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

“I’m not going to say it again,” I said. “You’ve been charged with her safety. Imagine how amused Raphael is going to be when he finds out you’ve allowed her to come to harm.”

The seraph’s name was like a secret code. The bars lowered.

“Excellent. Now if you’d open up a portal for me to Bloodline Academy that would be just peachy.”

“There’s no way that’s going to happen, witch,” the Nephilim on the right said.

“You call me a witch like I’m a lower being,” I said. “And yet this witch has terrorised your Council for months. I killed Alistair. Imagine how easily I could kill this human. All I want is passage to the Academy.”

“Oh, just let her go,” Nanna said. “She seems to really want to be there.” Not exactly normal behaviour for a hostage. I swallowed. What if they called my bluff? If that happened my chances of making it out of here were nil. A stroke of anxiety laced through my gut. The walls shimmered before my eyes. The two Nephilim blinked in and out of existence. I couldn’t control the phasing. It seemed to happen whenever I was emotionally agitated.

“Stop!” the one on the left said. His grey eyes were brimming with hatred and something else that made his jaw set hard. If I didn’t know better, I would say it was fear. “I will teleport you.”

“No need. A portal is fine.”

“I will take you or you won’t go anywhere.”

I glanced from one of them to the other. What choice did I have? Nodding, I turned so that he was able to grab hold of my elbow. “You so much as move an inch out of step and I’ll open her up,” I said. The thought made my stomach churn, but I injected as much venom into my voice as I possibly could.

The moment I felt the world around me slip, I let go of Nanna and pushed her aside. There was no time to worry about whether she landed softly because the next thing I knew I was in the portal field with a Nephilim bearing down on me. For a second his broadsword was dangling over my head. I shifted my body weight to slide out from underneath him. I tripped against something on the ground and tumbled. A body. I recognised one of the boys as a vampire that Sasha sometimes hung out with. He was out cold. He hadn’t turned to dust, so it meant he was still alive even though he didn’t breathe. No time to wonder why he was napping in the field.

I stepped over the body, focusing on the bigger threat. My arms came up in a defensive stance. I lifted them to cover the left side of my body where the Nephilim was positioned.

The Nephilim gasped. I wondered for a second if he had made a mistake while teleporting. He turned his head to glare at me. The skin on his face had become translucent. His mouth twisted into a grimace as he toppled over. His broadsword clanged to the ground. I weaved beneath his underarm and used my legs to push us to a standing position. A sound of protest dragged from his throat, but he was so weak all of a sudden that he couldn’t stop me.

“What’s happening?” I asked.

He pushed out a word that I thought might have been “drowning,” but I couldn’t be sure. A roar like the clapping of thunder erupted in the moonlit night. For the first time, I paid attention to the scene around me. My heartbeat came to a stuttering halt. The vampire wasn’t the only body on the field. The place was scattered with unconscious supernaturals. In all the time I’d been in their presence, there was only one thing I could think of that could do this to them. The way the Nephilim sagged in my arms confirmed it. They were being drained.

Lowering myself to the ground, I let the Nephilim go as gently as I could.

She was here. And she had brought the criminals with her. Somewhere around here, Skander was doling out payback for all the times he had been drained while he was imprisoned. My eyes tracked over the winged figure nearby. I raced over to find Curtis sprawled on his back, the white of his wings muddy. There were footprints dusted over them. Relief flooded through me when I saw his chest rise and fall. I shook him but he remained unconscious.

My relief was short-lived. If the draining was this powerful, it could mean that all the supernaturals were affected.

Nobody, not even Skander, was strong enough to pull off something of this magnitude. Not without dark magic. If he had tapped into demonic power, it meant that it was only a matter of time before the Hell dimension spilled into this one.

A sharp burst of pain in my chest had me wincing. Scrambling for the source, I found my mind dragged involuntarily into the Ley dimension. A thousand origins of light sparked behind my eyelids. I recognised the circle of blood magic surrounding the Grove but not the hundreds of entities scrambling within it. Outside of the blood circle, a depthless black shadow charged. When it hit the barrier of my magic, my mind throbbed. The barrier reciprocated the attack with a magical charge of its own. The blackness winked out. Something was trying to breach the Grove. It took me a moment to realise the cloud of lights were other students who had taken refuge there. I hoped it would protect them long enough for help to arrive.

As I retrieved the broadsword that lay beside Curtis, a fireball erupted in the sky above the Academy’s courtyard. Screams blanketed my ears. They came from the direction of the dorms.

And then I saw them. Tiny figures standing on the roof of the