Bloodline Contingency: An Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 12), page 1
Bloodline Contingency
Bloodline Academy Book 12
Lan Chan
Copyright © 2023 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
Proofread by Matthew Lang
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
8. Sophie
9. Lex
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
64. Sophie
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
67. Lex
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
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1
Was it still a double-cross if the person deceiving you told you it was going to happen? I stared at Lucifer across the kitchen table.
“Come again?” Eloquence was surplus to my requirements today.
He steepled his fingers in front of him, his elbows slightly bent. “I have made an agreement with Astaroth. He will spare the heavenly realm and return my true vessel in exchange for you.”
We had just finished yet another gruelling training session on constructing more powerful protection circles. Now I understood why. My brain made the sound of tyres screeching. “You…what?”
A throb in my chest alerted me to the jarring presence of the bond. It attempted to sink tenterhooks into him to pry apart his lies. Before War and Sachiel’s deaths, Lucifer’s emotions and sometimes his thoughts were open slather to me. Since he’d become aware of the bond, he’d learned to shield himself when he wanted to. Worse still, I suspected the bond now worked in reverse.
Gathering up my indignation, I locked down any hint of vulnerability. Though the obvious question had to be asked.
“And what are your plans for when Astaroth uses me to free himself and destroy life as we know it?”
Lucifer cocked his head to the side. “Firstly, do I not deserve some kudos for coming clean?”
He wanted kudos for admitting that he would betray me. It was too much to bear. Nowadays, my emotions were balanced on the head of a pin. Caustic fury ignited in every pore on my body.
I knew it. I knew that Lucifer would eventually turn. It was imprinted in his very essence. Yet the betrayal, so soon after I had lost Kai, wiped all logic from my thoughts.
Without considering the dire consequences, I snatched the fireplace poker Fred had left beside the table and swung it at Lucifer.
He blocked it. The smack as the poker hit his palm was not satisfying. He arched his left brow and gently tugged the poker from my grip. Rather than resist, I allowed his strength to unseat me and climbed onto the tabletop. He saw the kick coming. Any fool would have when it was preceded by my war cry.
Letting go of the poker, I dived for him. Even standing on the kitchen table, I was barely taller than him. It made no difference that he could probably now blink and send me into oblivion. Since he’d ingested Sachiel’s essence, the command pendant had no more control over him.
Magic would have been much more effective. At least with magic I had a chance to match his strength. But I didn’t want the easy flick of hedge or bone magic. I wanted to make him hurt with my bare hands.
The same way I felt as if somebody had reached into my chest and was squeezing my heart with all their might. Lucifer would feel pain if it was the last thing I did.
When Andrei and Nanna bolted into the kitchen, I was perched on Lucifer’s back, my right arm around his throat, my teeth clamped around his ear. Why was his cartilage so hard?
Goosebumps pricked along his neck where my skin scraped against him as I tried to take a chunk out of him. Lucifer shuddered. “That tickles,” he laughed.
“Umm…” Andrei was frozen in a state of disbelief. The red in his eyes was slowly bleeding away as he inspected us. He leaned his hip against the table. “Do you need a referee? Biting is an illegal move.”
“Not according to the shifters!” I screamed before pulling Lucifer’s hair.
Nanna scrubbed at the sides of her mouth. “Why don’t we all just–”
“He’s going to give me to Astaroth!”
Nanna and Andrei’s backs straightened. Heaving a deep sigh, Lucifer brought his left hand up. A circle of silver-laced blue stopped Andrei and Nanna in their tracks. Lucifer wrenched me off him, making my teeth snap as they reluctantly released his ear. Holding me by my biceps, he addressed the room. Arctic fire shone in his blue eyes.
“You cannot even bypass my circle,” Lucifer informed them. “How will you defeat Astaroth when he comes?”
My legs pin-wheeled in an attempt to kick him in the nuts. “They don’t have magic!” I argued. That was when I remembered that I did. Lucifer dropped me at the same time I tore through his celestial magic with my low magic. The clash of magic sent blue and silver sparks cascading across the kitchen floor in a beautiful wave of glitter. Nanna gasped as the magic swept over her.
