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

  Bloodline Alchemy

  Bloodline Academy Book 6

  Lan Chan

  Copyright © 2021 by Lan Chan

  All rights reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, (electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

  All names, characters, groups and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and all opinions expressed by the characters, whose preferences and attitudes are entirely their own. Any similarities to real persons or groups, living or dead are coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Cover by Christian Bentulan

  Editing by Contagious Edits, Lorie Collins, and Tiffany Purdon

  Contents

  1. Lex

  2. Max

  3. Sophie

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  21. Max

  22. Sophie

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  33. Max

  34. Sophie

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  41. Max

  42. Sophie

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  52. Max

  53. Sophie

  54. Lex

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  1

  Lex

  Tomb raiding: in real life, it wasn’t about sexy midriff exposing outfits and cool gadgets. It was about cowering against a rocky outcrop and praying to a deity you didn’t believe in that the chimera lumbering behind you wouldn’t melt the skin off your face with its molten breath. Allowing my eyes to close for the briefest second, I swore black and blue that if I got out of this crumbling temple alive, I would never eat lamb again.

  “Alessia,” Cathy whined through the mirror pendant on my chest. “Thirty seconds until the portal skips.”

  Sucking in a breath, I bit my tongue to stop myself from cursing. What part of shut the hell up and don’t get me caught did this stupid excuse for a sorceress not understand? In a feat of utter desperation, I crossed my fingers and hoped like hell the chimera’s superhuman hearing hadn’t picked up her bulletin.

  As if luck had ever been on my side!

  Behind me, the chimera gave a soul-shuddering growl from its lion head. Thirty seconds was more than enough time for it to finish me off. What kind of sick deity thought it would be a good idea to fuse a lion, a sheep, and a snake together?

  “You must use the Angelical,” Cathy pressed.

  The chimera roared from both its lion and sheep heads. The rattle of its reptilian tail caused a shudder to creep through my chest and turn my bones into jelly.

  Cloven hooves stamped on the hard floor. The cavern filled with a flash of light so bright, I had to shield my face in the crook of my elbow. Flames erupted from the sheep’s mouth, colliding with the blue of my protection circle and causing a hot lance of pain to splinter down my spine.

  Twice more the beast spewed forth a cascade of fire. Its rage at being awoken by someone unworthy was evident in the way its four black eyes slitted as it tried to pinpoint my location. Its sight was obstructed by the plumes of smoke that wafted from the enchanted orbs Cathy had supplied before our mission. Fat lot of good they had done me. The only thing the supposedly paralysing concoction had been good for was impeding my vision and ticking the beast off.

  It sucked in a gargled breath that was too close to my right ear for comfort. If I didn’t make a move now, I was going to become human jerky. My muscles contracted as the rumble of lava breath bubbled in its throat.

  “Alessia!”

  One. Two. Jump!

  Pushing off the now scorching rock, I darted towards the opening on the chimera’s left where its wings were having trouble extending in the tiny space. Tiny was the only advantage I had.

  Flames sailed past my left cheek. Wincing, I pushed as much magic as I could into the circle and tried to scamper past. Even after so many years in the presence of supernatural beings, I was still not used to the reality of their incredible speed. My pathetic little legs managed to carry me about seven steps before the chimera’s tail whipped out and slammed into the rock face. Granite exploded. It clawed jagged lines into the rock, dissolving any illusions I had about coming away from this unscathed.

  Turning tail, I tried to slide underneath its belly. The light from the opening was no more than a muted charcoal amidst the oppressive darkness. Contorting its body, the chimera backtracked and thumped its left paw down directly in front of my path. In my periphery, its right paw pressed against the rock wall, hemming me in. Great. The flaring of its heat-moistened nostrils had all my panic buttons pushing.

  “Nice supernatural guard-doggy. I’m not going to hurt you.” Even I was snorting in my head at that one. “Let’s just stand still for a second and I’ll squeeze myself out and you can go back to sleep.”

  The lion’s top lip curled as it eyed the satchel at my hip. Uh oh. Gritting my teeth, I braced for the lick of flames that was sure to spew from the sheep’s head. My magic had just reinforced the circle when a flare of sludgy brown tendrils synonymous with Cathy’s magic shot out from behind the chimera and caught it mid-step. Not giving myself a second to reconsider, I dove for the opening just as the first flare of portal magic scraped across my skin.

  Corona-scorching orange light flashed. I landed on the hard, damp earth of the Cambodian jungle on the human side of the portal. Blinking, I cocooned my head in my arms and waited for the waves of magic to disperse.

