20 Shades of Shifters: A Paranormal Romance Collection

by Demelza Carlton

  “So if the Rewa are here, and the Altaica are here, what’s to stop us all just tearing you to bits right here and right now?”

  He held up his ‘gun hand’, rolling his shoulders. He looked past me, to Asena. “How long do you think it would take to kill me, Asena? An hour? Two?”

  “Fifteen minutes flat,” she answered, sincerely.

  “An interesting claim,” Jacques answered with a coy smirk, seeming to ignore the insult. “And one I’d love to put to the test. But truth be told, you could kill me now and it wouldn’t change a thing about your fate. You see, the end of your kind is coming.”

  I shook my head in confusion. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “It means,” he said with a wide grin, “that the Australian Federal Police currently believe that Katelyn is being held in the mountains on the southwest side of Canberra, in a house in a cave. The directions she gave were… detailed.”

  There was a stunned silence broken by Asena pushing her way past me, her skin a menacing orange colour, the beginnings of the Rakshasa’s tiger stripes appearing on her flesh. “You… you revealed the location of the Garden to the humans?!”

  “Oh, not just the garden. The Rewa’s great tree, their dwelling within their borders… It would be an unfortunate coincidence, don’t you think, if a hiker informed the police he’d found a body in that area?”

  A loud roar came from nowhere, so deep and loud that it startled me. To my right, six white figures adorned with brown stripes appeared in a faint twinkle, as though they were appearing from a transporter from Star Trek. The Rewa, Shade at their head, her green eyes lit up with an unnatural fire which died as the sparks all around them did.

  My eyes met Ishan’s, his blue orbs wide with fear.

  “You fool!” shouted Hailstone. “If the humans catch wind of what we are, if they discover our nature, we’ll all be hunted down and destroyed!”

  I felt a sickening twist in my stomach as I watched Jacques’s reaction, the confident smirk on his lips.

  “Saving him the bother,” I said, my voice quiet with realisation. “He wants us to be discovered. He wants the humans to know about us. That’s why he drew us here, that’s why he targeted me. Because I could bring both clans together, at the same place, at the same time. So both clans would be exposed together.”

  He waggled his finger at me, a sarcastic smile painted all over his face. “An astute observation, little one. And I’m here as well. We’re like a big happy family.”

  Asena snarled, baring her long feline teeth. “I’ll destroy you for this!”

  “And if I run, what then? You claimed you could beat me in a quarter of an hour, but you assumed I would be fighting you. What if I ran? What if I made every effort to avoid you, and ran north? Would you sacrifice your precious Garden, leave your fledgling’s friend in the boot of my car, just for revenge?” Jacques held his hands out wide, invitingly, slowly walking backwards away from us all, away from his vehicle. “If so, now’s your chance.”

  Asena’s fingers became long claws. “Perhaps I will,” she hissed, the beginnings of her tail forming behind her.

  “You’ll get me, then,” confessed Jacques, “but I’ll make sure to drag it out. By the time you do, Federal Police will be swarming all over your Garden. They’ll find the ledger. Your secrets will be exposed.”

  I swore, for a moment, that Asena would take him up on that offer, but the mention of the ledger seemed to temper her anger. She snarled and turned away. “Get Katelyn,” she instructed, “and then get back to the Garden. We’ll meet you there as soon as we can.”

  I went to move towards the car but my eyes met Shade’s. The woman stared daggers at me, the corners of her mouth turned down. “You did this,” she said. “You brought this upon us!” With a snarl she turned and began moving back towards the city, her coven moving with her. Ishan stayed, just for a moment, his eyes finding mine and lingering there, before he too turned and, reluctantly, joined up with his fellows.

  I ran to the back of Jacques’s car. I didn’t have the keys but, trying it anyway, I hooked my fingers under the boot’s handle and pulled. Surprisingly the whole thing lifted upwards and I thought for a moment that I’d broken it.

  Katelyn’s crumpled form lay in the boot on a thick sheet of plastic, unmoving and bloodied. She had a bruised eye and her hair was matted with blood. She was breathing and she had a pulse, but she appeared to be unconscious. I gingerly scooped her up, snarling angrily at Jacques and what he’d done.