Andrei’s muscles clenched as though he was trying to take a running start, but he couldn’t budge. Blinking, I allowed the Ley sight to descend over me. With a wildly inaccurate snip, I severed the thread of magic that Lucifer was using to hold Andrei in place. The vampire pounced.
Lucifer side-stepped easily, but his focus was on me. “Be reasonable, scion of mine.”
The word reasonable and Lucifer didn’t belong in the same sentence. They didn’t belong on the same page let alone in the same novel.
“You…” As I stood there staring at his amused expression on Pestilence’s stupidly beautiful face, the fury melted into a soul-deep ache. It dawned on me why he could now consider sacrificing me. I was no longer his one and only scion.
Despite my best efforts, the hurt speared through the bond. It eroded whatever coating Lucifer had used to block me out. As his eyes narrowed, my stomach lurched with a sickening hatred.
The bile was unfamiliar. I knew my own reaction to Leia intimately. This new hatred was all his. It confused me as much as it infuriated me. If he despised her so much, then why was he willing to throw me to an archdemon? The answer, like most things these days, was that he had no choice. It didn’t make things better.
“Alessia,” Lucifer grated as I turned on my heel.
“I’m going to Ravenhall,” I informed them. Andrei’s footsteps pounded the floor. “Alone!” The steps halted for only a fraction of a second.
Andrei’s Cheshire grin as he pulled up beside me was anything but apologetic. “I said I wanted to be alone!” I snapped.
“Who says I don’t have business of my own?” Andrei drawled. He linked his fingers over his head and bowed his back as though stretching casually.
“You’re scheduled to guard the manor! You can’t just leave whenever you feel like it.”
His grin morphed into a mouth full of sharp teeth. “Who do you think is going to infiltrate the manor with the devil in residence?”
I tapped my chin. “Hmm. Are you saying you’re redundant?”
Andrei flinched, but his eyes remained hard. I provide other protection services,” he said, his nose in the air.” Then he muttered, “Good thing I moved her.”
Her was the little girl whose soul was intricately woven with Lucifer’s blade.
It was hard not to roll my eyes. “What was the point? If he asks you, you’d tell him anyway!”
It was useless being petty when Lucifer was our only chance at surviving the impending apocalypse. The way Andrei scuffed the back of his head with his hands could be the meme for supernatural society these days. Their every instinct shouted at them that there was a monster in their midst, but logic wouldn’t allow them to attack. Worse, they were being forced to help Lucifer.
For a month now, everybody was walking around on a knife’s edge waiting for Lucifer to pull the rug from underneath them. So far, I was the only chump whose face was covered in proverbial pie.
If I was expecting sympathy from the Sisterhood witches, I was in for a shock.
“He really just came out and told you that?” Giselle asked.
“Yep.”
She exchanged a glance with Matilda. “It’s more than he would have done in the past,” Matilda observed. “Maybe he really has changed?”
My sputtering objections were tamped down as Giselle held up a seven-inch hunting knife in her left hand, and a dart gun in the other.
“Knife.” I was useless with any sort of projectile weapon. It took too long to arm once I had taken a shot.
“Unless you started morphing into an Amazon,” Giselle reminded me, “short range weapons are a bad choice.” She indicated the dual hexed pistols at her hip for emphasis.
I made a deranged face at her. “I have Morning Star. Why do I even have to carry these weapons?”
Even though I complained, I was grateful for the security blanket of a weapon as I teleported us to Transylvania. To that twisted castle where we had found Rune’s soul. And the blood that had mimicked mine.
Every hair on my body stood up. Not because of the First Order containment wards that had been erected around the place. Our Sisterhood magic would make light work of those, but because of the thick undercurrent of something that was both sinister and disturbingly familiar to me.
Despite my protests, I gripped the handle of the hexed Sisterhood knife that I’d secured to the right side of my belt.
Basil had a theory that when our race was conceived, all humans had a capacity to wield magic. But our preference for technology had dulled those senses until we went against our gut instincts at every turn. I would bet a million manna that any human who stepped foot in the misted surroundings of this demonic castle would regress in a nanosecond. My nerves were a taut thread. Instinct screamed at me to tuck tail and run. The bone magic was bubbling inside its pool, seething with an awareness that death seeped from this place.
