Contents
First Page Header
Prologue
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Epilogue
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Rakshasa
Part I
A Paranormal Romance Serial
with a little hint of spice.
“The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Prologue
Nineteen Is An Odd Age To Die
The shotgun slug entered my right hip, blowing a hole the size of a penny through my body. I fell over backwards and I bled, and I bled, and I bled.
Rakshasa, the mythical were-tigers of India, are more powerful than humans. We can run as fast as a car, lift about two hundred kilos, take hits that would fell a man. We can appear as women and men, or as the great tigers, the hunting cats. We can heal grievous wounds.
Not these kind of wounds, though. We have limits. We aren’t immortal.
Blood gushed from the hole in a way I’d never seen blood do before. I could smell it; thick, coppery, pungent. That’s one thing you notice after you shift, your sense of smell, even in your human form, becomes much more powerful. I could smell the grass beneath me, the harsh acrid smell of gunpowder from the thin smoky trail rising from the wound, the faint smell of rain in the distance carried by a cool wind. It was going to rain soon but I’d be dead before the storm arrived.
Nineteen is an odd age to die. You’re over eighteen so you’re legally an adult, but really, you’re still just a kid. I hung out at the local mall, went drinking with my friends and otherwise did everything I did at age fifteen.
I was never going to be a wife. Never going to be a mother. I’d never watch another game of cricket. I’d never eat or drink anything again. I’d never walk or sing or laugh. Every single thing I was ever going to do with my life, my entire influence on this planet and the billions of people in it, was complete.
But it was okay. I was going to die to save the life of the man I loved.
I’d found someone whom I cared for with everything I had. Not just a boyfriend, an accessory, interchangeable and faceless. A soul-mate. Someone whose life was bound to mine.
My death would save him. My blood, the same blood pouring onto the grass beneath me, would be his salvation. A piece of myself, given freely.
That’s why I didn’t struggle, I didn’t resist. My wound, my torn and perforated flesh, burned with deep pain, but I didn’t press my hand to the entry point, I didn’t try to hold on to life.
I heard voices. The crack of shotguns, sharp and staccato, drowned out by the thunderous roar of my fellows. The Rakshasa, my coven, leapt upon the huntsmen and tore them to shreds with their powerful claws, ripping out throats with their teeth, clawing and biting and maiming and destroying the humans. Hurting those who hurt us.
Avenging me.
I let go. I let it all go, and I lay on my back in a growing pool of my blood, staring up at the sky as my vision drained away, and I saw the sun darken as the moon moved across it.
Chapter I
Libby the Loser
Two months earlier…
I don’t know why I let my friends dress me like this.
The music thumped around me, the bass deafening, so loud and so forceful I could feel it deep in my chest. I stood by the bar in the crowded, packed club, just like I did every Friday, waiting for my friends to all hook up with guys so I could slip away unnoticed through the back exit.
I had another sip of my glass of water and tried not to think about what damage this overly loud music was doing to my hearing or how much the dress I was wearing cost me. It was slick, red and on the shop model it looked totally divine. On me, though, it was just ludicrous. I felt like a rodeo clown.
A man, dressed in a button up shirt and jeans, stepped out of the crowd to the bar. He was tall, with a shadow of stubble over his chin, with tan skin and an outdoors-y complexion. Indian, like me. As he moved right beside me I could smell a faint, but pleasant, scent from him: pine leaves, crisp and clean. He had the brightest, most clear blue eyes I had ever seen.
You’re here to meet guys. The words of Katelyn, my best friend forever, echoed in my mind. The key is just to talk to them! Talking. I could do that. I inhaled, trying to adopt the most casual pose I could, holding my drink in one hand and leaning on the bar with the other.
“Nice day, isn’t it?”
The stranger turned to me, bewildered. He mouthed something I didn’t catch. The music was something dubsteppy and repetitive, it drowned out all other sound.
I put a hand to my ear. “Pardon?”
