Feral (The Irisbourn Chronicles Book 1) (24 page)

“You are a terrible driver!”
Arisella screeched with wild eyes, making Dylan shrink into his seat.

“Everyone out,” Adrian
ordered.
 
He kicked open his door and
pulled me through it after him.

“We’ll have to do it in the
warehouse,” Arisella muttered to her brother.
 
She was practically dragging Dylan by the scruff of his collar.

Do what?

For only the second time, I watched
Adrian produce a thin, black blade from the flesh of his wrist.
 
He proceeded to wedge it under one of the
plywood boards that had been nailed over the nearest window.
 
The blade looked so thin, I was sure it would
snap, but it was the harsh crack of the wood that I heard instead.

“Aris,” he hissed when he had
pulled the board back far enough to create sufficient space for a person to
enter.

Arisella gracefully pulled herself
through the window and landed with a soft thud on the other side.

“Okay, send them in,” her voice
echoed from within the warehouse.

Adrian nodded toward me, and I
tried to slip in through the window just as fluidly as Arisella had, but my
backpack caught on the plywood.
 
After
awkwardly wiggling around like a distressed worm, I managed to free myself,
only to fall flat on my face on the other side.

Even Dylan got in more easily than
I had, much to my frustration.

Adrian let the board fall shut
behind him as he somersaulted in with the dexterity of a gymnast.

“Show off,” Dylan muttered.

Now that the plywood had fallen
back into place, the warehouse returned to its original pitch blackness.
 
I couldn’t so much as see my hands in front
of my face.

Above us, chains rattled eerily in
the rafters.
 
The air felt damp and chill
on my exposed skin, making me feel more vulnerable.

I jumped wildly at a sudden fleshy
touch on my hand.

“Relax,” Adrian whispered, his hand
sliding into mine.
 
“It’s just me.
 
We need your blood for the pons.
 
I’m going to need to cut your hand.
 
Is that okay?”

“Okay,” I whispered back.
 
I wasn’t really sure what we were doing, but
I trusted him.

“Can’t you use my blood?” Dylan
offered.

Arisella wasted no time shooting
him down.
 
“Your blood is useless.”

“The only blood that can invoke the
pons is that of an Irisbourn,” Adrian explained as he dragged something sharp
across the palm of my hand.
 
I was
thankful that I couldn’t see what he was doing.

I felt him place his pons into my
bloody palm and gently enclose my fingers around it, before removing it and
handing it to Arisella.
 
It had begun to
glow a soft pink, pulsating with light at the rhythm of my heartbeat.

A shrill shriek filled the air just
outside the warehouse, and Arisella cursed under her breath.
 
The caeci had found us.

Arisella moved the pons in a rapid,
egg-shaped movement, leaving a trail of thin, pale light suspended in the air
around her body.

“I’m not sure I can remember the
incantation,” Arisella said in a panicked voice.

Something huge slammed into the
door of the warehouse, making the entire building rattle.

“Try!” Adrian said through gritted
teeth.

Arisella closed her eyes in concentration
and began to murmur indistinguishably.
  
Despite her frequent stumbles, the thin line of light in the air grew
wider and brighter, expanding inwards – filling itself.

She uttered the words with
increasing hesitance until her voice died in her throat.
 
“I-I can’t remember the rest,” she stammered.

The door of the warehouse shook
again.
 
A thin beam of light appeared
down the center of it.

“You are a terrible Divinblood!”
Dylan burst out madly.

Arisella didn’t even react.
 
She kept repeating the last of the
incantation she could remember in a futile attempt to jog her memory.

I heard the caeci gnashing their
needle teeth as they dug their nails through the crack in the door.

A surge of visceral adrenaline
overtook me, and without thinking, I pushed Arisella out of the way and claimed
the pons from her.
 
The last of the
incantation came pouring out of my mouth in steady, confident cadences.

“
Portemur
,” I concluded, filling the final gap in the portal with
light.

After I had finished, I felt the
influx of energy leave me as suddenly as it had come, replaced by the return of
control over my body.

I turned to Adrian hesitantly.
 
“I think I did it.”

“Unbelievable,” he breathed.

Arisella held her palm to the
surface of the portal, sending ripples through it.
 
“Take us to the Black Forest.”

The portal shimmered, then changed
a cloudy color.