  “Your concern for the human is adorable,” he said, “but you really should run along.”

  I held Katelyn with one hand, resting her over my shoulder, and fumbled in my pocket. “Yeah, well, you know what they say about empathy and living a good life…” I pulled out my lanyard, then dragged my house key across the side of the car, tearing a deep gouge in the paintwork from end to end. “It’s key.”

  “That’s insured,” Jacques said. Feeling anger boil up inside me I went to make more scratches, but Asena reached out and touched my arm.

  “We have to save the Garden.”

  Growling, I replaced the key, then the four Altaica Rakshasa turned and ran back towards the mountains.

  15

  The Trap

  I felt so stupid.

  The Champawat Tiger—Jacques, Eclipse, whatever he wanted to call himself—had played me. Played all of us. We’d got Katelyn back, but now both covens risked losing everything. The trap had been sprung, we’d deliberately walked right into it and hoped for the best, but it hadn’t turned out.

  This was all my fault.

  We ran, climbing up the first of the mountains, taking a shortcut over the Federal Highway and up the side of the mountain that ran beside it. Fortunately no cars were present at this hour. I had no idea what they might think of the sight if there were.

  “Asena, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry…”

  “Keep running,” she instructed as we crested the hill. “Katelyn’s badly injured. Save your breath.”

  “Go on without me,” I said. “I can’t help much in a fight, and you have to get there before the cops do…”

  Asena shook her head. I could tell she was slowing herself to keep pace with me. Katelyn was heavy, and I was sprinting as fast as I could. My chest ached and my breath came in ragged gasps.

  “We run together,” Vriko said, and I stared at him. “But what about the Garden? I can catch up…”

  “The net snags both ways,” he said cryptically, then slowly stopped his run. “I think we’re far enough away now.” The others followed suit and I, confused, stopped as well.

  “What’s going on? Katelyn’s hurt, and the Garden—”

  “The Garden’s just fine,” said Asena.

  I stared at her. “But how?”

  She coughed, clearing her throat, then pulled out her phone. “Hello, triple-oh, state your emergency,” she said, in a heavy, male voice. “What’s that? You say there’s a pack of what living in the mountains?”

  I stared in bewilderment as she snapped the phone shut. “But how did you route his call to your phone?”

  “My husband works in dispatch,” she explained, “which has come in handy more than once.”

  “But… The Champawat—uhh, Jacques, Eclipse, whatever—he used to be part of our coven. Wouldn’t he know that?”

  Asena smiled gently. “Eclipse is a skilled hunter, but when it comes to things he doesn’t intend to butcher, he can be remarkably unobservant. I doubt he even remembers our names.”

  “Won’t the Rewa be mad?”

  “I told Ishan my plan. I’m sure Hailstone didn’t like it, and I thought for a while he wouldn’t show up, but it appears he was willing to play along to help us out.”

  I couldn’t help but frown, slightly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I… it was your friend,” she said. “We needed you to fall for his trap. We needed you to believe it.” She held up a hand, as though making a pledge. “We’ll tell
you next time, though.”

  I shifted Katelyn in my arms. “What about Katelyn? She’s really hurt.”

  “I didn’t think she’d be this bad,” Asena admitted, “but she’ll live. Lay her out on the grass. Ishan should be here with the medkits soon.”

  I did so, and sure enough, Ishan arrived moments later. I pulled him aside once the supplies were opened.

  “You knew about this?” I asked, trying to keep my tone even as Vriko and Susi began bandaging Katelyn’s wounds. Vriko wound a bandage around her head and Susi ran her fingers along Katelyn’s body, looking for bruises and broken bones.

  “Asena told me this morning, after Eclipse called her. Otherwise I would have.”

  I frowned a little. “Only this morning? She waited that long to tell you?”

  He smiled slightly, raising a hand to cup my cheek. “I suspect that if she had told me her plan earlier, I would have told it to you in our dream, completely defeating the purpose of it all.”

