20 Shades of Shifters: A Paranormal Romance Collection

by Demelza Carlton

  “I’m… not entirely sure,” said Asena. “I’ve only ever done this once.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Tell me how.”

  “I… can’t. The main thing is to run, and… not think about it. Think about where you’re going, not where you are, and your body should do the rest.”

  I felt ridiculous, but I nodded. “Right, okay. Got it. Think of where I’m going. Anything else?”

  Asena shook her head. “Nope. That’s all I got. It was explained to me like this… you’ve spent so long running as a human, so that way is all you know. But now you have to unlearn how you do it, like you’ve never run before, and move like we do.”

  Run without trying to run. It made no sense at all, but I had to try.

  “Okay,” I said. “Let’s do it.”

  Together we turned to the west, to the afternoon sun, and we began to run.

  To be continued in Tigress: Eclipse of Ecstasy!

  Part V

  Eclipse of Ecstasy

  A Paranormal Romance Serial

  with a little hint of spice.

  “Love and death are the two great hinges on which all human sympathies turn.”

  - B. R. Hayden

  Prologue

  Sprinting to Save Them All

  I ran and ran until my lungs burned and my breath came in ragged, panting gasps.

  The distance between Canberra and Campbelltown was three hours by train, nearly three hundred kilometres, and yet we somehow closed the distance in just over an hour. We headed west, then swung south. It didn’t seem like we were moving that fast—I barely felt the time slip by—but soon the windmills of Lake George rose over the horizon and I slowed down.

  Asena wasn’t with me. I turned around back where we’d come, and coming over the last hill I could see a faint black dot with a trail of red dust behind it. I had overtaken her in my rush to get back to Canberra but I was so focused on getting here I hadn’t even noticed.

  The bottoms of my shoes were worn right through and faint wisps of smoke rose from the bottoms of my feet. I bent down and undid the laces, easily removing what remained of the shoes. The destroyed rubber and fabric just fell off. The soles of my feet were unharmed, although quite dirty, and my socks were just rings around my ankles. I took them off too and wiggled my toes into the ground, savouring the feeling. I enjoyed being barefoot. Closer to the earth. Katelyn’s attempts to make me wear high heels had always felt unnatural, and now I understood why.

  I watched as the dot that was Asena drew closer. Had anyone seen us? Doubts and other thoughts raced through my mind, but I squashed them quickly. That was a problem for the future. Right now I had to keep my mind focused on the most important thing: finding, and saving, Ishan.

  It seemed like an eternity before Asena, seeming far more tired than I was, staggered up to me.

  “Holy hell,” she panted. “That has to be some kind of record. Especially for a first timer.”

  “I just did what you said,” I said, “and ran.”

  “Well, bloody good job.” Asena bent over and put her hands on her knees, trying to recover her breath. I felt a spike of annoyance run through me. We didn’t have time for her weakness.

  I had to stop and remind myself that I was feeling all manner of negative emotions through the link with Ishan: fear, anger, worry. I didn’t consider Asena weak; those thoughts weren’t mine and they weren’t Ishan’s, they were merely a product of the strange bond we had. I took a deep breath, pushing the unwelcome thoughts from my mind.

  “So where’s Ishan?” I said. “I don’t see him. He should be here.”

  “Maybe he’s still coming. It’s not dark yet.”

  It had been twilight when Ishan was shot in my vision, as Cinder held my hand and showed me the events that had not yet come to pass. I’d felt Ishan’s pain as the slug blew away his heart, but that pain was passing. The agony of losing him, the feeling that burrowed into my head like a worm, was still raw and bloody.

  Cinder had said one of us had to die to prevent the Champawat Tiger from pooling the power of the Rakshasa. Ishan had taken that burden on himself.

  Everything else in my life seemed inconsequential at this moment, pushed aside in favour of stopping him from doing what Cinder had shown me he was going to do.

  But as I stared out at the afternoon sun, bathing the area in its bright radiance, I could see no sign of anyone. I had no idea where to begin to search, until my finely-honed Rakshasa senses caught sight of a car driving up to the distant windmills.

