Feral by Sierra Prynne

Author:Sierra Prynne [Prynne, Sierra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jordan Trippeer
Published: 2024-01-30T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 19

Perhaps it was the weekend crowds or the bright evening lights of a living, breathing city, but I was several streets away from the Orpheum before I realized shadowing a stranger was a terrible, dangerous, silly thing to do.

She didn’t turn around once, didn’t pick up her pace. She strolled through the city.

Soon, I was trailing this woman down darker and darker avenues. Before I knew it, we had turned a corner and arrived back at the foot of Castle Rock. The full moon had risen. Its brilliant silver light dusted the top of Edinburgh Castle like fine salt while the castle’s ghoulish green base lighting clawed at it from below. The few surviving black shadows between wrote in an ancient cuneiform script across the stones; it looked like a spell to summon some beast.

In the distance, something howled, and the woman paused, turning her head just slightly. “A little farther now and I’ll explain everything.”

She opened the small, squeaky gate ahead of her and disappeared down the stairs beyond.

Half of my mind told me to turn and run, to seek out brighter lights, other people, even Cassian if he hadn’t just given up on me entirely and returned to the house. The other half was too eager to know what she had to say.

I hustled across the street and slipped through the iron gate after her. A few dozen rough steps took me into the heart of a graveyard, where trees and high walls kept the modern city at bay and the pungent stench of musk tore visitors from the modern world. This was a secret place.

I found her leaning in the shadow of a small, ancient mausoleum half eroded by wind, rain, snow, and moss. I paused far out of reach, with my hand clamped to the stair railing, and waited.

“I’m impressed you came,” she said. “Do you know who I am?”

I shook my head.

“Do you know...what I am?”

This was stupid, stupid. My mind screamed inside me like a panicked captive begging me to let it go if I wasn’t smart enough to save myself.

“You’ve come this far,” she said. “I only ask that you stay once I show you. I have much to tell you. Don’t be afraid.”

She took a step forward into the open between us and lifted her head to the sky.

At first, nothing happened. An active nothing as noise seemed to fade away and the world seemed to hold its breath.

And then...

The full moon’s softest glow brightened to molten silver, thickening until an actual beam surrounded her. A waterfall of light. Pain swelled across her in a terrible tsunami; her whimpers of agony sounded...like two voices crying out in the night. Her flawless pale skin rippled. Her teeth sharpened. Her brown eyes lightened to gold. The hair on her head began to spread, across her cheeks, down along her neck as she melted away in front of me, until all that was left was a jumble of dark fabric and red fur on the ground.

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