Rakshasa Book I, Part #4: Shadowfall Read online

  I nodded politely. “Yes, I remember. Thank you for your assistance earlier.”

  Thomas gave a nod followed by a surprisingly genuine smile. “It was my pleasure.”

  “Can I help you?” I asked. “Is this about what happened earlier?”

  She shook her head. “Not exactly, Miss Meda, it’s just a follow-up visit. We just want to make absolutely, completely sure that there was nothing going on that night that we should know about. It’s common for people who’ve experienced trauma to try and conceal it, try to carry on their lives as though nothing’s happened, but that can hinder our investigations substantially.”

  The truth was that I’d turned into a powerful creature of muscles and claws, then slaughtered a roo on the outskirts of the city whilst the Altaica clan members watched on with cautious, curious eyes. When the deed was done I woke up on a hilltop covered in blood. I’d washed myself in a creek and then, with little more than a blanket and some shoes, had walked back into town. Their suspicion was understandable.

  “No, no,” I said, “just me being a derp, I suppose.” I gave an effortless, pseudo-sincere smile. “Seriously, I was fine then and I’m fine now.”

  Thomas’s eyes flicked away, to the side, and I knew exactly what she was looking at. The side of my fridge, visible from the doorway, was still crumpled in from when the Champawat Tiger had thrown me into it. Her smile slowly faded. I got the impression that she believed what I was saying, but there was still some doubt, some piece of the puzzle that didn’t fit in.

  “Is something wrong?” I asked, deliberately keeping my eyes on her to pull her attention away from my fridge.

  It worked. She looked at me, refocusing her attention. “We’re not sure yet. Your friend Jacques. He was waiting for you when you arrived back at your apartment. How long have you known him?”

  I felt a chill slowly creep down my spine and it was everything I could do to hold back my physical revolution. Jacques was the Champwat Tiger, a serial killer calling himself Eclipse but basking in the infamy the humans were assigning to him. The real Champawat Tiger was a female tiger who killed hundreds of humans in India. Although he had little to do with her, really, it’s possible he just really liked the name.

  I’d done my reading, though. The Champawat Tiger’s reign over the Champawat area finally came to an end at the business end of a British hunter’s rifle. Some not entirely insignificant part of me hoped that our Champawat Tiger would receive a similar fate.

  “Not very long,” I answered. “I mostly knew him through Katelyn.”

  It was true. Katelyn had met Jacques in a club, and they’d gone home together. The idea of the two of them humping like bunnies made my skin crawl and I couldn’t resist the urge to scratch at my forearm. “Why?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “Well,” said Thomas, “he’s been missing for about two weeks. He didn’t notify his work, he hasn’t paid his rent. His bank accounts are untouched. Nobody’s seen him at all. We’re treating his disappearance as suspicious, which in turn, makes us want to re-examine your own little stroll in the dark just to be certain that there’s nothing we’ve overlooked.” She gave me a meaningful look. “There’s no shame in admitting something happened to you, but the longer you leave it, the less likely that justice will be served.”

  Jacques’s disappearance boded ill for us. I made my face seem concerned, worried even, although my mind was racing a thousand miles an hour. The dates matched up to only a couple of weeks after Katelyn. What was the cause of his disappearance? Where had he gone? Why hadn’t he told anyone?

  What was he planning now?

  “Oh my God, that’s awful!” I shook my head. “No, no,” I lied, “nothing happened at all. I seriously just had a blonde moment and went walking around, and got further away than I’d intended.” I gave her a cheesy, apologetic smile. “No offence.”

  “None taken,” Thomas answered, “and it’s okay. But you know what to do if you see him, or hear anything, right?”

  “Oh don’t worry,” I said, “I do.”

  Chapter III

  Too Much To Say

  I’d always liked trains.

  There was something about being a passenger on a train, winding through some of the most amazingly beautiful countryside in the entire world, that just appealed to me. I loved idea of having to do nothing at all on your journey, just being carried along on tracks that could well be a hundred years old, then arriving at your destination in or near the heart of the city you were visiting. Your surroundings would pass by you, a beautiful slideshow of the world, set to the melody of the clunking tracks and the engine’s whine.

