Bloodline Contingency: An Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 12), page 12
“Hey,” Diana spoke into my hair. “It’s so good to see you.”
“I saw you last week,” I said to her chest.
“There’s seeing and then there’s seeing.”
I had to agree.
“Aww yeah!” Isla’s voice piped up. “They’re here!” I detached from Diana as Isla called down the hallway. In popped the Evil Three. All of them wore sweats.
“Did you just escape an axe murderer?” I asked.
Isla waved me away. “We’re meant to be in immersion training, but we skipped out.”
“I’m sure Angus is going to love that.”
Isla shrugged and pulled me into an awkward side hug. She wasn’t touchy-feely, but I was glad for the sentiment. “Angus can go to hell,” she hissed.
Harlow glanced around swiftly like Angus would pop up any second to give us a dressing down. She was well and truly indoctrinated into the life of an initiate. “He’s not going to hear you,” Diana laughed at her.
“You never know.” Harlow grabbed my bags. She eyed the big suitcase Sophie was wheeling. “Dare I ask if Max is letting you stay?”
Sophie turned a shade of red-warmed brown. She puffed air into her cheeks and then let it go. “We have had discussions.”
I gave her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “Don’t get into an argument on my account. I’ll be fine.”
She clutched my hand in return. “It’s not you he has a problem with,” she said. “It’s Kai. After the slap that shall not be mentioned, Max doesn’t trust Kai around me. He doesn’t want me here where I can’t be protected.”
“If Kai has a problem,” Isla said, “he’ll have to get in line. Because if I see that bitch, I’m going to strangle her.”
“Not if I lop her head off first,” Diana added.
“Girls,” I said quietly.
Winnie covered her ears. “Nope,” she said. “You don’t get to be reasonable. Not after you retreated for like a month and nobody could contact you.”
My jaw dropped. “How am I getting heat for this?”
“Nobody blames you, Lex,” Diana said. “But you’re going to have a hard time convincing us you’re okay.”
“How is that anyone’s problem?”
“How would you feel if that happened to any of us?”
It never even occurred to me that they would be angry on my behalf. Things only really hit home when we joined the boys for lunch. The dining hall was packed to the brim. We found them sitting near the outer edge of the hall. Trey’s tiger eyes were two slits as he stared behind my back. The hairs all over my body stood up dead straight.
“Are you hunting?” I asked him.
“No.”
“Trey.”
He didn’t respond. On his left, Sasha was just sitting there sucking in carton after carton of blood juice. His eyes were a deeper shade of red than the blood he was drinking.
“Will you both stop?” I pleaded. “You’re scaring me!”
“Good,” Roland said. “If you’re scared, imaging how–”
Diana elbowed her brother. “Do not say her name.”
“I’ll be fine.”
The universe decided to test that theory not five minutes later. Trey went predatory still. His nose flattened and serrated-edged lines appeared on his skin. The tiger was coming out.
Sophie took my right hand. Diana took my left one.
I was going to fling them off when, as one, the entire dining hall felt like it turned its head towards the entrance. My heart reacted to the sight of Kai as it routinely did, by beating out of control and commanding my body to move towards him.
If I had, I would have stumbled when the spear of hatred hit me as I spotted Leia. He had his arm curled protectively around her. She clutched the front of his shirt. They moved slowly to the back of the buffet line.
Around us, guards descended into whispers. Isla stood up and for some reason started stretching in front of me.
“Are you okay there?” I asked. What she hadn’t considered was that she was too slim. Behind her back, I caught more than one guard’s eye as they snuck glimpses at me.
“I’m great,” Isla said. These supernaturals had no clue how much they gave serial killers a run for their money.
“Guys,” I said. “As much as I appreciate it, I can’t be normal if you’re going to jump every time they’re around. Just ignore her. Gaia knows I’m trying to.”
“You shouldn’t have to ignore her,” Trey lamented. “We should have put her down.”
Only then did I realise the origin of their jumpiness. “It’s not your fault. I couldn’t have asked you to do that. If I did, what kind of person would that make me?”
