Fire and Fantasy: A Limited Edition Collection of Urban and Epic Fantasy

by CK Dawn

And damn Quill and her intuition. Who knew something so ephemeral could work with such pinpoint accuracy? If Dragon didn’t know better, she would’ve thought Quill had access to the full depth of her powers. But after ten years living in the Salon as a creature more than human, but considerably less than goddess, she still couldn’t grasp the fact that wine bottles didn’t automatically refill themselves after the last glass had been poured.

  No doubt Quill at this very moment correctly dissected Dragon’s behavior to Jasper and Ch’in. Jasper would focus on her guilt and use that as evidence that Dragon would finally change her ways. Ch’in would agree with Jasper until Quill detailed the ridiculous, uncontrollable fascination Dragon had for one man a mere two hours after many earnest declarations of love for another.

  And wasn’t that just the crux of the whole matter? Her complicity in her own disappointment. She swallowed and turned away from the door, her sense of discomfiture swelling as if oak were a reflective surface.

  For as long as she could remember, she’d blamed all of her missteps when it came to love on her mother and grandmother. The fact that she wholeheartedly threw herself into relationships whether they had an obvious chance of success or not was their fault. They loved to love after all; taught her everything she knew.

  The fact that she was perpetually dumped and left alone despite her best efforts was their fault as well. Phyllis and Katie couldn’t rush away from her fast enough. Dragon had promised herself that she would never do that to anyone she claimed to love and to date, she hadn’t. She clung to losers and criminals like they were bread and water in a dark, hopeless cell.

  And the bliss she received from making them better? Well that was Katie’s and Phyllis’s faults as well. Had they loved her like they were supposed to…

  Dragon shook her head. She was a woman grown now. Couldn’t continue to blame her unhappiness on wounds that were almost twenty years old, even if they were still raw.

  She straightened at the sound of wind rushing through wings and the delicate thump that followed, and smiled as Buddha settled on the walkway’s slate flagstones. His flat nostrils flared briefly as he scented her and started to purr.

  She felt that bass rumble vibrate through her like it was an embrace and knelt to receive the true one that followed.

  His wide paws made no noise as he came towards her, sinuously winding himself against and around her before sitting sphinxlike and enveloping her in his great, luxurious wings. It was like a salve, that hug, and she gratefully surrendered to it until the initial sting of her foolishness wore off and all that remained was healing, velvety and sure.

  “Hsst,” came a frantic whisper from the front gate. “Babe.”

  Buddha refolded his wings with an indignant snarl, gave her a long, hard stare as if to remind her of his agreement with her family and their attempt at intervention then leapt to the roof and through the open window of a steeply pitched dormer.

  “Babe,” Ryan said again. He reached a beseeching hand through the gate then snatched it back when one of the iron cubs nipped at his sleeve.

  Dragon gathered up her bag and walked slowly towards him, wracking her brain for the right thing to do and say; the perfect thing that wouldn’t tear her newly made scars, but would make him go away without obligating her to see him. She knew herself well. A few sorrowful gazes with stuttering sentiments to match and she’d consent to damn near anything to make him feel better.

  So much hinged on executing this next step correctly.

  “Shiva, you’re pathetic,” she whispered to herself. He left you in So-So by yourself and he’s an asshole. The memory of their bathroom encounter swam before her eyes as did the decadent moments in Fel’s company. The first a shameful example of her need—addiction—to turn lowlifes into charming princes. The second an example of…nothing she’d ever experienced before. Uncomfortable with the way Fel made her feel, Dragon focused on her parents’ disappointment and the situation she could control.

  Squaring her shoulders, she opened the gate door and stepped through. “Piss off, Ryan,” she said, tickling the cubs before locking the gate.

  “Hold still a minute.” He smiled, taking hold of her hands and forcing her to meet his gaze with a gentle caress along her cheek. “You mad?”

  His actions had softened her up until this point. The soft hand and earnest eyes—before he asked that idiot question, her battered soul almost shook off its reserve and reached out to him.

  Was she mad? Yes, surprisingly she was.

  “Go away.” She put her head down and started the eight-block trudge to work.

  He kept pace with her, his shoulders hunched and hands shoved into his pockets. “I know I fucked up. I was just hoping—”

  Dragon stopped and stared at him incredulously. “Hoping what?” That she’d accept his perfidy; consider his girlfriend’s demanding yoga schedule when she made plans to see him? She blinked at him as if he was a new species of animal.

  He altered his posture slightly and she watched, impressed, as he visibly changed tactics.

  “I’m in love with you. We had a good thing, but if you want to throw that all away over nothing then maybe I should just go.”

  Nothing?

  A high-pitched roar echoed from the direction of the Salon reminding Dragon of her pink, just-begun scars, lacking even the ripening influence of a scab. They wanted time and space to season properly and for once, she was of a mind to give it to them.

  “Then go,” she said, feeling none of her usual ambivalence.

  Her reaction shocked him, she could tell as she watched him try to regroup with scientific interest. For the hell of it, she stopped and willed herself to see him as a viable prospect, willed her ability to paint over his reality and render him as glorious as he was meant to be.

  An image shimmered over him, nearly transparent and, shocked that his potential had become so indistinct, she stopped to gape.

  “What?” Ryan said defensively.

  “Nothing.” Dragon smiled and fiddled with the strap of her bag to cover her confusion and the pain that sliced over her flesh like a vegetable peeler. Had he always been this unfocused? She breathed through the dissipating pain, analyzing their most recent dates, trying to remember if she’d ever noted that lack.