  I tilted my head, rubbing my cheek against his hand, feeling the sting of what had happened slowly fade. I was touched that Ishan had been willing to walk into the trap with me, even without Asena’s plan, and that made it a little easier to forgive him. “Okay,” I said, “but… I’m going to spank you for this one.”

  “Promises,” he quipped, giving a soft smile. I genuinely felt hurt about the way things had turned out, but I knew that Ishan would never actively do me harm. Although I resolved to ask him about it later, I knew that he would not keep the truth from me unless he had a very good reason.

  “So the Garden is safe?”

  “Yes.”

  “And… and the giant tree you apparently live in?”

  Ishan smiled. “Yes. For now. And yes, it’s a giant tree. I’ll have to show you it sometime.”

  “Isn’t something like that a little, I don’t know, obvious?”

  “You’ll see,” he said cryptically.

  “I’m kind of a little sick of secrets.”

  Ishan chuckled. “Well, a’right. It’s not giant giant, merely fairly large for its species. And it’s substantially larger on the inside than it is on the outside.”

  “How does that work?”

  “To be honest, it’s a bit of a mystery. How do the vines and plants of your Garden grow underground with no sunlight?”

  “I haven’t thought about it, to be honest.”

  Ishan pursed his lips. “There’s a theory that areas inhabited by Rakshasa tend to take on a kind of life of their own, that the power that lives within our bloodlines can, in some rare cases, actually leak out of us like helium from a balloon. Normally that energy would just dissipate into the environment, but when the leaky Rakshasa—”

  “Leaky? Oh, eww. Can we use a different word other than leaky? It makes it sound like they have poor bladder control.”

  “Very well. Sometimes, when the rare Rakshasa stays in one place for a long time, especially somewhere underground or somewhere completely surrounding them, that energy becomes a part of the landscape, too. Literally infused with the land.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I’m guessing this doesn’t happen very often.”

  “Right,” said Ishan. “Our kind tend to be solitary when we’re not banding together in small packs. Forming covens is usually something that’s done by the younger ones. The craving for solitude grows stronger as the Rakshasa grows older and more powerful.”

  I nodded. “I wondered why everyone was so young.” A thought seized me. “So, wait. You’re saying that we’ll… eventually not want to be with each other?”

  Ishan shook his head. “I’m not saying that, and it seems unlikely.” He smiled at me and those blue eyes shone in the bright light of the morning. “I don’t think I could ever leave you.”

  “I love you, Ishan,” I said, feeling my breathing quicken and a strange feeling of total, complete calm wash over me.

  “I love you too,” he said, leaning up against me. I felt with my hands, resting them over the centre of his chest, feeling his strong heart beating against me. The heart of a tiger.

  We held each other tight, arm in arm, unmoving and silent, watching as the sun began its slow climb up from the horizon through the sky, sharing a moment that we both wished would never end.

  16

  The Fires of Love

  Katelyn looked so peaceful, snuggled up in my bed at my apartment, and I watched her with a little tiny bit of envy. I was still dog tired and the adrenaline kick of the morning had well worn off, leaving me somehow even more tired than I had started.

  But I couldn’t rest. Not yet. What Ishan had told me had shaken me in a very deep, very real way. We’d only known each other for a very short period of time, but I felt like I’d known him all my life.

  Two months seemed like an eternity compared to the length of our relationship so far, but I knew that it would pass faster than I could imagine.

  “How is she?” Ishan asked from behind me, resting his chin on my shoulder. I felt his strong arms around my middle and I wiggled back against him.

  “She’s… okay, I guess. I don’t know. I’m not a doctor. She took an awful whack to the head and she hasn’t woken up yet.”

  “Vriko says it’s a drug that’s keeping her unconscious, not any injury. The black eye looks really bad, but it’s not enough force to knock her out for this long. She won’t be asleep forever… all drugs wear off.”

  “Or kill you,” I said, but then I shook my head. “No. If she was going to die, she would be getting worse, not better.”

  “Agreed.” Ishan kissed my neck and I closed my eyes, enjoying the sensation. “Ishan?”

