Feral (The Irisbourn Chronicles Book 1) (9 page)

“Arisella, stop!” Adrian yelled,
livid.
 
“Don’t do this.”

“Blade please,” Arisella
requested.
 
She held out her hand to
Adrian expectantly, but Adrian only looked at her in disbelief.
 
“Fine,” she shrugged, and bent over to pick
up one of the razor-sharp knives on the ground.

“You could kill her!” Adrian
exclaimed.
 
“It’s not worth it.”

Arisella turned on Adrian.
 
“I’ll kill
you
if you don’t stay out of my way.”
 
Her voice sent shivers down my spine, but
Adrian just rolled his eyes.
 
She
redirected her attention back to me. “Girl.”

“Amber,” Adrian corrected, as if it
mattered.

“Fine, Amber,” Arisella
grumbled.
 
She transitioned into a low,
savage crouch and held her blade confidently at her side.
 
“Let’s play.”

She leapt at me, blade in the
air.
 
It took me a moment to get over the
initial suddenness of her attack.
 
At the
last second, I gathered enough sense to dart to the side to avoid the
blow.
 
She lunged at me again, and again
I dodged her blade by a hairs length.
 
Before she could take another swing at me, I sprinted toward the tree
with the knives jutting out of it and pulled one out.
 
I attempted to climb the tree, but Arisella fastened
her hands to my ankles and yanked me back to the ground.
 
My head spun from the impact.

“A coward,” she muttered in
disappointment.

She gave me enough time to get back
on my feet before she shifted into another crouch.
 
I held my blade in front of me, with the
ridiculous idea that I might be able to deflect anything that might fly toward
me.
 
In one practiced movement, Arisella
sent her blade sailing through the air toward mine, effectively knocking it out
of my hand and slicing through the skin on the back of my wrist.
 
I gripped my injured hand tightly with my
left, as hot, sticky wetness seeped from the cut.
 
Like the one I had sustained in the woods,
this wound seemed superficial, so I wasn’t too worried about stopping the
bleeding.
 
I was far more worried about
the sadistic girl in front of me.

“Arisella,’ Adrian hissed from the
sidelines.
 
I was suddenly enraged with
him for leading me into a deathtrap with this psychopathic killer.

With a bored expression, Arisella
watched the red fall from my hand.
 
“A
bleeder,” she announced discontentedly.

She charged at me again, this time
trapping me against the wall of the house.
 
I closed my eyes in anticipation of the grisly pain, but all I felt was
the dull edge of a knife pressed up against my neck.
 
I opened my eyes.

“Vulnerable,” she sneered.

She dropped the blade from my aching
neck, and I fell to the ground, coughing.
 
I tried to crawl sideways to the door as she stepped back.
 
Her eyes were wild.

“Adrian, I think you may have made
a grave mistake.”

“I’m not wrong.”

Arisella dropped her knife and ran
her hands through her hair.
 
For a second
I thought she was done, that she had accomplished what she wanted by injuring
me.
 
But my relief disappeared when she
said, “I think we should raise the stakes then, don’t you?”
 
She didn’t wait for Adrian’s response.

She bent over and began to shudder
uncontrollably, so much so that for a second I actually wondered if I should
help her.
 
Adrian watched her stiffly,
making no movement.
 
It wasn’t until her
body was contorting and stretching that I realized something was seriously
wrong.
 
Needle-sharp hairs like metal
threads emerged from her skin, as her body shifted into an unrecognizable
feline shape.
 
She fell to the ground on
her hands, which now resembled paws.
 
Her
nails extended into claws as sharp and long as the blades in the grass.
 
I watched her, dumbstruck, while her body was
replaced with that of a monstrous silver cat unlike any I had ever seen.
 
Its quick silvery tail was shaped more like
that of a fox’s than a cat’s, and its ears were so large on its head they were
practically drooping.

The sinister feline lifted its head
and glared at me with red, catlike eyes.
 
My fear of Arisella paled in comparison with my terror of this
creature.
 
A warning snarl slipped through
its incisors, and I gulped, defenseless.
 
It charged toward me, claws out, and left me no opening to escape.
 
This animal was going to slaughter me.

With that realization, my body
began to burn, just as it had in the woods.
 
I screamed and knelt to the ground in so much pain that I didn’t even
realize that the blow from the cat had never come.

When I could summon enough strength
to look up, Arisella had taken the cat’s place, her savage demeanor replaced
with one of awe.
 
I wanted to wipe that
wonder-struck look off her face.

