Feral (The Irisbourn Chronicles Book 1)

Feral

By

Victoria
Thorne

Feral

Copyright ©2014 Victoria Thorne

All rights reserved.
 
No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any
means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise – except
for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permission
of the copyright owner.

Chapter
One

The foamy residue of waves licked
my sand-encrusted toes as I stared into a black expanse of ocean.
 
Panic crept through my veins.

How did I get here?
 
I did not belong here.
 
I belonged... I couldn't remember where.
 
But I should not have been here, in this
bizarre world washed of color and choked by darkness.
 
I felt as if my memories were being
distorted, muffled – like they had been submerged underwater, while I had to
make sense of them from above.

The piercing laughter of a woman
shattered the solitude.
 
Startled, I
turned and spotted the distant silhouettes of a man and woman, their skin
glowing under the pale moonlight.
 
They
were the only evidence of life I had discovered.

Whether it was due to the innate
fear of being left alone or mere curiosity, I pursued the couple before I could
lose them in the dense fog.
 
But the
instant I set foot after them, the beach morphed into the heart of a city.
 
Sheets of fog became steam clouds rising from
storm grates, and skyscrapers burst forth from the sand like trees.
 
Although every lamp was lit and the
unmistakable stench of refuse wafted through the air, the city was absolutely
devoid of pedestrians, cars, sound – life.
 
Where in the world was I?

As the world turned itself
inside-out, the couple surged forward, leaving me with no choice but to
follow.
 
A dancing shadow at the corner
of my eye caught my attention, and for a second I thought I could faintly
discern a figure behind me.
 
Almost in
response to what I had seen, the couple abruptly quickened their pace and
changed direction.
 
The further we
traveled, the more our surroundings deteriorated, until eventually I found myself
walking down a shady alley riddled with graffiti, dumpsters, and boarded-up
backdoors.
 
By now I was certain that
someone was following us.
 
It was evident
in the man’s step, the way he pushed the woman when she began to slow, as if he
were trying to escape some invisible pursuer.
 
We turned a final corner, only to be met with a dead end.

Not once had I seen their faces the
entire time I was following them.
 
They
had always been obscured by darkness or facing the opposite direction.
 
But now that I had caught up, I began to
sense that there was something eerily familiar about them.

The woman turned around.
 
The moment I saw her face, my mind cleared as
if a layer of haze had been lifted from my eyes.

She was my mother.

It felt like so long since I had
last seen her.
 
When
had
I last seen her?
 
Yesterday? Last week? Last month? I couldn't remember.

My father stood at her side with
one of his hands entwined in hers.
 
Stubborn tears pooled in my eyes as I digested the reality of their
presence.
 
Why did I feel so sad?

My father kept taking furtive
glances over my mother's shoulder.
 
He
looked at her intently and whispered something urgently into her hair.
 
My mother tugged on the golden bauble she
always wore around her neck while she nodded in nervous understanding.
 
The entire time they never noticed me.
 
As much as I wanted to run to my mother and
ask her why she looked so hopeless, so miserable, I was rooted in the shadows.
 
Although my parents stood only a few feet
away, I felt as if I had no place in this part of their lives, that I
fundamentally did not belong.

I saw him before my parents did – a
tall figure moving toward us in calm, graceful strides marked with malice.
  
He struck unmistakable panic in my parents'
faces.
 
As he came closer, he remained
shadowy and indistinct, his features blurred as if my eyes simply could not
focus on them.

Dread pooled in my stomach.
 
I shouted at my parents to run, but no sound
escaped my lips.
 
Within seconds he had
forced them up against the dead end.
 
What were my parents doing?
 
They
were not fighting back.
 
They were not
outnumbered.
 
They were voluntarily
submitting.
 
I had never seen my parents
frightened before, but here they stood, pinned against a wall, their eyes
glistening with terror. Why weren't they trying to run or defend themselves?
Why hadn't they at least offered their wallets in desperation, instead of
resigning their fates to the whim of a single stranger?

Only when I noticed the thin,
shard-like blade glittering in the figure's hand did I fully comprehend what
their fates would be.