  “Yes?”

  “I… where do we go from here?”

  “I don’t understand the question.”

  I turned around, facing him, holding him close. “I want you to stay tonight. I want us to do it for real, because… because we can’t have our entire relationship exist in a dream. We have to make it real. We have to make us real.”

  Ishan smiled widely at me, but there was a sadness in his eyes, too. “I understand. But, listen to me, I want to stay here… but I can’t. Not because of duty, or because of Hailstone, or any other reason except… the fire of love can burn strong. Too strong. It can overheat, burning you out, consuming all your fuel and air in one swift blow. I want our relationship to be real, too, and I want it to last… but that means I have to hold off. I have to be the one to wait, because if I don’t, I’m afraid we’ll move too fast and I’ll lose you. I can’t have that, I just can’t.”

  It hurt to hear him say that, but I could understand his reasoning. Katelyn’s nightclub hookups, although they seemed to work for her, never lasted very long. She was usually single again within a month, tops, assuming it even got to the relationship stage. That wasn’t the kind of lifestyle that I wanted. I wanted Ishan and me to last the distance, and although I didn’t think I could ever ‘burn out’ on him, the fear that I could was something very real to me as well.

  “I understand,” I said, “but… that doesn’t make trying to avoid jumping you any easier.”

  He laughed, kissing me again, and I gave him a tight squeeze. “I’ll stay tonight, but seriously, I’m sleeping on the couch.”

  “Katelyn’s in my bed, so conveniently, I was thinking of sleeping on the couch too, so—”

  “Nice try,” he said again, giving me a playful swat on my backside. I grinned, resting my hands on his chest.

  “It was, wasn’t it.”

  “Eight out of ten.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “Guess I’ll have to work my way up to ten before it all happens.”

  He laughed, kissing my forehead. “Something like that.”

  “Sleep?” I asked, hopefully, smiling up at him.

  His eyes told me everything I needed to know.

  Epilogue

  The Emptiness

  I entered the dreamworld quickly and easily, and this time there was no snow, no ice, and the air was crisp an
d clean.

  “Ishan?”

  I sat up and, right away, felt his hand rest on my shoulder. I turned to him, smiling widely.

  “That was fast,” he said. “You must really have been tired.”

  “I felt like the walking dead,” I said, laughing and resting my hand on his thigh. “But here I feel great.”

  “There’ll be time for play,” he said, leaning forward and rubbing his nose against mine. “But I don’t want to exhaust you…”

  “We discussed this before,” I reminded him, “and it turned out okay then.”

  Ishan gave a cheeky grin. “Just okay?”

  My smile turned coy. “A little more than just okay.”

  His hand stroked across my body, cupping my left breast and giving a firm squeeze, his thumb stroking across the nipple. I arched my back, lidding my eyes, giving a soft rumble of pleasure.

  “Why is Asena keeping secrets from me? Why didn’t she trust me with her plan?”

  “I don’t know for certain,” Ishan said, moving his digit in slow, teasing circles, “but I know she worries about your dreams. The eclipse… only you see it.”

  “Why is that a problem?” I asked, suppressing the urge to grab Ishan and have my way with him. “Aside from the obvious link to him…”

  Ishan took in a breath, holding it for a moment as though he was reluctant to tell me something important. The affection stopped and I opened my eyes fully. I sensed that he had something serious to say and, quickly, the mood evaporated.

  “You know I can predict the weather, yes?”

  “Yes, I do, a talent you showed me when we first met.”

  He leaned forward to kiss me, his face hovering close to mine, concern in his eyes. “In two months, a full solar eclipse is coming. But from that point on… nothing.”

  “Nothing?” I blinked, shaking my head. “What do you mean, nothing? There’s no weather after that?”

  “What I mean is… I can’t predict what will happen beyond that point. Up to the eclipse, I could tell you everything: how many clouds in the sky, how many drops of rain, the wind, the humidity, everything.” He took a breath, looking me in the eye. “But not beyond the eclipse. There’s just nothing, an emptiness that I don’t understand.”