Rakshasa
Authors: Alica Knight
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.”