Trey speared some of his lasagna and shoved the whole fork into his mouth. He must have forgotten it was metal because I heard it buckling against his teeth. I grabbed the handle because it was making a shrieking sound. Trey only let go after a soft tug.
“I don’t blame you,” I told them. “Any of you.”
That was when someone I did blame came striding through the doorway. Conrad craned his thick neck, spotted Kai and Leia’s backs, and went to stand in the buffet line. Though the rules dictated that he couldn’t take cuts, I felt impatience radiating off him as he bounced on his heels and stared in their direction. What was he doing here? He wasn’t even an elite guard!
“I suddenly don’t feel hungry,” I announced.
“You haven’t eaten anything,” Diana scowled.
Picking up a banana, I peeled it and shoved the entire thing into my mouth. Trey choked on his lasagna. “That’s some skill you have there, Lex,” he said, winking at me.
“I’ve had a lot of practice,” I snarked back, speaking clumsily around the banana in my mouth. I refused to take my eyes off him.
The corners of his mouth lifted. He reached out and tapped the tip of my nose. “You scare the shit out of me sometimes, you know that?”
I swallowed hard. “That is the point.”
The girls moved to come with me, but I waved them back down. “Stay. I’ll meet you in the next class.”
Getting up, I bussed my tray and then made a beeline in the direction where Sophie’s attention had been glued since we got to the dining hall.
Max lifted his head the second I was within scenting reach. Thank the heavens Kai hadn’t tried to sit with him. Then again, Max was surrounded by shifters who were giving off don’t-sit-here vibes.
“Lose your way?” Max asked.
“Believe me, I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t need you.” I rapped the table to get Noah’s attention, but he continued to glare at where Kai and Leia were now sitting quietly alone amidst the Nephilim. “Yo! I get enough of this from my friends, I don’t need this here as well.”
“Who said it was about you?” Anastasia asked. The blonde showed me her teeth. They were wolf sharp.
“Right. Because the pack link isn’t insane with Durin’s hormones at the moment.”
Anastasia grinned even wider. She was so pretty, but the deranged smile made her look too dangerous to approach. “It’s more Yolanda’s, actually.”
I paused for a second. That seemed about right. “Cut it out all the same.”
Max grabbed me by the forearm. “You’re welcome,” he said.
“What?”
“You don’t get to make people care about you and then go all lone wolf when it suits you,” he said.
As a former lone wolf, Noah finally snapped his teeth at Max. “No offense,” Max added. Noah let it go. Mostly because he was still preoccupied with glaring.
“I’m not doing anything of the sort. In fact, I’m here because I need you to come with me to the Abyss.”
That got Noah’s attention. He looked up at me. “You’re joking, right?”
“No. Why would I be?”
Noah shook his head. Max, however, stood up. “What harebrained thing are you doing now?”
I threw my hands in the air. “Nothing! I haven’t been able to contact Haniel. We’re just going to see what’s up.”
“And you need me because…?”
“Lucifer doesn’t want me going. If you’re there, it might appease him a little.”
“Does he need appeasing?” There was a cautionary note to his question.
“Who cares?”
“We do,” Max said. “He’s right here, right now. And he’s not an essence inside a para-human anymore.”
“I won’t let him hurt you if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Max scoffed. The fact that he didn’t go lion said he didn’t even consider it an insult. “It’s not us that he forced to marry a maniac. Try and remember that.”
Despite his warning, he followed me out of the dining hall. It didn’t escape my notice that he used his body to block out my view of Kai and Leia, and now Conrad.
“You know,” I said, “it does nothing for your street cred if you’re going to come over all protective.”
Max smirked. “I couldn’t care less about street cred. However, have you noticed that you’re stepping slightly behind me and following where I lead?”
He roared with laughter at my open jaw as it dawned on me that I was letting him dominate me. Picking up my pace now would be worthless. I did it anyway.
