Bloodline Contingency: An Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 12), page 59
Lucifer’s confidence swept through the supernaturals like an infection. One by one, the elite guards cracked a smile. It suddenly felt like I was wading through shark-infested waters.
While they made plans to protect their cities and take back the heavenly realm, I sat quietly in trepidation. Azrael squeezed my hand again.
Violence isn’t always the solution, Azrael spoke in my thoughts. That’s why I chose you.
He bowed his head for the first time. I’m so sorry that this burden is now yours, Alessia.
Feeling like stress was going to drown me, I decided that it was time to perform an act of kindness. When I was finally dismissed from the meeting, I teleported to the Seraphina cells.
In all the hustling to get the cities back into living order, everyone had forgotten about Timothy. The Sisterhood weren’t even watching him anymore. They were too busy helping to clear up the Grove.
The scion was as quiet as he had always been as I stepped into the room. My blood circle and the soul circles continued to blaze around him quietly. Their essence was diminished because they hadn’t been reinforced in quite some time. That didn’t matter. We wouldn’t hold him for much longer.
I came to a stop in front of him. Something sparked in the back of my mind. My darker half slid off the lid of my chest of bad things. She stepped forward with tearful compassion in her eyes.
“It’s time to rest now,” I told Timothy.
I received no acknowledgement until my bone magic touched his aura. By then, it was already too late. Black and then white rolled across Timothy’s eyes. His broken face morphed from a slack expression into something redolent with hatred. His cruel smile made my heart stop beating.
Cold blasted at my extremities. Ice crusted against the corners of the room, only for it to be eaten away as the fabric of reality shifted. A malevolent force chewed on the magic holding the room together. Metal and cement screamed as it buckled and crumbled away. Seams of blackness appeared around the corners of the room.
A blunt force struck the room, making everything inside rock. The soul circle and blood circle around Timothy gurgled and disappeared. It was replaced by a circle of complete black, brimming with death.
Timothy’s head lifted. His eyes were depthless in the way of a demon. Not just any demon. “So,” Astaroth said, “Lucifer thinks he has his Lightbringer back.”
The bond screamed inside of me. I felt Kai and Lucifer both clambering to reach me, clawing at the bond so desperately it felt like they were tearing strips off it.
Kai’s panic consumed me. In my thoughts, his eyes had gone black too. Astaroth laughed in my head. “Did you think it would be that easy to shake me off?” he said. “You are not Lucifer’s. You, all of you, are mine.”
Kai and I both screamed as the bond stretched wafer thin. All my magic swarmed towards it, trying to keep hold of it. The last thing I saw was Kai’s aura going black as Astaroth ripped me through the Ley dimension.
My darker half scrambled. The former me would have come out swinging. This new version of me knew fighting now wasn’t going to help. Instead, I sent all my love towards Kai. All my certainty.
Do not break, Malachi, I told him. I won’t either. I promise you.
It was a promise I intended to keep.
Astaroth grinned. In that last second before the world went dark, I saw the legions of his army stampeding towards the heavenly realm. He was just doing that to frighten his enemies. His true intent lay in the direction of the humans. The ones on whom Azrael and Lucifer had chosen to bestow their favour.
A celestial longing burned through me with Astaroth’s proximity. Death was glorious, but creation was divine.
Astaroth had lost his divinity when Azrael had stripped out a part of him. And now, he was going to use me to get it back.
Unless I used him first.
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Lan Chan, Bloodline Contingency: An Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 12)
