Feral (The Irisbourn Chronicles Book 1) (25 page)

“What the hell is your problem?!” I
shouted at her.
 
“First you thought I was
going to steal your latest slaughter, and now you won’t let me drink from the
river?
 
Are you trying to be awful or do
you just think I’m not entitled to anything in this world?”

“Will you be quiet!” Arisella got
to her feet and glared down at me.
 
Her
face and chest were still smothered in dried blood from her earlier kill.
 
“First, I happen to get a little carried away
with being a grimalkin when I hunt.
 
If
you don’t like it, that’s just too bad.
 
Second, that river is teeming with kelpie.
 
If you so much as dip your finger into it,
you’ll get pulled in and we’ll never see you again.”

“Kelpie?”

Arisella groaned at my ignorance.
 
“Body of a woman, tail of a fish?
 
Pretty but deadly?”

“Oh,” I said in realization.
 
“You mean a mermaid.”

“Whatever.
 
They’re notoriously fickle as well – never
able to decide quite what they want.
 
Anyway,” Arisella jerked her thumb toward the river, “don’t go near
there.”

She started back to the tree line
where Adrian and Dylan had emerged.
 
Adrian tossed Arisella her clothes in a huge wad, which she caught
deftly before slipping them on over her bloody skin.

Dylan and I were much more awkward
about the clothes exchange.
 
Extremely
self-conscious about my nakedness, I remained rooted in place on the riverbank
and waited for Dylan to come to me.
 
Making a gentlemanly effort not to look in my direction, Dylan gingerly
set the clothes two feet away before scampering back to Adrian.

I pulled myself into my clothes and
joined everyone by the trees.
 
Despite my
best efforts to pay attention to their conversation, all I could think about
was how everyone had basically just seen me nude.

“You let Amber run through the
forest alone?” Adrian scowled.

I jumped at the sound of my
name.
 
“What?”

“And why were you by the river?”

“I wanted to get a drink.
 
Oh, but don’t worry,” I said quickly when I
saw the horror on Adrian’s face.
 
“I
stopped when I saw a kelpie.”

Adrian glared at his sister before
directing his attention toward Dylan.
 
“This goes for you too.
 
Don’t get
close to that river.
 
The Bloodbourn have
hunted the kelpie for sport, mutilated them, even tried to rape them.” Adrian’s
nose wrinkled with disgust. “And that’s only made them more vicious.”

“They didn’t look that vicious to
me…” I said softly.

“Do not be fooled by their
appearance.
 
The moment you let your
guard down, they won’t hesitate to kill you,” Adrian warned.

“Which is especially bad,
considering we’ll need to make sure they don’t kill us when we cross the
river,” Arisella added.

“Don’t you guys have bridges
here?
 
Pretty sure humans have been
building those for thousands of years,” Dylan pointed out.

“Of course we have bridges,
halfwit,” Arisella spat.
 
Great, so now
Dylan had been demoted from human to halfwit.
 
“Except the only bridge that crosses this river is guarded by ten
Bloodbourn sentinels.”

“The last time we fled to the
Praetus, I was able to use my family name to get us past the Bloodbourn.
 
Then, no one knew that I had defected.
 
They’ll all be looking for me now,” Adrian
frowned.

Dylan snorted.
 
“Things just get better and better.”

“Anyway,” Arisella continued,
ignoring him.
 
“We can’t swim across
because 1. the river’s too wide, and 2. the kelpie will kill us.”

“Uh, guys,” Dylan whispered as he
tugged on my shirt with the urgency of a small child.
 
“I think one of them is watching us.”
 
Dylan gestured toward the river, where the
head of the young girl with flaming red hair and a shower of freckles bobbed
above the surface of the water.

The kelpie drifted close enough for
me to get a good view of her scarlet-hued tail undulating beneath the
water.
 
Flowing in iridescent shimmers
with the current, translucent, filmy fins fanned out from the end of her tail,
her waist, and her back.
 
She was the
most demure, intriguing creature I had ever seen.

“Greetings, travelers.
 