I knew that I would have to attack
her when she was distracted.
 
I darted
toward her faster than I thought was possible.
 
Her eyes widened in fear, and an exultant guttural noise rose from my
throat.
 
But before I could come close
enough to her to strike, a shooting pain paralyzed my side, and I collapsed on
the ground, helpless.
 
The world grew
dark around me, and my body drowned in pain.

As I slowly lost consciousness, I
could hear Arisella victoriously remark, “We have a winner.”

Chapter
Thirteen

“We need to wake her up.
 
She looks like a corpse; it’s making me
uncomfortable.”

“In case you don’t remember, you
did this to her.”
 
I recognized Adrian’s
voice.
 
He sounded pissed.

I opened my eyes and found myself
in a large bed.
 
The only light
illuminating the room was coming from a small lamp on the wall, so my eyes had
to take some time to adjust before I noticed Arisella and Adrian beside me.

“She’s back from the dead,” I heard
Arisella whisper.

“Here.” Adrian handed me a glass of
water that had been sitting on the nightstand.
 
“You must be exhausted.”

I took the water but eyed it
suspiciously.

Adrian sighed.
 
“Amber, relax.
 
We’re not going to poison you.”

“How do I know that?
 
She
tried to kill me.”
 
I glared at
Arisella.
 
I had to restrain myself from
throwing my glass at her.

Arisella held up a finger in
rectification.
 
“Help, not kill.
 
It may not seem that way right now, but
you’ll thank me later.”

Her superior tone made my blood
boil.
 
“Why you delusional,
murderous-”
 
I was so irate, I couldn’t
even finish.

“Stay calm,” Adrian murmured sympathetically.
 
“Aris, I think you should leave.”
 
Arisella stared at Adrian in disbelief.
 
“Now,” he emphasized.

She stalked out of the room without
another word and closed the door behind her.

“You’ll have to excuse my sister,”
Adrian said gently.
 
“She can be quite…
unpleasant at times.”

“You’re related to that witch?” My
glass of water shook in my hand.
 
“And
you!
 
You led me here so she could kill
me,” I remembered.
 
An intense feeling of
betrayal rose within me.
 
Water spilled
over the side of the cup and onto my shorts.
 
Hold on, those weren’t my shorts.
 
I closed my eyes.
 
“Why am I
wearing different clothes that I came in with?” I whispered.

“Your clothes, er, were kind of
ruined during the fight.
 
Don’t worry,
Aris switched them with new ones,” Adrian added quickly.

I tried to remember any time during
the fight when my clothes could have been damaged beyond repair, but my memory
of the altercation was murky.
 
It had all
taken place so quickly.
 
Had Arisella
turned into some sort of cat?
 
I shook my
head to clear my mind, only to jostle memories of last night’s shredded
wardrobe.
 
Had my clothes somehow become
like that?
 
I blushed in mortification of
the idea, which Adrian, of course, noticed.

“If it makes you feel any better, I
left before I saw anything,” Adrian said awkwardly.
 
Even more blood rushed to my flaming
face.
 
His words insinuated that there
must have been something to see.

I rushed to change the topic.
 
“I take it my torturer bandaged my hand as
well?”
 
I held up my right hand and
wriggled my fingers.

“Actually, that was me,” Adrian
admitted.
 
“I didn’t know she would be so
rough with you.
 
We were honestly both
trying to help you.
 
It’s all very
complicated.”
 
Adrian’s eyes were
pleading.

“Actually, it’s all very crazy, and
I would really like to go home.”
 
I swept
my legs over the side of the bed so I could get up.

“You can’t,” Adrian asserted.

I stared at him in
incredulity.
 
My pulse sped up.
 
Did his family consist of insane murderers
who intended to keep and kill me?

“At least, not right now,” Adrian
clarified.
 
“You will be able to go home,
I promise.
 
But first you need to hear
some things.”
 
I grew slightly calmer.

“Like what?”
 
I couldn’t imagine anything he said would be
so important that I couldn’t go home.

“You’re not human,” Adrian said
seriously and waited for my reaction.

I stared back blankly. I half
expected him to burst out in laughter and yell “psyche!” but he didn’t.

“Okay, I need to go home,” I
repeated.

“You don’t believe me,” Adrian
breathed disappointedly.

I shrugged.
 
“Can you blame me?”

“I’m telling the truth.”

I eyed the door warily.
 
Even if I could manage to reach it ahead of
Adrian, Arisella would no doubt catch me before I even hit the stairs.
 
I decided I might as well play along with
Adrian if it would help me get out of the house faster.

