Bad Blood: Bloodlines, #5

By Lara Lynwood

My mother's not dead.

 

When she was dragged away by vampires when I was eleven years old, I assumed they'd killed her. Sensible assumption to make, right?

 

Apparently not.

 

Turns out she didn't just survive - she was on their side all along, working with the monster who calls himself my father. They're trying to destabilise the Tunnels, and cause a magical apocalypse like nobody's ever seen before.

 

But I want to know why. I want answers. And I'm going to get them.

 

Even if it kills us both.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lara Lynwood
• Release date: Aug 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223111610

Book preview

Bad Blood

Lara Lynwood

Copyright © 2023 by Lara Lynwood

All rights reserved.

No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher or author, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.

Contents

1.Ada

2.History

3.The Tunnels

4.Luka

5.Dhampir

6.Memories

7.Carmen

8.Knowledge

9.Familiarity

10.Plan

11.Guardian

12.Ritual

13.Cadeyrn

14.Searching

15.Fool's Errand

16.Darkness

17.Dragons

18.Remembrance

19.Hostile

20.Muspel

21.Castle

22.Thessalia

23.River

24.Runes

25.Mother

26.Family

27.Collapse

What to read next...

one

Ada

I knelt on the floor in my flat, and didn’t let myself think about what might have seeped into the filthy carpet over the years. I’d put a rug on top of it. That would have to be enough. I wasn’t going to rip up all the carpet, not when I was only squatting here anyway.

And besides, I had bigger things to focus on right now. Like the sword I’d rested across my thighs. The sword inhabited by some kind of spirit – a spirit I was planning to try and deliberately communicate with.

As opposed to last time, of course, when the spirit had semi-accidentally knocked me unconscious right before I went to witness the Guild battle of a generation. In theory – at least according to what I knew of magic like this, and what Felix had told me – it should be easier if I was the one to initiate contact. Easier to make contact in the first place – and easier to pull away, too, if the spirit within the sword turned out not to be as friendly as she’d seemed.

Even so, I’d inked a careful circle around myself, and added enough runes that even something possessing me, with access to all the strength and magic of a dhampir – a strength I was only beginning to understand – shouldn’t be able to get out. Not without making one hell of a racket, anyway. And not without triggering the other wards – the ones that would kick in if there was something truly dangerous within the flat. I’d tweaked them enough that they should be able to recognise if something wasn’t actually me, and act accordingly.

And even now, after I’d done all of that, I was stalling.

I stared down at the sword. It wasn’t especially elaborate; it didn’t look like some kind of fairytale sword. It was practical – a simple hilt and crossguard, and, most importantly, a blade of purest silver. The kind that was made by hand and magic, reinforced to be able to stand up to anything short of a dragon – maybe even a dragon, actually, thinking about it. It was a dragon who had given it to me, after all, and that same dragon who’d laid a geas on me to bring it back to him.

It was an old, old sword. And the spirit within it... she could be even older.

She’d introduced herself as Ada. And she was a dhampir, like me – or appeared to be, at least. That was why I was hesitating. On the one hand, she’d hinted at having information that could be incredibly valuable to me. And she’d seemed excited to meet me – downright delighted, in fact, once she’d realised that I was a dhampir too.

That could be because she hadn’t spoken to anyone since whenever she’d been bound to the sword. Or it could be for more nefarious reasons. It could even be both – I couldn’t imagine that being stuck in a sword for however long was any good for your mental health. And whilst she’d seemed fairly stable, I hadn’t spoken to her for long.

...She was a dhampir, though. And aside from Luka, who was down in the Tunnels somewhere, I didn’t have any other way to get information about dhampir. It wasn’t exactly something you could look up on the internet.

I sighed.

Yet again, I was stalling. I was... not afraid, exactly, but wary. Hunting vampires was one thing – that, I was used to. That was as easy as breathing for me, and I knew the risks every time I did it. I knew that I could die, every time I stepped into a fight.

But this... this was different. This was something I was completely unfamiliar with. Magic like this wasn’t something I’d ever had much experience with, and nor had anyone else in the Guild, so far as I knew. Maybe some of the Experimental Runes lot – they were crazy enough to think it was a good idea. Not anybody else, though.

Was I going to do it, or wasn’t I?

I shook my head, and rested my hands against the blade of the sword. Of course I was going to do it.

