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Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used fictitiously.
Copyright © 2014 by Amalie Howard
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Howard, Amalie.
Alpha goddess / Amalie Howard.
pages cm
Summary: "Sera is a Hindu goddess incarnate and must battle between her good and evil sides in order to save the world from becoming hell on earth"—Provided by publisher.
ISBN 978-1-62636-208-6 (hardback)
[1. Hindu goddesses—Fiction. 2. Hindu mythology—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.H83233Al 2014
[Fic]--dc23
2013035687
Printed in the United States of America
For my parents,
who encouraged me to look beyond,
to seek more, and to find my own voice.
“Blow O wind to where my loved one is.
Touch him and come touch me soon.
I’ll feel his gentle touch through you and meet his beauty in the moon.
These things are much for the one who loves.
One can live by them alone:
that he and I breathe the same air and that the Earth we tread is one.”
Translated from The Ramayana
CONTENTS
Imaginary Demons
Underneath
Brotherhood
Deceiver
Housebound
Peace
The Hunt
Serjana
Disclosure
Azrath
Infinity
Hidden Things
The Portal
What Lies Beneath
Truth
The Place Between
Confrontation
Back to Before
Strength
Sera and Kyle
Agendas
The Dark Realms
Hell and More Hell
The Sins of the Father
Dekaias
The Prize
KaliYura
Return of the Avatara
Eternity
Epilogue
Author's Note
Acknowledgments
IMAGINARY DEMONS
She was nothing but flame in the deep of hell’s embrace.
“Welcome Serjana,” whispered a throaty voice. “I have been waiting for you.”
Sera lurched upright in bed, gasping, images from her nightmare still flashing like lightbulbs in her brain: a sea of moaning, bloody mouths and tongues pressing beneath her feet—razor sharp fangs slithering against her skin—a boy swathed in shadows beckoning, calling to her. A flicker of a kiss that tasted like blood.
The numbers on her bedside alarm clock glared red, two fifteen in the morning. Sera swallowed, her throat dry like gritty sandpaper, the lingering taste of something sour and tangy against her gumline. She needed water. Sitting up, her eyes focused on a smear of red on her sheets. Was that blood? A sharp graze throbbed along the inside of her heel in answer to her question. Sera touched her fingertip to the raw scrape, frowning. A glimmer of sharp teeth slithering along her foot jerked in her memory and she shoved it away, squeezing her eyes tightly shut. She must have scratched herself during the night.
Sera sighed, shrugging out of her damp pajamas and pulling on a cotton cami. The sweating was new, too. She’d had to change her clothes almost every night during the last two weeks. It was starting to become tiresome, and she was sure that her mother would notice the doubling of her laundry, which would only lead to questions—ones Sera didn’t want to answer. She stuffed the wet clothing under her bed.
Careful not to make any noise, she padded toward the bathroom, her bare feet curiously hot against the cold tiles as though she’d been walking on some scorched surface. Maybe this was some kind of hormonal phase, like teenage hot flashes. Whatever it was, she’d have to get through it on her own; she didn’t have any girlfriends to talk to and there was no way she was going to tell her parents about getting the sweats over a couple gory nightmares.
Lately, her mother’s obsession with dreams—Sera’s in particular—bordered on creepy-crazy, and the last thing Sera needed was to have her mother dissecting hers to pieces. The dreams were bad enough without her mother weighing in on why her daughter was dreaming of blood and carnage and being the queen of the dead.
Sera closed the bathroom door quietly and chewed on her lip. It was a little strange though, she admitted silently to herself. Maybe her mother had a point. Seriously, what kind of person had dreams about heaven and hell all the time? At first, they’d been sporadic, but recently, they’d become consistent, too consistent …
Like they meant something.
She coughed, spitting into the sink, and frowned. Her saliva was tinged with pink against the white porcelain. On cue, a fleeting memory of the kiss in her dream winked into her brain. A shudder rolled through her. It’d been some kind of faceless monster, half-boy, half-something else. Had the blood been hers? His? The bitter coppery taste filled her mouth and this time she gagged, spitting again.
“Get a grip,” Sera told herself. “It’s not real.”
But the monster’s faceless shape still loomed on the edge of her thoughts like a dark stain; mocking her, taunting her with the fact that she’d liked it, that she’d enjoyed its kiss, that she’d begged for more. Refuting the poisonous thoughts, Sera took a deep slow breath, clearing her mind. She drank a glass of water and washed her face, the cool water refreshing against her flushed skin. But still, the taste was there like salty cotton, coating the inside of her mouth with scummy residue. She brushed her teeth with minty toothpaste and gargled with antiseptic mouthwash. Better.