What is your business?” she inquired in a
soothing, musical voice.

“Shit, it’s talking,” Arisella
muttered under her breath.
 
She warily
moved toward the edge of the water, making sure to remain a sizeable distance
from the creature.
 
“No one say or do
anything,” Arisella whispered through tight lips.
 
“Especially you, boys.
 
Kelpie especially despise males. I’ll handle
this.”

I swallowed thickly.
 
Something told me that Arisella wasn’t the
best person to be handling this.

“Er, greetings, my lady,” Arisella
awkwardly dipped her head in respect.
 
Huh.
 
Who knew she could be
polite, much less be polite to something that probably wanted to kill her?

The kelpie produced a tinkling,
melodic laugh like bells.
 
“I am no
lady.
 
You may call me Kaela.”

Arisella nodded.

“I overheard your discussion.
 
I take it you wish to cross my river, and the
Bloodbourn bridge is inaccessible to you, is that correct?”

Arisella didn’t answer.

“Oh, you need not be so
reticent.
 
Tell me, why is it that you
wish to cross?”

“Because we seek shelter on the
other side,” Arisella answered vaguely.

“Ah, I see.
 
I believe my sisters and I might be able to
be of assistance, then.”
 
Kaela raised
her hands, summoning more goddess-like kelpie blessed with immortal amounts of
beauty to the surface of the river.
 
Seven of them bobbed around her now, their green eyes all transfixed on
us.
 
“We are willing to offer an exchange
– an exchange that will guarantee you safe passage across the river.
 
And do keep in mind that without us and
without the bridge, this river is utterly impassable.”
 
Kaela’s lips curled.
 
“I would know.
 
The river is mine.”

Arisella’s eyes lit up in cooperation.
 
“Anything you want on land.
 
If we can attain it, it’s yours.”

Kaela grinned, a set of curved
fangs protruding from her perfect smile.
 
“A smart choice, to offer us a gift of the soil that we could never
otherwise attain.
 
Unfortunately, as we
have never experienced life beyond our river, we desire nothing we do not
already have.

“That is, except for one thing.”

Arisella stepped closer to the
kelpie.
 
“Anything.”

Kaela’s eyes twinkled
devilishly.
 
“For every one of you who
crosses, we demand a Bloodbourn life be brought to us.”

“We cannot murder for you,” Adrian
said with resolution, breaking his silence.

Kaela’s expression flashed from
serene to lethal.
 
“So it is acceptable
for them to mutilate us by the dozens, but unacceptable for us to seek
revenge?” she seethed venomously.
 
She
slithered in front of Adrian, but he didn’t so much as move.

“If you only knew what they did to
us—” Kaela suddenly grew quiet, her eyes focused intently on Adrian’s
face.
 
“You,” she whispered. “
You
are Bloodbourn!”

Kaela let out a bloodcurdling
shriek, which her sisters joined in as they madly writhed about in the river.

“You tried to deceive us!” she
raged, half-laughing with the fervor of insanity.
 
“This was all a trick – to gain our trust so
you could kill us!”

“No, you misunderstand,” Arisella
insisted.
 
But any opportunity for an
exchange had already gone too far to hell for damage control.

“At the request of your
Bloodbourn
,” she spat the word acidly,
“companion, we no longer demand four Bloodbourn lives,” Kaela compromised. “We
want
him
.
 
Then the rest of you may cross.
 
A deceitful Bloodbourn in disguise is far
more dangerous than any four Bloodbourn brutes you would find.
 
You have until dawn tomorrow morning to
present your Bloodbourn friend to us.”
 
Before any of us could object, Kaela laughingly slid back under the
glistening waters with her sisters.

For a couple seconds, we all stood
staring at the river, frozen by the kelpie’s ultimatum.

“Well,” Dylan sighed.
 
“I guess Adrian’s going to be sleeping with
the fishes from now on.”
 
Dylan smirked
at me, expecting a high five, but all I could do was gape at his audacity.

“Adrian is not going anywhere,”
Arisella snarled.
 