I shut my eyes, and opened them again in the same empty whiteness that had surrounded me the first time I’d met Ada. This time, though, it quickly filled itself in, although not with anything I could really define as scenery. Pastel brushstrokes, faintly coloured clouds. It was as though I were standing in mid-air, and I forced down an unpleasant sense of vertigo.

There was no sign of Ada, and I frowned.

Last time, she’d been right there waiting for me. Then again, last time she was the one who’d pulled me in. Maybe there was no way for her to know when someone else had entered whatever world this was? If so, it could take me a long time to find her.

Ada, I called, frowning more deeply at the way my voice didn’t even echo. It’s Cass. Cassandra Blackthorn. You said you wanted to speak with me.

Nothing. No response, no sign of anyone or anything stepping out of the swirling mists. I tapped my fingers against the hilt of the sword at my waist – at least I still had that. Like before, I was fully armed and armoured. If I did run into anything nasty here, or Ada turned out to not be what she seemed, at least I’d be able to fight.

I waited a few moments, hoping maybe Ada would appear. She didn’t. I shook my head, picked a direction, and started walking.

I couldn’t have said how much time passed. I knew that for my body, it had been less than an hour – the arrays I’d set up would tell me every hour that passed, alert me on the hour, and would pull me out if six hours passed. If they couldn’t, then they’d alert Felix and Marci. I’d made sure I had enough safeguards in place to counter every story I’d ever heard about things like this – which wasn’t many, to be fair. Mostly it was stories about how it was a stupid thing to even try, and a good way to get yourself possessed.

Well, at least if I end up possessed by a sword, I’ll have something in common with Felix, I muttered, more to hear my own voice than anything else. It wasn’t an impulse I usually fell prey to – I was a well-trained hunter. I could do silent stake-outs for hours.

But something about this place... It set me on edge. I wasn’t sure if it was the lack of visibility, the knowledge that I wouldn’t be able to see anything coming at me until it was almost too late. Or maybe the fact that I knew that there was something waiting out there in the mist, even if it was only Ada. Or even the fact that this was utterly alien to me. Whatever it was, it had my hand resting on my sword, ready to draw it at a moment’s notice, and all my senses stretched to pick up as much as I could. Which, nowadays, was a lot.

I couldn’t even hear my own footsteps, though – not that I was really stepping on anything. It was as though soft cotton had been layered over everything, including my ears. Nothing but the pressure of silence.

A little while later, I heard the faint bell that signalled an hour had passed in the real world. I stopped, glancing around.

I didn’t have time to waste hours in here.

Ada, I called again, as loudly as I could. Still nothing, and I gritted my teeth.

There was something she’d said to me, last time. But I couldn’t remember it. A lot of what she had said had turned fuzzy afterwards, despite my usually excellent memory – something to do with the magic, maybe, or to do with how she’d dragged me in here. But she’d told me how to speak with her again. And I couldn’t remember. All I knew was that it needed the sword, and so I’d asked Felix about ways to do something like this, and picked the method that seemed least likely to get me killed or possessed.

And it was, apparently, useless.

What else was there? My hand was still resting on the sword’s hilt, and I drew it, glancing over the blade.

There was nothing simple, of course, nothing like a secret message carved into the silver or anything like that. It was just a sword, the exact same as its counterpart in the real world. Maybe truly the same – something about it seemed more real, more solid than the rest of my weapons and armour.

Felix had described it as a tether, when we’d discussed it.

Since it’s the sword that allows you entry, it will also be the sword that permits you to leave, he had explained. "Of course, that presumes the sword will permit you to leave, depending on precisely how much control this Ada has over it. Still, it should serve as an even better tether than one you’d create yourself, given it’s rather inextricably tied to both the physical world and whatever realm it is you spoke to its spirit in. Fascinating, really." He’d gone off on a tangent then, about the magical theory involved. I’d listened, but I didn’t have the background to fully understand it, not on the level he did – and I didn’t have the interest, either. I’d tinker with magic a little, go deeper if it was something that particularly caught my attention. But for the most part, I was, as in everything else, focused on practicality.

The sword was real, then. For a given definition of real. And so was I; I could sense that much. But my armour, the rest of my weapons... they were less so. I didn’t like that, but I didn’t see that I could do anything about it.

And with the sword, I could leave. I still hadn’t found Ada; there was no sign of her anywhere and she wasn’t responding to me. Maybe she wasn’t here – maybe she had some way of leaving the sword. Or some kind of hibernation, perhaps, to let her survive the long years in a sword with her mind intact. I didn’t know, I wasn’t a sword spirit.