  The CountryLink rail line from Canberra to Campbelltown was exactly this. It wound its way through mountains covered in olive green trees, in and out of old brick tunnels carved through the heart of mountains years ago, then across large, sprawling fields full of golden grass and dotted with black cows. It was one of the most beautiful and powerful bits of natural wonder I’d ever laid eyes upon, but the whole way there I could barely take a moment to enjoy it.

  My mind was on more serious matters. Jacques was “missing” and the police were beginning to suspect that the day I transformed was something other than ordinary. Cinder was an enigmatic character, someone I had no idea how to deal with, and with whom Asena could not help. I was glad she was here though. Ishan, reluctant to travel with two Altaican Rakshasa, would be making his way up to meet with me. Until then I’d be doing this on my own.

  The scenery was beautiful and relaxing, the train’s gentle swaying hypnotic, and my mind overstressed and in need of rest. I rested my head up against the window for a moment, just a moment, and closed my eyes, letting the rhythm and the comforting sounds soothe me and drive away the worry.

  Before I knew it, I was asleep and dreaming.

  *****

  Ice crunched under my bare feet and a fierce wind howled around me, blasting the heat from my body and cutting through even my newly developed resistance to the cold. My hair whipped around and got in my eyes, and for a moment I couldn’t see.

  “Ishan?!”

  All around me the dream world was a crystalline, frozen wasteland. I lifted up a foot to reveal dead, blackened grass underneath me, a rotting carpet over a dead, frozen land. Roiling, dark clouds tumbled above, their thunderheads dumping hailstones in the distance, pouring their frozen contents down onto the once verdant, vibrant landscape.

  My dream was dying.

  “ISHAN!?”

  He was nowhere to be seen. Panic began to swell within me. My sharp Rakshasa eyes scanned the surrounding area, trying to find him.

  Nothing. I saw nothing, until a hand burst out of the snow and grabbed my ankle.

  I recoiled in panic, jerking my foot away, but then as I stared down at the hand I recognised it. I fell down to my knees, digging frantically, clawing at the white powder, scratching and digging until my fingers were numb.

  I uncovered Ishan’s face and he gasped in a lungful of air. With powerful, superhuman strength I gripped his bare shoulders, dragging him out of the snow and out into the air.

  “Aurora!” He gasped in air, coughing with frozen lips, his arms blindly seeking me.

  I grabbed him and drew his naked body to mine, wrapping my arms around him and squeezing him with all my considerable strength. He did the same to me and our bodies stood pressed together, ankle sunk deep in the snow, gripping each other for all we were worth.

  “What’s going on?” I shouted over the howl of the wind, giving an involuntary shudder from the numbing cold. “It’s getting worse!”

  Suddenly, the noise of the wind faded away to barely a whisper, although its icy touch continued to drag across my body. I felt myself calming.

  Ishan had done the same thing when I had first met him, at a crowded club months ago, a strange ability of his to shield out all other sound from our shared surroundings so that we could hear only each other. I didn’t understand it, and I hadn’t asked him about
it, but at this moment I basked in its ability to make everything seem alright again even when it clearly wasn’t.

  “I know,” I said, relaxing my grip slightly and pulling my head back, keeping my face close to his. I kissed his lips, gently, feeling their cool flesh brush over mine. “You’re freezing…”

  “Our dreams become colder and it’s harder for us to join,” Ishan said, his hands slowly rubbing up my goosebumps covered back, “whatever’s driving us apart is growing in power. A storm’s coming, and it’s coming for me.”

  I shook my head wildly, as though protesting his very words. “No! Nothing can drive us apart, Ishan. No. Nothing. Nothing. I won’t let it.”

  Ishan turned from me, gesturing out to the frozen wasteland. “Does this look like a happy dream landscape to you?”

  I dug my nails into his skin, forcing him to look back at me. “I don’t care,” I said, slowly dragging my hands down his chest. “What’s around us, what’s in our dreams, isn’t important. It’s what we have together, that’s all that matters. That’s all I want. This place can burn to ashes for all I care, all I need is you.”

