Bloodline Diplomacy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 3) by Lan Chan (best short novels .txt) 📕

I pushed against his thoughts. His swing faltered. It gave her enough time to reach for the gun beside her bed. She fired it without hesitation. The vampire struck again. Her neck snapped in an unnatural angle. The burn in my chest as I fell backwards was secondary to the fist that clamped around my throat. The body I was in collapsed onto the bedroom floor. My head turned towards the floor-length mirror. The face smiling back at me tore my heart in two. Lucifer’s iridescent blue eyes creased at the edges. His stunning features didn’t match the militaristic garb the vampire wore. He blinked at me. His voice cut through the distant fog that kept me complacent.

“Let them fight this useless war,” he said. “We will build an empire on their ashes.”

Footsteps thudded into the room. Something shook me.

The violent shaking dislodged the dream. My eyes, my real eyes, opened to find Sophie peering down at me. “Lex!”

I backed up and into the wall. “What happened?”

“You were screaming in your sleep.”

“I need to see Jacqueline.” Without waiting to explain to her, I raced out of the room in my bare feet. Sophie was nothing if not quick. She’d proven that the first day we’d met. An arm latched on to me the second I pushed the dorm doors open.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Tony asked.

I tried to shove the man mountain away but it was like trying to push a boulder uphill. “Let go of me! I need to speak to Jacqueline!”

“You can’t just go running off in the middle of the night,” he said. My struggling was not getting me anywhere.

“Please just let her go,” Sophie asked.

“You know why I can’t,” he said.

This was pointless. My temper was fraying. The sharp stab of panic in my chest had only ratcheted up the more alert I became. We were wasting time. I had just witnessed a supernatural murdering Ben Cochran and Samantha. Only it wasn’t any normal supernatural. It was one who was possessed by Lucifer. My mind was too turbulent to even comprehend how that was possible. Right now, I just needed to get to Jacqueline.

Without thinking, I reached inside me for the hedge magic. It sputtered. Cursing, I lost my temper for real. Kicking out at Tony, I jarred the big toe of my foot. Damn these stupid supernaturals. A high-pitched bark split the night. Phoenix came barrelling from the direction of the billabong with a horde of yowies in his wake.

“Let. Me. Go.”

Tony only gripped harder. His skin began to harden into granite. Phoenix headbutted him. I screamed, thinking the dingo would split his head open. Instead, he regrouped and charged again. Two Nephilim guards materialised above us. Neither were ones I knew. The Academy had taken on so many new guards recently that I had a hard time keeping them straight. It brought home a very real threat. There were so many of them. If this situation escalated, the Terrans would be exterminated. I’d had enough.

“Malachi!” I screamed. Using the dark power, I amplified the thought until it reverberated through the grounds. It might not be hedge magic, but it had proven powerful enough to kill a demon.

Seconds later, Kai teleported beside me. He must have been asleep because his hair was matted on one side and he was only wearing sweatpants. He took one look at the situation and his jaw clamped. “Let go of her.”

Just like that, I was free. He placed his hands on either side of my shoulders. “I need to see Jacqueline.”

Without hesitating, he teleported us right to her cottage just outside the official school grounds. She was already dressing when we barged through the door. “What’s all the commotion?” she yelled at us. “I’ve just gotten a bulletin that you’re bringing down the school.”

Kai let me go. I halted in front of her. “I had a vision.” There was no other way to describe it. By now I knew better than to bother trying to warn them of Lucifer’s part in the whole mess. “Samantha and the Environment Minister have been murdered. Something…it seems like a supernatural did it. But…” But nothing. No more would come out.

Her face stilled for a second before she began to bark orders. Kai disappeared in the blink of an eye. “Stay here,” Jacqueline told me.

“I can’t!”

She grabbed me as I tried to run out the door. “Lex,” she said. “There’s nothing you can do. We need to try and contain this as best we can. The humans will react poorly as soon as they find out. I don’t want you in the firing line. Go back to the dorms. Stay inside your room until we can sort this mess out.”

It said a lot that she left me with that order without making sure I followed it. I counted to fifty. It was overkill but I didn’t want to chance it. She was an Amazon. It would have taken her no time at all to get to anywhere inside the Academy grounds. It took me fifteen minutes to make the same sprint back to the outer edge of the Herbology sector. The Fae lights in the walled garden were on. Somebody must be up. Using the lights as a guide, I cut through the garden.

“Alessia?” Peter’s voice called out as I passed the little potting shed at the entrance of the garden. I turned towards where he was standing at the door with a mug of warm tea. “What are you doing up at this hour. It’s three in the morning.”

I stopped short. “Beg your pardon?”

He scratched at his head. “It’s very early to be running around the school. But I suppose you were woken up by the same flux of energy that woke me. Darndest thing.”

It wasn’t his explanation that had my pulse thrumming. It was his timekeeping. Or mine, to be exact. The clock inside Samantha’s house had said eleven. If Peter was right, and I had no reason to