“Okay, let’s say I’m not
human.
 
That must mean you and your
sister aren’t either, right?”

“Yes, we’re Divinbloods, just like
you.
 
We’re not of this world, but of
another called Fallyre.”

I furrowed my brow at his strange
words.

Adrian seemed upset by my
resistance to the idea. “Okay, well, have you recently been seeing things
others cannot, things you can’t understand?”

My eyes widened in surprise.
 
I had been seeing creatures that definitely
should not have existed on this earth, but everyone else had just dismissed
them as panic attacks.
 
But that didn’t
necessarily mean Adrian’s outlandish assumptions were right, did it?

“No,” I muttered in response.

Adrian smiled at me slyly.
 
“You’re lying.”

I grimaced in defeat.

“We’re different from humans.
 
We can do things they can’t.
 
Do you remember when Aris changed forms in
the backyard?”

So I hadn’t imagined that.
 
She really had changed into a giant sort of
cat.
 
“Yes,” I admitted slowly.
 
“What was that?”

“A grimalkin.
 
They’re native to our world.
 
Our animals are different from yours, just
like our people.”

“And your world, what’s it like?” I
was fascinated by the possibility of the existence of another reality beyond
ours, something greater to this life than I already knew.

Adrian’s eyes darkened.
 
“Our world is dying,” he said gravely.
 
“Collapsing from the inside out.
 
Not literally imploding, though,” Adrian clarified
when he noticed my shocked expression.
 
“We as a people are destroying ourselves.
 
It’s a very long, complicated story.”

“Well, it doesn’t look like I’m
going anywhere,” I pointed out, as I crossed my legs atop the bed.

“No, it doesn’t.” Adrian’s mouth
twitched up.
 
“We were all told the
stories of old as children, just like the way humans are read fairytales before
bed.
 
The only difference is, however,
that our tales are true.”
 
He sat down on
the flat surface of the mahogany nightstand beside me and closed his eyes.
 
He looked lost in his memory, as if he were
trying to capture a dream that had been slowly slipping away from him with
every daylight hour.

Chapter
Fourteen

“According
to the early stories, when the gods created our world, they filled it with
their wildest fantasies, from bloodthirsty dragons to wood sprites.”

“Hold on,” I interrupted, raising
my hand as if I were in class.
 
“You have
dragons
?
 
Are we talking little snake-like dragons or
big dinosaurs with wings?”

Adrian shot me a weary look.
 
“Both.”

“Really?”

“Yes.
 
Now please try to be patient, Amber.
 
The story’s just getting started.”

“Sorry, sorry.”
 
I motioned for Adrian to continue.

“To
the gods, Fallyre was an empty canvas on which they could project their
imagination without paying any regard to rhyme or reason.

“Amongst
the ancient creations, the first people to inhabit Fallyre were not Divinbloods,
but humans.
 
But from their conception,
the first men were too weak, cowardly, and defenseless to survive in a world of
instinctive killers.”

I produced a loud, intentional
cough, disrupting Adrian’s train of thought.
 
I couldn’t help feeling insulted; until ten minutes ago, I had
considered myself a human.

Adrian smirked and continued.

“Due
to the gods’ inattention to practicality, Fallyre’s food chain was highly
flawed.
 
As the native animals of Fallyre
facilely overpowered and slaughtered the first men, the rapidly declining human
population prayed to the gods for an opportunity to escape their disastrous
fate.

“It
is said that the gods felt pity for the people they had created, and blessed
them with unique abilities so that they might exhibit greater chances of
survival.
 
The men of Fallyre then
declared themselves the ‘Divinbloods’—”

“That’s us,” I realized.
 
Adrian’s story was actually starting to make
sense now.

“Yes.”
 
Adrian looked pleased.
 
“So
they declared themselves the ‘Divinbloods’ to accept their abandonment of their
weaker bodies.
 
Based on their god-given
gifts, the people identified with one of four groups: the Strongbourn, the
Beastbourn, the Bloodbourn, and the Spellbourn.

“The
Strongbourn were blessed with the ability to heal.
 
They were assigned the responsibility of
maintaining the health of the people.”

“Are you a Strongbourn?” I was
intrigued by the idea of Adrian healing anything.
 
He looked far too strong and dangerous to be
a healer, but perhaps all Divinbloods were supposed to look that way.

“No, I’m Bloodbourn.”

“Oh, well, I guess I just figured,
since you asked if I was hurt that time I fell off my gate, and today you
bandaged my hand,” I explained sheepishly.