  Ishan’s hands slipped around my middle, holding me tight. “I know,” he said, “and I’m holding on with all my strength. But I’m not sure it’ll be enough.”

  “It has to be.” I gripped him so tight I was sure I was hurting him. “It has to be. I need you to be with me, Ishan. There’s a piece of me that’s us now, and that part is right in the centre of my heart. If you take that piece out, then there’s nothing left but a dead hunk of muscle. I can’t be without you.”

  “Stop,” he said, “I can’t bear to think about it anymore.” He leaned forward, bringing his lips to mine, and I kissed him back. Eagerly, needfully, pressing my bare chest to his.

  Around us the snow melted in a small circle and we sank, gracefully, into the void until our feet touched the dead, brown ground beneath. As I wiggled my toes against the rotting grass the colour returned to it, flowing back into each stem as though a painter were dragging his brush through it.

  “I want to say something,” said Ishan, “but I can’t.” His hand slowly ran up my back, his strong fingers tracing their way up my spine, feeling along my body. The circle of dry ground beneath us slowly expanded, the circumference widening as warmth returned to our bodies.

  “Say it,” I said, kissing his cheek, then brushing my own against his. “Say it, I want to hear it.”

  “I can’t,” Ishan said again. “It’s too strong. It means too much, and I can’t bear to tell you.”

  I shuffled my feet closer, touching my toes to his, dragging my toenails across his soft skin. “I don’t care,” I said, “I want to hear you say it.”

  “Another place,” he answered, his fingers wandering up to my lower back and rubbing in a small circle, “another time. A better time.”

  “People say that they’ll do this and that in the future, or that the time’s not right. But in my experience… the time’s never perfect. You just have to make do with the present, and that’s the funny thing about the present. It’s usually the right time to say whatever’s on your mind.”

  I locked eyes with him, staring directly into his bright blue eyes, and painted on his face I saw an expression of sadness and regret. Like a light flicking on in my mind I suddenly knew what he was going to say. The ice below us crept back towards our feet.

  “You’re not really coming to Campbelltown, are you?”

  Ishan hesitated, then shook his head. “I’m not, no.”

  I kept his body to mine, even as the cold began to creep up my ankle, the colour draining from the grass below and the snow returning to cover it as the enormity of what took place slowly began to sink in.

  “You lied to me.”

  “I needed to,” Ishan said, a thin film of ice slowly creeping up his chest. “I’ve… already been to see Cinder. I went after I began to suspect. He told me everything.”

  “Everything?” I gave Ishan a rough shake, staring wide eyed at the man I loved, unable to fight the burning, stinging pain in my chest, like a raw wound being scrubbed with a metal wire brush. “Everything about what? Ishan, what did he tell you?”

  “He told me about the eclipse. About our bond. About what it all means. Why the shadow falls over everything in our dreams, and why I have to do this.”

  “Do what?” I stared at him, unblinkingly, right into his eyes as the snow poured in between us, filling up the cleavage of my breasts and burying me up to my shoulders in icy powder. “What is ‘this’? What have you done?”

  His expression was so sad, so happy, so tragic and so joyous I couldn’t make head nor tail of it, but the dread in my gut grew ever stronger. The panic, the fear, the doubt filling my body and burning me from the inside. I felt like I’d swallowed acid.

  “Aurora… the Champawat tiger will never stop until we’re all dead. His power grows daily, and his strength is too much for us to bear.” The ice began to grow over his face and head, entombing him, and I could feel its frigid carpet creeping over my upper body. “But I’ve discovered a weakness. A vulnerability. I’ve discovered a way to kill him to keep you safe.”

  My jaw could barely move and my whole body was numb. Snow flurried in from above, burying us in a white blanket that slowly darkened as the light from the surface grew fainter. The weight of the snow pressed onto my back, making breathing difficult, crushing us together. “What weakness, Ishan?”

  But his mumbled whisper was impossible to hear over the growing wall of ice between us, and I only caught the last few words of his sentence.

