Bloodline Treachery: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 10), page 1
Bloodline Treachery
Bloodline Academy Book 10
Lan Chan
Copyright © 2022 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
6. Kai
7. Lex
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
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
Did You Enjoy This Book?
Connect With Me
1
The only good necromancer was a dead one. Of course, if they were powerful enough, death wouldn’t stop a necromancer. I glared up into Mayer’s serene face. Did he have it in him to rise from eternal sleep? My instincts said no, but with my magic still half contained by the seraphim, I couldn’t be quite sure. Uncertainty didn’t blunt my tone.
“Move!”
His expression didn’t change. A fraction of sinister magic scraped across my shoulders. Not enough for me to consider it a threat. Just enough that I knew there were undead behind the door he barred me from exiting. There were undead everywhere these days, and it pissed me right off.
Mayer bowed his head, ever respectful. My cheek twitched. Why did it feel more like a bitch-slap when he remained calm while I snarked at him?
“The master wishes that you would remain in the cathedr-” He mashed his lips together before he could make the mistake of calling this place a cathedral. Too late, bucko.
My glare could have stripped a basilisk hide. The spike of my bone magic caused the undead to keen louder. Nails scraped against the wood of the door. Mayer blanched. Lucifer had dropped a bundle on the gold Angelical script fused to the wood. If the door was damaged by undead, somebody’s head would roll.
“I said, ‘move!’”
Mayer bowed even lower. My jaw clicked. The communication pendant around my neck crackled. It sent an annoying vibration into the base of my throat, causing me to cough. Eugenia’s voice blasted from the small mirror embedded into the pendant.
“Lex! Get your tiny ass here. No excuses. This is worse than that time before the Unity Games!”
For some reason, Mayer’s spine stiffened. He pancaked his back against the door. “There is no dignity in flaunting yourself at that orgy.” Said the necromancer who didn’t blink an eye at animal or human sacrifice. Prudishness: the last bastion of uptight middle-aged Trinity mages. Violence and death were all good, but heaven forbid if anyone did anything above PG in front of them.
Little did he know I had no intention of going to said orgy. I had an appointment with Mary for another Nephilim House lesson. Even though she and Liam had returned to Seraphina after that whole “humans being exiled from supernatural cities” thing, she insisted that I had to learn. At least Liam had quit Meryl’s person guard and was training for the elite guards now.
Eugenia didn’t know I was avoiding her too. “What the hell did you say?” Eugenia shot at Mayer. The portal in the pendant warped her voice, making her sound slightly like a harpy.
Mayer straightened. “You heard me quite clearly, madam.”
She reacted the same way I did to fake politeness. “Listen you dry-assed–”
“Hush, Ginny,” Fawn’s smooth tone soothed. “He can’t help if he’s so repressed, he doesn’t know what to do with it anymore.” She emphasised the it, and I heard them giggling conspiratorially.
Mayer’s poker face didn’t change, but his sinister magic left a sour taste in the back of my throat. His sedate personality wasn’t an act. The only thing Mayer cared about was serving Lucifer. No matter what that entailed. It was what got him an inch away from being locked up in the Dominion on murder charges. The only reason it hadn’t stuck was because everyone else involved was dead.
A roar went up from the pendant as though a shifter had just let loose. The metal heated against my skin, soaking me in peripheral magic.
Mayer’s nostrils flared. “Remember that you are the head of a House.”
He backed up a little as my brow arched. “Oh, so you concede that this is my House and not Lucifer’s?”
His eyes darted. “There is never any doubt that House Hastings–”
“Save it. I don’t care.” To be fair, I didn’t care about much these days. “Seriously, get out of my face.”
He imitated moss on a tree trunk. His back kissed the door. I waved Gabriel’s Key in front of him. “You know I can teleport, right?”
He tipped his eyes and really looked at me, taking in my outfit of three-day-old jeans and black T-shirt. “We both know you do not wish to go. Why not just–”
A portal opened to my right. Mayer’s jaw clamped. I cringed. Why didn’t I just teleport instead of wasting time with him?
Hastings Manor was warded against intrusion, but since the Markham sisters technically lived here, the wards didn’t try to knock them out.
Two gloriously stark-naked sorceresses stalked through the portal. Most human males would have passed out. Mayer averted his gaze.
Eugenia snatched my right wrist. “Move your butt.” She started dragging me towards the portal.
Fawn flapped her hands. “Forcing her is bad mojo,” she reminded her coven sister.