  “Come on!” I said to Asena. With a groan she pushed herself back up to her feet and we moved to intercept the slow-moving vehicle.

  22

  Shadows

  As we drew close my suspicions were confirmed. It was Eclipse’s black Hyundai.

  I slowed my pace, letting Asena catch up with me again, making sure to stop on the other side of the mountain from the road. The risk of being spotted was small, but we didn’t need busy, prying eyes seeing how we moved. Most drivers would have their eyes on the road, while most passengers would have become bored of the scenery.

  I hoped.

  The car stopped outside one of the power generators, its huge blades slowly spinning above them as the afternoon sun bore down on us all. It seemed brighter than it should have been, almost too bright, and I made my way forward toward the vehicle. Easily, too easily, I crouched and moved down on all fours, walking on my hands and knees through the grass. I felt as invisible as a ghost.

  There was no sign of Ishan. Doubts began to fill me. What if the vision wasn’t true? Cinder had been known to be wrong before. What if the feelings I felt for no reason weren’t coming from the link? What if they were and the cause was something different?

  Was this Ishan’s way of dumping me?

  I sealed that thought away in the deepest recesses of my brain. There was no way, none, that it could happen. I had to have faith in Ishan.

  I kept my gaze locked on the car. The doors opened and people climbed out—I saw Jacques step out of the driver’s seat, a face I knew well, one that had haunted me from the moment I’d discovered what I was. Even at this distance, I could see his skin covered in yellow and black tiger stripes.

  The others, though, caught my interest for a moment. They were all tall, muscled adult men. Each had a firearm of some description; most had shotguns, but a couple had hunting rifles, too. Even from this distance I could smell the metal of their projectiles, a sour, uncomfortable scent like rotten milk, and it caused my nose to wrinkle involuntarily.

  Silver.

  Silver hurt our kind. Wounds inflicted with silver would hurt us like we were human. Ishan had explained it as a connection between the metal, the moon and our power. As my power grew, my aversion to the metal grew in kind. When the Champawat Tiger had abducted Katelyn, Ishan had bought a block of silver. The others had a much more severe reaction than I did but now I understood why they did.

  I was now, more than ever, leaving Libby the Loser behind.

  Jacques strode to the boot of his car and popped it open. He reached in with a single hand, pulling a person with a bag over their head from the boot, casually throwing them out into the long grass. The body flew almost fifteen feet before crashing to the ground.

  A spike of pain ran through my mind and, even without seeing his face, I knew it was Ishan.

  I went to stand, to walk over to Ishan and save him, but I felt a strong hand clutch my arm. Asena, crouched over like me, holding me down to the ground.

  “Stop. Think.” Asena’s long nails, like claws, gently pricked my skin, and her voice was barely a whisper. “He’s got no reason to keep Ishan alive, except that he knows if he does you’ll come. Eclipse wants us all dead. All of us. But ahead of that, in the short term, it’s you he wants, Aurora.” Asena gently released my arm. “There are eight of them, and they’re armed, even him. I can smell their silver from here. And… something else. I don’t know what it is, but I don’t like it.”

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sp; I inhaled through my nose, trying to force the overpowering scent of silver away from my mind in favour of finding what Asena was talking about. I could sense it, too… a foul smell, like bracken, stagnant water.

  Reluctantly I nodded my agreement. “Yes, but what Cinder said still holds. One of us has to die.”

  “Not here,” said Asena. “Not today.”

  I could see Jacques reach into the boot again. This time he pulled out a long, break-open shotgun. He loaded it with green shotgun shells, then turned back to Ishan. The wind carried their voices to me, along with the overpowering scent of silver.

  “Guess she hasn’t shown up,” said Jacques, clicking the shotgun closed. “The eclipse is almost here. The avatar will be mine, Rewa.”

  Ishan slowly climbed to his feet. I couldn’t see his face but I could sense his feelings through the bond. Fear. Resolution. Courage. Relief that I wasn’t there.