Something tugged at me, though. Not the same kind of pull I’d experienced before, down in the Tunnels. This was a magical pull, just as that had been, but it was far gentler – more of a polite request than the insistent yanking I’d experienced the Tunnels’ magic as. And it didn’t seem to be leading me anywhere, either.

I didn’t have any other leads. And I should be able to get out of here if I had to. It was a risk, but it was my best option – so I listened, and my attention was drawn again to the sword.

I turned it over in my hand. The grip was leather, or had been once – worn smooth by the pressure of hands, though somehow not rotted away. I didn’t think it was leather from any ordinary animal, either. That wasn’t what I was meant to be looking at, though.

I followed what the tug was trying to tell me, and my gaze settled on the blade – on the edge, so sharp it glittered even with no real light source to reflect. I frowned.

There was something... I still couldn’t quite remember what Ada had said. And I really wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to listen to what the magic seemed to be suggesting I do.

But what other choice did I have?

Very carefully, I put the sword away. If I was going to do this, I was doing it the Guild-trained way, not the way that might give me blood poisoning.

I had sterile blades and needles in a pouch at my hip – it was standard-issue. The Guild didn’t technically approve of blood magic, but there were still quite a few common spells they used which, with the benefit of distance and hindsight, I knew absolutely were blood magic in practice if not in name. Minor things, mostly – tracking was a big one, so was checking if a weapon was truly silver. Just as I had done the first time Cadeyrn had given me the sword, actually.

It was only a moment’s work to uncover one of the blades, and make a careful cut down the outside of my arm. Some trainees, when they first learnt how to do this, tried to follow what they’d seen on TV or read about, and went straight for the palm. That was a stupid idea – there were far too many delicate nerves and tendons in the palm, and even apart from that, the last thing you needed was stinging pain in your hands when you were about to use them to hold a weapon. So the outside of the forearm was what the Guild taught, if you really had to.

I capped the blade and put it into a separate pocket – I’d dispose of it properly later, when I could ensure that nobody would be able to get hold of my blood for nefarious purposes. Even more of a risk now that I knew I was a dhampir, actually. Who knew, though? Maybe the things I used here wouldn’t carry through back to the real world.

I drew the sword again, and smeared the blood across the flat of the blade. It was an awkward angle, but manageable.

And, of course, within moments I saw Ada step out of the fog, a bright smile on her face.

two

History

Ada looked the same as she had before. Short, scarred, armed and armoured just the same as I was, right down to the copy of the sword hanging at her side. Golden eyes, just like mine were at times. Short blonde hair, pulled roughly back into a bun.

Cass, she greeted me, nodding. It’s good to see you again. I’d hoped you would come to speak with me.

I nearly didn’t, I said, shrugging. I don’t know if I can trust you, if I’m honest. And it wasn’t exactly easy to find you here.

The words were a test, as much as anything else. When we’d met, she had claimed to be the same Ada who’d founded the Guild. If that was true, then according to all the information about her (not that there was much) she would appreciate the bluntness. Even if she weren’t, she’d need to tolerate it if we were going to work together in any way. There was only so much I could do to soften the way I was, and honestly I wasn’t willing to do it for many reasons, or many people.

Ada winced.

The trust, I don’t know how to fix, she admitted, sighing. If I were in your place, I would feel the same, I admit that quite freely. You have no way to prove that I am who I claim to be, no way to verify anything I say. There’s very little I can do about that, except do my best to prove myself trustworthy. As for finding me... Now that you’ve done it once, it should be far easier. I take it your memory was blurred? I had worried about that, to tell the truth.

I shrugged.

I followed what the sword seemed to want me to do, I said. I didn’t remember what you’d told me until just now, no. Is that going to happen again this time?

Ada shook her head. It should not, no. Last time was a special case; I used... well. Had we not been on Guild soil, had you not previously gifted the sword your blood, were we not the same, I would not have been able to do it. Even with all those factors combined, it took a great deal of power on my part to pull you in, and I suspect that placed a certain amount of strain on you, as well. Given that, memories are the easiest thing for the mind to shed.

Doesn’t sound ominous at all, I muttered, and Ada chuckled.

No need to worry, she said. "Nothing else will have been affected. I have more than enough skill and control to ensure that, at least. And now that you’ve formed your own connection with this place, it will be easier for you to return here in the future, if you wish to, and you will keep your memories. It will be far easier for you to draw on