  As the seconds ticked by, relief flooded through me. I’d failed the mission. Again. Trepidation followed like a stalker behind relief’s heels. Lucifer was going to be pissed.

  Light footsteps cushioned by the damp leaf litter made their way towards me. For a second, I brushed a sliver of hedge magic over the earth and felt its corresponding sweep of tenderness sinking into my bones. Life.

  It was such a welcome sensation after almost six months in the Hell dimension that my eyes filled with tears before I could temper my reaction.

  It made the hard note in Cathy’s voice all the more vicious. “You should have destroyed it.”

  Uncurling from my foetal position, I stood, swiped the tear from my cheek, and glared at her. Standing, we were about the same height. “The riddle said the beast must grant me access. That means we were supposed to tame it.
Not blast it off the face of the earth! If you hadn’t shouted, it wouldn’t have detected me in the first place!”

  Her unremarkable hazel eyes blinked with a distinct lack of sympathy. Behind her bulbous head, the noon sun blared. It cast her too-wide features in shadows that made her skin seem tight over her harsh bone structure.

  She lifted her chin so that she gained a fraction more height over me. “The master will be displeased.”

  Away from Rebecca’s calming influence, all of my charming personality traits came slithering back to life. Pouting, I balled my hands into fists and pressed them to my cheekbones, imitating sobs. “Boo hoo. Lucifer can jump up his own ass and die.”

  Throwing my shoulder between us, I was about to stalk away when she gripped my forearm. “I must tell him.”

  Unrepentant rage ignited in my chest. Months and months of emotion control training with Rebecca and I was still constantly on the verge of going postal. With inhuman self-control, I scraped my teeth over my tongue and dragged the Angelical from its tip. It would be so easy. Too easy to obliterate her with a single word. But then I would be no different than my psychotic creator. If there was one thing that stopped me dead in my tracks, it was becoming anything like him. “Do what you have to do.”

  It was big talk while we stood in the poised serenity of the jungle in the vicinity of Angkor Wat. As we trudged through the chill vastness of Lucifer’s throne room in the cathedral, my bravado began to morph into dread.

  In keeping with his celestial moniker, the Morning Star was draped languidly over his selenite-crystal throne. Today, his perfectly proportioned everything was dressed in the ceremonial attire of pre-dimension-collapse Fae royalty. The Mithril diadem perched on his head threw off lights that made my eyes water.

  Not a single being, from the demons constantly lined up around the arched doorway, to the supernatural inner circle, bought his placid act.

  Cathy made a beeline for him, her legs scurrying like the stick-insect she so perfectly resembled. Trying to maintain my composure, I didn’t allow myself to catch Rebecca’s eye as I stepped past her. Rebecca’s hands slipped behind her back.

  In spite of my promise not to give in to fear, thorns lodged in my throat. When I reached the edge of the steps leading to the dais, those spines turned into chainsaws.

  Retreating into my training, I rifled through all the reasons why I would not let subservient instincts get the better of me. Kai would probably get a kick out of knowing that when fear had me in a choke-hold, my thoughts immediately conjured up his arrogant smirk. It challenged me to straighten my spine against the quicksand of terror that tried to drag me to an abrupt halt.

  My heartbeat slowed.

  Flowing up to his feet, Lucifer stood for a moment in the glory of the red light filtering through the stained-glass windows. I suppressed a groan. Around me, the denizens of the Hell dimension took to their knees until his royal bastardness and I were the only ones standing.

  Cathy became a human puddle, prostrating herself on the marble floor. She quivered but didn’t make a peep as Lucifer sidled down the staircase, used her back as a stepping-stone, and appeared three feet in front of me. He swept those glacial orb-eyes of his to my empty satchel.

  “Another failure.”

  The room held its collective breath. Fear rippling in the air like heat-lines in a desert. When I could get my voice to work, it was equally icy. Two could play at this game.

  “Your assessment is quite astute, my lord.”

  Rebecca’s sapling-green aura flickered in the back of my mind. There was no need to slip into the Ley dimension to register her unease. Time and again she had tried to counsel me to be cautious. Hand on heart, I really did try. But whenever I was in his presence, the terror would warp inside my mind and come out the other side as snark. We’d decided that my best insurance was to keep my trap shut. Half the time it even worked.

  Lucifer circled around me. “I’m beginning to think your heart isn’t in this.”

  Taking pains not to allow my body to turn in his direction, I huffed. “My heart isn’t the weak link here.” On the floor in front of me, Cathy went rigid.

  “It was her fault!” she wailed. “She was deliberately trying to be noisy to wake the beast!”

  Ignoring the sorceress, Lucifer re-entered my field of vision. In an effort to forestall his psychotic reaction, I offered up a solution.