My parents were going to die.

I shrieked in a frantic attempt to
divert their pursuer’s attention, yet still no sound escaped my throat, and I
remained infuriatingly unnoticed.
 
I
whimpered internally.
 
I did not want to
witness the murders of my parents, but I could not bring myself to look
away.
 
My mind felt as if it were falling
to pieces.

The figure dug his hand into my
mother’s scalp and pushed her head to the ground without mercy.
 
Her long silver hair fell around her like a
curtain, hiding the pain I knew she had to have felt.
 
My father made no movement to help her.
 
He was frozen, whether in fear or cowardice I
could not tell.

For a split second, my mother's
pleading gray eyes found mine, and recognition seemed to glow within them. Her
colorless lips curved slightly upwards.
 
Before I could even process what had happened, her head snapped back as
one of the figures made an abrupt, fluid movement.
 
Her bloodcurdling screams cut through the
very fabric of my mind, searing themselves into my memory.
 
I closed my burning eyes and shouted into the
darkness until my voice returned to me in broken sobs.
 
My mother was dying.

Without a doubt, my mother’s
murderer had heard my whimpering and would soon be coming for me.
 
I didn’t care.

I felt foreign hands on my
shoulders shake me viciously.
 
This was
it.
 
I would resign myself to my fate,
just as my mother had.
 
I braced myself
for the fatal blow and savored my final moments of existence....

And
I woke up

Chapter
Two

"Amber! AMBER!" Matt
bellowed into my face with complete disregard for my eardrums.

I sat up with a gasp, my head
nearly smashing into his.
 
I touched my
swollen eyes and my fingertips came away wet.
 
Great.
 
Crying in dreams carried
over to real life.

"What do you want?" I
mumbled hoarsely.
 
Apparently I had been
screaming too.

"Good, you're not having a
seizure," Matt huffed in relief.
 
"Mom and Dad again, wasn't it?" he asked with concern.

"What do you think?" I
replied, as if the answer were obvious.
 
"I guess I'm not over it yet." I tried to feign indifference
as I mopped my face with my sleeve.

I had been having the same dream
for the last three months.
 
Every night,
I would watch my parents' murders and then wake up in a puddle of my own
tears.
 
Some nights were worse than
others, but the dreams always seemed so real.

I reclined onto the lawn and combed
my fingers through the individual threads of grass.
 
We were waiting for a locksmith in front of
the gates of our new house.
 
Evidently he
hadn't come yet.

I sighed exasperatedly.
 
In the last four days, we had traveled over
one thousand miles in a stuffy, poorly air-conditioned minivan.
 
So, of course, nothing frustrated me more than
waiting two extra hours for a much-needed bath.

"You can't even see the house
from here!" Heather, my younger sister, complained as she returned from
her little expedition around the front of our property.
 
"The gate is too high, and there are too
many trees."
 
Heather peered in
through the immaculate iron bars.
 
"For all we know, there may not even be a house in there."

"Oh, please, Heather," I
responded before Matt could indulge her wildly imaginative delusions the way he
always did.
 
"If Matt was able to
get the water and electricity turned on again, there has to be a house.
 
Right, Matt?"

My brother shifted uneasily as he
played with a few pieces of grass he had ripped from the ground.

"Right,
Matt?"

"Yeah, yeah.
 
You're right.
 
I mean, I paid the bills..." Matt glanced at us worriedly.
 
"I spent the last six years getting a creative
writing degree, not taking home economics."

"Matt!" I gasped in
disbelief.
 
I placed my exhausted head in
my hands and massaged my aching temples.
 
"You know what? It's okay.
 
If there's nothing in there, we'll just book a hotel for the
night."

"Mom and Dad
did
leave us with enough money to buy a
new place..." Heather added thoughtfully as she twirled her fingers
through her long fair hair.
 
It was
true.
 
As prominent journalists with
significant life insurance policies, our parents had left more than enough
inheritance for us to survive on for a while.
 
The only reason we were moving into this house was because Matt had
discovered it when he was going through our mother's assets.
 