A hot breath brushed against my ear. My scream was curtailed into a muffled yelp as a calloused hand blanketed my mouth. The Sisterhood witches whirled around, their weapons ready. Both became incorporeal, flickering as though they were ghosts haunting this place.
My captor drew me in closer. I felt his aura and scowled. Rune Pendragon.
The deep rumble of Rune’s chuckle did not soothe my spiked heart rate. He scooted out of arm’s reach and released me when I tried to elbow him in the gut.
“You’re not invited!” I hissed at him under my breath. He caught me by the shoulders as I deliberately turned away.
Pinning me in place, he did the thing that infuriated me the most. The thing he couldn’t even help. The thing that sent both pain and longing spiralling through me. He looked too much like Kai.
“You can’t have a party on my home turf and not invite me,” Rune informed me.
All the compressed venom I should have directed at Kai and didn’t have an outlet for came seeping out by proxy.
“Your home turf is Pendragon Manor. Go home. Last time you were here, a necromancer played marionette with your soul.”
His lips stretched into an easy smile. Looping his thumbs into the belt holes in his jeans, he gave a nonchalant shrug that was all boyish charm. If I had been a seventeen-year-old girl, my legs would be jelly. But I wasn’t seventeen anymore. And Pendragon charm now grated on me worse than the scrape of demon claws.
“I have more right to be here than any of you,” Rune drawled. A black flame ignited in the depth of his cerulean eyes. Though his congenial mask never slipped, the darker half of me drew back my irritation. That side of me recognised and admired what she saw.
Very few grown men would have the strength to face the stark reality of their captivity. The very first thing Rune did when he was well enough to leave Sanctuary was visit the Divine Fields. Now he was here, forcing himself to face his literal demons. Astaroth and War may have literally taken his soul, but they had not taken his spirit.
Giselle recognised it too because she went to hand him a spare knife. Rune smirked. Dark green angelfire crawled across his shoulders. “No need, sweetheart,” he said.
Andrei guffawed at the black look that settled over Giselle’s harsh features. Giselle’s body flickered again in the moonlight so that she was almost transparent.
“Call me that again and I’ll put your soul back in there.” She pointed in the direction of the dungeon. Rune made an exaggerated cowering gesture and stepped behind me.
The mind witch rolled her eyes before raking them over both men. “If that necromancer shows up, you’re both useless to us.”
Both Andrei and Rune flinched for real. It was my turn to smirk at Andrei’s wounded expression. Never take a swipe at a Sisterhood witch without expecting emotional damage in return. The hard part for them to swallow was that Giselle was right.
A necromancer of this calibre would think nothing of the treaty that forbade high mages from controlling vampires. Never mind that I suspected Rune was now also easily influenced by sinister magic.
“Are all humans this callous?” Rune asked with mock injury.
“You have no idea,” I shot back.
And then he got a good idea of just how prickly Giselle could be when she was pissed. I thought her head was going to explode when the reinforced cellar door creaked open, and Basil popped out.
He was followed close behind by Kyrie and a host of First Order mages. Matilda blew out a breath. “So much for a quiet recon mission.”
Basil spotted me and frowned. He made a beeline for us just as Giselle marched towards where the Trinity mages were sullying the crime scene.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Basil lectured. His gaze flicked from me to Rune and back again. “Either of you. We have it covered.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Call me a sceptic, but you’ve found nothing in a whole month. I want to see if it’ll work for me.”
Basil’s mouth opened. His attention drifted to the many eavesdroppers around us. With a surreptitious shuffle, he guided me away from the huddle of supernaturals and Sisterhood witches. Only then did he start in on his lecture.
“We’re not sure what ancient curse could be saturated into the ground,” he said. “It’s too dangerous to have you poking and prodding at it.”
Too dangerous. For a month everyone around me was toeing the “too dangerous” line. It was too dangerous for me to approach the site where Astaroth had almost breached the barrier. Except Lucifer had done just that and made a deal with the archdemon. It was too dangerous for me to enter the Abyss. Except when I tried to summon Haniel so I could suss out the situation, he hadn’t materialised. It was too dangerous for me to examine this hellsite, except clearly the First Order had been crawling around it this whole time. It was too dangerous to go onto the MirrorNet – actually, I agreed with that one.
