Read Rakshasa Book I, Part #2: Aurora Online
Authors: Alica Knight
Rakshasa Book I, Part #2: Aurora
Rakshasa
Part II: Aurora
A Paranormal Romance Serial
with a little hint of spice.
“To thine own self be true.”
- Polonius, Hamlet
Prologue
The Jaws of the Beast
He was a Rakshasa. A were-tiger. A tall, imposing creature with the head of a great cat, bright green eyes and powerful muscles, and standing right in the middle of my apartment in the dead of night. His long, thin tail whipped back and forth as he regarded me, sizing me up. Every one of us had a second name; a Rakshasa name. He’d called himself Eclipse, but in my mind he was the serial killer in the news, the Champawat Tiger.
Eclipse. An eerie coincidence, given my dreams of late.
I locked gazes with him, his dark green eyes glinting in the poor light of my small apartment. “What do you want?”
“What I want with the other Rakshasa-fledglings I find.” Another chuckle, this time with a little more energy, and the Rakshasa took a step forward.
“To kill you.”
With a growl he leapt forward, faster than I thought possible, closing the distance between us in a split second. I saw his right hand go back, more a paw than a human hand, the appendage ending in long, sharp claws, reaching for me.
The tiny kitchen left me nowhere to move. In a panic, I reached out for the closest thing I had to a weapon, one of the chopping knives I had resting on the counter.
Time seemed to slow down. My vision was filled of bared teeth and claws that ended in wicked points. There was no way I could escape them.
It was more correct to say, though, that there was no way
Libby
could escape them. Libby the Loser was going down. She was Rakshasa dung that hadn’t been digested yet.
Aurora
, though, my Rakshasa side, had other ideas.
The blade struck the Champawat Tiger right in the centre of his chest. The humble human steel slashed a great gash across his shirt but the skin underneath was unharmed. The metal blade dragged across his chest and bent, snapping off at the hilt. He was unharmed, his charge unimpeded.
That was just a distraction though. My left arm swung out wide, blocking the oncoming claw with my forearm. With a roar that boomed from my throat, raw and primal, I halted his charge; the force cracked the tiles under my feet and I swore, for a moment, I could feel the entire building groan with the stress.
The Champawat Tiger’s face was mere inches away from mine. “A strong one,” he growled into my face, seeming pleased by this notion. I pushed him back and he snarled, a brief stalemate held. He was cautious now; regarding me warily, but with confidence, as though finding a way to slay me was merely a matter of solving a fairly easy puzzle. “I’m going to enjoy snapping your neck.”
He pushed me back, then swung at me with impossible speed. There was a sudden, fading sting in my left arm and I fell back, smacking into the door of my fridge and crumpling the metal. I barely felt the impact on the fridge, though I was stuck; I struggled to get back onto my feet.
“Libby?”
A voice from the door. Ishan Kari’s voice, the lover from my dreams. The two locked eyes for a moment and, as though there were a momentary recognition between the two, a tense silence where nobody said or did anything.
Suddenly Ishan was between the killer and I, faster than I could blink. His shirt tore away and instantly he was taller, stronger, his body covered in white and dark brown tiger stripes. The Champawat Tiger took a step back, growling at us both, but I extracted myself from the ruined fridge and stepped up beside Ishan, shoulder to shoulder.
The large Rakshasa’s eyes flicked between us both, sizing us up with a cool, calculating logic. Ishan was strong and now it was two against one. “I’ll be back for you,” the Champawat Tiger growled, raising a claw towards me, backing up into my living room, turning and leaping over the balcony rail, then disappearing off into the night.
Ishan and I ran after him, but by the time we arrived he was gone.
“Are you alright?” Ishan asked me, suddenly turning to me, his Rakshasa form melting away as he became a human once more.
I threw my arms around his middle, grabbing him and drawing him close, squeezing him tightly as I pressed my face against his shoulder. “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not, I smell blood.”
I blinked in surprise, releasing him, taking a step back. “I’m fine,” I reiterated, holding up my hands. Immediately I could see that I wasn’t. A trio of deep slashes ran down my left arm and the blood ran out of the wounds, forming forked, dark red rivers over my skin. It looked horrid. I stared down at Ishan’s chest; I had smeared my blood all over his body when I grabbed him.
“Libby?”
I felt lightheaded. That was Libby, my human side, not Aurora. Libby was afraid of blood. I shuddered, eyes widening slightly as the smell hit me. It was never the sight of blood that got me, it was the smell.
That
smell. Rich and strong, coppery, human tinged with something else. A scent I couldn’t grasp; something like freshly cut grass and pine needles and crisp, cool air.
I stumbled back, staring in bewilderment at my bloody appendage, then I felt my vision fade out around the corners, like I was going into a long, dark tunnel.
Strong arms caught me, and then I felt reality slip away.
Chapter I
Dreams and Revelations
“I thought I might find you here.”
The dream world, now familiar and comforting. As Ishan spoke I opened my eyes and drank in the bright light. I was standing on top of a verdant hill, crowned with a single tree, the beautiful cerulean sky stretching from horizon to horizon. The wind blew the grass, carrying with it tiny balls of fluff from the cottonwood trees and the sun bathed the area in a golden radiance. To my side was Ishan, laying on the verdant grass, relaxed and comfortable as though he’d been waiting for some time.
