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

the Sisterhood used to hurt the supernaturals. Tasting acid on my tongue, I forced the alchemy to transmute the demon’s blood into the corrosive burn of toxins. The demon screamed in a low timbre. Pain raked up its chest making it throw me wide.

I went flying head over heels. Unable to see where I was headed, I smacked against the pole that Anastasia was chained to without being able to brace for impact. I took the brunt of it on my right rib. The hit stole the breath from my lungs. What came out of me was a pathetic wheezing sound.

My ears rang and muffled the sound of the approaching demons and the crowd.

And then, above it all, Noah screamed at me. “Sophie!” I recognised it for what it was: a distraction. As expected, the demons’ heads snapped back in his direction.

They converged on him. The first swipe of a tail crushed the circle around him like an eggshell. Noah cried out as demon talons bit into his right side.

Letting go of some of the magic that surrounded me, I tried to strengthen the barrier around him. Unfortunately, once the demons were in, it was impossible to create enough distance for another circle. Professor Mortimer had always said that it was easier to keep something out than to contain something. Arcane circles were fun like that.

Noah groaned again. “Sophie,” he begged. “Do it. Use me!”

For a second, I didn’t have the slightest clue what he was talking about. I could barely keep my head upright.

“That’s right, Sophie,” Agatha encouraged me. “He’s sacrificing himself for you. Now that can’t be against your little moral code, can it?”

I used Anastasia’s leg as a lever to pull myself up to sitting. The pounding in my brain was unbearable. Noah kept screaming at the demons, making sure to keep them focused on him. One of the demons with the long forearms latched its mouth around Noah’s ribs where he was bleeding. My brain became a jumble of terror. Instead of ripping out his torso, the demon bit down and its lips moved in a suction motion. It was drinking his blood. Bile and hatred sank its talons into my throat.

“Sophie! Now!”

I glanced down at the knife in my hands that were already soaked with blood. “Sophie!” The urgency, the terror in his voice had me glancing up. Our eyes met, and in them, I saw something that had nothing to do with the demons. His eyes were not yellow or red but a dark brown so punctured with fear that I imagined him as a little boy inside a sacrificial circle. Decades had passed since that night my great-grandfather took everything from him. He’d built a new life and forged a new identity from a nightmare that should have seen him destroyed. And now here he was right back at the start, facing death at the hands of a blood alchemist.

Only this time, he was making a choice. I couldn’t even imagine possessing a fraction of that kind of strength. My whole body shook with unbridled fear.

Don’t let them make you forget who you are, Lex had said.

I found myself gazing up into the mirror, searching for hope because I had nothing left. Looking back at me was Jacqueline’s steely gaze. She’d been right from the start. We had all gotten so desperate that we’d allowed ourselves to be seduced by the power of the fens. I’d allowed myself to stupidly believe that I could circumvent the rules that governed who I was at my basic level: human.

Jacqueline mouthed my name, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to hear her voice. The look in her eyes wasn’t rage or disappointment or despair. She was clear-eyed. Determined. At the last moment, she held up something in the palm of her hand. It was a frayed piece of black rope. No, it was the remnants of a necklace. The warped bits at intervals used to be knots that had decorated the necklace. Long ago, before Lex arrived at the Academy, before Lucifer became a threat once more, I had stood up to the Hell dimension and survived.

I had been prepared to sacrifice myself for the Academy. My focus narrowed to the arena. Noah’s head fell to this side, his mouth open as pain lashed at him from where the demons were feasting. Picking up the knife, I allowed myself a second of indulgence.

Glancing inwards, I brushed my soul against the mating link and wept for a future that might have been had things been different. The mating link tried to hold on to me, but I built up a barrier against it and plunged the knife into my chest.

29

At first, all I felt was the shock of seeing the knife’s blade sticking out of me. Then came the pain that made a white fog steal across my vision. As I doubled over, the scream I had been suppressing whipped out. It flew across the arena and ate up all the sound. With my dying wail in my ears, I scooped up the power that was slowly releasing from my soul. The pink light that gathered at my palms was more than I could contain. More than the essences of a dozen supernaturals at once.

The sudden surge in power from my direction had the demons unlatching from Noah. They turned, their black eyes searching, and then—I directed the alchemy at them. It smashed out, tearing through them as I spoke not words of light but words of power. The only words my great-grandfather had passed on to me in his diary. Alaha Shalamah: may you be at rest.

If rest meant utter annihilation. The flash was blinding. It ate up the world in a scorching fusion of pink and black as the demons were shredded to pieces.

Lightning coursed through my limbs. I dropped the knife, keeling over onto my back as blood pooled around me. It became a struggle even to blink. I couldn’t take in enough