Feral (The Irisbourn Chronicles Book 1)

by Victoria Thorne

  “YOU WILL NOT TRICK ME INTO THINKING A LEOPARD IS MY BEST FRIEND,” Dylan roared.

  I moved closer to him, pleading him to realize that it was me with my eyes. My distinctive violet eyes. Noticing them, he froze. My heart leapt in hope. He was recognizing me.

  But then his eyes went down to my neck, to where my mother’s pons hung at my throat. His focus shifted to something behind me, something on the ground. My shredded clothes.

  “Oh my God,” Dylan whispered. “Oh my God. What have you done? Her clothes… Her mother’s necklace.”

  He was losing it. All because of me. I had to do something.

  Human. Human. Human. Human. I desperately repeated the word in my mind. I quivered under the stress of how badly I needed to be human again. I could envision my human body in my mind, remember how it felt to flex my fingers, toes, arms.

  “What’s going on?” I heard Dylan say. I couldn’t look at him. My eyes were closed.

  “Arisella,” someone hissed.

  I tried to recall how my human body felt – remember what it meant to be human. It was like turning the surface of my mind inside out, molding it into a distant memory.

  I felt myself collapse, then something light fall over me. It was painful, but it was quick.

  When I opened my eyes, I found myself facedown on the cool grass. I twitched my hands and feet to make sure everything worked. I felt feverish, sore, and exhausted, like I had been lifting weights for the entire day – but undeniably human. I was also undeniably naked, save for a silk sheet someone had thrown completely over me just in time. My heart went out to that person.

  I sat up slowly, emerging from under the sheet while taking care to wrap it around me. The first thing I saw was Dylan’s transfixed expression. I tested a nervous smile, but he didn’t blink.

  “Dylan,” I said. The words came out slightly slurred. I felt so very, very tired.

  “Amber.” Dylan sounded unsure of himself. “It’s really you?”

  “Really,” I responded. “You weren’t supposed to be here.” I could hear the fatigue seeping into my voice.

  “None of this makes sense,” Dylan whispered. “Why all of this?” he gestured around him. “Why them?” He glanced at Adrian and Arisella.

  “I can explain…” my voice trailed off. I fought against my heavy eyelids. My head sank back toward the ground, and my vision grew dimmer. No, no, no, not yet. I still had to explain… But suddenly explaining seemed like so much work. The world was slipping away. Somewhere, in the back of my mind, I heard people calling my name…

  Chapter Twenty

  I awoke in the same room I had found myself in before. I was in a bed, dressed in pants and a T-shirt – not mine, but definitely a girl’s. I shuddered to think who had put me in them.

  “You’re up,” I heard Arisella say. She rose from the chair she had been sitting in and hovered to my side. “You did well today, even exceeded my expectations. Your friend is such a bother though. It really was quite hard to get him to shut up.”

  “Dylan,” I gasped. “He wasn’t supposed to be here. I can’t believe he jumped the wall. Where is he?”

  “In the cellar. Adrian’s been down there explaining everything,” Arisella said in an uninterested tone. “Really didn’t have much of a choice. We had to either tell him or kill him, and we felt like you wouldn’t forgive us for the latter.” Arisella flashed a wicked smile.

  “Thank you,” I mumbled. I got out of bed and made my way toward the door. For once, Arisella didn’t try to stop me. She followed me down to the cellar, without saying a single sarcastic word. This must have been serious.

  She grabbed my wrist before I could twist the cellar doorknob.

  “Adrian’s not pleased,” she stated.

  I swallowed. I didn’t want to see Adrian angry. “It’s not like I planned for this to happen,” I said, breaking free from her grip. I threw open the door before she could say anything else.

  “Amber!” Dylan exclaimed in a mixture of relief and surprise. He and Adrian were sitting in opposing chairs. They looked like they had been having a conversation.

  I ran to Dylan and hugged him awkwardly in his chair. When I realized that he hadn’t moved to get up or even made an effort to hug me back, I took a long, steady look at him. He had been tightly bound to the chair with rope. My blood boiled with incredulity.

