Feral (The Irisbourn Chronicles Book 1) (7 page)

“And your parents were okay with
you abandoning them?”
 
My voice was
colored with disbelief.

“Of course they weren’t at
first.
 
They were pretty upset.
 
But I can be a very persuasive kid.” Dylan
paused to steal some macaroni from me.
 
“They saw I wasn’t happy, and my grades were slipping.
 
Eventually they ran the idea by Matt, and he
offered to let me stay with you.
 
He
actually insisted.
 
I told my parents it
would be like a trial of college life, living away from home for a while.”

I snorted.
 
“Minus the college.”

“Anyway,” Dylan continued.
 
“They agreed.
 
Nathan threw a fit until he realized he would get my room.”

“And you’re going to live with
us
?”

“Yeah, but I’m still paying rent,
so don’t look at me like I’m a freeloader.
 
Oh, and we have the same schedule too.
 
Matt told the counselor you would help me catch up in all my courses.
 
The school was quite accommodating.”

“Matt never told me anything!”

“You know him.
 
He’s a writer.
 
He was probably trying to make our grand
reunion more dramatic.” Dylan shrugged.
 
“What’s up with that table over there?
 
They keep staring at us.
 
One guy
looks like he’s choking.
 
Should we do
something?”

“They’re my friends.” I played with
my fork.
 
“I accidentally agreed to go on
a date with the choking one.”

Dylan grimaced.
 
“Seriously, that one?
 
No wonder he’s trying to spit fire at
me.
 
Rather unsuccessfully too.”
 
Dylan waved at Spencer as his way of saying,
“Yes, I can see you.”
  
“Good luck
getting out of that.”

“I don’t think I’ll be able to,” I
said in resignation.

“We’ll think of a way,” Dylan
smirked.

But deep down I knew that even if
we could think of a way, I wasn’t sure I would have the nerve to use it.

Chapter
Ten

“Jeesh, what was with all the
panthers?” Dylan complained.
 
“They’re
everywhere in your school.
 
I swear I’m
going to see them in my sleep.”

I rolled my eyes.
 
Dylan had followed me around all afternoon
like a lost puppy, and now we were walking home together.
 
As thrilled as I was to see him, I was still
majorly upset with his most recent spontaneous life decision.

“Go big or go home.” I emphasized
the “go home” part and turned around to see if Dylan was still behind me.
 
“Dylan – what the – what are you doing?”

I found Dylan on his hands and
knees peering under some bushes.
 
Dylan
swatted his hand around in the darkness blindly with a blatant disregard for
snakes and spiders.

“I saw a lizard.
 
I’m going to catch it for your sister.
 
She still likes lizards, right?” Dylan asked,
the top half of his body obscured by a bush.

I exhaled loudly.
 
He looked five again, with his legs waving
around on the sidewalk while he searched through leaves for something he would
never catch.

“I think she likes the sport, not
so much the prize. She and Nathan would always let the lizards go.”

Dylan’s face reappeared from under
the shrubbery, and he stood up, lizardless.

“Come on,” I urged.
 
“The house is right over there.”

Dylan sprinted in the general
direction I had pointed and stopped at a random gate.
 
“This one?” he called.
 
“It looks kind of… er, old.”
 
I wrinkled my nose at his choice of words.
“Sorry, just calling it as I see it.”

“Hush, Dylan.
 
That’s the neighbor’s house,” I shushed him,
afraid Adrian would overhear.
 
But he was
nowhere in sight.
 
I tried to ignore the
little sinking feeling in my stomach.
 
“Ours is to the right.
 
You can’t
see it behind all the trees.”

Dylan made a little “o” with his
mouth and looked up at the weathered gray house that wasn’t ours.
 
“You’re right, it
is
creepy.
 
I feel bad for
the people who live there.”

“Still want to stay?
 
The weird neighbors could be the deal
breaker.”
 
I slipped the key into the
lock on my house’s gate.
 
I couldn’t keep
myself from periodically glancing at the gate to my right in the hope that
Adrian might appear beside it.

“Looking for something?” Dylan
asked, pointedly ignoring my question.

“No,” I responded hastily.
 
“Nothing.”
 
I heaved my bag higher on my shoulder and led the way inside.

Matt was waiting for us in the
kitchen with a ridiculously happy grin, which I efficiently wiped off his face
with my glower.
 
I was getting right down
to business.

“You didn’t tell me,” I said,
gesturing to Dylan.
 
“You should have
told me.”

“Aw, Amber, come on.”
 
Matt leaned up against the marble counter
sheepishly.
 
“Aren’t you glad?”

“Yes, but my joy is significantly
outweighed by the disappointment I have in both of you.”

