Feral (The Irisbourn Chronicles Book 1)

by Victoria Thorne

  “Let me out, before I physically injure you again.”

  “Pure crazy,” he repeated, as he spitefully pressed a button on his door.

  I wrenched the car door open as soon as I heard the unlocking click. I couldn’t escape fast enough. The inside of the car had gotten very hot, and the night breeze chilled my flaming skin.

  “Never, ever come near me again,” I warned through red vision. My head was pounding. “I never want to hear you so much as speak to me. Because if you try anything again, so help me God, I will do a lot more than give you a bloody nose.”

  “Crazy bitch,” he snarled, before spitting at me like a child.

  I slammed the car door in his face, and he drove away, leaving me alone in an empty corner of the parking lot. When I knew he couldn’t see me anymore, I sank to my knees and took deep breaths.

  I was trying so hard not to cry.

  I heard sprinting footsteps beating the pavement behind me, and I turned to see two male figures running at me. Instinctively, I panicked and got to my feet to run away.

  “Wait!” a voice called from halfway across the parking lot.

  Oh my God. I squinted at an unbrushed brown head of hair and a separate set of pale blue eyes.

  Adrian was faster and got to me first. “Are you okay? What happened?” Despite his heavy breathing, he seemed solely concerned for my well-being. He jolted to a sudden stop three feet away from me. His expression looked pained, as if he were struggling against some invisible barrier he could not cross. I could see his eyes passing over my arms and legs from a distance, I assumed for injuries.

  “WHERE DID HE GO?!” Dylan shouted into the night. “I’ll kill him.” His eyes were wild, and he looked as if he had gone absolutely mad.

  “Have you two been following me all night?”

  “Yes, and thank goodness we were. That piece of human garbage. If I ever see him again…” Dylan went on.

  “Dylan drove us in your brother’s car,” Adrian said slowly. He made no movement toward me. He was giving me my space. “Dylan was the one to suggest it. And we thought it was for the best. If anything happened, and you underwent the change – we didn’t want you to be alone for that.”

  “Okay,” I whispered. Normally, I would have been mad at them for following me, but now I was just glad they were here. I wrapped my arms around my chest. “I have a terrible migraine, and I’d like to go home now.”

  Dylan and Adrian wasted no time getting me into the minivan, and Adrian sat in the back with me while Dylan drove.

  “We saw you two fighting,” Adrian said carefully, and a flicker of rage passed through his face. “We couldn’t see into the car very well. We saw a lot of movement, but we didn’t decide to intervene until you got out. Gods, we should have done something sooner”

  “What happened?” Dylan demanded from in front of us. “Tell us everything that happened, so we can hold him accountable for it.”

  So I told them everything. If I didn’t, they would only assume that something worse had happened to me. At first, I could barely get a word in. Every time I said something, Dylan would add to the stream of unrepeatable punishments he would inflict upon Spencer. Adrian just sat in cold, furious silence, and occasionally told Dylan to shut the hell up so that I could continue.

  When I got to the part about the steering wheel, Adrian’s disgusted grimace shifted into the shadow of a grin, and he asked disbelievingly, “You knocked him into the steering wheel?”

  “Twice, actually,” I confirmed.

  “Good,” he grunted with approval. “You got to practice some attacks.”

  “I can’t wait to try some things on him too,” Dylan muttered.

  “Dylan, please,” I begged. “You really can’t do anything to him. I handled it. And you could get into trouble with the school, or even the police. That’s the last thing we need.”

  “What he did wasn’t right,” Adrian growled. His eyes were dark. “If I ever see that despicable human again…” The bloodthirsty look in his eyes frightened me.

  I looked at him, shocked. Adrian was actually taking Dylan’s poorly thought-out side.

  “If anyone had done that to Arisella in my world, my father would have removed his hands,” Adrian added.

  “We should remove his hands,” Dylan agreed.

  “No one is cutting off Spencer’s hands! And your father wasn’t exactly the most reasonable of people,” I reminded Adrian. “There’s no one I hate more than Spencer right now, but things are what they are. It’s done. Let’s move on, please.”