  “Was this really necessary?” I glared at Arisella.

  “Don’t look at me,” Arisella smiled. “It was all Adrian.”

  I stared at him, shocked.

  “Unfortunately, we had to do it.” Adrian’s expression looked apologetic. “I couldn’t get a word in. He kept trying to run out and call the police.”

  “Amber, are you okay? They haven’t done anything to hurt you, have they?” Dylan asked frantically.

  “No, of course not. I’m fine.”

  “Then it’s all true? That you’re a – not a human?” I knew Dylan wanted me to say no. To tell him that I was everything he had always thought I was and that our lives could go back to normal. And I might have told him that, but I cared about him too much to keep lying to him.

  “It’s all true,” I admitted, lowering my eyes.

  “I guess it does make sense now – your eyes, the monster in the woods, the ghosts in the house. But why couldn’t you just tell me?” I could see the hurt, but worst of all, the betrayal, in his eyes.

  I began working on the knotted rope that was holding Dylan to the chair.

  “I wasn’t entirely sure you’d understand it. Hell, I barely understand it myself. I didn’t want to drag you into all this – make you worry. Dangerous people are looking for us.”

  “The Bloodbourn, I know,” Dylan stumbled slightly over the foreign word. “You should have told me. I may not have been able to help, but I need to know what’s going on.”

  “I know, I’m sorry. But I didn’t even know if it would be worth telling you. I could have to leave at any moment--”

  “Leave?”

  “Yes, well, if the Bloodbourn realize I’m here, I’ll need to go back to Adrian’s world, the world I’m from. I couldn’t risk leading them to you, and I might find people who can help me there.”

  Dylan just shook his head. “I would come with you. You know that. I follow you – no matter what.”

  “Dylan, it’s just not possi—“ My hand slipped on the rope I was trying to loosen, and I scraped my knuckle.

  Adrian stood up with a dark blade I hadn’t seen him produce. He moved behind Dylan’s chair and cut the ropes off in one facile swipe. “You should go back home. You need to rest,” Adrian said, addressing only me.

  “Yes, let’s go home,” Dylan agreed wholeheartedly, rubbing his wrists. “Good chat today, Adrian.”

  Adrian nodded expressionlessly in response.

  Dylan tugged me all the way to the front door by the wrist. I never seemed to move fast enough for him.

  “Wait,” I said, just as he was about to pull me outside. “I need to say something to them first.” I earned an unenthusiastic “okay” in the form of a grunt.

  I wandered back inside, but I only found Adrian.

  “I’m sorry about what happened today,” I said softly.

  “I’m sorry you had to lose all the clothes you were wearing.”

  I felt myself blushing. “You know what I mean.”

  “It’s okay. We can’t control everything.” But Adrian didn’t sound okay. If anything, he still sounded a little pissed. “You got the change very quickly today. Even Aris didn’t get it that quickly.”

  “Thank you?”

  “You should be able to control it in no time. We’ll keep working on it tomorrow—”

  “Actually,” I interjected, “I’m going to be, er, busy in the evening.”

  “Oh,” Adrian said, surprised. “Perhaps, then, you should take tomorrow off. Take a day to rest. You can do that, can’t you?”

  I smiled thankfully. But then I heard Dylan’s irritated voice behi
nd me.

  “I’ll make sure she’s fully rested before she leaves for her date with Spencer Anderson tomorrow.” Without warning, he grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me out the door.

  I was still so weak – I couldn’t fight back anymore. I cast Adrian an apologetic look over my shoulder. He was watched us with a pained expression while we walked away.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “The Philly cheesesteak here is supposed to be the bomb,” Spencer said through a straw in his mouth. He had already downed three glasses of coke. We were at a little old-fashioned burger joint, me in a modest blue dress and him still in his basketball jersey. The game had left him thirsty, and, based on the grumbling of his stomach, ravenous.

  “Thanks, but I think I’ll stick to just a regular hamburger.” I hated cheese. It gave me migraines.

  “So,” Spencer said, taking my menu I was using as a partition between the two of us. “How’d I play?”