We assumed that it had been bequeathed unto
her by our deceased aunt she had mentioned a grand total of once.
 
Since our parents had never imparted any
information concerning their journalism careers with us, we weren't very
surprised that they had failed to mention owning property in another state.

At the mention of my mother, I
habitually clutched the golden bauble around my neck.
 
Matt had given it to me after our parents
died, and now I never took it off.
 
Cloudy, golden liquid floated in a glass orb adorned with intricate
silver claws at its top and bottom.
 
To
any other person, the piece of jewelry may have looked highly unusual, but to
me it was one of my last connections to my mother.

"I still think there's no
house in there," Heather muttered, as a loud mechanical sputtering
interrupted the serenity of our surroundings.
 
A noisy pickup truck with an obnoxious neon key printed on its side slid
into the driveway beside us.

"That must be the
locksmith," Matt said with relief.

The person who stepped out of the
truck was nothing like what we were expecting.
 
With her carefully curled hair, perfect makeup, and tall stiletto boots,
the woman looked ready for a night on the town, not a humid afternoon of lock
picking.
 
If she hadn't been dressed in a
faded –albeit fashionable – blue jumpsuit and had a toolbox at her hip, I would
have assumed that she had stopped at the wrong house.

"Oh, dear! You haven't been
waitin’ out here too long have you?"
 
Her chipper voice bounced with a slight Southern twang.

"Not long," Matt replied
quickly before Heather could contemptuously voice the truth.

"Well then, my name's Jessica,
but ya'll can call me Jess.
  
And ya'll
must be the Tates," Jess smiled at us excitedly.

Heather rolled her eyes in disdain.

"Tesses, actually," Matt
corrected politely.
 
"I'm Matt, and
this is Heather and Amber."
 
Jess
nodded at each of us and shook hands with Matt. But the glances she tossed
Heather and me were nothing compared to the long look she had given Matt.

Everyone knew that Matt had been
blessed with the innocent face and charisma that girls do a double take
for.
 
His gray eyes, inky black hair, and
infectious cheerfulness could make him the center of attention even amongst
strangers.
 
Unfortunately, my sister and
I resembled nothing of our brother.
 
We
both had inherited pale complexions, slightly tall statures, and muddy brown
eyes that seemed to clash with our hair.
 
None of us really looked much like siblings to begin with, especially
with our varying hair colors and facial features.

But, out of all of us, I felt I had
drawn the shortest stick, genetically-speaking.
 
I had always envied my sister's uncut golden hair, the way it rippled
down her back in a single sleek wave.
 
That coupled with her bright child-like face made her look almost
angelic, like she had been cut out of a Christmas card.
 
When I was younger, I would have traded my
plain features and limp chestnut hair for hers in a heartbeat.

Heather cleared her throat
impatiently.
 
"We need this gate
opened, as well as all the locks changed on the house,” she reminded Jess.

“Right, gotcha.
  
I'll be done in a flash." Jess wobbled
slightly in her high heels as the weight of the toolbox momentarily got the
best of her.
 
Seriously, what kind of
locksmith wore three-inch heels?
 
"So, how long are you planning on staying?"

"Staying?" Heather
reiterated with slight offense.
 
My
sister could be so sensitive.
 
"Well
the house is ours, so we plan on
living
here for a couple years."

"Gosh, I guess that makes us
neighbors then – almost. I mean, I live just down the street from here.
 
You see that gate five houses down?"
Jess made ostentatious arm gestures in a vague direction toward the
horizon.
 
"Lived there twelve
years.
 
I've seen so many people come in
and out of this house here; it's so nice to hear a family will finally be
settling in it."

"Excuse me," I broke
in.
 
"People have moved in and out
of this house? How many?"

"My, it's so hard to
recall."
 
Jess scratched her head
with a screwdriver-like apparatus.
 
"Must have been at least four families since I moved here.
 
To be honest, most of the time the people
only stay for a few weeks, and then the house goes largely uninhabited.
 
Why, the last family that was here only
stayed about two weeks last year."

I shot Matt an apprehensive
glance.
 
That couldn't have been
right.
 