“Women,” Dylan whispered to
Matt.
 
I shot him a cold look, and he
shut up.
 
He knew I was being serious.

“What did you think you were doing
when you lured my friend halfway across the country with the promise of food
and board?” I said to Matt.

“Hey, hey,” Dylan interjected.
 
“I chose to come.
 
Matt didn’t force me.”

“You chose on a passing whim,” I
said, clearly aggravated.
 
“And Matt
willingly indulged that whim.”

“It wasn’t just some passing wh--”

“You don’t get it, do you?” I
said.
 
“You still have parents and a
brother, all of whom are very much alive and miss you right now.
 
I think you have a bigger commitment to your
family than you do to the kids who used to live next door.”
 
I glared at him.
 
I had been dying to say that since chemistry,
but I had been restrained by the accepted social norms of public facilities
until now.

“I had to-” Dylan broke in, only
for me to cut him off.

“No,
we
moved because we
had
to.
 
You
moved because you
wanted
to!”
 
I exclaimed.
 
“Big difference.”

I heard the front door open, and
Heather appeared in the doorway, her long hair dancing around her in loose
ringlets.
 
She was completely unaware of
the tension in the room.

“Dylan!” Her eyes lit up when she
saw him.
 
She skipped up to him and held
out her arms in anticipation of a hug, but Dylan remained motionless. She
awkwardly cleared her throat and asked, “How was the flight?”

“No,” I blurted.
 
“No, come on. Heather?
 
Heather knew?”

“Surprise!” She did jazz hands next
to Dylan.
 
She was so hopelessly
clueless.

“That’s it.
 
I’m done,” I said, walking into the
foyer.
 
“Dylan.” I held his eyes with
mine.
 
“Please reassess what you’ve done
before you rashly throw away something I don’t even have anymore.”

“Where are you going?” Heather
asked from behind Dylan.

“On a walk,” I opened the door, and
Dylan put his foot forward.
 
“Please
don’t follow me.
 
I need some time to
think.
 
Alone.
 
I’ll be back later.”
 
I slammed the door behind me before I could
change my mind.

Behind the house trickled a small
stream leading into a woodsy area.
 
I had
never been back there before, but I knew no one would come looking for me in
the woods, so I followed the water.
 
The
forest closed in around me, and the air grew heavy with the smell of wet earth
and trees.
 
A thick layer of dead leaves
sealed the ground and prevented the growth of excessive shrubs which would have
hampered my movement.
 
The blanket of
leaves crackled under my feet with every step, making it impossible for me to
move silently.

When I was tired enough to deem
myself worthy of a break, I collapsed under a tree and buried my face in my
hands.
 
My bag dug into my back
painfully.
 
In my haste to leave the
house, I had forgotten to take it off.

My mind was running at a thousand
miles a minute.
 
I would have given
anything to change places with Dylan.
 
He
had a life, a home, a family.
 
Why would
he give that up for this?
 
I groaned in
frustration.
 
I needed to stop thinking
about that.

I stroked my mother’s necklace in
my pocket, and a lullaby she used to sing to me when I was a child came
flooding back to me.
 
I placed the chain
around my neck and hummed the tune against the babble of the stream and the
hypnotic songs of bird and frogs.

Chapter
Eleven

I woke up in complete darkness, my
fingers scraping against raw dirt as I pushed my body into a sitting
position.
 
I was completely
disoriented.
 
I couldn’t remember where I
was until I recognized the sound of running water.

My eyes struggled to adjust to what
little light the moon offered.
 
When I
was asleep, the woods had changed from welcoming to menacing, and, without a
doubt, I had already outstayed my welcome by several hours.
 
I could hear the faint cry of a coyote in the
distance, but it sounded too far away to be of any danger to me.

I sat at the base of the tree,
listening to the bubble of the stream as I tried to regain my bearings.

Just as I was about to get up, I
heard leaves crunching along the riverbank.
 
I held my breath and stopped moving.

I could tell from the heavy steps
that it was definitely big, whatever it was, and it was moving toward me.
 
It sounded like it was sniffing the
earth.
 
Very slowly I turned my head.

No more than three yards away,
something human-sized was squatting close to the ground, smelling whatever was
near it.
 
At a glance, I thought it
looked like a man.
 
I didn’t realize how
wrong I was until it stood up in one abrupt, jerky movement.

It was so emaciated that it didn’t
even look like it should be alive.
 
Its
pallid skin looked like it had been stretched so tautly over its bones that it
might snap.
 
Its limbs were too long and
slender to be a human’s, yet the creature still looked vaguely humanoid.

It lifted something glistening and
dripping to its head and bit into it.
 
I
could hear cracks from the creature’s mouth as it chewed.
 