“See you on the other side,”
Arisella saluted us before charging through it.
 
The portal reacted like water, beads of it jumping up around her,
encasing her, before being pulled back to their original state.
 
Arisella had disappeared, and the portal
returned to its smooth stillness, bearing no traces of what had just happened.

Adrian pushed Dylan in behind her
without warning, and he too disappeared.

The door ripped loudly and more
light streaked in.
 
I could see slender,
wiry caeci arms protruding through the crack, grasping blindly for their prey.

“Ladies first,” Adrian gestured
toward the portal.

I closed my eyes and stepped
through it, prepared for any unearthly sensation that might accompany being
transported between worlds.
 
But it
didn’t feel like anything – it was just like walking through light. An instant
of burning brightness flooded my vision before dissipating altogether.
 
That was all it took to get between the two
worlds.

I felt something slam into my back
and knock me onto the ground.

“Oh, Gods, sorry,” Adrian
apologized, while he helped me to my feet.
 
He must have launched himself through the portal right into me.

“Occludere!
Occludere! Occludere!”
Arisella shouted at the portal frantically.
 
The portal shrank away, fading into a final
speck of light until it vanished completely.

Arisella exhaled hugely and flopped
down like a dead fish onto the ground.
 
“Well everyone,” she said, her drained voice muffled by the ground.
 
“Welcome to Fallyre.”

Chapter
Twenty-Six

To be honest, the forest I was
standing in didn’t look too different from one I might have found on
Earth.
 
It was still undeniably creepy,
though, what with the colossal trees towering over me, blotting out the
daylight.
 
A dense sheet of fog crept
along the ground, as if it were suffocating the decaying gray leaves and
shrubs.

In the treetops, foreign creatures
cried out to one another in unfamiliar squawks and screeches, disturbed by our
unwelcome presence.

“That was the worst thing I’ve ever
experienced,” Dylan huffed.
 
He was
squatting on the ground, his hands on his knees and his chest heaving up and
down.

Still reclined on the ground,
Arisella looked up with a confused expression on her face.
 
“How did you know the words to the
incantation?”

“I don’t know.
 
They just came to me,” I shrugged.
 
Weirder things had happened to me. “I think a
better question would be ‘Why didn’t
you
know the words to the incantation?’”

Arisella scowled.
 
“I had only heard it once before.
 
I thought I might be able to remember it, but
– get this – it’s hard to remember things under pressure.”

“Unprepared,” Dylan coughed under
his breath.

“What did you say, human?”

“Why did you take us to such a
gloomy place, anyway?” I broke in.

“The pons can only take you
somewhere you can see clearly, somewhere you are connected to emotionally,”
Adrian answered.

“And this was the only place I
could think of that wasn’t directly in the Blood Kingdom.”
 
Arisella tossed her hair over her shoulder
and disinterestedly ran her fingers through the strands.

“Wait, hold on,” I said putting my
fingers to my temples.
 
“Are you telling
me that we’re on the edge of the Blood Kingdom?”

“Yup.”

I stared at Arisella
openmouthed.
 
“Didn’t you say you and
your father used to hunt grimalkin in these woods?”

“Not in this area, but yup.”

I gaped at her in disbelief.
 
I was getting sick of her blasé attitude.

“Hey, calm down.” Adrian put a hand
on my tense shoulder.
 
“We can remember
how to get to the Praetus from here.”

“And then what?!” I turned on
him.
 
“You leave me there?
 
What about Dylan? I didn’t give up my life to
take part in some ill-conceived plan!”

Adrian cautiously wrapped his hands
around my wrists and tried to hold me still.
 
“We’re not going to let anything happen to you – or Dylan.
 
The Praetus will take the both of you.
 
And we won’t leave you until you want us to.”

“I won’t want you to leave,” I
whispered, calmer now.

Arisella fake-gagged at us, and I
self-consciously broke free from Adrian.
 
Adrian grinned shamelessly at her.

“We need to keep moving.”
 
Arisella got to her feet and put her hands on
her hips.
 
“It’s a three-day walk.
 
At the very minimum.”

From his backpack, Adrian removed
something that looked like an elaborate, platinum-plated compass, designed
almost like a square pocket watch.
 
On
the back, the engraved letters “E.B.” caught the light, while an elaborate dial
spun uncontrollably at the center.
 