He leaned in to me, so close his face was almost touching mine, and suddenly I could hear him. “What did you say?” His voice seemed to cut over the pounding bass, muffling it. His words were as clear as day and I found I barely had to shout anymore.
“I said, it’s a nice day, isn’t it?”
“Actually it’s going to rain later tonight.”
The stranger moved his head back from mine and the music came back full force. I had no idea how he did that, or how he knew about the weather. We’d been in the club for several hours, but when we came in there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky.
As I was staring, mouth agape, thinking of something funny and witty to say, the guy’s drink arrived. “Okay, well,” I gave a nervous laugh. “I didn’t pack an umbrella, so I hope not.”
I don’t think he heard me. The stranger gave me a polite nod, then with a laugh and a much more genuine nod to his distant friends, he slipped back into the crowd. I watched him disappear into the mass of people jumping to the deafening thump of the crappy music.
Someone grabbed my arm and I spilled water all over the polished wood of the bar. Katelyn, my best friend since I don’t know when, laughed drunkenly and fell onto my chest.
“Liiiiiibby. Libby, I’m drunk.”
“Yes,” I sighed, “You are.” I helped her stand.
Katelyn indicated to the blonde, college-age guy standing beside her, wearing hipster jeans and a baggy shirt. “This is Jacques. We’re going back to his place now, okay?”
I nodded, just like I nodded every other time she’d come up to me and told me she was going home with some guy she’d barely met. “Okay.”
Katelyn leaned in close to me, her alcohol-heavy breath blowing right in my face. “How’d you do tonight? Talk to anyone?”
I wrinkled my nose, reaching up and pushing up my glasses. “I had a quick chat with, like, a weatherman I think.”
“A weatherman? What the hell?”
“I don’t know! He said it was going to rain, and then he walked off.”
Katelyn gave a melodramatic sigh. “Libby, you have to try harder, or you’re just going to end up Libby the Loser. This is your future. A grim, dark future with a knitting circle and fifty cats.”
Jacques was awkwardly hovering around while Katelyn interrogated me. I caught his eyes and gave him a kind of ‘help me’ look. I didn’t like Katelyn going home with strangers all the time, but it was her life, her choice.
“It won’t be, okay? I’ll stay here and keep looking. You two go have fun.”
I shepherded Katelyn towards Jacques and they stumbled towards the main exit together, arm in arm. I watched them go, pulling out my phone when they were out of sight. I pulled up my journal for today, tapped out Waste of time!, finished the surviving water in my glass then weaved my way through the crowd to the back exit.
*****
I was about five minutes out from the club, and about fifteen minutes away from my apartment, when the sky opened up and it began raining sideways.
A wall of rainwater buffered me as
I walked. That slick red dress of mine displayed a property I was not forewarned of: it turned see-through when wet. Canberra was a big place. It was late. Busses and trains weren’t running at this hour, I needed a cab. Huddling under a bus shelter I opened my waterlogged purse and pulled out my iPhone.
Soaked through, dead and silent. I’d gotten it brand new, too, and it had taken me months to save up for.
I waited an hour for the rain to stop but it didn’t. Freezing, with no way of contacting any of my friends and attracting entirely discomforting stares from a trio of guys who looked like they were part of a gang, I started to walk back to my apartment in the pouring rain.
Splash, splash went my ruined high heels as I trudged through the puddles on the footpath, arms huddled around me for warmth, trying to focus my mind on warming myself up. I thought of warm sunshine, of an electric heater, of a nice warm fuzzy blanket.
A car drove behind me, headlights shining through the rain. I moved to the side, off the footpath, so that the inevitable splash from the wheels wouldn’t soak me further.
I stepped right into a enormous dog crap. The splash got me anyway.
It took me nearly half an hour, hopping between the sparse shelter offered by overhanging shop awnings, to finally drag my soaked, smelly, freezing self back to my apartment. A quick search of my purse revealed that my keys were missing. They must have fallen out when I pulled out my phone.