“We’re not going to get any mojo if she doesn’t come.” Eugenia whirled on me. She pressed her face up so close I could smell the enchanted wine on her breath. “You’ve had quite enough moping time, Alessia.”
Woo. Using my full name. She meant serious business. I felt myself stalling. “You know, now that I think about it, that’s too much socialising for me.”
Eugenia’s grip grew tight. “Don’t care. You could do with too much socialising.” I went limp so that she had to brace her arm under my pits to keep my upright. A cold, dry hand latched onto my left wrist.
We both peered at Mayer. Eugenia took exception. “What are you, a chastity guard? This is none of your business. Go back to romancing the undead!”
Relations within House Hastings had not gotten any warmer in the months after Lucifer commandeered Xavier’s body. My black mood didn’t help things one bit. I didn’t care. Mayer’s deep pool of patience trickled away.
“The master very explicitly asked that Alessia not–”
Eugenia flapped his orders away. “Nobody cares what he wants.”
The old necromancer’s body bunched hard. I had to give him props for loyalty. It was misplaced, but he was really rocking it all the same. My congeniality disintegrated when he opened his mouth and said, “Malachi will not be there.”
I snatched my hand away so abruptly, he almost tripped. Eugenia gave him a razor-sharp smile. “Now you’ve stepped in it,” she goaded. “If you spent less time kissing corpses, you’d know when to keep your mouth shut.”
Fawn tried to massage the scowl from my face. She braced her palms on either side of my jaw when I attempted to avert my gaze. “We promise no drugging this time.”
Despite myself, I laughed. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep!”
She grinned at me and looped her arm around my back. Brown sinister magic crawled across the portal, blocking our escape.
“I really must insist,” Mayer said. His persistence set off a warning in my mind.
“Are you trying to keep me prisoner?” I asked, my voice turning frosty. He blinked. I could practically feel him grappling for a response.
“The master–”
“Where is he anyway?”
Mayer’s mouth clamped shut. We did this dance every time Lucifer conveniently disappeared. Lucifer tried to do it at night when he thought I was asleep. The joke was on him. Thanks to his convenient body-snatching, I was too on edge to let my guard down. My insomnia was back with a vengeance. So, I was irritatingly aware that Lucifer left the manor quite regularly.
Angus had raised his brow when I offered him this bit of information. “Does he go off alone?”
It took all my self-control not to let the snarl past my tongue. “Kai is with him.”
The Fae had shrugged. “Then I think we can let it slide.”
Honestly, what was the point of elite guards?
A dark cloud descended on me at the mere hint of Kai. Irritation made me neutralise Mayer’s magic with little care. Mayer gasped as my bone magic snapped his sinister magic in two.
Eugenia flashed him a Cheshire-cat smile before she flanked me on the left, and we stepped through the portal together. Magic smashed into me the second we landed on the site where the black market had once stood. A cacophony of sound and heat crashed into the circle I’d instinctively drawn around myself. Drums pounded a steady undercurrent to the more flirtatious flute music. The sky was brightly lit with big, fat stars that had nothing to do with real constellations.
Naked skin of every tone streaked across my field of vision. They blurred at the edges as I surreptitiously tried not to let my attention fix on anyone in particular. The only way not to cop an eyeful at these things was to keep your gaze roaming. My only consolation was that they were all stunning. For some reason, it only fuelled my annoyance.
Eugenia became a wall of soft flesh that blocked my passage back towards the portal. “Err,” I hedged. “I’m having second thoughts…”
She pushed me in the back gently. “Then don’t think!”
Eugenia let out a banshee shriek that was met by an enthusiastic roar from the crowd of sorceresses dancing around the bonfire.
A bushy tail slapped against my calves. I turned just in time to spot the grey wolf loping off into the shadowed tree line with two sprites dashing after him. I sniffed cotton candy and sneezed. While Eugenia sashayed towards the sorceress circle, Fawn turned me to face her.
Once upon a time, she would have been just as pushy as the Markham sisters. But death had tempered her a little, and she brushed her thumb against my cheekbone.
“All you have to do it stay for a while,” she told me. “Nobody expects you to do anything you’re not comfortable with.”
That was all well and good, except as soon as she disappeared towards the bonfire, I was immediately accosted by a big brute of a dark elf. Dark being the operative word. His midnight-black hair and tanned skin were a perfect foil for golden eyes that sparked in the moonlight. Thank goodness he hadn’t gone full native below the waist.
