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

Huh. So even supernaturals used that trick. He wedged through the opening as soon as I unlocked the door. “Wait, Basil,” I hissed. But he was in too much of a hurry to notice.

I cursed as he disappeared inside without thinking. I was in the midst of drawing circles around us both when he made a strangling sound. Pushing the door wide open, I slid the demon blade from its scabbard and barged into the house.

I stopped dead at the scene in the living room. Odette lay on the rug, her soft blonde hair haloed around her head. But it was the other blonde who had my attention. In the prison she’d been professionally reserved. On the outside, the mask slipped. Giselle smiled at me. She held Basil tight in her left hand.

She raised her other one when I moved to attack. “I wouldn’t if I were you,” she said. The air around her shimmered. She was phasing. Oh hell no.

“You’re Sisterhood,” I breathed.

“No, youngling. We are Sisterhood. Or we would have been if you hadn’t been brainwashed by the supernaturals.”

I tried to step closer, but she squeezed Basil tighter. If it was just physical, it wouldn’t have mattered. He no longer felt pain. Instead, a thin copper thread of luminous gold wound around his squishy body. It formed a noose around his head and contracted. Basil coughed like he actually couldn’t breathe.

The demon blade warmed in my palm. It hummed with renewed vigour to taste blood. Dammit. All that work I’d done was unravelling. It wanted to kill.

A hand touched my shoulder. I whirled as a bag was thrown over my head. Somebody tried to rip the demon blade from my grasp. I inched to the left, slamming my elbow into solid ribs. Whoever I’d just attacked didn’t cry out that time.

They did when I drew the constricting circle around them. I squeezed, imaging the glowing blue circle in my mind growing tighter.

“Disable her,” Giselle said a second before something blunt slammed into my temple. I went out like a light.

40

The silver light of an incantation circle brushed against my closed eyelids. I groaned as I regained consciousness. My stomach lurched. The pain in the right side of my head was dull but no less distracting. When I went to rub at the sore spot, my hands wouldn’t come away from behind me. Still confused from being knocked out, it took me a few minutes to take stock of my surroundings.

We were in the clearing of some type of forest. A quick brush with my hedge magic told me it was natural and not supernaturally made. The moon was whole and grinning down at me. I was in a standing position. My body was being supported by a thick trunk behind me and a rope tied around my underarms. My hands were restrained around the trunk. I ran a hand against the tree. No, it wasn’t a tree. The wood was too smooth. It was a stake. This couldn’t be happening. I forced my lazy eyes open and looked down where I was standing. There was kindling beneath my feet. I was tied to a stake. If someone set fire to the kindling, I would burn. This time, it wasn’t someone’s idea of a trial.

“Don’t worry,” Giselle said. “You won’t be there for long. It was a ridiculous way to kill us anyway.” My eyes flicked to where she was crouched inside the silver circle. Basil lay on the ground unmoving. The copper bindings around him were now so numerous and interwoven I could barely see his woollen skin.

“What are you doing?” I spat. “Let go of him.” I tried to struggle against my bindings. She’d used a zip tie. Not something a supernatural being would ever consider useful.

“It’s all a matter of time.”

“He hasn’t done anything to you, he’s just a soul trapped in a doll.” The zip tie was cutting into my wrists, but I kept trying to loosen it. I’d seen enough movies to know grown men couldn’t get out of these things. I’d used them enough times to keep trees staked in Nanna’s garden so they wouldn’t blow against the wind.

“He’s an abomination,” she said. “But that’s not what I need him for. He’s just a means to an end.”

“Why? Why are you doing this? What have we done to you?”

She ignored my question. I hadn’t really hoped to distract her anyway. If only I’d been a kitchen witch. If I could conjure fire, I would be able to heat up the plastic and escape. It would hurt like a mother but that was beside the point.

The point became evident when Giselle set four red candles at the four quadrants around the silver circle. Red candles were symbolic of soul magic. I bit my lip and renewed my struggle. She poured salt into a crucible and added a piece of Basil’s wool, a single dark hair that I guessed was mine, and her own blonde strand. It was when she started drawing symbols that the alarm in my chest became a blinding panic.

“Don’t!” I screamed, thrashing against my bindings. She finished the five even waves that signalled transference.

She continued to look down at her handiwork, but I could see her cheeks crease into a smile. Inside the confines of his copper mummification, Basil made a muffled sound. Giselle turned her palms up. Silver glowed from them. The light of the circle blazed.

Getting to her feet, she approached me with a small knife. Nicking her thumb, she touched it to my forehead. I tried to turn away, but she held my chin steady with her other hand. She drew a symbol I couldn’t see but one I could guess from my studies. A circle with the wind symbol on it. Moving behind me, she cut my finger and squeezed to release the droplets of blood. Swiping the drops from my hand,