  I pretended to sleep for the rest of the ride home. I could feel the migraine beginning to split my skull.

  That night I got into bed, trying hard not to think about what had happened. We hadn’t told Matt or Heather – mostly because I didn’t want to make them worry, but also because I didn’t want to relive it again. Under the covers, I curled into the fetal position and checked my phone.

  One new message.

  From Spencer.

  I opened it and read, Amb, sorry about tonight. I shouldn’t have been drinking. I had 2 much 2 drink. Please don’t tell anyone what happened. Im srry.

  I deleted the message without thinking twice. He couldn’t just apologize for what he had done. And anyway, he hadn’t been anywhere near drunk enough to start using alcohol as an excuse for his behavior.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Just let me yell at him a little,” Dylan whispered. He shot Spencer the most hate-filled look he could muster.

  As we passed Spencer, Dylan pulled me closer toward him, like he were afraid Spencer would jump out and hit me without warning. But Spencer just kept his eyes on the ground.

  “Absolutely not. I don’t want the entire school to know.” Dylan, Adrian, and even Arisella had taken turns not letting me out of their sights all day. They all hated Spencer with a burning passion, and they weren’t afraid of letting Spencer know.

  Alexis never found out what had happened, but she ended up taking Spencer’s side in the standoff. After all, they had been friends longer. So now, my entire lunch table hated me. Which was lovely, in its own way, because now I didn’t have to choose between lunch tables.

  “So, are we going to training today?” Dylan inquired. We were outside now, walking home through the neighborhood.

  I stopped walking suddenly. “Uh, we? You don’t come with me to training.”

  “Hell yeah I do.” Dylan crossed his arms.

  “We throw knives. You could get hurt. You’ve already almost gotten your head impaled.”

  “I had no idea what was going on back there,” Dylan justified. “Anyway, I might learn something.”

  I shook my head. “I doubt Adrian and Arisella would be okay with it. I would be, but it’s up to them. Anyway, we’re not training today. They’re meeting with their guardian.”

  “Guardian?” Dylan repeated with an inquisitive inflection.

  “A Divinblood who’s their key to integrating into human society, or whatever. I’m not sure how it works. She can’t know that I’m here.”

  “I see. Well, I guess that leaves more time for me to work on that history essay,” Dylan frowned.

  “Oh no,” I gasped, putting my face into my hands. I had completely forgotten. I was probably going to get a solid C in history.

  “Don’t worry.” Dylan patted my back comfortingly. “You still have fourteen hours before school starts tomorrow. That’s a lot of time.”

  ***

  Against my better judgment, I didn’t spend that evening researching my history topic on the life of Benedict Arnold. I told Dylan I needed to take a nap, but I really just slipped outside into the woods. I was far too stressed to even think about writing my essay, so I thought I would try throwing some knives Adrian had given me to practice with.

  I trudged through the muddy woods with the knives jingling around in my bag, the metal clinks muffled slightly by a spare set of clothes. I carried extra clothes with me everywhere now.

>   It had rained that afternoon, so I made sure to stay on the small path that had been cleared by the occasional jogger or hiker. I had seen people use this path before, but since it was muddy and fairly late in the day, I doubted whether anyone would be around.

  When I got to a point where I felt I hadn’t wandered far enough into the woods to encounter any caeci, but I knew no one in their backyards would be able to see me, I dropped my bag on the ground with a satisfied thump.

  The air was muggy and warm, and made my hair stick to the back of my neck, much to my distaste. I got the first knife out of the bag and held it flatly in my palms. It was appalling how such a simply designed, little shard of metal could end so many people’s lives. Like my mother’s. And my father’s.

  I studied it coolly, regulating my breathing and my pulse. No panic, no flashbacks disturbed my mind. I sighed in relief. Hopefully my overreaction to the knives last time had been a one-time thing.

  I pulled the blade up over my head and hurled it into a faraway tree. To my surprise, it not only stuck, but it sank in deeply. My aim was improving.