I couldn’t stop myself from drawing my breath
sharply in revulsion.

It snapped its head toward me, and
I stifled a distressed squeak. Its pupils were tiny pins of black in bulging
white spheres, and they focused on me greedily.
 
Its lips curved up into a deathly smile, revealing hidden rows of
needle-like teeth.

I
needed to run.

I took off along the river, blindly
tearing through whatever was in front of me.
 
I could practically feel its footsteps beating the ground behind
me.
 
When I looked back, I saw it chasing
me frantically on all fours like an animal, as if it were enjoying the hunt.

My brain screamed at my body to
move faster, and my body screamed back that it just wasn’t possible.
 
I wasn’t going to make it to the house.
 
It was already catching up to me.

I felt my foot sink fast into the
mud of the riverbank, holding it there while I fell forward into the
water.
 
I tried to crawl into the reeds,
but a haggard hand wrapped itself around my thigh and pulled me backwards.
 
I screamed in protest as I was dragged
through the mud, only to be silenced by the shrill hiss that emerged from the
creature’s mouth.

The creature pinned me on my back
against the riverbank.

“Please, please, please,” I pled in
desperation.

Above me, the creature became
silent.
 
It cocked its head, lowered its
face to my neck, and… sniffed me.
 
Bile
rose to the back of my throat.
 
It
smelled like a rotting corpse.

It hissed sharply and placed one of
its long, razor sharp nails over my pulsing stomach.
 
In a single effortless movement, it sliced
through my shirt and abdomen. I yelped in excruciating pain.
 
It lowered its nose to the salty blood that
trickled from the incision and hissed in triumph.

My body suddenly felt as if it were
on fire, like I was being burned alive even though I was in water.
 
I shrieked and thrashed wildly under its grip
until I felt something inside me snap.

The creature seemed stunned and backed
away for a moment so it could observe me.
 
I felt as if my bones were breaking and rearranging themselves inside of
me while my skin grew tighter and heavier.
 
I tried to stand, but some invisible force pushed me to the ground,
leaving me only able to crawl on all fours.

The creature approached me again,
baring its needle-like teeth.

It
was going to kill me.

Without thinking, I launched myself
against it and swung my fist at its chest.
 
To my surprise, my hand glided right through.
 
A large gash on its abdomen opened and poured
black, sticky liquid, staining its pale skin. The creature writhed about in
pain before cracking then crumbling into dust.
 
Within seconds it was gone.

I collapsed into the stream and let
the water wash over my body.
 
I moaned as
the pain grew intensely stronger, then dissipated into a dull ache, then
nothing.
 
As the pain left, it took my
consciousness with it.

***

This time when I opened my eyes, I
knew exactly where I was.
 
I had dragged
myself away from the river onto the leaves, where I was shivering and caked in
mud.
 
I placed my hand on my stomach and
traced the faint line that ran across it.
 
The cut had been shallow and was no longer bleeding.
 
I shuddered at the memory of the monstrous
creature that had attacked me.
 
I physically
examined myself to gauge my ability to run, only to discover that most of my
clothes now hung in tatters on my body.
 
I would have to deal with that later.

I frantically groped through the
dark for my bag and found it in the reeds.
 
It was slightly damp.
 
I must have
dropped it into the mud when I fell.

I sprinted along the stream back to
the house before anything else could find me.
 
I entered the garden through an unlocked gate in the rear wall that met
with the woods.
 
Once it was securely shut,
I collapsed against the ivy-strangled brick wall in fatigue.
 
The dim glow of lights from the house burned
my eyes, but they were bright enough for me to see myself.

I was a disaster, with my hair
matted with mud and most of my body covered in dirt.
 
Luckily, my necklace still hung intact around
my neck.
 
Unlike the rest of me, it had
remained clean.
 
My soggy clothes had
been shredded, exposing me indecently and permitting the cold air to nip at my
body.
 
I couldn’t remember what had torn
my clothes.
 
Perhaps it had been the
undergrowth when I was running.
 
Either
way, I couldn’t go into the house like this.

I fished around in my bag for my
spare set of gym clothes and shrugged them on.
 
There was nothing I could do about my filthiness, so I took a deep breath
and entered through the lit backdoor.

“Hey, I’m back,” I called as I
stepped into the empty living room.
 
I
threw my soiled backpack and raggedy clothes onto the coffee table.

“Amber?” Heather called from the
opposite end of the house.
 
I could hear
the pitter patter of her feet as she sprinted through the hall.
 
“Amber!”
 
She launched herself into my arms and nearly knocked me over.
 
“God, Amber, where were you?
 
You look terrible.”

I held her head close to my chest
and absentmindedly stroked her hair.
 