Adrian
patiently held it still in the palm of his hand until the dial stopped spinning.

“This way,” Adrian announced,
moving in the opposite direction of the dial.

We all followed Adrian’s lead and
trudged through the forest, which seemed to only grow darker and colder with
every step.
 
I couldn’t imagine how
Adrian wasn’t freezing – after giving his shirt to me in the car, he had
changed into a second identical American Eagle T-shirt, but this one was white
instead of gray.

“Hey, Dylan, could you pull my
sweatshirt out of my – Dylan!” I snapped around and found him intently waving
his iPhone above his head in the air.

“What?” Dylan asked obliviously.

“We are on an entirely different
planet
.
 
You’re not going to find a signal.”

“Well, it was worth a try,” Dylan
frowned.
 
He put his phone back into his
pocket before tugging my backpack off me and handing me my UCSF sweatshirt.

“Thanks.”

As the only one who hadn’t been
carrying anything, Dylan apparently felt the need to sling my bag over his
shoulder, but not until he had first rifled through it for two Clif Bars.
 
He shoved them into his mouth one after the
other without barely breathing or chewing.
 
I looked at him in disapproval.

“Human! Don’t eat all the food!”
Arisella barked from ahead of us.

“Whaf? I’m hungrfh,” Dylan said
with chipmunk cheeks.

Arisella rolled her eyes and
exhaled with distaste.
 
“I’m hungry, too,
and you don’t see me snorting down our provisions.”
 
She pulled her bag off her back and threw it
at Dylan.
 
“Carry mine too.”

The bag bounced off Dylan’s chest
before he grasped it in surprise.
 
“What
do you think I am, a pack mule?” Dylan retorted.

“Of course not.” Arisella batted
her eyelashes innocently.
 
“A pack mule
would be far more useful than you.”

“How dare you –”

I put a hand on Dylan’s arm before
he could do anything too rash.
 
As snippy
as Arisella was, we needed her help, and we could not afford to piss her off.

“Thank you for finally taking
responsibility for your human,” Arisella smiled.

I narrowed my eyes at her.
 
“He is not
mine
.
 
And his name is
Dylan.”

Arisella waved me away
blithely.
 
“Doesn’t matter.
 
I’m going hunting.
 
Would you like to join me?”

Was
she seriously asking me?
 
She wasn’t
looking at Adrian.
 
And she definitely
wasn’t asking Dylan.

“Sure?”

“Excellent.
 
Get the clothes out of the front pocket of my
bag and put them on.”

“She’s still so new, Aris.
 
I don’t think this is such a good idea,”
Adrian said disapprovingly.

“Nonsense.
 
She’ll be able to help me scout what’s
ahead,” Arisella replied.

I reached into her bag and removed
two bands of black cloth.
 
Ugh
. Her special Spellbourn underwear.

“Oh, don’t make that face,
now.
 
I washed them.” Arisella popped her
head out from behind a nearby cluster of trees, exposing her bare
shoulders.
 
Her shirt was on the ground
beside her, and I averted my eyes quickly.
 
“Well, what are you waiting for?
 
Get over here.”

I hastily walked over to her
makeshift changing screen and stripped down.

“Not bad,” Arisella commented, her
hands on her bare hips.
 
I felt the
burning trail her eyes left on my bare flesh as she scanned me from head to
toe.

“Oh my God,” I blurted, shielding
myself with my sweatshirt that I had tossed onto the ground.
 
The only things she still had on were the two
strips of black cloth at her chest and waist, and – although I hated to admit
it to myself – I knew I looked nothing like the sculpted ivory goddess in front
of me.
 
“Can you please have the decency
to look away?!”

Arisella snickered.
 
“Just calling it like I see it.”
 
She flexed her shoulder blades and smoothly
shifted into a grimalkin before stalking back to the boys.

“Dylan, you’re going to, uh, pick
up my clothes for me, aren’t you?” I said as I wiggled into Arisella’s
Spellbourn undergarments.

“Of course.”

I was suddenly very grateful for
Dylan’s presence. I wasn’t sure if I would have been comfortable with anyone
else in the group handling my clothes.

I lithely hopped up and down,
warming up my body, while I allowed memories of my mother to flood my
mind.
 
The change came much more easily
now, and with every change I found myself able to initiate it with less fear
and more control.