Standing next to his hard pecs and broad shoulders made me feel like I was two feet tall. He grinned down at me, his gorgeous face half steeped in shadow. If my stupid brain wasn’t weighed down with Nephilim baggage, I would totally have indulged. Instead, when he tried to reach out for my hand, I widened my circle and pushed back against him.
His bottom lip jutted out. “C’mon, Alessia,” he cajoled. “It’s been three months.”
Three months. It had gone by in the blink of an eye. To the supernaturals and their towering libidos, it was a lifetime. I had become the brunt of snarky remarks amongst the sorceresses of the fens after week one.
A snappy quip was on the tip of my tongue when something brushed up against the edge of my circle. Distracted by the hulking beast in front of me, I hadn’t noticed that I’d let the circle expand until it reached the outer edge of the clearing. Modesty tents had been set up around the perimeter.
Modesty! Who were they kidding? I counted six buck-naked shifters in my peripheral vision and almost snorted at the absurdity of it.
Until my magic touched against a flicker of essence that had my jaw clicking. The seraphim had stripped Xavier’s vessel of his sinister magic, but Lucifer’s aura was a bright blister of light that I was perpetually attuned to.
“Alessi–”
I didn’t hear the rest of what Beast-elf said because I was already stomping towards the tents. My blood boiled. So, Lucifer had the audacity to try and keep me contained in the manor, but he was here doing who knows what?
I saw red. Grabbing the flap of the offending tent, I ripped it away. “Aha!”
It took too long for my pitiful human senses to register what I was seeing. The musky scent of sweat hit me first. Then the slick sound of creamy flesh sliding together. Then the moan from…from…Astrid?
I screamed. My brain went into meltdown mode, and I screamed my bloody head off.
2
“Lex!” Fawn was suddenly in front of me. I felt myself being dragged away a few steps, but I was too busy clawing at my face.
“Lex!” Eugenia cried. “What’s wrong?” Bewilderment laced her tone. Somebody tried to rip my hands away, but I just kept stomping and whining.
“For goodness’s sake!” Lucifer shouted above the din. I buried my face in my hands and tried to scrub the image of him…of him…Astrid…argh!!
“My eyes!” I bellowed. “My eyes!”
No, it wasn’t my eyes that had been assaulted. It was my mind. Assaulted with an image that I couldn’t erase no matter how much I was scratching my face raw. What was seen could not be unseen. Purge. The memory had to be purged.
“Vampire,” I hissed, opening my eyes. The world was a blur as my vision adjusted. “I need a vampire!”
“No vamps at fertility rites,” somebody explained unhelpfully. “Too easy to give into the bloodlust.”
It was interesting how the mind made associations. Because I was trying to claw away the image of Astrid bent over the back of a chair, I opened my big mouth and screamed, “Andrei!”
Gabriel’s Key warmed on my finger. It dragged at the Ley dimension. The world spun in a kaleidoscope of starlight before Andrei was snatched from wherever he’d skulked to on his night off.
He appeared right beside me in a cat burglar getup complete with grey cloak. There was blood splashed on his chin. Even though he looked like he’d been up to no good, he grimaced at the surroundings. There was a split second where he opened his mouth. The smart comment that he was about to make evaporated when the skin walker wearing Astrid’s face glided out of the tent. She’d had the foresight to throw a sheet around her body. It didn’t matter.
Andrei’s eyes turned bloodshot in a nanosecond. Somebody snatched me out of the way as Andrei went directly for Lucifer’s throat.
When he’d been inside Percy’s body, Lucifer had his own claws that he could use to defend himself. He’d had Percy’s sturdy skin and low centre of gravity to lend him strength. Since he’d chosen beauty over substance in Xavier’s body, he was a sitting duck. Like a whiney, useless socialite, Lucifer shouted for help. “Pendragon!”
My brain malfunctioned. The world stood still for a fraction of a second. Andrei’s claws hit Lucifer’s soft skin. The tiniest hint of blood traced along the devil’s throat before green angelfire burst around them.
Awareness of Kai hit me like a gut punch. He didn’t use his wings, but he levitated just slightly before touching down on the grass. His white T-shirt was torn across his left shoulder, and there was sweat clinging to his collar. No angel blade which probably meant he’d been working out rather than fighting. My mind took a mental picture of him, cataloguing all that had changed since we’d been apart. It snagged on the Cherubian tattoo that now covered the left side of his neck.