I needed to get inside and an easily broken glass window was stopping me. My iPhone was a brick. This was an easy puzzle.
I stepped back and hurled my dead phone through the window, then reached around and opened the door from the inside. I stumbled into my apartment, kicked off my stinking shoes near the door where the mess would be easy to clean up and sank onto the couch. I buried my face in the pillows and tried not to cry.
Clinton, my cat, began sniffing at my hands. He purred and licked my wet fingers. I blindly reached for his head, giving his ears a playful scruff.
“Hey, Clinton. My special little man.”
I rubbed around and down his neck, tracing my fingers over his coarse fur.
“How was your night, huh? Did you miss me when I was gone?”
He purred, rubbing himself up against the side of the couch. Clinton wasn’t usually this affectionate. He must have sensed that I was upset. I gave his ears a rough scratching.
“Yeah, I bet. You probably just want to be fed, don’t you, boy?”
I interpreted his incessant meowing to be an answer in the affirmative. Groaning I hopped off the couch and wandered over to the kitchen, looking for cat food. I was out.
“I’ll go shopping tomorrow,” I promised Clinton, reaching down to give his yowling self another pat. Strangely he didn’t seem to want food, but he kept yowling. Shrugging it off I walked down the corridor to my bedroom, tugged off the red dress and threw on a pyjamas top, then faceplanted in my nice warm bed. In moments I was sound asleep and dreaming.
*****
In the dream I wasn’t myself.
I ran on all fours, crushing the grass beneath me. I had four, strong legs that were covered in orange and black stripes. My eyesight was clearer than it had ever been. My ears were like radar, hearing everything around me. Every scent excited me, caught my attention, and I felt alive.
I stopped under a tree on the top of a hill and I felt my form melt away, standing upright and walking like a person. Now I was myself, again, with olive human skin. I was naked, without a single stitch of clothing, but it felt completely natural. The air, cool and refreshing, whipped around my body and the tree bent towards me, worshipping me. This place was high, I could tell by the cool, thin air. A small mountain, perhaps… a peak in the earth covered in lurid green grass and crowned by a single tree.
“You took your time,” came a voice, a voice I remembered. The man from the bar. The wind continued to blow, whipping the grass around but making no sound; there was just breathing, and I felt hands, strong hands, slide around my hips. I smiled over my shoulder, closing my eyes, feeling the warmth of a chest pressing up against my back.
“Did I? Aww,” I purred. It was my own voice, but odd; it was me and not me. My tone, my inflections, coming from my throat… but it was raw. Powerful. Strong. This wasn’t the voice of Libby the Loser, this was the voice of an animal set free. A powerful, impossibly confident creature who had nothing to fear from anyone. “I felt like I needed to stretch my legs.”
“I was waiting for you, you know.” His strong hands gave me a gentle squeeze around my middle, pressing him against his body. He kissed at my neck and I tilted my head, giving him access to my bare skin. “It’s not polite to keep the Rakshasa waiting…”
I reached around behind, blindly finding his body, my hands exploring his hips. I touched his skin, warm and inviting, and closed my eyes. “I would have thought that was my line, now I’m one of us. I’ve been waiting you, Ishan, for my entire life.” I wiggled and squirmed, turning around to face him, and I looked into his eyes. They were just as I remember. Bright blue, the colour of the midday sky, and I slowly slid my hands around his strong shoulders.
He leaned forward, his breath washing over my face, and his lips found mine. I kissed at him, feeling heat rising up from my toes, little sparks of energy coursing up my body. I’d kissed boys before—the kind of awkward, shy kisses where nobody knows what they’re really doing—but I’d never, never felt anything like this. This was kissing in a raw, passionate sense, a kiss that wasn’t the release of sexual tension but something that escalated it, like a charge being passed through me.
