by Lan Chan
Bloodline Fallacy
Bloodline Academy Book 5
Lan Chan
Copyright © 2020 by Lan Chan
All rights reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, (electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
All names, characters, groups and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and all opinions expressed by the characters, whose preferences and attitudes are entirely their own. Any similarities to real persons or groups, living or dead are coincidental and not intended by the author.
Cover by Christian Bentulan
Editing by Contagious Edits and Lorie Collins
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Epilogue
Dear Reader
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1
I’ve always had a sketchy relationship with hospitals. The same cold dread gripped me when I stepped through the doors of Terran General as it did when I entered Nanna’s psychiatric hospital. Both were meant to be places of healing, yet my chest felt hollowed out by a broken sense of loss.
I almost did a double-take at the sight that greeted me. Last time I was here, the waiting room had been deserted. This wasn’t a public hospital. They didn’t just take random patients. Yet almost all the seats were filled with people. Most of them were vacant-eyed.
An old lady by the wall to the left clutched a set of black rosary beads and was mumbling the Lord’s Prayer. By the potted ficus plant in the corner was a girl about my age. Her ash-blonde hair was braided into a circlet that looked like a halo around her head. It was an appropriate hairdo. She was positively angelic. Too bad she kept flinching at everything and nothing. When she lifted her head and caught me staring, her whole body stilled. Colour drained from her cheeks in contrast to the sudden wildness in her eyes. I’d seen that look on deer in nature documentaries just before a predator leaped at them from the bushes.
Some of the other patients were swaying in their chairs but they sure as heck weren’t praying. There was only one explanation for this kind of behaviour: demon contact.
Despite their best efforts, the Dominion and the elite guards hadn’t been able to round up every demon released when Jonah escaped. The low demons were easier to ferret out but most of the others, the ones that could possess humans, were still at large. If it was this bad at Terran, what did the other hospitals look like?
I approached the admissions desk. The receptionist kept her head down, furiously scribbling on a notepad. A cordless phone was cradled between her neck and shoulder. “Can I help you?”
Now probably wasn’t a good time to tell her that she had macaroni stuck to her brown curls. The phone rang right beside her ear. She grunted and picked it up before I could answer her.
“Terran General, can you hold?” She returned the phone to its cradle.
“Hi. I’m Alessia Hastings,” I spat out before anything else could interrupt. I was already having second thoughts. “I’m here to see Doctor Daly.”
I knew she’d found my appointment and read the reason I was here when her sharp expression softened. Pity: the gift that nobody wanted.
“She’ll be out in a sec, love.”
Unsure where to wait, I hovered by the edge of the reception desk, playing with the band of Gabriel’s Key on the middle finger of my left hand. The swinging door on the other side of the room opened. Jessica barged through with a clipboard in her hands. She had on a nurse’s purple scrubs.
Out of all the Terrans, Jessica was the only one adamant that she wanted nothing to do with Bloodline. Unlike Rachel, who had killed supernaturals, I couldn’t get to Jessica with guilt. Especially not after Samantha was murdered. So Jessica had transferred to Terran Hospital while the Academy was being rebuilt.
She saw me, paused, and then ran stubby fingers over her pageboy hair that had turned a little shaggy on the sides. Finally, she nodded at me before heading towards the praying woman. Well, hello to you too.
Two minutes after Jessica disappeared with the old lady, a woman with close-cropped, dark hair came down the open corridor. She appeared to be in her mid-thirties but her sensible knee-length skirt and buttoned blouse would have met with approval from Nanna. As opposed to my faded blue jeans and black singlet which Eugenia had dubbed my “moping getup.”
“Alessia?”
I jumped like I’d been electrocuted. She smiled and waved me over. I followed her into a small examination room. The hum of machinery set my teeth on edge. Or maybe it was the fact that I was here in the first place.
“Take a seat,” the doctor offered.
Her desk was set in the right corner from the door. The patient seat sat next to it and backed up to the wall. I eyed the blood pressure machine warily but did as I was told. “Matilda filled me in on your situation,” she said. “Did you get a chance to read the pamphlets I emailed?”
I nodded. Best not to incriminate myself by opening up my big mouth. Nobody but Matilda knew I was going to get my eggs tested and she only knew because I needed her help to make all the arrangements. I only had an email address from my time at Terran, but I couldn’t very well check it while living in the Reserve.