  “We both know the answer is to cut these babysitters loose,” I suggested. “It’s impossible to concentrate on shielding their supernatural presence and search for the remnants at the same time. I’m much better equipped to do the raiding on my own.”

  A thin smile stretched across his ungodly face. “So that you can continue stalling for time?” Rebecca had told me that time worked strangely in this place. Six months here would only be three in the earth dimension. Three months wasn’t long enough for the supernaturals to rebuild their defences. A single extra day was too long for me to spend in Lucifer’s company. But I would stay here forever if it meant the people I cared about were safe.

  Once more he was before me. The Ley sight was a superb warning system, but it would never beat seraphim craftsmanship. Jerking from her prostrate position, Cathy’s body raised three feet into the air. My suppressed scream manifested in a flash of bone magic that attempted to hold onto her soul. Grinning like a circus clown, Lucifer flicked his wrist.

  Cathy’s head popped completely off her shoulders. I lost the connection to her soul. As I forced my gaze to remain locked with his, I felt Rebecca’s magic leaching the anguish from my chest. The Hell dimension had reduced her healing powers to nothing, but her ability to absorb negative emotions was my saving grace.

  As the panic subsided, I managed to respond. “Temper, temper.”

  On the dais behind Lucifer, Asmodeus, his chief necromancer, shifted. That was his version of wanting to give me a backhand. Part of it was fear that my forked tongue would bring Lucifer’s wrath on all of us. The majority of it was envy. Lucifer’s acolytes despised me, because no matter how insolently I behaved, he still needed me. But as time bled on, that need was beginning to wane. Even I could only play the bungling human idiot for so long.

  The only assurance I had that Lucifer wouldn’t harm Rebecca was that he was sure I’d retaliate somehow. My grasp on sanity was fraying to almost nothing. I’d thought we were at a crossroads. One of these days, I would get sick of constantly being wrong.

  “I think you need a little reminder of what’s at stake.” As I stood there playing chicken with him, the air just behind his left shoulder rippled. A tiny crimson spark ignited and quickly expanded into a gaping portal. At its centre was an opaque mass so dark, I thought I was looking into the void of a black hole. The humanoid creature that hunkered through the portal, one emaciated limb at a time, was only partially corporeal.

  Inside the cathedral, Lucifer had established a human-friendly ecosystem so the cold didn’t bother me. With every inch that the thing in front of me dragged itself into the Hell dimension, the temperature dropped five degrees. My breath began to fog the air in front of my face. The trails of Cathy’s blood stopped seeping from her torn neck and congealed.

  My attention never left the progression of the creature through the portal. Its scrawny limbs were barely covered by an ash-grey cloak that was torn to shreds. Through the gaps I witnessed its mottled brown skin shifting over sinewy muscle. As it ducked its head through the portal, the hood of the cloak pulled free. Biting my lips together was the only way I was able to keep the gasp from escaping.

  The thing in front of me should have existed only in nightmares. Its eyes were two unseeing, milky marbles at once blind but all-knowing. Nausea wracked my gut as its left eye swivelled in my direction while its right eye remained steadfastly pinned to Lucifer. Where its cheeks should have been, the skin was stretched so tight it had torn in places, gaping to reveal knife-sharp teeth without needing to open its mouth. But it was the way it walked that made my tiny
hairs stand up. One foot first and then a drag of the other. Like it was only just learning how to stand on two feet. The sound made shivers crawl down my spine. Without meaning to, I recalled every nightmare I’d ever had where something demonic was chasing me but my legs wouldn’t work and I couldn’t run.

  And then it opened its mouth. “Brother.” His ancient rasp spoke of old power. The thing was, it didn’t fit with his decrepit body. So the demon had chosen this broken vessel for kicks. Awesome. Up on the dais, the necromancers lowered their heads out of respect.

  My heart hammered in my chest. Lucifer’s smile was disarmingly genuine. “Apollyon. You look well.”

  “I don’t feel it.”

  Lacing his hand behind his back, Lucifer balanced on the balls of his feet. “Why is that?”

  “The bounty that was promised to me was stolen.”

  “Ahh. Let’s see if we can rectify that.”

  His eyes twinkled with delight as Lucifer turned back towards me. I smiled at him, showing teeth. So what if they were chattering? It was a miracle I hadn’t peed myself and started bawling.

  Lucifer feathered the back of his hand in the air. Trailing behind it appeared a mural of transparent images. I planted my feet, every muscle in my body constricting as the image of Kai above the soul gate materialised in front of me. “Is this the one?” Lucifer crooned.