I ran my hands along his arms, drawing them down to his side, pulling his body against mine. I pushed him over onto his back, falling with him onto the thick, bright green grass. I kissed at his chest, pressing my lips to his tan skin, my body rubbing incessantly against his.
Strong hands gripped my backside and I squirmed for him, emitting a soft moan. This person that I was, in this dream, wasn’t anything like who I was, but I liked her. I shifted my posture, pressing my groin against his and straddling his body, pinning his warm shaft down against his belly.
I’d had sexy dreams before but nothing, nothing like this. Always where I was the meek receiver, always where I didn’t have any control. I’d dream of entirely mundane things; of making out with a cute guy on my couch, or meeting the perfect stranger in the library where I worked. Silly things that seemed frivolous and petty in the light of this wonderful experience.
Instead, now, I was in control and I was making love on the crown of the world.
I eased forward, casually stroking my groin forward, teasing him with my bare flesh. I felt his girth slide beneath me, settling back. I arched my back, pushing out my breasts, closing my eyes as I felt him enter me.
The moment he did the wind picked up, silently whipping the grass around us into a frenzy as I began to move, rocking atop him, my whole body moving sensually, moving with the wind. My thighs dragged across Ishan’s flesh as I pushed him into me, this stranger whom I felt like I’d known for my entire life. White, puffy balls from the cottonwood trees floated all around me, carried on the wind as though a celebration of my raw, unleashed sexual power.
His hands explored me, but in a familiar sense, his strong fingers tracing their way up my sides, over my breasts, then down my belly to my hips. I worked at him, my hands gripping his chest, feeling the intense, powerful waves of pleasure wash over me. It wasn’t mere sexual pleasure—I’d played with myself before, I’d had an orgasm, I knew what to expect—this was more. This was a connection, a union physical and spiritual between two people, and this was the physical side of it being expressed in a raw, primal sense that didn’t seem to be able to keep itself within our bodies. All around us, nature began to respond; the wind howled, the grass writhed and thrashed underneath us and the tree bent almost to the ground as my pleasure grew and grew.
My fingernails dug into his chest, holding him close, and he pounded up at me, his groin thumping
against mine in a rhythm; even, fluid, sensual… but needfully, too. He wanted me as much as I wanted him and I could feel that. And I wanted to pleasure him; I wanted him to take me, to exhaust himself within me, to complete the union that we had. I felt him move within me, his eager body driving against mine and I moaned; I sank my teeth into his shoulder, gripping him tightly, unwilling to let go, unwilling to let this pleasure end. This perfection.
The world grew dark as my pleasure mounted, the whole hill bathed in a crimson, dark blanket. I stopped, twisting around, looking over my shoulder. The sun above me was cast into shadow as the moon moved across it, blocking its light, darkening the whole of the world. I felt my weight drop and, looking below me, Ishan turned translucent and vanished before my eyes as the world grew darker and darker. There was a loud crack, the sound of a gun.
Right before the sun vanished completely I woke up, covered in sweat and alone in my apartment.
Chapter II
The Window
Stumbling out of bed, drenched in sweat, I followed the sound, coming from within my apartment, of high pitched squeaking. It sounded like a mechanical device that needed oiling, squeaking lightly but incessantly, but as I got closer I realised that it was the sound of meowing cats.
As in multiple.
I found Clinton inside my cupboard, along with three baby kittens, squeaking in incredibly high pitched voices. They had Clinton’s orange coat, but patches of black and white, too. My shoe collection, neatly arranged at the floor of the cupboard, were covered in blood and afterbirth.
It took a second for me to process this. Clinton wasn’t my special little man. ‘He’ was a female cat.
“I don’t believe it,” I muttered, regarding the three squealing little kittens as they nursed on Clinton’s teats, “Even my damn cat can get some easier than I can.” I crouched down beside the four cats, reaching out to give Clinton a pat. “How the hell did you manage this, huh? You live inside…”
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