Bloodline Secrecy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 2) by Lan Chan (best e ink reader for manga TXT) 📕

“Boo hoo.” She rubbed her fists against her eyes like a baby. “You’ve been given the greatest weapon against the demons and all you can do is whine.”

“Given? I bled for that blade.”

“Ladies,” Professor Eldridge said. “This is Weaponry and Combat. Not a screaming match.”

I hadn’t even noticed I had raised my voice. “Thanks a lot,” I hissed.

She made an obscene gesture at me. My, how far we’d come. I was battered and bruised by the end of the lesson. Isla shoved me with her shoulder when we went to return our training swords. “You know,” she said. “If you’re not going to make use of it, give the demon blade to somebody else.”

“I can’t just give it up,” I said. “It’s not that easy.”

She smiled. It was like a shark when it opened its jaws. “That’s right,” she said. “It has to be taken, doesn’t it?”

The way she said it, I got the feeling that the thought had crossed her mind. If Isla had thought about it, then I could pretty much bet she wasn’t the only one. As I was drawing the circle before I went to bed that night, I saw the hilt of the sword poking out from under the bed. When I lay down, I let my hand dangle over the edge and grip the handle.

As always, the humming shot up my arm. I thought of Skander’s watery gaze and shuddered. I didn’t want to end up like that. I also didn’t want to be Fred, so afraid of what I could or couldn’t do that it pushed me to act recklessly.

I was afraid of what possession of the sword meant. At the same time, I was also afraid of not having the sword. It was a no-win situation. And in a no-win situation, I rationalised that it was better to be well-armed. I fell asleep having made up my mind. If I was going to be the holder of a demon blade, I was sure as hell going to learn to use it properly.

27

They say that no matter how beautiful a painting, if you see it regularly, you eventually get used to it. It becomes background noise. I wish somebody would give Lucifer that memo. In my dream, I was lying on the floor. This cavern was freezing. Icicles hung from the ceiling. My breath came out in a puff of condensation. Every breath was laboured. The air was too thin.

A glow of red around me had my head turning. The throb of energy pulled me back. The circle was nothing I had ever seen before. The symbols were foreign. They had been constructed from a dead language I had not yet learned.

The figure standing above me was the only thing that I knew. I wished with everything I had that he was a stranger. Despite it all, my heart stuttered at the sight of him. It was no wonder he had been named the Morning Star. I could never have hoped to imagine anything so bright. So beautiful. A deadly beauty.

If I could have moved, I would have crawled just to get away from him. He stepped from the circle to a portal that opened up beside the ice-covered wall.

“I’m waiting, Alessia,” Lucifer said.

My sight was riveted to the portal. An arm reached out of it. Unlike the portals that I’d travelled through, the barrier of this one wasn’t transparent magical energy. It was viscous and thick like a membrane. The arm was followed by yellow horns. The portal gave off a shrill sound almost like a human scream. It grew more urgent as the demon dragged the rest of its misshapen body from between the slit in the portal.

“Welcome, my son,” Lucifer said to the demon.

It was then that it hit me. The portal was like a birth canal. It was giving life to new demons. My stomach roiled.

I gasped awake to the chime of the witching-hour bells. Why in the world they decided to tune the bells to three in the morning was beyond me. My clothes were soaked through with sweat, but I was shivering. The room was awash in blue light. How Sophie and Basil managed to sleep through it was beyond me. When I reached out to trace the familiar, comforting lines of the circle, my hand touched the handle of the demon blade.

My blood felt like it had turned to ice. My teeth were chattering so hard they sounded like dice being rattled. Right then I wanted my nanna really badly. When I had nightmares as a child, I’d run into her bed and she would tell me stories until I feel asleep. Now she had the opposite problem. She wouldn’t wake.

In one of her fairy tales, a hero would come and save the day. But this was the real world. Heroes were few and far between. I used to have this fantasy where my parents would walk in the door one day. Someone would tell me it was a mistake that they had died when I was an infant. I’d wait and watch for someone to come and rescue me.

I was a year into living on the streets before I finally accepted that nobody was coming. Now here I was, pretending that these things weren’t happening. Even if my world now included Nephilim and demons, vampires and werelions, this still wasn’t a fairytale. I sure as heck wasn’t a princess. If there would be any saving, I would have to do it on my own.

I gave a silent little howl in my head. Throwing the covers off me in one fell swoop, I dressed in a pair of sweats and my hoodie, grabbed the demon blade and headed out into the mist-drenched night.

I wasn’t sure where I was headed until I stood at the entrance of the Grove. I’d taken my acceptance into the