Bloodline Diplomacy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 3), Lan Chan [best way to read an ebook .TXT] 📗

entity so filled with anger and unbearable sorrow. I blinked back tears as a face appeared in front of me. The woman was stunningly beautiful with tanned skin and lustrous dark hair. As I watched, her face sank. Lines cracked her lips and cheeks until she turned into a crone. She opened her mouth and tried to spit at me. I threw up a shield and the image dispersed.

I heard Rachel cry out as the circles smashed against hers. With the last scrap of wherewithal, I tried to direct the wave of magic away from her. The light was so bright it was blinding. I fell to my knees and tried to blink but my eyes were watering. I stayed that way until I heard sirens in the distance.

24

Somebody lifted me up. “We have to go,” Ashton said. I shrugged him off.

“She’s in shock,” Rachel said.

“Don’t touch me!” I snapped.

“Alessia,” she said. “The emergency services are coming. You can’t be here when they arrive. They won’t understand.”

I didn’t care. My mind was a maelstrom of confusing thoughts. My body was shaking from the expenditure of energy. This time, when somebody grabbed me, I didn’t try to resist. I might have blanked out a bit because the next time my eyes opened, I was lying in the back seat of the car. The streets were in chaos. It meant I had probably been unconscious for a while.

“Far out,” Rachel breathed.

Ashton was white as snow as he steered through the debris. The roads were gridlocked but he didn’t seem to mind. As long as we were in the crowd we’d be able to blend in. Even though the rain appeared to have stopped, Ashton hadn’t turned the wipers off. Tree branches littered the roads and sidewalks. Most of the cars around us looked like someone had taken a baseball bat to them. Our windscreen was a hairline crack away from shattering. It was a miracle the car was working. But that was nothing compared to the damage to the buildings. Structures that had always seemed so solid and imposing when I was living on the streets now stood sad and broken. There were scorch marks on the side of some of the buildings where they had been directly hit by lightning.

Rachel noticed me stirring. “You okay?”

I didn’t bother to answer. My head felt like it had been used as a rattle. In contrast, my stomach felt like it was completely hollow. “Here.” Rachel pressed a chocolate bar into my hand. If I had any dignity left, I would have thrown it at her head. Instead, I tore it open and gobbled it up in two bites. We inched forward at a snail’s pace. The traffic lights within a four-block radius were all out. For a while we barely moved. Rachel had time to get out and buy food at a convenience store and get back into the car without us having gone more than a few metres. I didn’t thank her for the meat pie or the vitamin water. All I could do was sit there and try not to think about the fact that two supernatural entities had tried to kill me. Or that it was Lucifer who has attempted to help me.

Every now and then Ashton snuck glances at me in the rear-view mirror. It took an hour and a half to get clear of the city. By the time we arrived back at Terran, all I wanted to do was sleep. We went around the back entrance.

A group of the students and Samantha were gathered around. I hopped out of the car on shaky legs. “Are you alright?” Jessica asked.

I hoped the look I gave them was a withering glare. I suspected it looked more like a constipated grimace. Either way it seemed to work. They parted and allowed me to move between them into the building. I dragged my sorry butt into my bedroom and slammed the door. I stared at the bed that didn’t feel like mine for a few seconds and then curled up on the floor instead. I pressed my cheek to the cool wooden boards.

It took an age to get my heart rate to slow. Only when I could feel my body relax and turn cold did I wrap my arms around myself. I was too weary to even cry. Somebody knocked on the door.

“Alessia?” Samantha called.

Her footsteps only receded after I let the query hang. I was grateful that, unlike Nanna, she didn’t think knocking was all she had to do before barging right in. And of course, it was the thought of Nanna that shattered the cocoon of apathy inside me. I was an ugly crier. But there was nobody here to see my cry. I let it all out in huge hacking sobs. The muscles in my face locked up. I used the hem of my shirt to wipe my snot and tears.

It was late afternoon by the time my tears dried up. It occurred to me that this was the first time in a long time when something had shocked me so much I couldn’t keep my composure. It made me wonder if that was because Sophie had always been around to make me something soothing or if I just felt better knowing Kai was a single thought away. Or at the very least, I could knock on Jacqueline’s door and feel safe inside her office. Here I felt exposed and vulnerable. I felt...human. Why did that unnerve me?

I was still mulling that over when Samantha tried again. This time, I opened the door for her. Rachel lingered in the hallway beside her. “May I come in?” Samantha asked.

I stepped aside and let her enter. Rachel made a gesture to show me she didn’t mind if we locked her out. I didn’t argue.

Alone inside my room with Samantha, I chose to sit on my bed instead of the floor. She perched on the edge of Rachel’s desk.

“I understand