Stretching with my body’s
contortions, the black Spellbourn fabric was absorbed into my skin, rather than
tearing to pieces like it should have.
 
I
was genuinely pleased.

I tentatively stepped out from
behind the trees, my tail swishing behind me.

“Well, hell, Amber!” Dylan
exclaimed, his lips curving into a huge smile.
 
With my swelling bag on his back and Arisella’s on his stomach, he
provided a goofy contrast to the eerie forest around us.
 
He boldly put a hand on my head and stroked
behind my ears, which, to my surprise, felt nicer than it should have.
 
“I have to say, I like this look on you.”

For the sake of his amusement, I
produced a low, rumbling sound that was the closest I could manage to a
purr.
 
As a form of farewell, I brushed
my head against Dylan’s leg and padded over to Adrian.
 
I looked at him intently to ask for his
approval to leave.

“Aris, don’t make me regret letting
you do this,” Adrian said, without breaking eye contact with me.

Arisella released a savage howl –
which was strange, since I had always considered her a cat – and took off ahead
of us.

I surged after her so quickly my
haunches burned from fatigue.
 
She was so
much faster than I was, and she was so far ahead that before long I was no
longer following the silver blur ahead of me, but its scent.
 
Hold on
– its scent?

Sure enough, Arisella left an
unmistakable aroma of spice and soil in the air, leading me to her better than
a map.
 
So this must have been how the
caeci could find us so easily.

I heard her vicious snarls in the distance,
and I pushed my legs faster in alarm.
 
Her smell became mixed with the salty, metallic scent of blood, and I
began discovering fresh crimson streaks decorating the crushed leaves on the
forest floor.

At last, I could see her, a large,
silver mass of fur on the ground, her abdomen rising and falling sporadically.

Fear pooled in my stomach as I
sprinted toward her body.
 
I know
Arisella had told Adrian that she would keep me safe, but how would he react
when he discovered that I couldn’t do the same for her?

I found her hunched over a
lifeless, black dog-rabbit hybrid half as big as she was.
 
Its torso had been lacerated, its entrails
spilling out of it, as Arisella sank her teeth into the poor creature.
 
The fur around her mouth and neck was
completely matted with blood, and she made nauseating, wet sounds while she
consumed the thing’s intestines.

I inched toward her in an effort to
study the poor animal, but she snarled at me and curled herself around her kill
possessively.
 
Shocked by her utter lack
of humanity, I planted myself in a sitting position several yards away.

She looked up from her meal just
long enough to toss her head in the direction she had been headed, as if urging
me to leave.
 
What, was she the one who
needed privacy now?
 
The fur on the back
of her neck bristled, and she growled at me impatiently.

Whatever.
 
If I got lost in these godforsaken woods, she
would have a hard time explaining that to Adrian.

Casting Arisella one final sickened
look, I continued onwards, indignation coursing through my veins.
 
I heatedly raced through the forest without a
single care as to where I was going, so I was surprised, to say the least, when
I found myself no longer surrounded by trees, but grass.
 
I swiveled around hectically and took in my
new surroundings.

I had reached the end of the forest
and run straight onto a lush, verdant riverbank soaked with light.
 
Everything had suddenly become so bright and
warm, and the light bounced off the small waves of the three-thousand-foot-wide
river coursing beside me.

Enticed by the water’s coolness, I
trotted down to the river and knelt beside it.
 
Transparent all the way down to the billowing eelgrass, the water was
clearer than I had expected it to be.
 
Overheated and exhausted, I arched my neck down to lap up a taste of the
rushing water.
 
Hell, if Arisella could
consume a raw wild animal, the river water wouldn’t be a problem for me.

A pair of green teardrop eyes
glimmered from within the eelgrass, and I froze halfway above the water, my
tongue hanging out of my mouth.
 
A gentle
feminine face shifted into visibility behind the eyes, surrounded by floating
cascades of endless red hair.
 
Captivated
by her beauty, I leaned toward the water as the face rose gracefully to the
surface.

A pair of hands jerked me backwards
onto the grass, and I lost my composure and shifted back into my normal body.

“Damn it, Amber.
 
As much as you may like girl-on-girl action,
that’s really not my style.
 
Now, get off
me!” Arisella aggressively rolled my barely-clothed body off hers.
 
I must have landed on her when she pulled me.