“If either of you
actually thought that—”

I held up a hand.
 
“Of course we’re not actually going to give
Adrian to the kelpie.
 
Dylan was only
joking.”

“Sick human humor,” she scoffed.

“Glad to know that you all value my
existence,” Adrian remarked calmly, as if the kelpie’s sudden desire to see him
dead hadn’t affected him at all. “But it’s clear that the kelpie are going to
be of no help to us.
 
And, since we have
no alternatives and it’s going to be evening soon, we should set up camp
early.”

We trudged back into the darkness
of the Black Forest, far away from the grassy, sun-soaked hills by the
river.
 
Arisella wanted to sleep as far
away from the kelpie as possible, and I think everyone was grateful for that.

After ten minutes of walking, Dylan
finally threw down Arisella’s bag (I had taken mine back earlier) and refused
to go any further.
 
And that’s the way we
chose where we would set up camp.

Chapter
Twenty-Seven

What little light penetrated
through the thick branches was fading fast, and Arisella wasted no time
divvying up the work amongst us.
 
Arisella immediately assumed the responsibility of hunting our dinner,
which I was more than happy to leave to her.
 
After assigning Dylan and I with the menial task of carving a fire pit
out of the soil with our hands, Arisella promptly shifted into a grimalkin and
slipped into the woods without a farewell.
 
Adrian eventually left too, but not until he had reassured us that he
would be looking for firewood nearby, and that he would be able to hear us if
we called.

With no one else around and with
nothing better to do, Dylan and I reluctantly set out on creating the fire
pit.
 
Everything was damp, and our hands
slid right through the loose, black soil as we upturned it.
 
I tried not to think about how I might as
well have been digging a grave for whatever unfortunate animal Arisella would
be bringing back.

Arisella must have thought that
making a fire pit would have been a lot harder for us than
 
it actually was, because when Dylan and I
finished, she and Adrian were still nowhere in sight.

With a sigh, I resigned myself to
setting up the rest of the camp.
 
Meanwhile, Dylan nodded off with his back against a tree.
 
Between driving, being chased by caeci, and
trekking through the forest, he had gotten the least sleep of all four of us
over the course of the last twenty-four hours.
 
The day had visibly drained him, and the least he deserved was a nap.

The dank air had curled his messy
hair around his temple, the wispy fog rolling over him like an ominous
sheet.
 
He looked so pale, so tired, so
still.
 
He almost looked dead.

My stomach turned at that ghastly
thought, and I busied myself with the latches on my sleeping bag.
 
We had brought three sleeping bags with us,
and I arranged them with care around the fire pit.
 
Where Dylan would sleep for the night, I had
no idea – in the rush of our escape, no one had thought to bring anything for
him.

Finished with the sleeping
arrangement, I moved onto organizing our provisions.
 
I had brought a few bottles of water, cans of
vegetables, and some dried meat – basically, whatever I thought would withstand
serious wear and tear.
 
If Arisella
couldn’t find food for us by hunting, I had enough in my bag for us to survive
on for a couple of days.
 
The water, on
the other hand, presented a more pressing dilemma.
 
The water would likely last us no more than
another day, and since we couldn’t drink out of the river, we would have to
find another water source soon before we started suffering from dehydration.

Although I felt guilty about it, I
quickly rifled through Adrian’s and Arisella’s bags as well.
 
If they had food and water, I needed to have
an idea of how much.
 
The most important
things in Arisella’s bag were another pair of clothes, two half-full water
canteens, and a couple of Slim Jims.
 
I
unzipped the top of Adrian’s bag, and I found it stuffed with sharp weapons of
all sorts of odd shapes and sizes.
 
I
groaned at the excess of shiny, clinking metal.
 
No way was I going to go rooting around in that.

In the hopes that Adrian and
Arisella wouldn’t notice that I had snooped through their stuff, I meticulously
returned their bags to their original positions.
 
With the light almost completely gone now and
Adrian and Arisella still missing, I was starting to feel uneasy.
 