  He knew exactly what he was doing.

  Every part of me wanted to break free and leap to his defence, to jump before the barrels of the rifles and take the wounds myself. It was only Asena’s grip on me that stopped me standing up and doing just that. That and the nagging thought that something was wrong. In my vision it had been twilight when Ishan had been shot. But now the sun beat down on the golden grass, illuminating the whole of the hill, the spinning windmills casting short shadows. It was the wrong time.

  Drawn by some strange curiosity, as though I was trying to make sure it really was the middle of the day, I looked up at the sun. As a human this had hurt and stung my eyes, but now I could look at it without a problem.

  The sun was bright and clear, as I’d expected, but I could see something else. The edge of the moon near the sun.

  Realisation dawned brighter than the golden disk I was staring at. Ishan could predict the weather. He knew that he wouldn’t be shot during the twilight. He would be shot just before the eclipse.

  Ishan would be dead in moments.

  I knew Cinder’s visions could be wrong. They could be changed. It was a peek into a possible future. I had to act.

  I jerked my arm away from Asena’s grip and leapt to my feet. With a growl that was louder than it should have been I broke into a run, sprinting through the golden grass, closing the distance between Ishan and me in a matter of seconds. I extended my arms, reaching out for him, relief flooding me as my fingers grabbed hold of his jacket.

  Then Jacques’s shotgun cracked and I smelt blood.

  23

  The Boneyard

  I crashed into Ishan, throwing him to the ground, covering his body with mine.

  Rich scents flooded my nose. The scent of gunpowder, the sour, bitter smell of silver and the coppery smell of blood.

  I felt no pain, but below me Ishan groaned. I raised my head, heedless of the danger, and I saw an exit wound on his shoulder and the blood that flowed from his torn skin. I stared at it in muted horror and, right as I did, I could feel Ishan’s pain in my mind. Shock. Searing agony from the silver.

  An angry roar from Jacques, the crack of a shotgun, and the whizz of a projectile flying right past my ear broke me out of my trance. One of Jacques’s henchmen cocked the lever action on his rifle, and I knew if I stayed here the next shot would kill me. Jacques snarled orders to his henchmen, and I realised this was the first time I’d seen him genuinely angry.

  Ishan was taller and broader than I was, but I picked him up with a single hand and threw him over my shoulder. Keeping as low to the ground as I could I tore off into the grass as shotgun blasts echoed around me and shots skipped off the ground right near me.

  He was hurt. How badly I didn’t know, but I could feel his pain in my mind. I sped up, putting more distance between me and the hunters, heading to the highway beside Lake George and the mountains that bordered it. By some miracle the road was abandoned; I tore across the bitumen and started up the side of the mountain, a cloud of dust in my wake, the midday sun casting clear shadows from every tree.

  As I passed, one of the shadows reached out and grabbed me.

  I felt its icy touch grab my shoulder, stealing the strength from my body. My limbs went rubbery and I faceplanted into the side of the mountain, sliding down almost a metre. Ishan fell away from me as I dug my claws into the dirt, stopping my slide. I reached out with my other hand and grabbed his foot, then looked over my other shoulder for my assailant.

  The shadow that had grabbed me coalesced into a vaguely human form, faceless except for a pair of glowing blue eyes. As I watched it solidified further, its face becoming that of one of the hunters who had accompanied Jacques. The scent of stagnant water became much stronger and black smoke billowed from its human form.

  “Foolish tigerheart,” it hissed, an otherworldly sound that echoed around in my ears. “We shall drink of your strength… and the avatar shall belong to Eclipse…”

  It reached for me again and I twisted to one side, the shadowy appendage missing me by inches. I grabbed the barely conscious Ishan and staggered back, struggling to keep my footing on the sloping mountainside.

  “What are you?” I said, clutching Ishan defensively. His blood ran onto my sweat-slick shirt, and I could feel his breathing, thin and ragged. He needed help. “What do you mean by ‘the avatar’?”