Adrian looked disturbed.
 
“If I were Strongbourn, you wouldn’t have
needed a bandage.”

“Oh.”

“May I continue?”

I nodded in acquiescence.

“The
Beastbourn were the shapeshifters, capable of changing into the feral animals
that had ravaged their people.
 
They were
created as a form of defense, so that Fallyrian animals would never again
become a danger to men.”

“Arisella is a Beastbourn?” I
tested.

“Yeah, and a nasty one too.”
 
Adrian glanced at the door, as if he were
hoping that his sister had heard him.

“I second that,” I concurred loudly
for Arisella’s benefit.
 
A disgruntled
“harrumph” emerged from the next room, and Adrian suppressed a laugh.

“The
Bloodbourn became the race of warriors, created purely for the sake of
killing.
 
The gods gave them the gift to
produce weapons from their own blood, as well as the ability to manipulate the
dark beasts of Fallyre even the Beastbourn had no hope of slaying.”

“Wait, back up.
 
Weapons from
blood
?”
 
I cringed at the
thought.
 
“How does that work?”

“Would you like to see?” Adrian
offered, as if it were nothing more than showing me his driver’s license.
 
Speaking of which, did he even have a
license?

In the back of my brain, a sensible
little voice was screaming, “NO! I do not want to see this guy make lethal
weapons out of his own blood.
  
That is
unsanitary and insane, and I am probably just having one massive panic attack
right now!”

However, that small voice was
small, and therefore easily overpowered by the larger, morbidly intrigued part
of me that really wanted to see Bloodbourn Adrian in action.

“Okay.”

Adrian rolled up the sleeve of his
button-up shirt, exposing his pale wrist.

“Ready?”

I could see the excitement in his
eyes.
 
“Yeah,” I gulped.
 
“Uh, are you?”

Adrian closed his eyes. “I’m always
ready.”

His brow furrowed in
concentration.
 
When I looked back at his
wrist, I could see his skin stretching at a fine point from within the
muscle.
 
It looked like a shard of his
bone had split from his skeleton and was trying to escape.
 
The point became sharper and higher until
something dark cut through the white of his skin.
 
I jumped in surprise.
 
Adrian’s hand was suddenly enclosed around an
ebony needle-like blade.

The sight of it sent shivers down
my spine.

“Well, that wasn’t as messy as I
thought it would be,” I admitted breathlessly, earning me a chuckle from
Adrian.
 
“That doesn’t seem like such a
deadly ability, though.”

In that instant, Adrian’s
expression turned from bright to grim.

“You don’t think so?” Adrian
flipped the smooth blade through his fingers in contemplation.

In a rapid flash of movement, he
flung the blade at the opposite wall, where it promptly buried itself in the
wood.
 
The only evidence of the weapon
was the clean, deep hole it had disappeared within.

“Imagine dozens of those being
aimed at your head.
 
Imagine fighting an
opponent who never runs out of weapons.
 
And they don’t necessarily have to be shaped like that.
 
We can make whatever blade we want.”
 
Adrian’s eyes burned intensely into mine, as
if he were trying to describe to me the importance of something he knew he
would never be able to communicate clearly enough.
 
“Never underestimate the Bloodbourn.”

“I’ll make sure to remember that,”
I murmured, taken aback by his sudden seriousness.
 
“I want to hear the rest of the story.”

“Where was I?”

“Something about the Bloodbourn
mind controlling animals.”

“Oh, that’s right.
 
Anyway,” Adrian began,
“the gods had intended the Bloodbourn to be the strongest line of
offense, in the possibility that the men of Fallyre would meet a challenge too
great for the Beastbourn.

“Finally,
the Spellbourn received the ability to harness magic through curses, charms,
and incantations.
 
However, the
Spellbourn’s greatest strength lay in their abilities to complement the powers
of the other races.
 
Thus, the Spellbourn
were created as a second line of defense, behind the Beastbourn, as well as a
form of support to the other groups.”

“That makes four.”
 
I scratched my head perplexedly.
 
“Which one am I?”

“None,” Adrian responded.

“But I thought you said I was –”

“You are.
 
I haven’t gotten to your part yet.”

I became silent.

“In
the hope that the ancient men might be able to restore order to the world, the
gods had been quite generous with the Divinbloods.
 
However, the Divinbloods did not use their
new gifts as the gods had wished.
 
Instead of embracing each other’s strengths and uniting, the Divinbloods
fragmented into four separate nations and migrated to different areas of the
world.
 