  “Well,” I responded hesitantly. His team had won by ten points, and from what I could remember, he had scored many of the baskets.

  “Come on. Well? I owned the court!” Spencer sank back into his chair smugly. “How was your seat? Did you have a nice view?”

  I choked on my water. “I sat in the middle row.” I had also been watching in the bleachers alone, next to fans who were much more avid about the game than I had been.

  Just then, a round, grumpy-looking woman with an interesting perm came to take our order.

  “We’ll have two Philly cheesesteaks,” Spencer reported to her confidently.

  “Excuse me, but I’ll actually be having a hamburg-“

  “Nah, nah,” Spencer spoke over me. “She’ll be having a Philly cheesesteak, like me,” Spencer assured the waitress, who promptly scowled and left us. “Trust me, Amb, you will thank me for this.”

  “Spencer, cheese gives me migraines.”

  Spencer’s mouth formed a little “o.” “Are you sure?”

  “Yes,” I said through gritted teeth. Jeesh, did he always get this cocky after games?

  “Wow. You should have told me you wanted something else. We’ll change your order when she comes back. Anyway,” Spencer leaned back again in his chair, “that referee was really something, wasn’t he? Calling all those fouls on us.”

  “Spencer, I’m going to be completely honest with you. I have no idea what a foul is.”

  Spencer guffawed loudly and pulled something out from under the table -- a little silver flask.

  “Spencer, are you drinking?”

  “Shhhhh.” He pressed a long finger against my lips, despite my discomfort. “We’re celebrating. You want some?”

  “Of course not.” I did not want to be buzzed around a guy I barely knew. Somehow that didn’t seem like a very good idea.

  Spencer shrugged. “More for me.” He took a swig of the flask’s contents in a rapid movement. I could smell it from across the table – and it smelled like whiskey.

  “Don’t you need to drive?” I wasn’t even bothering to hide my irritation anymore.

  “No worries, we’ll be fine,” Spencer said dismissively. “Let’s enjoy ourselves. My mother likes you, you know.”

  “Oh yes, the locksmith,” I remembered.

  “She thinks we’d be good together. Make a nice prom king and queen.”

  I forced a laugh because I didn’t know what else to do.

  “I’m not kidding. I wholeheartedly agree with her. You’re very pretty.” He moved to push away a tendril of hair that had fallen over my face, but I faked a sudden fit of coughing that forced him to withdraw with a disgusted look.

  “Prom isn’t my thing. I don’t do well at large social events. At friends’ parties, I’m that guest who’s playing with the pets,” I said seriously. But I had two more important reasons for not wanting Spencer to think I was going to prom with him, which were, firstly, that I didn’t really like him and, secondly, that I shouldn’t be making any long-term plans.

  Spencer snickered. “You won’t be that way around me. I’m always the life of the party.”

  “Oh, are you now?” I muttered to myself. I drew in a deep breath of air that smelled like hamburgers and French fries. Despite how much he was getting on my nerves, I needed to make an effort to remain courteous.

  The waitress returned then, carrying two identical plates with hamburgers practically overflowing with cheese. She placed them in front of us hastily. The place was busy, and she seemed to be the only server on duty. Stressed and tired, she looked desperately in need of a break.

  “Oh crap, I forgot – I was going to get you something else,” Spencer remembered.

  I poked at the burger warily with my fork. Cheese slime was everywhere – even drowning the fries. I gagged internally.

  “Excuse me,” he bellowed, snapping his fingers to get the waitress’ attention. “We need you to take this back. You see, she can’t have cheese. We’d like a bacon burger instead.”

  The waitress sighed and shifted her weight to her side. “Son, I don’t think—”

  “No, I’m sorry ma’am. It’s fine, thank you,” I piped in, sensing the beginnings of a heated disagreement. The waitress already looked so exhausted. “Spencer, I can scrape the cheese off. It can’t be that hard.”

  Spencer smiled widely. “All right, then. We won’t be needing anything, then,” Spencer clarified for the waitress, as if to dismiss her. He even made a little shooing motion with his hand that made me grow hot with disgust.

