Feral (The Irisbourn Chronicles Book 1) (8 page)

“Do you see that?” I asked Dylan
urgently.
 
I was afraid they would
disappear before he would see them.

Dylan squinted into the
darkness.
 
“What?”
 
He moved his hand to turn on the light.

“No, don’t,” I said.
 
I didn’t want them to vanish.
 
I cautiously walked toward them into the
darkness.

They seemed to be billowing, as if
they were enshrouded in thin, smoky fabric.
 
I realized they had faces identical to the face I had seen above my bed
that one terrifying night.
 
They were
suspended in the air slightly above the ground, but didn’t seem to be going
anywhere.

I approached the one that was
closest to me and examined it from a distance.
 
It tilted its face down to mine in a sudden movement.
 
I scrutinized its soulless eyes and mouth,
still twisted into a silent scream.
 
In
the back of my mind, I realized that it actually looked sad.

Strangely, this time I didn’t feel
frightened by them at all.
 
In fact, I
was oddly relaxed.
 
The creatures weren’t
like the monster I had seen in the forest.
 
They didn’t seem as if they intended to hurt me.

I felt Dylan’s presence behind me.

“What do you think they are?” I
asked him.

“What do I think what are?”

“These things.”
 
I turned to face him.

He looked at me blankly, like he
had no idea what I was talking about.

“You can’t see them,” I sighed.

“Hallucinations are a side effect
of the medicine,” Dylan pointed out.

I reached out a trembling hand to
catch a piece of the shroud that drifted limply away from the creature.
 
I could feel the creature’s eyes on me as I
took the delicate fabric between my fingers.
 
It sure didn’t feel like a product of a hallucination.

I laughed lightly under my
breath.
 
I was going insane.

I let Dylan lead me to my
room.
 
I was fine with leaving the two
creatures in the hallway.
 
They didn’t
seem as if they were making any trouble for anyone other than me.

“Do you think I’m crazy?” I asked
him as we passed through the door.

“Your brother thinks you’re having
panic attacks,” Dylan answered equivocally.

I scoffed.
 
“They’re not panic attacks.
 
Of course, I don’t expect anyone to believe
me, and the more I deny it, the more likely I am to be carried away to a
psychiatric ward.”

“I believe you,” Dylan said
honestly.
 
“I mean, I believe you’re
seeing things.
 
Maybe what you saw in the
hallway was a drug-induced hallucination, but I don’t think you’re crazy.
 
You have the greatest intolerance for nonsense
of anyone I know.
 
If you say you’ve been
a witness to enigmatic occurrences, I believe you.”

“Really?” I asked with skepticism.

“Really.
 
I believe there are things in this world that
we can’t understand.
 
I think the world
is often too fast to assume the madness of individuals who notice what others
can’t.”

“I didn’t know you bought into that
spiritual paranormal crap,” I muttered.
 
“Because I didn’t, although now I’m not so sure what’s real and what’s
not.”

Dylan leaned against the doorway
and shrugged.
 
“I like to keep an open
mind, even to crap.”

Chapter
Twelve

The next morning Dylan and I didn’t
arrive at school until around eleven.
 
We
mutually concluded that we might as well sleep in, as there was no point in
going to school if we were just going to feel like sleep-deprived zombies.
 
But mostly I was dreading walking into school
with glaring, abnormal purple eyes.
 
I
hated attracting attention to myself, and my eyes were so frustratingly
impossible to ignore that I knew everyone would be staring at me wherever I
went.

Dylan suggested I wear sunglasses,
which I immediately refused.
 
Sunglasses
would encourage even more whispers than would my eyes, and they were against
school policy anyway.

It had been raining heavily all
morning, and we left dangerously slippery puddles in the bustling halls as we
rushed to pre-calculus.
 
I kept my eyes
down while we walked.
 
We had timed our
arrival so that we would be able to get to class before it began.

“Now, remember,” I warned Dylan
outside the door.
 
“Ms. Garner hates me,
so unavoidably she’s going to hate you.
 
Just try to say as little as possible and don’t let her get the best of
you.”

“She’s really that bad?”

“No.
 
She’s worse.” I gathered my courage and
pushed open the door.

Ms. Garner usually left the room
during the passing period, so I didn’t have to deal with her immediately.
 
Dylan and I took nondescript seats in the
back and waited for class to start.

Of course, Cecelia always had to
find a way to ruin everything, and as soon as she saw me come in, she turned
around in her seat to make me miserable.

“Hey look, Amber’s back,” she
trilled to her entourage, who marveled at her unsurpassable talent for pointing
out the obvious.

I leaned back and eyed her
warily.
 
