Bloodline Alchemy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 6), Lan Chan [free ebook reader for android TXT] 📗

He rolled his eyes at me. “How tedious.”

Maybe it was, but right now, I was kind of glad for it. Even though I despised having to cut into my own skin constantly to draw blood, it served as a small reminder that power came at a price.

Hugh snapped his fingers and a scalpel appeared beside my hand. In the cage, the rats doubled their screeching. Somehow, they knew that something awful was coming. “We don’t have all of time to do this,” Hugh reminded me.

“I’m going to have to touch one of them.”

“That appears to be that case. It’s distasteful but there’s no helping it.”

Distasteful was too light a word. If I tried to stick my hand into the cage right now, they would bite the hell out of me.

“I’m going to prepare the blood.” Otherwise known as trying to stall for time. Taking the vial of Lex’s blood from my pocket, I drew a circle around it and then dripped two small drops into the centre of the circle. Next, I prepared my own blood and mixed them together. Now...now there wasn’t really anything more I could do but bite the bullet.

Looking into the cage wasn’t enticing. The rats never stopped moving. They bit at the metal of the cage and each other. There were now seven of them left in there. Big, fat ones that I suspected had been collected around the marsh of the fens. Their pink tails were longer than their bodies by a mile. How in the world was I going to do this?

“Perhaps we should have started with mice,” Hugh noted, his tone less than impressed. “Or something else you find repulsive. Name an animal you dislike. Or is there someone in particular you don’t care for that will make this easier? Somebody blonde and busty perhaps?”

Behind Hugh’s back, Noah was growling in a steady rhythm now. When I didn’t respond but just kept looking into the cage, Hugh made a frustrated sound. “This is utterly ridiculous. Would it help if I held them down?”

Without waiting for a response, he grabbed the seven rats with his magic. With a flick of his hand, the cage flipped open. One by one they floated out in a straight line in front of me.

“Pick one,” he said. “Any of them will do. There are thousands more where they came from. They’re worthless animals who live in darkness and feed on anything they can get their hands on. They spread disease and breed like there’s no tomorrow. Ridding the world of these seven is a service.”

He pressed the rats down against the floor so that their arms and legs were the only thing that could move. Their black eyes darted, their mouths opening to give sickening screams. “Do it,” Hugh urged. “They’re lower than low.”

For some reason, I saw Lucifer in my head at that moment when he’d appeared to Lex when she died. He’d had the same flippant tone in his voice. We had meant nothing to him. We were less than a thought. We were vermin that he wasn’t at all concerned about exterminating. My fingers released. The scalpel fell from my hands.

Hugh barked out a word in a language I didn’t recognise. Before I could retract my hand altogether, he snatched my wrist.

Noah surged to his feet, but Hugh threw his other hand out and spat another word. Noah went flying into the wall, his arms and legs splayed out just like the rats. Face serene, Hugh pulled me forward.

“You should learn to grow a spine,” he said. “Even Alessia could kill when she needed to.”

Purple light appeared around me. I picked up the scalpel again without wanting to.

“Let go of me!”

In my chest, the blood alchemy surged. It raced down my arm and coursed through my fingers only to come up short. Shit! I’d dispelled the blade in the Reserve. “Stop, please!”

More purple magic gathered around me.

“It’s not that difficult,” Hugh said. “Let’s see if we can experiment and come up with another way to make this work. After all, isn’t this what school is about?”

Before I could do anything to stop him, he grabbed my arm with his magic and forced me to stab the scalpel into the rat it front of me. We both screamed at the same time. The rat’s back legs bucked as though it was trying to run but its leg slipped in the pool of blood that was gathering beneath it. My body locked as I tried to fight the magic compulsion.

Tears stung my eyes even as the blood alchemy bubbled up inside me. “Good,” Hugh said. Once more he whipped my arm out. But instead of stabbing a single rat this time, he drove me to make a sweeping motion that sliced right through all of the rats at once. They died instantly, their bodies bursting in a gory splash of blood and guts.

I knew that there was no way the scalpel itself was the thing that cut them. It was far too clean. The second the scalpel touched them, a corresponding light clapped inside my mind. It drew the blood alchemy forward, and I felt an electric charge as the drops of blood in front of me lifted in the air.

“Yes,” Hugh said, eyes bright. “That’s a good girl.”

The world turned into a flash of red and pink as the Ley sight stole around me. It bathed everything in a glow that I didn’t feel. My heart was beating so furiously it felt like it was going to jump out of my chest. Ice and heat blossomed in alternate waves across my skin. Tears ran down my eyes as I watched the crimson of my magic eat into the silver and black of Lex’s blood. Wind howled in my ears.

“That’s right!” Hugh laughed.

“Sophie!” Noah screamed.

Hugh shuffled back from me as the drops of blood in front of me twisted and rolled into each other. My blood, always the lesser of the two, was rapidly ingesting Lex’s.