  We didn’t speak much when we were eating. He wolfed down his food with the speed of a competitive eater and wasted no time claiming my leftovers. I tried to remove as much cheese as I could, but I still ended up consuming too much for my comfort. I hoped I would be able to get home quickly, so that I could take an Advil.

  When the check arrived, I insisted on paying my half, fully aware of how untraditional that was. But I had found that when guys paid for meals, they sometimes expected there to be certain strings attached. Since I hated feeling obligated to boys I didn’t know very well, I tried to avoid that situation in its entirety by simply paying for my food. I mean, I had money too. Why shouldn’t I pay for myself?

  But Spencer just laughed at my determination, saying that he would never allow any girl to pay for herself on a date with him, and called me a “silly feminist.”

  I left the restaurant in a bad mood, which grew even worse when an oblivious Spencer snaked his arm tightly around my waist, effectively destroying my personal bubble. I tried to walk faster, hoping that would break his grip. But he would just walk faster too, so ultimately I just settled for wedging my purse between us.

  He helped me into his car (a red pickup, identical to his mother’s, but without the company decal key) probably with more enthusiasm than I would have liked, and he got into the driver’s seat.

  He fiddled with the air conditioner and some controls on his door before looking at me. “So…” He let his voice trail off. I could smell the cheese and whiskey on his breath.

  “You sure you can drive?” I questioned.

  “Yeah, yeah. No problem. This was really great. We should do this again some time.” He smiled hugely.

  My stomach dropped. I couldn’t do this again. “I don’t know. I’m pretty busy these days…”

  Spencer waved dismissively. “You’ll find time.” He had put his finger to my lips yet again, even though I had already finished talking. This time it was impossible for me to squirm away in the small space of the car.

  Oh no, I thought, as he gradually leaned in toward me and moved his hand at my lips to the back of my neck. No, no, no, no. What had I gotten myself into?

  At the very last moment, I managed to overpower his hand on my neck and shift my head so that he was pressing his lips against my hair. I could see the surprise in his eyes quickly turn into anger, and, for the first time, I was scared of what he might do.

  I pushed my hands against his chest to make space, but my arms still burned from yesterd
ay’s change, and the muscles were seized by small tremors.

  “I think we should just be friends,” I said clearly.

  He just smirked and ignored me. He continued to force me in toward him so that he was pressed up against me, our weight fully against my door. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve seen you looking at me ever since that night at the Italian restaurant.”

  “Stop it, I’m serious. This isn’t funny Spencer,” I snapped, putting all my effort into getting him off me. The training had left me so weak, and he was so much bigger than me.

  He didn’t stop, and I wasn’t strong enough to fight back. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. Couldn’t believe Spencer would do this. All I could think was no, no, no, no, no. If I couldn’t fight off a hormonal teenage boy, how was I going to survive in Adrian’s world?

  I was too infuriated to notice the hot, angry tears sliding down my cheeks, and he didn’t notice either – or he just didn’t care.

  “You like me,” he whispered in my ear.

  “Stop!” I shouted again.

  I could feel his nails in my back, felt him put his wet mouth on my neck. I grasped for the door handle behind me and pulled it. But it didn’t open. It was locked. What kind of door did that? I felt Spencer smile, and I was entirely overcome with rage. This had all been premeditated.

  Some instinctive survival mode in my brain turned on at that moment, and I didn’t even need to think. I slipped my torso out from under his grip, so I could pull my legs from under the dashboard. And I used my feet to kick him in the chest. Hard. Hard enough to make him slam against the steering wheel.

  I returned to a sitting position. “Unlock the door. Now,” I demanded.

  But he just laughed stupidly, like I had told him a joke. He started toward me. Again. So, before he could react, I hit the back of his head with my fist, slamming it into the steering wheel. Again.

  “Let me out of this car before I call the police.” My words dripped with revulsion and authority.

  The small trail of blood that was trickling out of Spencer’s nose seemed to make it dawn on him that we weren’t going to happen. “You’re crazy,” he sneered, moving his eyes up and down me.