Their newly-acquired holy gifts
only awakened their insatiable lust for power.

“Each
Divinblood nation became consumed with the desire to attain ultimate control
over its counterparts, and the Divinbloods began to violently clash amongst
themselves.
 
Rather than create harmony
in Fallyre, they enslaved the native creatures and bathed the world in blood.

“The
gods, disillusioned with Fallyre due its chaos and bloodshed, were said to have
left our world, similar to the way one would abandon a failed experiment.
 
During their absence, the gods were designing
a new world, free of the perilous creatures they had created on Fallyre.
 
This world was created to be safer, more
balanced, and more practical than ours.
 
When the gods were finished, they named it Earth.

“As
the gods nurtured their new planet to maturity, they became utterly enthralled
with the new race of humans they had created.”

I coughed again, but this time in
pride.
 
Who would have thought the gods
would abandon a race of super humans for utterly average mortals?
 
Obviously the gods wouldn’t have done that if
earthlings were such pitiful, weak creatures.

“However,
while Earth thrived, Fallyre fell apart.
 
The Divinbloods’ prolonged war had brought them dangerously close to
destroying themselves.
 
Thus, the
Divinbloods, again on the precipice of demise, made a second plea to the gods,
who once more chose to show mercy.

“In
order to assist the Divinbloods, the gods created a fifth race of men capable
of possessing multiple divine abilities, rather than only one.
 
Wary of making the same mistake twice, the
gods carefully designed the nature of this new race to be honest, just, and
less susceptible to corruption, so that they would be more inclined to act for
the good of their world rather than for themselves.
 
As the most reasonable and powerful beings of
their world, these new men were intended to become the eternal rulers and
guardians of Fallyre, so that their world would never again slip into disorder.

“The
gods marked their new race with piercing purple eyes, so all Divinbloods could
recognize and respect the peacekeepers.
 
For this reason, the new men became known as the Irisbourn.”

I gasped in realization.
 
“I’m an Irisbourn.”

“Yes,” Adrian affirmed.
 
The sides of his mouth twitched up as he
watched my stunned expression.

“Keep going.”

“Grateful
for the gods’ aid, the Divinbloods willingly accepted the Irisbourn as their
new rulers.
 
The gods watched as Fallyre
began to function peacefully just like they had initially hoped it would.
 
Pleased by the improvement, the gods welcomed
Fallyre back under their protection.”
 
Adrian stopped.

I assumed he was giving me an
opening to ask questions.
 
I struggled to
organize my thoughts into coherent questions and then triage them.
 
“If I’m Irisbourn, does that mean I have the
abilities of the Beastbourn, Bloodbourn, Spellbourn, and Strongbourn?”
 
It struck me that I sounded almost greedy,
inquiring if I had all these abilities when Adrian and Arisella only possessed
one.

“It’s possible, but not likely,”
Adrian said with candor.
 
“Most Irisbourn
had only two or three abilities.
 
Very
rarely an Irisbourn ended up with one, but it was even rarer for an Irisbourn
to have four.
 
It had something to do
with the gods wanting the Irisbourn to be only as powerful the world required
them to be.”

“Oh,” I replied.
 
“So which abilities do I have?”

“Well, right now we’re certain that
you have the Beastbourn ability.”

I frowned.
 
That meant I had the same ability as
Arisella.
 
“How do you know?”

“You changed during your fight with
Aris.
 
Don’t you remember?”
 
Adrian blinked, surprised.

“Changed what?
 
Changed clothes?”
 
I was clueless.
 
The last thing I could remember was falling
onto the ground like an imbecile after my embarrassing attack on Arisella.

“No, you changed into a big black
cat.
 
It was a.. a…” Adrian stared off
into the distance, trying to remember the word.
 
He grimaced.
 
“I’m not familiar
with your animals,” he admitted.
 
“ARISELLA, WHAT DID AMBER CHANGE INTO AGAIN?” he bellowed at empty
space.

“A panther!” said a muffled voice
from the wall beside us.

“That’s right, a panther.”

“I did what?
 
I didn’t become a –”

Then I remembered the searing pain,
my shredded clothes, my sudden proximity to the ground.
 
I had been changing, just as I had seen
Arisella change.

“But why a panther?”
 
I muttered, before I answered my own question
again.
 
I groaned in understanding.

Damn Pierce High’s stupid
subliminal panthers.
 
Well, I guess I
could have changed into something worse, like the armadillo on the cover of my
biology book.
 
“So how will I know what
else I can do, if I even
can
do
anything else?”