She seemed legitimately taken
aback when she saw my new eyes.

“Apparently she spent the whole
morning picking up her contacts,” Cecelia remarked dryly.
 
She kept shooting curious glances at me.
 
I could hear her friends whispering amongst themselves.

“Whoa, cool contacts,” Spencer said
in awe as he and Alexis walked in.
 
“They
look good.”

“I want some,” Alexis said
wishfully.
 
“Where did you get them?”

I fumbled for words.
 
Where would people get contacts like
mine?
 
Definitely not at Walgreens.

“Online,” Dylan interjected, saving
me.
 
Thank goodness for his conveniently
timed vague responses.

Spencer turned toward Dylan
disappointedly and stared at him as if to say, “Well unfortunately you’re still
here.”

“Places, places,” Ms. Garner
chanted, strutting into the room from either a coffee or a bathroom break.
 
Ms. Garner whipped around at the front of the
class and looked intently at me.
 
For a
split second she looked slightly perplexed.
 
“Amber, I’ve been informed that you missed your first two classes.
 
Nice to see that you had enough sense to end
your little game of hooky just in time for my class.”
 
Any opportunity to humiliate me always
delighted her.
 
“And, what’s this?
 
You brought a friend?
 
What’s your name?”

“Dylan Winters,” he answered
curtly.

“Ah, the new student.”
 
Ms. Garner waved her hand dismissively.
  
“I advise you to exercise prudence when
choosing your companions here at Pierce.”
 
She looked directly at me.
 
“Some
students can become a negative influence on others.”

“I actually think Amber is really
helping with my transition,” Dylan insisted.
 
As nice as it felt to be defended, I wanted to slap my hand over his
mouth.

Ms. Garner inhaled sharply.
 
“And yet you were both tardy to school this
morning by several hours.
 
I expect
assiduity and punctuality from my students…”
 
Ms. Garner scrutinized Dylan’s stony expression, as if to determine how
far she could go.
 
“Not indolence and
insolence.”

Dylan responded with a “humph” and
became silent.

Ms. Garner’s lips curved up in
celebration of her little victory.

***

Although it wasn’t unusual for
people to wear colored contacts, it was definitely unusual for eyes, colored or
not, to look as abnormal as mine.
 
I
might as well have been screaming, “Hey, everyone!
 
My eyes glow, look at me, I’m different!”

Dylan couldn’t walk home with me that
afternoon, because he had an appointment with one of our teachers after school,
so I walked home alone like I had been doing for the last half month.

A slight mist hung in the air as
residue from the morning rain.
 
The sky
was still cloudy and gray, and I shuddered at the possibility of another
thunderstorm.
 
I wasn’t sure if I could
tolerate another sleepless night.

As I neared the house, I noticed a
dark-haired boy perched upon the brick column of our gate.
 
His dark hair looked messier than usual and slightly
damp from the mist.
 
He was leaning over
a book, and didn’t seem to notice me.
 
I
hadn’t seen him in days.

My heart sputtered slightly, making
me frown at myself.
 
I tried to convince
myself that I was only concerned about his safety, what with him sitting nine
feet off the ground.

“Up there to show off?” I called
from halfway down the street.

Adrian looked up, surprised.
 
He closed his book with a snap.
 
I was startled by how tired he looked.

“Not exactly,” he said
pleasantly.
 
“I just needed a place where
you wouldn’t be able to slip by me while I read.”

“Read what?” I was below him now,
right up against the gate.

“
Lord of the Flies
,” he answered.
 
He held the book up curiously.
 
“I
didn’t know human children could be so violent.”
 
He said the word “human” as if he were
tasting something sour.

“Some would say that civilization
is the deciding point between our humanity and savagery.”

“You’ve read it?” he asked,
surprised.

“Of course, it’s a classic.”

“And do you believe that?
 
That civilization is the only thing that
keeps humans from becoming animals?”
 
He
sat up straight and waited for my answer.

I paused to think.
 
“No, the law can always deteriorate into
anarchy.
 
But I wouldn’t want to live in
a world without order.
 
I think that without
organization, we would not be as human as we are today.”
 
I looked up at Adrian.
 
“And you?”

Adrian narrowed his eyes at the
darkening sky.
 
“I believe that a
civilization that celebrates barbarism is worse than no civilization at
all.”
 
He directed his attention back to
me.
 
“We should probably go in.
 
It looks like it might rain.”

My heart squeezed a little.
 
Adrian and I had just started talking.
 
Stupid, stupid weather.

“Should I get you a ladder or
something?” I looked around for some platform Adrian could have used to get all
the way up there, but I found nothing.