  “The living prattle to us, but the dead ask no questions,” the shadow hissed, and sank halfway into the ground again, slipping towards me like a shark in water.

  I forced my strangely weak legs to work, putting one foot in front of the other as I clambered up the mountainside. The slope seemed so much steeper, Ishan so much heavier, since the shadow had touched me.

  It burst out of the ground near me, shadowy limbs grasping for my flesh, passing through my body like an icy wind. Once again I felt the strength fade from my body but I held tight to Ishan for all I was worth.

  I couldn’t run. I had to fight. I roared, a deep, guttural sound that boomed from the hills, and slashed out with my left hand, my nails elongated and claw-like, my hand covered in orange and black stripes.

  To my amazement the sharp claws bit into the shadow as though it were made of some soft, puffy material, slicing deep scars in the shadowstuff. Blue gas hissed from the wounds like a deflating balloon and the creature howled, sliding back in the air, across the ground.

  I realised why I could strike it; the shadow creature could not be both corporeal and incorporeal at once. It had to be solid or shadow, not both, so if it wanted to attack it could not hide in the ground. Pressing my advantage, I slashed again and again, each time creating scars of otherworldly, luminescent blue gas, and then it faded slightly and I felt my claws touching nothing.

  This was my chance. I turned and willed myself to move, climbing over the top of the mountain and sprinting down the other side, Ishan’s body held tight against my shoulder. Halfway down I slipped and Ishan and I tumbled down the rest of the way, rolling and falling against the sharp rocks, tearing up my clothes and drawing long scratches along my arms and legs. Desperate to avoid the shadow creature I let myself fall, rolling with it as best I could.

  At the bottom of the hill I fell into a large depression almost twenty metres wide, crashing heavily onto a pile of bleached white stones. Shaking the dirt from my body and the stars from my eyes I tried to stand, but as I put out my hand it rested right on the face of a sheep skull.

  I looked around. I could see, now, that I had come to rest not on a pool of rocks, but bones.

  I could see horned bulls’ skulls and sheep skulls, the dried and empty skeletons of cats and dogs, kangaroos, birds, and the occasional bone from an animal I didn’t recognise. There must have been hundreds of corpses here, piled together on top of each other.

  I lifted my striped hand. The skull below me had been crushed by some powerful force, and I could see the long canine teeth of a large predator like a lion or wolf.

  There was only one creature I knew about in southern Australia who had teeth like that.

  Us. The Rakshasa.
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br />   Somehow, instinctively, I knew what this place was. It was a place, hard to find and out of the way, where the Rakshasa would hide the bodies of the animals they had killed. The Altaica didn’t have anything like this. This could only mean I was within Rewa territory.

  I looked around frantically for Ishan, trying to find a trace of him, but my eyes were drawn to something else.

  A human skull, sitting in a pile of human bones. I recognised the distinctive ribcage, the armbones, the pelvis… the Rewa had killed a person and thrown their body in this place.

  Despite the risk of pursuit I couldn’t help but spend a moment staring at the lifeless, bleached-white skull. Had Ishan killed this person? Had Hailstone or one of the other Rewa I’d met? Had this been a woman or a man? The idea didn’t sit right with me, but I couldn’t think about that now.

  Scrambling over to the other side of the pile I found Ishan’s limp, lifeless body crumpled in a heap near the edge of the sea of bones. As carefully as I could I picked him up and put him back over my shoulder, then turned to the south.

  Another hill presented itself and I began climbing immediately. I crested the top and stopped, looking back to the wind turbines. With my impossibly sharp vision I could see Jacques’s car tearing off away from the spinning windmills, and I could see a separate dust cloud running away from the city. It was Asena. She seemed to be getting away, but at least some of the shadows were in hot pursuit. A stab of guilt built in me. I’d almost completely forgotten her in my mad rush to save Ishan.

  I couldn’t stay to watch her escape, though. The memory of the shadow slipping into the ground invigorated me and I knew it was around me. I felt my strength slowly returning. I turned southward, towards the Rewa territory, and I ran for all I was worth.