Bloodline Alchemy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 6) by Lan Chan (tohfa e dulha read online .txt) 📕

managed to contain the power for so long was beyond me. I watched as pink light presumed to ingest the silvery black of her bone magic.

Every nerve, every fibre in my body burned. A single drop of blood and it felt as though a hundred thousand spikes were being drilled into my brain. And like every other attempt I’d made to tame her blood, it was completely misguided. The bone magic threw off my alchemy like a duck shaking water off its back. If magic had an emotional range, pissed-off would be the way I would catalogue the cold vibration of Lex’s blood before it lashed out and the world exploded around me.

5

Crude. That was how I would explain the magical bomb I’d just tried to set off. Knowing exactly how my last-ditch attempt would go, I used my remaining strength to throw up a protection circle around Andrei. I prayed that Lex’s magic wouldn’t engulf us in its wake. The resulting blast as my alchemy stuttered had me cowering on the ground. It stampeded through the clearing, tearing into the malachim closest to us. Every muscle in my body squeezed tight. A keen of fear ripped from my throat as the shockwave of the explosion rolled over me. The magic scraped at my skin like sandpaper, rubbing it raw.

But it was inside where the damage was done. Though it spared my life, Lex’s magic dragged my sight into the Ley dimension. I blinked and my aura flashed in front of my eyes. The soft pink glow was now laced through with streaks of dull brown and red. It was like a pink eyeball with irritated capillaries throbbing all around it. My heart almost jumped out of my chest when I followed the lines of disease down to where it should have been held securely in place to the soul tether. This line was also poisoned by threads of darkness. The mass led to an origin that was blurred, and I didn’t have the magic to force it to show me where the thread would lead.

It had started with a single tendril that compounded into many strands each time I attempted to use my blood alchemy to contain Lex’s magic. Now, almost a quarter of the thread had turned an ugly, dead colour. Thick as I might be, even I knew that I was warping the light of my magic. For some reason, the voice that cautioned me belonged to an old man. My great-grandfather.

Every step you take is in the wrong direction, Sophie.

And yet, I couldn’t stop. Unless I found a way to overcome Lex’s power, there would be no hope against Lucifer when he came.

Hope was the furthest thing from my mind as the ringing in my ears subsided. The first thing I heard was the low, scratchy sounds of the malachim. Dammit. I would never be strong enough.

I pushed myself up only for my limbs to give way. For a second, I allowed myself to just lie there, soaking in the lush, magically enhanced grass. Over to my right, I heard Andrei attempting to do the same. Biting my lips together to stop from groaning, I put my hand on the ground and pushed again. Sit up. That was my only goal. No need to be a hero.

Then I saw what we were up against. The magical blast I had set off had killed all but three of the malachim. The problem was, there were plenty more where they came from. It was like cutting the heads of a hydra demon. Cut off one head, two more grew in its place.

The black fires licked at the earth once more. Andrei began to drag himself towards me in earnest. I shook my head at him as another malachim appeared in the sky. There was no time. They were already too many. At this point, they were just playing with us.

“Go!” I mouthed at him.

The pitiful sound brought the attention of the malachim towards me. That was okay. If my death could buy Andrei some time to run, I had to be happy with that. The malachim in front of me pointed a finger in my direction. I had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but the way all the hairs on the back of my neck stood up was pretty telling. Fisting my hands, I shot a burst of alchemy into the words of light at my wrist. A thin blood blade appeared in my hand.

Swiping at my nose, I swallowed hard as the mirage manifested through the fog of the malachim’s ethereal bodies. A lion roared again. I dropped the blade.

The air in the clearing vibrated with the power of a rolling storm. The sound was so deep, so frightening and full of rage, it blasted through my nerves and froze me in place. Something primordial inside me rose to the surface, and my fight and flight instincts disintegrated. Resisting the urge to cover my ears almost gave me a nosebleed. The sound was deafening, so loud it blocked out the return screech from the malachim as they rose to the challenge.

Above the pool of almost-depleted magic, the thread of the mating link hummed. It made sense that this illusion resonated in every cell in my body. That didn’t mean it was in any way comfortable.

I held my breath as the half-man, half-lion that was Max’s beast form stalked into view. My gut bottomed out as a hundred nightmares came to screaming life. And yet, I drank up every inch of him, a feeling of...relief flooding through me. Like every second of these past six months had been winding me tighter to the point of explosion.

His bare chest was covered in a thick matting of golden hair interlaced with blue and pink streaks. Veins throbbed and popped from the straining muscles in his arms. But it was his eyes that held me captivated. Molten gold surrounding a pulsing centre of red that radiated menace.

My