  “I’m sorry, Aurora. I’m so sorry.”

  Chapter IV

  Numb

  I felt a nudge to my shoulder that jolted me awake.

  “Hey,” said Asena, “we’re here.”

  I stumbled out of the train in a daze, trying to digest what had happened in my dream. Asena put her hand over my shoulder.

  “You okay?” she asked. “You seem kind of pale.”

  I mutely nodded, looking around the train station platform in bewilderment, suddenly totally lost. I felt as though I was still in a dream, as though the real world was just a muted, dull ghost of its true self. The bustle of people exiting the train and jostling around the platform, the groan of the train as it relaxed itself after its journey, the squealing of small children excited to no longer be confined to a seat. I was indifferent to it all.

  We walked a short distance, down some stairs and into a tunnel under the nearby road, and then Asena lead me over to the cab rank. A Lebonese looking man with bronzed skin and a wide, genuine smile opened the door for us and Asena slid into the front. I just stood there, looking at the taxi with its engine running, the white paint gleaming in the sun. I watched her get seated, clipping on her seat belt and engaging the driver in what I presumed to be a discussion about our destination.

  And then I vomited all over the front passenger side door.

  “Holy shit, Libby!” Asena threw open her puke-splattered door, unbelting herself and jumping out of her seat with speed and agility that would have raised a few eyebrows. I didn’t even think about it and just stared at her as she stood in front of me, eyes wide with shock. “Are you okay?”

  “Hey, what the hell did you do to my car, mate?!” came a shout from the driver. “She puked on my door!”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” said Asena, twisting around to see him and fishing in her purse, “Here, here’s a hundred. I’m so sorry. She’s just gotten off a train and she’s not well.”

  The taxi driver shot me a dark scowl. “Train, sure. Whatever. Listen, tell that alco bitch not to drink so much,” he snarled, then reached over and slammed the door. The hybrid’s engines whined as it took off, tyres squealing as it left us at the taxi rank.

  “Libby, hey, just sit down, okay?”

  I let her guide me, slumping onto a wooden bench. Asena snapped her fingers in front of my face.

  “Oi. Oi! Wake up!”

 
It’s not that I couldn’t hear her, or see her, it was just that I didn’t care.

  Asena leaned in close to me, speaking softly—barely above a whisper. Even my sensitive hearing barely caught it. “Libby, okay, we need to get you somewhere quiet. People are staring. Your skin…”

  I looked down at my arm. From my elbow to my fingertips, the pattern of tiger stripes had mysteriously appeared, as though I’d had tattoos put all along my body.

  I recognised those signs. Ishan had spontaneously developed similar ones, in the brown and white of the Rewa, on his body when he’d fought the Champawat Tiger in my apartment… and I’d had these orange ones before, in my dreams. Never in real life.

  “Hey mate, what happened?” asked a passerby, a portly man covered in sweat and wearing an uncomfortably pervy smile, “is she drunk?”

  Asena shook her head, not even looking at the man, crouched in front of me as I stared blankly at her, her eyes locked onto mine.

  “If you two need a lift back to my place,” said the large man, “I can arrange that. I’m always happy to help out pretty ladies who’ve had a little too much. They ride for free.”

  Normally weirdo guys hitting on me would creep me out, but as it was I was barely listening to what they said. I was staring at my hands, at the growing stain of tiger stripes blooming along them.

  Asena rolled her eyes at me, then stood up and faced the stranger. “Thanks,” said Asena, but not in her normal voice; instead it was the booming, deep voice of a man, rich with bass and tainted with testosterone. “We’re on our way to Mardi Gras and I guess we kind of over indulged, honey.” She gave a wide, eager smile. “So pretty ‘girls’ ride for free, huh?”

  *****

  The next thing I remember was being rather forcefully stuffed into the back seat of a cab. Fortunately I didn’t have to do much thinking on the ride out to Campbelltown’s southern outskirts. I didn’t play along with Asena’s deception and used my normal voice whenever I had to answer a question, but truth be told I wasn’t paying any attention. When we arrived it turned out we were actually riding with an entirely different driver.