal her,” Max said.

  “Do I look like a submissive to you?” Kai snapped back.

  I left the living room for a minute to talk to Jeremiah and some of the mages who were supervising the rebuild of the kitchen and came back to find them wrestling on the floor.

  Max had Kai in a choke hold and Kai was trying to brain Max with a shoe. You would never have been able to tell that Max had been alpha of the whole Reserve not long ago. It was like they turned into nine-year-olds in each other’s presence. As detrimental as it could be to the furniture, I was glad for them both. There was so much pressure in their lives. To have someone they could be completely unguarded with was rare. It did not excuse all the ruckus, though.

  “If you break this room too,” I told them, “you’re both going to regret it.”

  “He started it!” Kai said, attempting to teleport. He started it. The war cry of a man-child.

  Max grabbed him by the arm and did that strange magic disruption thing of his. “You’re just sooking because Lex didn’t talk to you!”

  Kai’s green eyes flashed murder. His jaw set hard and his aura thrummed with rage. When Max released him, he stormed out of the house and slammed the door.

  “Now you’ve gone and done it,” I told Max. He stretched into a languid pose on the ground.

  “He can’t go into a rage every time someone mentions her. He’ll go crazy if he doesn’t let it out.”

  He knew Kai better than I did, so I let it slide. “I don’t need to be healed anyway. My strength will eventually return.”

  “Eventually is too long.”

  “Well, Kai doesn’t look like he’s coming back anytime soon.”

  “Give it a second.”

  Ten of them passed. Max smirked. A few seconds later I heard the thumping of angry footsteps, and then the door opened again. “Come on,” Kai said to me. I flicked Max in the nose on my way out. He snapped his teeth at me and joined us a second later. I should have known he would never let me out of his sight for something like this.

  Kai teleported us to Seraphina. It was still a shock to my system to see the Nephilim city in disarray. The courtyard outside the ballrooms was still off limits, which meant the ballrooms themselves weren’t to be used.

  Patricia was not a happy camper. She tried to chew Kai’s ear off the moment we arrived. It was like she was hiding in the wings of the ballroom waiting for him to pop up. “We need some normalcy,” she said.

  “Trish,” Kai said, his nostrils flaring. “I’m going to say this once and once only. I don’t give a damn about a welcome-home party. I don’t give a damn about the Laurents wanting
to reassure people we’re on good terms after the bonding ceremony, and I sure as hell don’t give a damn that Chanelle isn’t speaking to me. So the next person who mentions any of it is going to find themselves without their tongue.”

  She huffed. Her mouth opened, but she saw the look in his eye and deflated. Then she stalked off muttering something about him being more fun while he was possessed.

  Max left it for about five seconds before he asked, “So, no welcome-home party then?”

  I stepped back because Kai was going to punch him for sure. Max’s grin was a mile wide.

  “You’re so funny, Maximus,” Kai snarled. “So, so funny.”

  He turned to me, his eyes flashing wickedly. “You’d never think of having a mating ceremony without Lex, would you?” he asked casually, knowing what my answer would be.

  “There would be no ceremony without her,” I said truthfully.

  The play of emotions over Max’s face was priceless. Kai threw the grin back at him. Max gave a frustrated roar, because there was no way he would make me have our mating ceremony without Lex there. Which would mean it would be put off indefinitely.

  He was all brooding unhappiness as we approached the soul circle. Raphael met us there. The change in him was drastic. I gulped and surreptitiously glanced from Kai to Raphael and back again. The seraphim turned to me, his blue eyes solemn. I saw in them a question. When I shook my head imperceptibly, Raphael smiled at me.

  No, I hadn’t told Kai that his death had a detrimental, maybe a fatal, effect on Raphael and therefore all the supernaturals. I knew then for certain that Lex was aware of it. It was no wonder she didn’t want to bond with him. Everything in me wanted to break down when I thought about all the pressure everyone had put on her to accept the bond, when she knew she couldn’t because of her inability to bear children. When we finally faced Lucifer, I was going to do something eternally painful to him. I wasn’t sure what it would be, but I would make it hurt. A lot.

  “They are restless,” Raphael said.