For once, luck was on my side and the doctor went through the process again. She checked all of my vitals and measurements with calm practicality. Not once did she mention the pink supernatural elephant in the room. If she had an opinion about how I’d ended up like this, she kept her mouth shut. I decided I liked her.
I was inside the change room putting on the scratchy hospital gown when the nausea rolled over me. Bitterness and iron coated my tongue. All the strength in my legs disappeared. I landed butt first on the filthy plastic bench and doubled over. Bracing on my knees, I forced air into my lungs while at the same time surrendering to a fi
t of coughing. Something popped between my ears like firecrackers. The bursts coincided with dark splotches appearing in front of my eyes. Pain radiated down the back of my skull. My eyes watered. The hand I used to cover my mouth came away coated in blood and bile.
Instinct took over. I turned my attention inward to the pool of magic inside of me and hissed. Both layers were swirling together in a whirlpool of unease. They crashed against each other as though an invisible tornado was blowing though my body. Gripping onto everything Peter had taught me about hedge magic, I tried to force a measure of calm. What happened instead was a burst of bright green that saturated my body. It separated the blue and black magics, soothing them with its calm nature. Almost as though Kai could sense that I was unstable, and he was sending me comfort. Any illusions I’d harboured about the bond fading just because I hadn’t been in contact with him for a month disappeared.
That thought forced me out of my stupor. I focused on the white sock I’d dropped on the stone floor. The material where my big toe sat was browned with dirt. There was a ladder forming at the base of the heel. These mundane thoughts helped the pain in my head to subside. I managed to take a deep breath without feeling like my lungs were full of burning liquid.
Somebody knocked on the door. “Everything okay in there?” a male voice asked.
No, everything was not okay. It was getting harder and harder to rationalise these attacks as anxiety. Not when I was now coughing up blood. This wasn’t the time to freak out, though.
“Just a second,” I called back.
Rubbing my wet hand on the side of the gown, I swiped the wetness from my cheeks and stuffed my things into my backpack. Then I stowed that in the blue square bucket that I was told to leave in the change room. The former homeless girl in me didn’t like the thought of leaving valuables unattended. Unfortunately, this gown didn’t even have a back. There was nowhere to stash anything. So I stuffed the ring into a sock and buried it at the bottom of the backpack. Not exactly secure, but the action calmed my nerves a little.
Doctor Daly was waiting for me when I was done. She’d changed into pale blue scrubs and now wore a surgical mask and gloves.
She led me to a room with a pair of hospital beds. “Hop on,” she said, indicating the one closest to us. When I was secure in the bed, an anaesthesiologist swabbed my arm and injected me with aesthetic.
“Okay, Lex,” Doctor Daly said. “Can you count backwards from ten for me?”
Ten. Nine. Eight. Sev...
If ever there was a test to determine my humanity, this was surely it. No supernatural would have been this susceptible to human medication.
I woke to the sound of earth shifting. When I begrudgingly forced my eyes open, the ceiling refused to stay in one spot. Cold bit at my extremities. The left side of my body was no longer covered by the blankets, but that seemed negligible. My breath came out in puffs of condensation. According to the clock, it was just past one in the afternoon. I’d been unconscious for almost two hours. The pitch-black darkness outside the window said otherwise. My skin prickled as a swathe of metaphorical brown sludge poured over me. The hedge magic vibrated against my chest in a panicked hum. I cast it in a wide circle, expanding it until I hit upon a foreign presence.
“Shit!”
The trees in the courtyard around the hospital were shuddering in response to demonic energy. The liquid in their cells hardened as the temperature continued to drop. Cell walls burst as their roots constricted and choked inside the rapidly compacting earth.
Ice crystals traversed over the window, turning the glass opaque. When they reached the corner, they crawled over the plaster, draping themselves along the windowsill into icicles.
This could not be happening. But just in case it was, I grabbed the sheet of ice that passed for a blanket and pulled it aside.
The floor gave my toes frostbite. I yelped as I waddled over to the armchair that now held my backpack. The first thing I did was make sure Gabriel’s Key was still there. Check. The second thing I did was attempt to teleport. No need to be a hero when my butt was hanging out the back of the gown. The air hummed around me. I felt the attempted tug of teleport magic in the pit of my gut but that was where it ended. Dammit.
Dressing as quickly as I could, I tried to call out to Morning Star. Yet another dead end. What was the point in having a demon blade if I couldn’t access it half the time?