All Max’s amusement died as we sat inside my summoning circle, just staring at each other’s stupid faces. “What’s happening?” he asked.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing was happening. Max scratched at the side of his face. “Did you forget how?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Just to be sure, though, I teleported quickly to the Reserve and back. Then to the Grove and Seraphina and back. Check.
“What’s the common denominator here?” I asked.
Max growled lightly. “They’re all technically in this dimension.” Bingo!
No matter how hard I strained, I couldn’t get into the Abyss. The sensation of being pulled towards the Abyss was still there. It felt like something reaching in and tugging my body upwards, but at the end, it sort of just fizzled out.
“This can’t be good,” Max said. “We need to report this.”
“Wait.” I held a hand up. Sinking into the bond, I knocked and called out Lucifer’s name. He appeared in a huff.
I was so frantic, I didn’t even think to make fun of his very regal white-and-gold cloak. “It’s only been a few hours, scion of mine,” he sighed.
“Don’t flatter yourself!” I pointed up and down at my form. “Did you block me from the Abyss?”
His face screwed up. “Why would I do something so pedestrian?”
“That’s what I was afraid of.” I tapped my chin. “What about Astaroth’s portal?”
Lucifer’s voice turned sharp. “What about it?”
Throwing caution to the wind, I attempted to teleport to the location of Astaroth’s portal. No go either. Huh.
I stood there wringing my hands. Last time the Hell dimension had been blocked, it was because Famine had taken the Sea of Souls. A quick search in the Ley dimension located the Sea exactly where it should be. This new barrier was steeped in quiet unrest. This new thing was a construct of Death.
He was cutting us off from the Abyss. My thoughts immediately tracked to Haniel. Aside from the torment he would be facing, Haniel knew me well. If Astaroth got a hold of him, the archdemon wouldn’t need Kai as a spy.
Lucifer’s ice-blue eyes widened as pain started to snap at my heels. “Alessia!” he shouted. “Alessia!
I felt his arm swipe me across the cheek as a phantom heat before I tore a hole in the Ley dimension and jumped through to the Abyss in the only way I knew how.
13
A million explosions went off in my head. Repeatedly until all thought and reason were no longer coherent. Everything was fire and brimstone and…Death. That really stupid part of me thought that I would take a little mosey into the Abyss just to check out why everything had gone wrong. The only reasonable scrap left in my mind screamed for Haniel in the hope that it would take me to him.
I landed in the depths of an icy tundra. The air was redolent with snow but somehow also smoking with brimstone. The ground beneath me was cold stone coated in a layer of frost. It suctioned onto the skin of my cheek and my palms so that if I moved, I’d skin myself alive. Not that I would be doing anything of the sort with my brain leaking out of my ears.
Crying in front of the elite guards was never an option. I wasn’t in Stormhaven anymore, so the few tears that escaped from my ducts could be forgiven. It was too bad they froze almost as soon as they left my body. I was inside some kind of cell.
The narrow beam of light coming from a single slit above head height was a dead giveaway. It was too cold for my nose to pick up anything else besides the brimstone in the air, and the metallic scent of blood. That wasn’t alarming in this place.
I made a soft, pathetic mewling sound. My brain was so muddled that I didn’t remember demons had better hearing than humans too. Especially if the demon was currently in this cell with me. A weak protection circle was all I could manage with my pools of magic depleted.
Normally, I would be in pain, but the pools shouldn’t have been on the verge of empty. Dreading the scrape of claws that I heard coming from the darkness, I tried to puff weakly to get the ice to stop sticking to my face. If anything, I ended up just suffocating myself even more. Snot dripped down my nostril only to harden onto my cheek and cement me into the ice.
The scuffle of heavy feet grew closer. I cringed, trying to determine whether I was better off throwing the last of my energy into the protection circle, or attempting to teleport back. Both those options died in my thought as the thing inside the cell with me moved under the sliver of light.
She couldn’t have been much older than me. There were dirty smudges on her arms and legs. Tattered, old sweats hung from her skeletal frame. What should have been blonde hair was gnarled into clumps and dulled with poor health.