  A piercing scream shattered the silence of the forest. I froze and scanned the area for movement, half expecting a caecus to jump out at me.

  Silence.

  Stillness.

  Had I imagined it?

  I heard the cry again, this time louder and more pained. Definitely not my imagination.

  I snapped into action, shrugging on my backpack and retrieving the knife from the tree. Whoever it was screamed again – a woman, definitely – and I realized that there was something eerily familiar about that cry. So I ran toward it.

  It could have been Arisella or even Heather, and there was no time to get help. I tore through the forest, breaking branches and scraping through leaves all along the forest floor. I didn’t care how much noise I made.

  Then I felt the air grow cold and dry around me, and I stopped. I smelled it before I saw it.

  The caecus was there, emanating the putrid stench of decay. It stood on its hind legs with its back to me, thankfully. Its arms were so slender that they looked as if they could snap off with the slightest movement.

  And then I noticed the girl who was lying face down in the mud at the caecus’ feet. She was wearing jogging clothes, her blond hair now a dirty brown after having been dragged through the forest floor. When she lifted her head to scream again, I got a good look at her distinctive orange spray tan and her heavy, mascara-coated lashes.

  “Cecelia,” I whispered to myself.

  Cecelia’s eyes darted around her crazily, completely looking through the caecus. She couldn’t see it.

  Whatever chance she had to survive would disappear if she didn’t get up and run. I mentally screamed at her to get to her feet, go back to where she came from, crawl away – anything except sit there vulnerable and scream hysterically.

  The caecus moved closer to Cecelia, saliva dripping in fat globules from its pointed teeth. Clearly irritated by Cecelia’s incessant wailing, it cracked its hand across her orange face, effectively shutting her up.

  The caecus crouched over her and dragged its human-looking, black tongue over her face. Cecelia whimpered and began screaming all over again.

  She was running out of time. The caecus arched its back and bared its teeth, as if it were savoring the final sufferings of the precious life it would soon end.

  And I launched myself toward it, allowing the shivering and tremors to overtake me as I ran. I felt my skin split and my bones reform, but I still kept running. I didn’t have time to stop.

  Cecelia fell silent when she saw me, her eyes boring fearfully into mine. By the time the caecus had followed her line of sight, it was already too late. I sank my claws deep into its torso, ripping blindly as I went, tearing its thin layer of sickly white flesh from its bones.

  It screeched hideously, and I sank my teeth into its neck. Thick, black liquid oozed into my mouth. I winced at the rancid taste and bit hard, until it stopped jerking and fell silent.

  It was dead.

  I dropped its lifeless body onto the leaves, its bloodshot eyes wide, its pupils barely visible. When the caecus hit the ground, its body disintegrated into dust. It had been weak, barely able to struggle against me.

  I turned my attention to Cecelia, who was crying helplessly on the ground, her makeup running down he cheeks in thick black streaks. Aside from her legs, which were covered in red, puffy welts where the caecus must have scratched her, she looked fine.

  When she had stopped bawling long enough to realize I was watching her, she started screaming even more frenziedly than before. She picked up a pitifully short stick on the ground and waved it at me.

  “Get away! Don’t come near me!” she hissed. “Someone help me! HELP!”

  I was furious. I had just saved her life – couldn’t she see that? I hadn’t even touched her.

  I decided she looked like she could make it out of the woods alone. Even if another caecus found her, I wasn’t going to stick around and wait until the change expired, so I hurried back into the woods, scooped up my bag in my teeth, and raced home.

  I listened to her screams grow fainter all the way back.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  With a careless bang I burst in through the back door as I yanked on my spare pants. I was still coated in the caecus’ stinking black blood, and I had managed to smear the sticky stuff all over my clothes.

  I ran up to Dylan’s room – luckily without bumping into either of my siblings – and found him at his desk hunched over his laptop, watching Youtube videos of cats.

  “Wow. Your dedication to that history project is impressive,” I remarked sarcastically.

  Dylan swiveled around smoothly in his chair, and his jaw dropped at the sight of me. “What happened to you?”

