Feral (The Irisbourn Chronicles Book 1) (21 page)

“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.