“No need,” he assured me.
 
He moved toward the edge of the ledge and
prepped himself for the drop.

“Don’t,” I gasped
apprehensively.
 
“You’ll break an ankle.”

Adrian grinned devilishly.
 
My concern seemed to amuse him.
 
“Want to bet?”

I didn’t think he would seriously
jump until I saw him falling.
 
Contrary
to my expectations, he hit the ground lightly on his feet, completely
unscathed.

I shook my head at him.
 
“Boys,” I muttered to myself.
 
“Are you sure you aren’t hurt, because maybe
I should s-” I stopped abruptly.

Adrian was staring intensely into
my eyes, just as he had done when he saw my necklace.

“Yeah, yeah, I know.
 
They look strange,” I admitted
reluctantly.
 
Adrian remained
silent.
 
He looked shaken.

In one quick flash of movement, he
grabbed my wrist and began to pull me toward his house.
 
“Come with me,” he insisted urgently.

I struggled to break my wrist free
of his iron grip.
 
“What are you doing?”
I demanded.
 
“Where are we going?”
 
I dragged my feet against the cement in
protest.

“Come on, Amber, walk.
 
You don’t have time for this.”

The raw desperation in his voice
made me tense.
 
Adrian never sounded
desperate.
 
I followed him
compliantly.
 
When he reached his gate,
he removed something indiscernible from his pocket, unlocked the gate, and led
me inside.
 
He repeated the process at
his front door, but this time I froze at the threshold.

Adrian shot me an agitated look.

“I don’t know what’s happening,” I
said in justification.
 
“I have no idea
what you’re doing.”

“Amber, please, I’ll explain,” he
implored.
 
“You have to trust me.
 
But you can’t stay out here.”

I sighed.
 
He seemed markedly perturbed.
 
I stepped inside with him and he shut the
door behind us. I was such a pushover.

The house’s interior was a complete
contradiction to its exterior.
 
Based
solely on the inside, I could have thought it brand new.
 
From the paint to the furniture, it looked
like a replica of the house I lived in.
 
But what surprised me most was how tightly all the shutters had been
drawn on every window, allowing no light to pass through.
 
All the light in the house was artificial,
provided by lamps and chandeliers.

“Aris!” Adrian bellowed into the
house.
 
“Arisella!” The name echoed
through the house, provoking no response.
 
“By the gods,” he muttered under his breath.
 
“Come with me.”

He led me to the back of the house
and deposited me in the living room.
 
He
opened the sliding door to the backyard and stuck his head out.
 
“Arisella, get in here!” he growled.

“What is it?” an out-of-breath
feminine voice replied.
 
A slender, yet
muscular girl scantily clad in a tank top and shorts languidly stepped through
the door.
 
The grace and fluidity with
which she moved, with which she held herself, were almost feline.

Her short, disheveled hair bounced
at her shoulders as she made her way toward Adrian.
 
Then she noticed me.
 
“Adrian, what were you th-”
 
She stopped abruptly.
 
Then she looked at me, really looked at
me.
 
“On our mother’s grave,” she
whispered.

“She’s an Irisbourn,” Adrian
murmured.

I was confused.

“I thought you said she was human,”
Arisella accused.
 
She roughly put her
finger under my chin and tilted my face to hers.
 
Her hair and eyes were the exact same shades
as Adrian’s, yet her face was also distinctly different.
 
She had larger eyes and a rounder face,
giving her a naturally innocent appearance.

“She
was
a human, but now she’s not.”
 
Adrian kept gazing at me perplexedly as if I were some one-of-a-kind
phenomenon that never occurred in nature.
 
I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around their conversation.

“Excuse me,” I interrupted, raising
my hand.

“Quiet,” Arisella shushed with an
air of authority.
 
So much for her
innocent appearance.
 
“She could have
changed the color artificially.
 
You.”
 
She directed her attention squarely toward
me. “Did you do anything to your eyes recently?”

I shook my head.
 
“What does that have to do with anything?”

They ignored me.

“She’s not a human anymore,” Adrian
insisted.

Arisella scowled and crossed her
arms.
 
“I’m not convinced.”

“What do you expect her to do? She
doesn’t even know what she is; it’s not like she can prove it.” Adrian looked
exasperated.

All of a sudden Arisella broke into
a diabolical smile.
 
“Really?”

The next thing I knew, she was
forcing me forward through the door she had just entered.
 
Even though I was two inches taller than her,
she had no trouble overpowering me.
 
Within seconds I found myself in the backyard.
 
The bark of the closest tree had been deeply
impaled with metal blades, and even more knives were strewn along the
grass.
 
I gulped.