  I batted at the air nonchalantly. “Just saved Cecelia from a caecus.”

  “You what?!”

  Without bothering to ask for permission, I picked up his phone from his desk, entered the passcode, and scrolled through his contacts. “You still have her number, don’t you?”

  “Yeah, why?”

  “Follow me,” I shouted over my shoulder as I walked out of his room with his phone. “Because we’re going to need Adrian to call it.”

  ***

  “Let me get this straight – you want me to call Cecelia?” Adrian said with uncertainty.

  “Yes. I just need you to make sure she didn’t see me.” I wasn’t sure exactly when I had stopped being a human and started being a panther. Which was why I had shown up at Adrian’s doorstep unannounced, with Dylan at my side and his phone in my hand.

  Adrian and Arisella’s guardian had left by the time I came, and I had already recollected the experience for everyone. All that was left was to make sure that Cecelia hadn’t seen too much.

  “What am I supposed to say?”

  “Hey, how are you? You say you got attacked by a giant cat? No way! You didn’t happen to see anything unusual aside from a giant cat, did you? No? That’s great!” I suggested. “You’ll probably have to flirt with her.”

  “A lot,” Dylan added. I elbowed him sharply in the chest.

  “I really don’t want to talk to her. Can’t someone else do it?”

  “Don’t look at me,” Arisella said. “I detest that sorry girl.”

  “That girl won’t stay on the phone with anyone longer than two minutes if she’s not talking to a boy,” I muttered. “Anyway, she hates me.”

  “And she’s not exactly too fond of me,” Dylan said. “But she seemed to really like you, Adrian.”

  I elbowed Dylan again, and this time he let out a painful little grunt. He shot me a confused look.

  “If you get stuck, we can just tell you what to say,” I offered. “It honestly won’t be that hard.”

  “Fine,” Adrian conceded, taking Dylan’s phone from my open palm. He pushed Cecelia’s name and the phone dialed.

  “Put it on speaker,” Dylan advised.
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  “What’s that? Is it this button?” Adrian said, looking uncharacteristically overwhelmed.

  “Here, let me.” I seized the phone and pressed the speaker button just as Cecelia picked up.

  “Cecelia Stone – who’s this?” She sounded shaken and faraway, not nearly as sickeningly confident as she normally was.

  “This is Adrian,” Adrian said without emotion.

  “Even I know you’re going to have to be more convincing than that,” Arisella hissed.

  “Say ‘Hi Cece. I was just wondering what you’ve been up to this evening,’” Dylan prompted.

  Adrian repeated the words with a reluctant face but with an awfully convincing voice.

  But I wasn’t sure it even really mattered, because words immediately started pouring out of the phone. Once Cecelia Stone started talking, she couldn’t be stopped.

  “Oh, you wouldn’t believe what I have been through today. You know what happened? I’ll tell you what happened. I was attacked!”

  “Attacked?” Adrian repeated with interest.

  “Attacked!” Cecelia screeched. “No more than an hour ago by an awful wild animal. There I was in the woods, running like I do every day, and then all of a sudden I saw this huge black cat run at me – and this thing was a giant – and jerk around erratically all around me. I swear, it was going to kill me.” Cecelia stopped, and I thought she was done. But then she added with a whisper, “It’s got to be the rabies, you know.”

  “Uh, yeah, the rabies.” Adrian attempted to disguise his scorn as shock.

  “That dense, orange dolt,” I scoffed under my breath. “I saved her from being caecus dinner.”

  “The horrible thing must have been sick. It smelled like a dead possum,” Cecelia went on.

  Adrian raised an eyebrow at me.

  “That was the caecus, I swear,” I said quickly.

  “Did you see anything else strange? Did you see any other people out there who might have been in danger?”

  The hint of urgency that had crept into Adrian’s voice seemed to amuse her. “No, it was just me. If only there were other people out there. Then that cat might have attacked them, not me, and I wouldn’t have to go through any of this. I felt that devil cat staring right at me, like it wanted to suck out my soul. Oh, and it had these awful purple eyes.”