Rakshasa Book I, Part #2: Aurora Read Free Page A

If you woke up, in pain and disorientated, your instincts could have taken over. You could have attacked us, or ran. If we lost track of you the humans may have found you, and that’s a situation we want to avoid if we can.”
    It made sense, but that didn’t help the feeling that I was going to throw up. I peered into the gloom, trying to see the face of the person I was talking to. “Who are you?”
    “My name is Asena. Don’t be alarmed.”
    Stepping from the shadows into the light, a lithe but muscular woman covered in orange tiger stripes revealed herself, wearing a tank-top and a pair of loose, baggy pants. A long tail snaked behind her, almost touching the ground. She moved with exceptional agility, putting one foot before the other, her movements graceful and fluid. It seemed odd to see her at rest, as though a creature so adept at moving would be unnatural when still.
    “I’m not alarmed, I’ve seen other Rakshasa before,” I said, doing my best to smile despite the churning of my belly.
    Asena nodded, her tone mysterious and vaguely annoyed. “Yes, so we gathered.”
    I regarded her, curious now. She had the same orange colour I had, the mark of the Altaica. I with my kind, other Rakshasa like me.
    “I… Ishan told me about the Rewa. And how they and the Altaica don’t play nice together.”
    “Did he now.” Her tone dropped slightly at the mere mention of the other clan. “Perhaps you could tell me how you met ‘Ishan’, and what you know about the Altaica?”
    I shuffled on the bed, tugging the bedsheets up a little higher. “He told me that the Altaica have orange strips, and that the Rewa have white.” An important fact came to my mind. “I have orange.”
    “We know.”
    I was in my human form, now, as I was when I’d passed out. How she knew that escaped me. “The Champawat Tiger has orange stripes, is he one of our clan?”
    She paused, regarding what I’d said. “How did you know he was a Rakshasa?”
    “He tried to kill me.”
    I thought she was going to press the point but to my infinite relief, Asena shook her head. “The one you know as the Champawat Tiger is Altaica by blood, but he has long since surrendered any link to our clan. He works, and hunts, alone.”
    Hunting. The word conjured bloody images in my mind. What did the Rakshasa here eat? Did they hunt the local animals? I imagined Ishan leaping upon his prey with hungry eyes, tearing their throat out, opening its veins and letting the warm, red blood spill out. Australia didn’t have deer or anything that large predators could eat. Kangaroos, maybe, or wallabies, but nothing larger than that.
    Nothing except people.
    I remembered how I’d awoken on the hill last night, the day of my first transformation, covered in blood. I’d washed myself off in the creek, but never for a moment had I even considered the source of the blood. It wasn’t mine, since I was uninjured and there was too much of it for it to have come from a minor wound I hadn’t noticed. So where had it come from? Had I killed someone?
    Perhaps catching my reaction Asena smiled comfortingly, her striped face lighting up. “Oh, you’re so precious. Just look at you.” She inhaled, shaking her head, seeming to drop the tough-girl act. “What? What is it?”
    It felt utterly insane to be asking this question, but I had to know. “What do we… eat?”
    Asena stared at me, a wide smile on her face. “Food. N ormal human food. Chips, salad, steak. Instant noodles.”
    I breathed an audible sigh of relief. “Okay. You had me going for a bit.”
    I expected a smile, a chuckle maybe, but Asena’s expression slowly faded. “We eat what we ate as humans, but know this. There is one thing we have in common with our former species, that despite existing for thousands of years, we’re still—to a varied extent—bound to our instincts, some of us more than others. Those instincts are to hunt live prey. Although we live like civilised people, sometimes