I thought about calling for Adrian, but Dylan
was still fast asleep.
 
Also, I wasn’t
exactly in any trouble, so I really had no need to call for Adrian.
 
What was I going to say if he came running
back, expecting the worst?
 
Yeah, my bad if you thought I was dying – I
was just pathetically lonely.

But just because I wasn’t going to
call for him, didn’t mean I wasn’t going to look for him.

I had actually remembered to bring
a flashlight this time, so I fished it out of my bag before heading out into
the dimming forest.
 
I would be ready
when darkness fell.
 
When I left Dylan,
he was still sleeping against a tree.
 
He
wouldn’t even notice my absence – I would be back by the time he got up.

I traveled in the same direction
Adrian had gone, but I couldn’t find any sign of him.
 
I made sure to travel in a straight line – no
turns whatsoever.
 
I refused to be that
oblivious camper in horror movies who passes the same rock five times before
she realizes she’s been walking in a circle.

When I couldn’t see the camp
anymore, I started shouting Adrian’s name, my words harsh against the hum of
the forest.
 
For a moment, each shout
silenced the alien cries of the creatures in the treetops.
 
But the animals would always resume their
dissonant music, seemingly louder and more savagely than before, as if
aggravated that I had intruded upon their world.

But other than the broken songs of
invisible animals, I heard nothing.
 
No
reply.

I shouted his name again into the
oblivion.

“Amber?” came a reply.

“Adrian!”

“Stay where you are!” he shouted
from afar.
 
I spun around wildly,
searching for him.
 
I had no idea where
he was, but I could sense the urgency in his command.

Behind me I heard the crunch of
leaves under rapid, lithe footsteps.
 
I
turned hastily to find myself staring straight into Adrian’s bright sapphire
eyes.

“Hello,” he said, a grin spreading
across his face.

“Hi,” I breathed.
 
I hadn’t expected him to appear so suddenly.

He watched me, as if he were
waiting for me to say something.
 
But I
couldn’t think of anything to say, so he cleared his throat.
 
“You called?”

Oh, crap, I had.
 
What the hell had happened to my resolution
not to do that unless I was actually in trouble?
 
“You snuck up on me.”

“Completely unintentional.”

I bit my lip.
 
“Sorry, I was…”
Don’t say lonely
“… looking for you.”
Good
.

Adrian held his arms out.
 
“Well, here I am.
 
But,” he frowned, “I did drop all the
firewood in my rush to get to you.”

“Geez,” I muttered, beginning an
apology.

“No, this is better.
 
Now we can bring it to camp together.” Adrian
seemed genuinely pleased by my presence, which surprised me.

We fell into step together, walking
at a leisurely pace in the direction of wherever he had come from.
 
Even though he remained a respectful distance
away from me, wasn’t even touching me, I felt overly aware of his
presence.
 
Overly aware of the way he was
gazing at me.
 
Overly aware of the way he
glided without making a sound.

“Do you do this often?” he asked,
drawing me out of my thoughts.

“Go on the run from people who want
to kill me?” I shook my head.
 
“This is a
first.”

“No,” Adrian grimaced, before
smoothing his expression.
 
“I was talking
about what humans do outdoors for fun – camping.”

I snorted.
 
“I highly doubt this qualifies as fun.
 
Although the sleeping bags do add a nice
touch.”

“But did you ever?”

I was amused by Adrian’s
persistence.
 
He really wanted to
know.
 
“A few times, with my family, when
my siblings and I were younger.
 
I saw a
bear once.
 
We were supposed to lock away
our food overnight, but Heather had left a chocolate bar out and the bear must
have smelled it.
 
I thought I had heard
something, so I, being a stupid six-year-old without a healthy sense of fear,
left the tent to see what it was.
 
Of
course, I screamed, my dad pulled me back into the tent, the bear left, and no
one died.
 
The end.”

Adrian frowned.
 
“It seems you’ve always been good at finding
trouble.”

“Hey.” I put my hands on my
hips.
 
“Trouble finds me.”