Matt had said that our parents
must have owned the property for at least five years.
 
Could our parents have been renting out the
house?
 
But even then, why would they
rent it out for only a few weeks out of the year?

"What kind of people stayed
here?" I asked.

"I can't really say... They
weren't the social kinda folk."
 
Jess frowned and her forehead creased in recollection.
 
"Mostly kept to themselves.
 
House next door has a history kind of similar
to this one."
 
Jess made another
showy arm movement to a massive house next to ours.
 
The gate had collapsed from disrepair,
exposing the heavily dilapidated residence. "New group of people moved in
just last week – saw the trash on the sidewalk.
 
Haven't had the chance to meet them, though."

"How strange..." I
couldn't help whispering under my breath.

"So, how old are you two girls
anyway?" Jess changed the topic, probably because over the course of the
last twelve years she had gossiped the last one to death.

"Fifteen and seventeen,
although my sister's still in middle school," I answered.

"Why then, Amber, you'll be going
to Pierce High with my son, Spencer.
 
I’ll be sure to tell him."
 
Jess' expression turned thoughtful while she dexterously clicked her
tools against the metal.
 
"You two
should get to know each other."

As much as I wanted to object to
her plans for an arranged friendship between her son and me, I managed to
mumble something along the lines of "cool."

"Ah ha!" Jess cried in
success as I heard a bar crash down with a resounding clang.
 
That must have meant that the gate was
unlocked.
 
"Got it!"

With a loud groan and a push from
Matt, the gate swung open.
 
The four of
us made our way down the winding cement drive, battling untamed tree branches
until we found our way into a clearing.
 
The sight that greeted us made us all gasp harshly in shock.

Before us stood the most stunning
monster of a house I had ever seen with my own two eyes.
 
Between columns of floor-length windows,
pearly stone balconies appeared to have been sculpted from the walls. Below the
portico were the parched remains of a once elegant mermaid-themed fountain, now
strangled by a mass of vines that held an uncanny resemblance to a sea
monster.
 
Although the house was clearly
several decades old, it bore the mark of time well.

Despite the grandeur of the house,
I couldn't help but feel as if something were unusual about it.
 
Something slightly off, something
unnatural…
 
I probably felt disturbed
because this house was so unlike the one we had left behind in California.
 
Yes, that must have been it.

“Holy horseshoes," Jess breathed
in awe.
 
"Never in all my life did I
know this was back here."

"Neither did we."
 
Matt was just as shocked as she was.
 
Jess looked at Matt peculiarly.

"Oh, that's right, you don't
know how the house came into our possession," Matt remembered.

"We inherited it," I
finished curtly, afraid that Matt would go too far back into our family
history.
 
We didn't need the entire
neighborhood privy to our family's most recent tragedy.
 
"Unfortunately, it didn't come with
keys."

"You Tesses must be in line with
some pretty important people," Jess said.
 
"Well, I guess I better get started on that door so we can see the
rest."

The door took much longer than the
gate, which Jess claimed was due to an “absurd little metal doohickey"
that was getting in her way.
 
When I
prompted her to explain what exactly the "absurd little metal
doohickey" was, Jess explained that it seemed to be a second locking
device, although she had never seen anything like it in her life.
 
A smaller, similar device had been built into
the front gate, despite the fact that it was hardly necessary; opening the
traditional lock would just unlock the second one anyway.
 
To me, the second lock just looked like a
little metal cavity.

After chipping a nail and nursing
it back to satisfactory appearance, Jess proudly announced that she had
unlocked the front doors.

Matt wasted no time ushering all of
us inside, where we found that the interior was just as extravagant as the
exterior.
 
But the strangest element of
the house was that it was fully furnished.
 
Landscape paintings hung on the walls beside ticking Victorian
grandfather clocks, all encased in a thin film of dust.
 
Otherwise, the furniture bore no traces of
time, and was completely free of fading, water damage, even the smell of moth
balls.
 
 
It was all very peculiar.

"Are you sure no one still
lives here...?" Heather asked Jess suspiciously as she inspected a nearby
piano.