I
was so relieved to see her and too overwhelmed to speak.

“Amber, say something,” she
pleaded.
 
She tilted her head up to look
at me and her eyes widened in shock.
 
“God, Amber your eyes.”

“I’m a mess I know,” I tried to
calm her down.
 
“Everything’s okay now,
though.”

“Jesus, Amber.
 
They’re purple.”
 
Heather couldn’t stop staring at my face.

“What, am I bleeding?”

Heather shook her head, stunned,
and wordlessly dragged me into the bathroom.
 
“Look.”

She flipped on the light and in the
mirror I saw myself, a horrible mess of leaves and grime.
 
But once I looked past the layer of dirt, two
piercing violet eyes jumped out at me.

“Oh my God,” I whispered, holding
my face up to the mirror.
 
“Are those
mine?”

The icy purple eyes stared back at
me.
 
They were so glaringly bright and
clear that I could see individual filaments of vivid purple spreading
throughout my iris from my pupil.
 
They
looked unreal.

“What did you do?” Heather
murmured.
 
She couldn’t stop staring at
my reflection.

“Nothing,” I said adamantly.
 
“Not to my eyes.”
 
I rubbed my eyelids to see if I could jolt my
eyes back to their normal color.
 
Nothing
happened.

Heather’s phone started screeching
dubstep in her pocket, diverting our attention.
 
She picked it up.

“Hello?
 
Matt?
 
Amber’s back.
 
Yeah, please come
back as soon as you can.
 
She’s…
alive.
 
Look, we’ve got to go.”
 
Heather kept shooting worried glances at me,
like she expected me to suddenly disappear or explode.
 
“Bye.”
 
She hung up.

“Do you know what time it is?” she
asked.
 
I shook my head.
 
“It’s
one
in the morning
.
 
You left at
five.”
 
Wow, I had been unconscious for a
long time.

“I didn’t mean to stay out this
late.
 
I only planned to take a quick
walk by the stream, but I accidentally fell asleep in the woods.
 
When I woke up it was dark and this… monster
was beside me.
 
It looked like what I saw
in my room, but different.”
 
I stopped.

Heather watched me carefully with
knitted eyebrows.
 
“Are you sure you were
awake this time?” she asked skeptically.

“Did I dream my shredded clothes?”
 
I pointed to my bag on the table.
 
“It followed me through the woods, but
somehow I attacked it, and it vanished into dust.
 
But it sliced my stomach.”
 
I held up my shirt to reveal the slash the
creature had made.
 
“Well?”

“Amber, I don’t see anything.”

I looked down.
 
There was nothing, not even a scar.
 
“That can’t be right,” I said in a frenzy.

Heather took a step back.
 
She looked scared of me.
 
“Matt and Dylan were out looking for
you.
 
You may want to take a shower
before they get back.”
 
She eyed me as if
I were a stranger.

“Oh-okay,” I stammered. I was
stunned.
 
My own sister doubted me.
 
She shut the door behind her, leaving me
alone in the bathroom.

When Matt and Dylan came home,
their relief to find me alive luckily seemed to overpower their rage that I had
disappeared.
 
Heather filled them in on
my little mishap while I was in the shower, and Matt seemed convinced I had a
concussion.
 
Despite my objections, Matt
was adamant that I go to the hospital, and Dylan tagged along.
 
After needless MRI and CT scans, the doctor
affirmed that I did not have a concussion.
 
Although he could not explain the sudden color change in my eyes, he did
feel concerned that I may have had a panic attack.
 
So concerned, in fact, that he told a nurse
to put anti-anxiety meds in my IV, so I didn’t have the option of not taking
them.

When we got home, it was past three
in the morning, and Dylan had to help me up the stairs because of how woozy I
felt.
 
Matt left to lock up the house and
check on Heather.

“Dylan, I’m sorry about yelling at
you,” I said slowly as I concentrated on putting one foot in front of the
other.
 
The drugs were affecting me
really badly.
 
I definitely had no
intention of finishing the rest of the prescription.

“You should be sorry about running
off into the woods and not coming home,” Dylan panted.
 
Either he was really weak or I was really
heavy, and I hoped it wasn’t the latter.
 
“But I should have told you I was coming.”

“It’s not that I don’t want you
here.
 
It’s just that I don’t want to be
the reason you regret leaving your old life.”

“Sometimes you meet people that you
find it difficult to live without.
 
To
me, you’re that person,” Dylan explained.

“Wow, you get deep quick,” I
laughed, earning me a disappointed grimace from Dylan.
 
He hoisted me up over the last step.

I looked down the dark hallway and
sucked in a deep breath.
 
Toward the end
I thought I could faintly make out two tall silhouettes.