“You need to get some sleep, or you’ll start looking like a zombie,” she told the girl in the mirror. A thin face plastered with dark stringy purple and black hair, with fierce dark eyes, stared back at her. She grimaced at her reflection, baring her teeth. In the fluorescent lighting, her skin was sallow and her eyes a lightless black. She pinched her cheeks to give them some color and sighed. “Too late, you’re already a zombie. It’s no wonder that monster boyfriends come looking for you,” she sniped to her image.
Not only was she bony and pale, but she was also almost six feet tall. At sixteen, looking like a tall skinny gargoyle didn’t win her any popularity contests at school. Sometimes she wished she looked more like her mother: petite, doe-eyed, perfect. From her mother’s glossy dark hair to her sun-kissed skin, Sera would pick her exotic North Indian looks in a heartbeat if she could. She sighed again and examined her face c
ritically. If she did look more like her mother, would things be any different? Would she have more friends? A boyfriend? A life?
The inside of her left palm ached and she stared at the curved scar on the fleshy part just under her thumb. She had an almost identically placed one on the inside of her right palm, but it was a completely different shape, nearly a reversed image of its sister scar. Her parents had told her that she’d fallen on some jagged rocks when she was a baby. The skin there felt raw and hot, and Sera rubbed it absently with the thumb of her right hand, staring back into the mirror.
An unnatural sensation zinged suddenly from her palm to her navel, and she grabbed the edges of the sink, disoriented by an odd feeling of weightlessness. For a split second, the mirrored glass seemed to shimmer, and then the face looking back at her wasn’t even hers. A heart-shaped face with eyes so clear they were almost the color of light, framed by a cloud of silken red hair, stared curiously at her. The girl’s eyes were rimmed in kohl, her lips stained the color of a rose. Even her skin glowed gold as if lit from within.
Sera’s lips parted and the face in the mirror followed suit, the silvery eyes widening in confused disbelief as their hands slid toward each other. Their fingers met against the cold glass, and the girl in the mirror frowned, her face an echo of Sera’s own confusion. Red-etched lines swirled in an intricate design on the girl’s hands and palms. Mehndi, Sera knew. She’d seen pictures of her mother wearing the same hennaed skin decorations on her wedding day—an ancient Indian tradition. The girl smiled as a waterfall of scarlet flames cascaded down her shoulders.
Sera shook her head, closing her eyes, and when she looked back, the face in the mirror was the one she’d always had—stringy purple hair, black eyes, non-descript. What the hell had just happened? Was she still dreaming?
Either you are still asleep or you are seriously losing it, Sera, she thought.
Her left palm burned, the strange scar white-hued against her flushed skin. It pulsed This time she didn’t touch it. She splashed her face again and walked out of the bathroom, grabbing her iPod and sketchpad on the way to her bed. She turned the volume up full blast, her thoughts fading to nothing as her pencil scratched against the white paper.
Sleep was overrated anyway.
Sera woke to the smell of pancakes and coffee, and rubbed her eyes tiredly. She’d finally fallen asleep at around five in the morning, and thankfully, that last hour of sleep had been dreamless. She showered and brushed her teeth. No metal aftertastes or strange faces in the mirror this time, and the scars on her hands were pale and ordinary, barely noticeable. She must have been half asleep when she’d gone into the bathroom earlier.
The sheet of paper with the graceful anime four-armed girl rising from a lotus flower in her sketchpad suggested otherwise, but Sera didn’t want to think about what that meant. She traced the long wisps of hair and the barest hint of flames spiraling below the girl’s outstretched arms. Mehndi art wound its way up each of her four arms to her neck, where it sat like a strangled bruise. The girl was reaching for something, the expression on her face beseeching. Something about it made her inexplicably uneasy, and instead of tucking the sketchpad into her backpack as she normally would have, Sera tossed it onto her desk before wandering downstairs.
Her parents’ hushed voices floated up the stairs, the conversation tapering off quickly as soon as she entered the kitchen, but not before she’d caught the tail end of her father’s last sentence.
“ … sixteen. We have to tell her eventually.”
“Tell me what?”
“Nothing, darling. You want some breakfast before school?” Her mother’s voice was over-bright and forced, but Sera was too tired to press them about their conversation.
“No, just OJ.” She plopped her bag on the stool next to her ten-year-old brother, watching him ladle giant spoonfuls of Cheerios into his mouth. They couldn’t look like more polar opposites considering they were brother and sister. Nate was the image of their father, with the exception of the hair color he’d inherited from their mom. She rumpled his bright, blond curls. “Nate, you’re going to turn into a Cheerio one of these days, you know.”
“Like … oomph … eerios … oletrol …”
“Slow down, piglet, you’re way too young to be worrying about cholesterol.”
“That’s not what the AAP says,” Nate said, finishing his mouthful. “Saturated fats are the new teen killer. You should have a bowl.”
“Seriously, who are you?” Sera shook her head, yawning, and rolled her eyes.