“Either way, you must have been
quite a handful. Not that I don’t enjoy a challenge every now and then.”
 
His teeth gleamed in the darkness.
 
“In all seriousness, do try to be careful
though.”

“You know, you can come off a
little domineering sometimes,” I said without thinking.
 
I instantly regretted it and turned away,
afraid he would be offended.
 
He hadn’t
meant any harm, and I didn’t want him to get the idea that I was ungrateful for
his help.

Adrian was silent for a
moment.
 
“I apologize if I seem that
way,” he said finally.

I turned back to him, the surprise
in my eyes reflected in his.
 
“You do?”

“I know I can be demanding at
times,” Adrian admitted.
 
“I just want
you to know that I only want what’s best for you, Amber.
 
I know you’re strong, that you’ve been
through a lot – that you’re not some helpless seventeen-year-old girl who
constantly needs someone hovering around her for protection.
 
But that doesn’t mean that I’m not going to
worry about you.
 
I worry not because I
view you as a liability – but because I truly care what happens to you.”

We had stopped now, and I felt his
eyes searching my face, gauging my response.
 
The only problem was that I didn’t really have a response.
 
Did he care for me like a friend, a brother,
or…something else?
 
No, I was
overthinking this.
 
Really overthinking.

I realized we had reached a large
pile of sticks, and since I didn’t know what to say, I just started picking
them up.
 
Adrian sighed and joined me.

“You’ve gotten very quiet.” Adrian
shoved most of the wood under his arm before I had a chance to touch it,
leaving me with an embarrassingly small bundle.

“It’s just – a lot has happened
today, and I haven’t gotten much sleep.
 
My mind’s processing things slower than usual.”

“We need to get you back to camp
then.”

I winced at the trace of
exasperation that seeped into Adrian’s concern.
 
“I do appreciate what you have done for Dylan and me.
 
I truly do.
 
I also appreciate your respect.”

“Do you trust me?”

I was thrown by the sudden
intensity of his question.
 
“Of course,”
I said without thinking.
 
“With my life.”

Adrian grew grave. “You
shouldn’t.
 
I want you to, but you
shouldn’t.”

“Why?”

“Have you ever even considered the
fact that I am Bloodbourn, that the reason I might need you alive is so I can
take you to the Blood King myself?
 
That
all of this might be a lie?”

I had considered that
possibility.
 
I had also dismissed
it.
 
“I don’t think you’d lie to me like
that.”

Adrian scowled.
 
“It worries me that you would trust anyone
this much.”

“Oh, no, just you.”
 
Well, and Dylan.
 
But I’m sure Adrian must have known that.

Adrian raised an eyebrow, and I
returned his gaze squarely.

It wasn’t until he had dropped his
sticks with an abrupt clatter into the crudely dug fire pit that I realized we
were back at camp.

“He sleeps like the dead, doesn’t
he?” Adrian motioned toward Dylan.
 
His
words sent a trail of shivers down my spine.

“He can sleep through lightning
storms.
 
It’s a gift.”
 
I deposited my share of sticks with an even
noisier clatter. “See? Still asleep.”

Adrian shook his head
disapprovingly and rearranged the firewood in a small tent-like pile, before
showering them with crackly, gray leaves.
 
He removed a small ebony stone and what looked like a Swiss pocket knife
from the front pouch of Arisella’s bag.

“Can’t you just create your own
knife?”

“My knives don’t have any steel in
them.
 
We need steel to spark the
flint.”
 
Adrian shaved some of the flint
onto a cluster of leaves, then ran his blade across the flint, sparking it in a
split second.

He breathed on the miniscule flame,
feeding it until it had engulfed a sizeable section of the wood.
 
I could instantly feel the warmth emanating
from it, chasing away the dampness.
 
I
felt my muscles relax, and I eagerly crouched closer to the fire beside Adrian.

“I had matches, you know.”

“Matches?” Adrian scoffed in an
offended tone. “I’ve never used a match in my life.”

I rolled my eyes.
 
“Well, look who’s too good for nineteenth
century technology.”