The protection circle I drew around myself flickered. I stared it down, forcing my will to keep it intact. Now wasn’t the time for my brain to misfire. The circle had only just stabilised when my door was flung open.
Jessica raced in, her chest heaving. When she saw me, her face pinched for a second before evening out again. She had probably expected me to still be passed out. A gooey black smudge decorated the front of her scrubs. It gave off an abrasive scent that I knew from my time at Terran. She wore a thick brown utility belt on her hip. Holstered to it were two toxic poison guns.
“We’re under siege,” she hissed. My hackles rose at her accusatory tone. The ground rocked as though to highlight her statement.
“I’m not forsaken anymore.” Triggered.
She shot me an impatient frown. Right. She didn’t know about that. “We need to get to the recovery wing,” she said. “It’s got the most warding.”
We ran down the corridor past other rooms. Most of the doors had been flung open and the rooms empty. “Have you tried contacting the Sisterhood?”
“No communication in or out. There’s some kind of dampening spell blocking everything.”
“What about other weapons?”
She shook her head. “This is a hospital, not an armoury.”
“Any idea what we’re dealing with?”
“Demons are demons.”
That wasn’t good enough. It would help immensely if I knew what type of demons they were. Unfortunately, time wasn’t on our side. We turned a corner and I spotted a trolley of trays and glasses that had been abandoned. “Kitchen?” I asked.
She pointed to a pair of double doors to my right. I ducked in and almost broke my ankle on a pool of water that had iced over. My knee hit the industrial cooker as I skidded.
Trying not to curse, I ransacked the kitchen for salt. There were two great big sacks of processed table salt in the pantry. Not ideal. Table salt had a lot of random chemicals in it that diluted its potency. “Would it kill you to buy something a little purer?” And then, “Can you help me carry this?”
That was me all over. Insult someone and then ask them for help.
Jessica picked up one of the bags that I was struggling to even move. At the last minute, I slipped a paring knife into my back pocket. A poor substitute for Morning Star but beggars couldn’t be choosers. We got to the recovery ward just in time to watch the sky light up in a fiery mushroom cloud. Doctor Daly closed the door behind us and barred it with a metal chain and padlock. Seeing her snapped something in my chest.
“The eggs?” I asked, rather selfishly.
She didn’t miss a beat. “Storage facility. Lower right wing.”
I abandoned the circle around myself and drew one around the location she’d provided. The last thing I needed was for the hospital to blow up and take my eggs with it. Priorities. There were white candles burning on metal candelabras in each corner of the room. The metal had been worked into an intricate pattern of runes and sigils for protection. Craning my head upwards, I saw that the ceiling was also decorated in a series of protective markings.
Jessica handed the bag of salt off to some other nurses. “Draw an unbroken circle around the room,” she said. Someone had the wherewithal to move the recovery beds into a corner. The occupants of the beds still lay unconscious. It left a big open space in the centre of the room where the rest of us congregated. While the hospital staff scrambled to secure the room, the conscious patients huddled together shaking. At the front of the group was Angel Girl. She stared straight ahead, unseeing. That was until she must have felt me starin
g again. Then she turned away and tried to melt into the group.
A quick headcount said we were coming up short.
“Ummm…where is everybody else?”
Half a dozen pairs of eyes cast to the window. Outside, it wasn’t a pretty picture. Smoke wafted from the broken structures of the hospital. The entrance had been caved in. Shadows bled into the surrounding atmosphere, blanketing the sun in red.
In the courtyard, not ten metres away, stood a being with deep crimson skin. It was naked, unashamedly male, built like a footballer on steroids, and sporting a pair of thorned black wings. Lying prone around its cloven feet were the bodies of a dozen humans. It yanked the rosary beads from the old woman’s shaking hand and crushed it to pieces. She fainted as it lifted her to its eye level. It grinned a sharp-toothed smile.
All of the breath left me in a rush. The old woman’s legs flapped beneath her unconscious body. I threw a protection circle around her at the same time the demon brought his palm down on her forehead.
2
Pain splintered through my mind. I gripped the windowsill in an effort to remain upright. Confusion blanketed my thoughts. Why was I so weak? The demon pressed down harder, shouting words in a demonic dead language. My circle cracked at the seams. While I tried to seal it up, I countered with words of light. It was like a buzzer went off in my head. The ineffectual words released my circle.