“You look like you had a rough night,” her father said. His smile was also forced, and for a brief second, Sera wanted to know what they’d been talking about. But wanting to know something and getting it without a guaranteed lecture were two separate things. Any discussion with her parents these days covered three subjects—bad grades, bad choice of friends, and lately, bad dreams. She’d take a pass.
“Couldn’t sleep,” Sera replied, rubbing bleary eyes as she walked to the refrigerator and grabbed the orange juice.
“Why?” Her mother’s tone was sharp, unlike her normal mellow voice. “Nightmares?”
Sera poured herself a glass of juice and sat at the counter, answering without thinking: “Like you wouldn’t believe. Even scratched myself in my sleep.”
Both her father and mother’s gazes converged on her like laser-beams, and Sera stiffened, realizing her mistake too late.
“What kind of nightmares?” her father asked.
“Making out with a hot demon. You know, the usual dream fare of teens my age,” Sera joked weakly, kicking herself that she’d said anything at all. From the expressions on her parents’ faces, she could see that her joke fell flat. Way flat. They didn’t look amused; they looked worried.
“Demon?” her mother repeated, staring at her with a piercing intensity. “What happened? Did it hurt you?”
“In my dream?” Sera asked, taken aback by her mother’s tone. The lies came easily. “No, Mom. Nothing happened. I was just kidding,” she said, avoiding her mother’s acute stare and focusing on the glass of juice. “It’s not like it’s real or anything.” She could feel them all staring at her, even Nate, who’d stopped chewing. “What’s the big deal?”
Her father stood up and rumpled her hair, his face strained. “It’s no big deal, Sera. But sometimes dreams have a way of telling us important things. Even the bad ones.”
“I know, and I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to make a joke, but in all honesty, my nightmare was probably because of watching scary movies all weekend. I’m fine, really,” she added more gently. Outside, a horn blew loudly, interrupting the heavy tension that had descended in the kitchen. Sera gulped the rest of her juice and grabbed her backpack, grateful for the excuse to leave. “That’s Kyle. I’m late. See you guys later.” She glanced at her mother, who was still frowning. “Sorry, again.”
The frown deepened. “Sera, about Kyle, I’m not entirely comfortable—”
“Mom,” Sera said quickly. “Kyle’s fine. He’s a good driver and it beats walking or taking the bus. Look, I’m late. Gotta go, love you.”
Sera raced out of the house, ignoring the anxious look that passed between her parents, desperate to get out of her mother’s line of sight. Notwithstanding their completely bizarre reaction, her parents had become really over-attentive the last few weeks, especially after she’d turned sixteen, as if they were expecting her to mutate into some kind of teenzilla at any moment. And their obsession with her dreams bordered on bizarre. If she even told them what she’d been dreaming of nightly for the past several months, they’d pull her straight out of school in favor of the dreaded homeschooling, which she’d endured the first thirteen years of her life. She’d rather be locked up in an entire room full of teenzillas than return to that.
Sera had only been allowed to go to the public high school in Silver Lake after her mother had found out that a close friend of hers, Eleanor Davenport, had two children at
the same school. Her parents weren’t strict, but they’d always been fiercely protective of her and Nate. Winning the battle to attend high school had been a major milestone in the Caelum household, with Nate constantly reminding her not to mess it up for him.
Sera tossed a glance over her shoulder. Her mother was standing at the front door, looking as though she were contemplating hauling Sera back into the house and locking her in the basement without a key. Her normally tranquil face was troubled. Sera couldn’t fathom why she’d gotten so worked up over a silly dream that meant absolutely nothing.
As if in response to the tune of her thoughts, Sera thought of the demon-boy in her dream, and she fought back a shiver.
I’ve been waiting for you.
She shook the image from her head, frowning, and climbed into Kyle’s car. Dreams were just dreams. They weren’t real. Because if they were, she’d have a whole lot more to worry about than just a pair of fiery wings and a pretty face. And there were some things that just weren’t possible.
Like demons.
UNDERNEATH
What’s up, loser?” Sera said, tossing her bag in the backseat of Kyle’s beat-up Jetta convertible. Kyle gave her a ride most days since he lived in the apartment block just beyond Sera’s neighborhood. He’d gotten his license at the start of the year.
With the piercings in his nose and brow, and the black wheels in his earlobes, Kyle looked like a thug and dressed like a goth. He was every parents’ nightmare, hers included. His thick, coarse, curly hair was tufted into a green mohawk—the sides of his head shaved to showcase two black dragon’s wings on either side that stretched down to his darkly tanned neck. Wearing beat-up black leathers, he definitely wasn’t “boy-next-door” material, but he was her friend, and Sera didn’t have many of those.
“Nada,” said Kyle. “You look like crap. Still not sleeping?”
“I’m fine, dreams again. Parents being a pain. You feel like ditching today?”
Kyle smirked. “Do I look like I ever want to go to school? The quicker we are out of that hellhole, the happier I’ll be.”
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