I would recognise a fellow homeless person at fifty paces. The only thing she didn’t have was the hungry look in her eyes. She moved with a jolting shuffle, dragging her left leg after her. As she came closer, I noticed that her left arm flapped uselessly beside her.
She reached the edge of my protection circle. While I was trying to understand how a human had gotten into the Abyss, the woman knelt on her good knee. The other one just sort of flopped there. It dawned on me that that was because her kneecap was shattered. Up close, the network of small scars and sores were more visible. It was like somebody had worked her over slowly with shallow cuts that would sting rather than kill. Except, I’d been injured enough times now to figure out that as many cuts as that, without being treated, should already be a death sentence.
Human or not, I still cringed as she leaned over me. “Alessia,” the woman said. There was such a depth of sorrow in her voice it kicked me in the chest.
My mind flooded with quiet resolve. The only being that was able to give me that kind of peace with just a quiet word was a malachim.
My insides went as cold as my surroundings. “Haniel?”
Before she could answer, the metal door burst open. Reaching out, I snatched the woman and dragged her inside the circle with me. Just as the cell flooded with demons. The little ones were just annoying. Their beady, black eyes roamed over me greedily. The bigger ones would be the problem. If the one with the horns came at us, my circle would shatter for sure.
I wished it came at us instead of doing what it did instead. The demon lifted its head to the shadowed ceiling and bellowed. It would be easy enough to convince myself it was just a demon being a demon, but the answering call was too convenient. It was relaying a message.
The smaller demons came at us. Inside the circle, the woman tried to struggle with me. “You must go,” she said. Her dull blue eyes were unfocused. Her hands where she tried to peel me from the icy floor were colder than the floor itself. At least none of her wounds dripped on me.
I screamed as a demon sank its sharp spiny claws into the circle. Normally, I could withstand a barrage for a decent amount of time. Weakened, the spines sliced through the circle and came out on the inside. Another hit like that, and I was a goner.
“Alessia!” the woman cried. “Kill me.”
I whined. She indicated the knife in my boot that I had taken to carrying at Giselle’s insistence. The demon pulled its arm back. Several dozen smaller ones were scraping annoyingly at the circle. It started flickering.
“Now!” the woman called. I knew what she wanted me to do. If I killed her, then I could take the power of her soul and use it to propel me back into the other dimension. On the other hand, if I killed her…then I killed her.
The circle shattered under the demon assault. Something spiny lanced me through my calf. Screaming, I jolted upright so suddenly the skin on my cheek tore. Pain spiralled down my neck and spine. Tears blurred my vision.
The woman tugged at the knife. It came free. She grabbed my arms, and with a strength I couldn’t believe she possessed, she drove the knife into her own heart.
“Alessia!” she cried out in a mix of her own voice and Haniel’s. “Go!”
The shock of hearing him smacked me out of my reverie. White light exploded from the woman’s body as her soul disintegrated. Only when I saw the spark of it in the Ley dimension did I remember that it wasn’t going to go to the Sea of Souls. Right before my eyes, her soul funnelled into something lifeless.
I reacted without thinking. Snatching at the last of my bone magic, I nabbed her soul for my own. It was harder without the boost of sinister magic. Something slammed into the side of my head causing white dots to appear all around the room. As soon as I caught hold of her soul, a force on the other side yanked back. We played tug-of-war. It took up precious seconds I didn’t have.
I heard Lucifer’s voice inside my head telling me that I had to survive. The darker half of me made an unforgiveable decision. Using the bone magic, I sawed the woman’s soul in half. It split in two, and the tension on the other side disappeared.
Free of the opposing force, I grabbed the soul’s burst of energy and funnelled it into the pools of my magic. They ignited with a boom that almost rocked me sideways. With a single thought, I began to tear open the Ley dimension. Reaching out with bone magic, I snipped Haniel’s essence from the woman’s body and dragged him with me. Haniel’s essence was weak. It almost came apart in my grip. Like I was holding onto water.