We were both naked, as we always were in this place. I smiled into his light blue eyes, the colour of the sky above.
“How long have I been unconscious?”
“A few hours,” he answered, shuffling towards me.
I blinked in surprise. “That long? It seems like only moments…” It was true. My arm tingled ever so slightly; not from real pain, I knew, but from the memory. From remembering the Champawat Tiger’s claws slice into me. “I should call Katelyn. She’ll worry.”
Ishan chuckled, reaching out to touch my chin, gently rubbing it. “The girl who maced me?”
I laughed and nodded. “Yeah. She tends to be quite protective of her friends.” I reached over and touched his face. “I wish I could come here more often.”
Ishan rubbed his cheek against my hand. “I do too, but this place only exists when we’re
both
asleep and dreaming. We can only come here together, and while I would have loved to join you in your dream sooner, you were badly wounded. I needed to take you to somewhere where you would be safe.”
A surge of worry jolted through me, so alien in this peaceful, natural setting. The fluff of the white poplar trees floated all around me, wafting in the faint breeze, carrying with them the scent of flowers and earth. “How bad was the cut?”
“It’s a little more than just a cut,” he answered, “a normal human would require dozens of stitches—maybe even surgery.”
“And what did
I
require?” It seemed so strange to be talking about this change so fluidly, as though it were the most natural thing in the world. As though every other day I was turning into some other species with supernatural powers.
Ishan smiled, his hand moving to my cheek, his thumb tracing across my skin. “Rest,” he answered, “and bandages to stop the bleeding. Both of which you’re getting.”
“Stop the bleeding? Was that necessary?”
He laughed. “Yes. Rakshasa are tough, but we’re not invincible. We obey the laws of physics, more or less. Our brains need blood to function, our cells need oxygen… but less of all of the above, and we can do without for longer. We heal faster. In practically all ways we’re simply a lot stronger, faster, resilient than humans.”
“
Practically
all ways?”
“Silver, being a metal with a strange connection to the moon, slices past our defences. Wounds inflicted by silver affect us exactly as they would a human, perhaps even worse.”
I shuffled closer to him, sliding my hands around Ishan’s waist, tugging him closer. I pressed my bare chest to his, brushing my nose over his cheek, leaning against him and taking in his scent. “Why don’t we use silver weapons to harm other Rakshasa, then?”
He nibbled on my ear, kissing down to the lobe. “Sometimes we do, but it makes us uncomfortable. The best way to describe our reaction to silver is an allergy. Injuries caused by silver throw our immune systems out of kilter. Just touching it can cause nausea, vomiting, headspins…”
My hands wandered down to Ishan’s tan backside, cupping his firm, muscled rumpcheeks and giving a firm squeeze. “I’ll be sure to throw out my jewellery then.”
“A small amount isn’t harmful.” He kissed down my neck to my shoulder, his head bobbing as he showered me with affection. I could feel his groin pressing against mine, firm and lumpy, responding to the close contact. “But pierced earrings, because a part of it is actually inside the body, are usually extremely uncomfortable.”
That actually came as some relief. “I hated piercings. Too painful. I had clip-ons.” I spoke of myself in the past tense. Libby the Loser wasn’t me anymore, especially in this place, and I wanted to make sure that anything that was left was only a memory.
His hands slid around my hips, slowly edging their way down the small of my back, settling against my bum. We exchanged squeezes for a moment, then he put his lips to mine.
“Wait,” I mumbled into the kiss and he pulled his head back obediently.
“Yes?”
“I have more questions.”
He nodded. “Questions. Go.”
“Where am I? I mean, you know, the
real
me?”
He smiled a warm smile, bumping his nose to mine, slowly rubbing it back and forth. “You’re with the coven. With the other Rakshasa, others of your clan.”
The idea of other Rakshasa intrigued me. “But I thought we were from different bloodlines?”
“We are, but our disagreements came second to your health.”
I was touched, but also eager to meet others like us. “Will I get to meet them?”
His smile widened. “One of them you already have, in a manner of speaking.”
“How do you mean?”
“Vriko… he has the ability to restore form to broken things just by touching them. The pane of glass you broke on the night we met, he repaired it.”
Blinking, I tilted my head. “I
thought
that was odd. I swore, black and blue, that it was broken.” I didn’t really like the idea that total strangers had been in my apartment without me even knowing they were there, but if Ishan trusted them, then I did too. “How did you know that, though?”
“I have my sources. Both clans take a vested interest in fledglings, so I expect they know as much about you as I do.”
I was strangely totally okay with this. “What’s your special power, then?”
His smile became a coy grin. “I can predict the weather. Remember back in that club? I told you it was going to rain.”
It was so obvious. “Of course. And it poured so hard it broke Katelyn’s house.”
“Well, just the roof. Anything else?” Ishan asked.
“What’s my power?”
He raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know, and if you don’t know yet, you’ll find out soon enough.”
“Oh.” I inhaled, closing my eyes a moment. “And I… need to know what you said earlier. During the dream.”
Now his features fell slightly. “About the Altaica clan?”
I nodded. When last Ishan had brought me here, we had made love and our true forms had been revealed. He said that our chance meeting in some dingy club had formed a kind of bond between us, triggering my transformation. But Ishan had white markings on his skin and mine were orange. This had seemed to surprise him.