Bloodline Alchemy: A Young Adult Urban Fantasy Academy Novel (Bloodline Academy Book 6) Lan Chan (uplifting novels .TXT) 📖

might have just signed my own death warrant too. Objectively I knew it had to hurt like hell, but I felt nothing besides the throb of urgency in my thoughts.

With fingers that were already too slick with somebody else’s blood, I uncorked the vials of elixir and let them soak onto the floor.

“What is she–” a female voice said before Max cut whoever it was off with a growl.

“Amy,” I gritted. “I need you.”

She was there in an instant. Her knees collapsed beneath her, but she appeared on my left. I jammed the knife into her thigh, and she didn’t flinch. The others did. Their hackles rose as their eyes became drenched in yellow.

“Hold,” I heard Max say.

The flux of power that shoved at me from the wound in Amy’s thigh was ten times the strength that the essences of the rats offered.

See? The voice in my head said. See what you could have if you took the leap?

Pushing it all aside, I sank into the pool of my alchemy and began to transmute the blood and the elixir. Cell by cell, the blood soaking into Amy’s jeans loosened itself. So did the blood on her skin. Reaching out, I called to the blood painted on Jeremiah and the splashes on Noah. It was intricate work. The magic swept over them again and again until they were wrung dry better than any industrial washing machine.

Pain built up behind my eyes. The exhaustion from the afternoon came back to haunt me. My stomach became hollow as my energy was sapped. Then it began to churn, as though it was pulling strength from somewhere deep inside me.

Ignoring it, I forced the glow of pink magic into a whisper-thin strand that I directed over Lizzie’s chest. Drip by agonising drip, I transferred the blood back into Lizzie’s heart. Thankfully, the organ was still intact. The problem was that no matter how much blood I managed to give her, she would continue to bleed out until the wounds were stitched up. Gwen was already working on it, her deft fingers flying over the wounds using a mage-constructed salve and enchanted thread.

Even if Gwen and I sat with her all night and day, without the gift of supernatural healing, I feared we were labouring in vain. Still, I kept her blood flowing, biting my bottom lip bloody because my heart was beating too slowly all of a sudden. Inside me, the magic was beginning to wane. The drawbacks of low magic at work.

When Gwen finished the makeshift stitching, Lizzie’s skin was a patchwork of terrible, overlapping flesh.

Completely out of my depth, I heard Basil’s voice in my ear. “Blood is about connection. It’s about family. It ties us together.” Shifters were about pack.

“The pack link,” I said. “She needs the link.”

“That’s impossible,” Ari snapped, his eyes two big saucers. “It’s already drained.”

Looking into his disdainful face, I realised I had no more care to give for hierarchy or insulation or any of their crap. Lizzie was dying, and I didn’t give a damn how it looked. Picking her up, I started towards the door. A chest blocked my way. “Move,” I screamed at Harris.

“You’re not–” that was all he got out before Max bulldozed over him, grabbed Lizzie from me, and ran.

Amy followed after him. My legs were too slow. They were already specks in the horizon before I got past the flower beds out the front of the house. “They’re so inconsiderate, aren’t they?” Charles said before he picked me up like a doll and took off after them.

Supernatural speed was a thing of wonder, but for a human, it was a sickening experience. The world rushed by me in a sweep of midnight, peppered with spots of brightness. The accommodation sector was aglow with activity as news must be spreading about the incident. There was no time to take in any of it as Charles raced towards the Cabin. Before very long, he had outstripped Amy.

We pulled up to the field around the Cabin and were met with a battalion of shifter guards. Max made it through perfectly fine. But the moment they scented me, Charles and I were suddenly flanked on all sides by predators. He would have run right through them if he were alone. But with so many of them circling around us, there was every possibility that I might get hurt.

We came to an almost dead stop too quickly. Charles placed his hand against the back of my neck to blunt the effect of the whiplash. The world was a spinning mess in my eyes. Without his support, I wouldn’t be able to stand upright and not fall on my ass.

“Get out of the way,” Charles ordered. The mouths of the shifters pulled open as though they were silently laughing. Amusement didn’t change the fact that there were very sharp teeth bared at us.

Amy arrived at our backs. Her eyes flicked between yellow and red. She blinked as though not seeing the reason why we had come to a stop. There was a tense moment when I thought she might start tearing into the guards.

Max appeared in the threshold of the building, still holding Lizzie in his arms. He took one look at the situation, cupped his hand over Lizzie’s delicate ears even though I was sure she was zonked out, and roared.

The visceral fury in it reached out phantom claws and swiped at the guards. They lowered themselves to the ground as the sound of thunder picked up momentum. It lashed at them in unapologetic waves of dominance. The three wolves directly in front of us began to bleed from their noses. The hairs on the backs of their necks stood on end, even as they rolled over and showed their bellies.

If Charles hadn’t cupped my head in his big hands, I suspected I might have passed out. As it was, he leaped over the prostrating wolves and raced towards the Cabin. Oppression and bitterness slapped me in