  A familiar pricking sensation scratched at the flesh of her arms, indicating her body’s hunger for bliss, and knowing it would only get worse the longer she ignored it, she raised her gaze to Ryan’s, preparing to give into her body’s demands.

  The rusty jiggle of a bicycle bell caught her attention and she looked towards the street and met Leyton’s glowing eyes as he rolled past on a ten-speed that had seen better days.

  Unbidden, another vision of her own potential appeared in front her and Dragon stepped back, terrified. Reflected in front of her was herself, naked, her rotting flesh being consumed by maggots. The vision was clear and meticulously articulated, an indication that it was unalterable. Crystal clear visions offered no opportunity to fix, no hope for the reward of bliss. Heart pounding, Dragon staggered away from Ryan and opened her senses to the memory of Fel, the warmth of his embrace, his verdant scent, his decadent touch. It was enough to ease her fears and dampen her unnatural craving and she hung on to it as she made her way to work, Ryan keeping pace next to her.

  Too shaken to tell him to take a hike, Dragon took a deep breath and blinked as odors of mothballs and lineament wafted towards her, stinging her eyes with their potency.

  For the last twenty years, the summer’s sun at its highest combined with the results of a badly aimed heat-seeking spell caused the austere face of Halo City Credit Union to wrinkle like aging human skin. Framing each window were a set of deeply chiseled crow’s feet. The front doors sagged with the frown lines that bracketed it, large age spots freckled each stone and every corner became as knobby as an arthritic joint.

  Dragon wiped her watering eyes and smiled at the crowd of employees who frantically pushed their way out the front doors li
ke someone had yelled fire.

  Wish I could escape my fate that easily, she thought as she and Ryan walked silently for three blocks.

  “Don’t you love me anymore?” Ryan said finally.

  Still consumed by what her vision signified, she glanced at Ryan and scowled. This is what she’d wasted her time with? This is what she used her ability to fix and nearly sacrificed her soul for? Twelve hours ago he seemed worth it, but now she just wanted him to go away, so she could brood over her power’s malfunction in peace.

  “Because I still love you,” he continued. “So much.” He took her hand and pulled her behind a large dumpster in the alleyway between Nico’s Deli and Bella Rosa’s. “Babe, it’s only been a day, but I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed you.” His pale blue eyes were sincere, but his fingers quickly picked apart the buttons of her blouse.

  “Ryan, stop.” She tried pushing his hands away, but he pulled the sleeves over her shoulders, trapping her arms at her sides, and pressed his hardening erection into her pelvis before she could take two breaths.

  “I wanna fuck like we did last night. I knew you’d like it rough.”

  She struggled in earnest then, fear blossoming when he let go of her arms to grab at her breasts. She scratched at his hands and raked her nails across his face.

  “No!” he ordered, holding her hands painfully. “You keep them here. You do what I say.”

  Shades of last night overwhelmed Dragon and the world dimmed as full-blown panic took hold.

  Her flesh began to twitch as if a multitude of newly hatched, many-legged things wiggled beneath it, changing its color until splotches of shimmering red, gold and unhealthy purple saturated her clothing.

  She raised her hand to his face and caressed his mutinous chin before gathering a fistful of his polo shirt. Strength pouring through her veins, sensitizing each nerve-ending like an aphrodisiac, she raised him high above her head.

  His surprised blue eyes bulging, she scientifically examined him like he was an alien species before throwing him into the alley’s opposite wall.

  The splat his body made when he hit the graffitied brick and landed in bags of sun-warmed garbage pleased her like a hit of bliss and she moved towards him to see if breaking every bone in his body would deliver a similar kind of ecstasy.

  “Dragon,” Ryan gasped, his broken plea pulling her out of the blood-hungry hold that possessed her. Immediately the dizziness and nausea she felt from using her power suffused her and she staggered toward Ryan and, bracing her hands on the wall next to his head, vomited like she’d eaten a few dozen day-old raw oysters.

  Her stomach clenched as she dry heaved until tears poured out of her eyes and snot spooled from her nose to the ground.

  Finally, after a few tablespoons full of bile drizzled over Ryan’s hairline and down his forehead, Dragon took several steps backward and dug in her purse, dangling drunkenly from her wrist. She wiped her mouth with the first cloth-y thing her fingers touched—a wet-set hair net.

  “Shiva wept,” she gasped, her breath coming out in exhausted gusts. “What the hell is happening to me?”

  Ryan’s moan interrupted her thoughts and, crouching next to him, she held her breath as she examined him for broken bones, avoiding the vomit-covered half of his body without a moment’s guilt.

  “Please don’t kill me,” he begged, his voice a thready whisper.

  “Go home,” she said, standing too quickly. Another bout of dizziness hit her and she took several deep breaths to slow her spinning head.

  As she headed for the alley’s entrance, she tossed the soiled hair net into a nearby bin and hitched her drooping purse strap over her shoulder. The action drew her attention to the gold stain fading from her sleeve.

  First last night and now today. Her power had never manifested this way before. When she was teenager she had thought to stop the It Crowd’s constant taunts by using what she knew of their potential to prevent them from reaching it. She’d constructed elaborate schemes in her head of their very public, very embarrassing demise and her ticker-tape triumph only to find that her power had deserted her when it came time to set her nefarious plans in motion.

  No matter how hard she tried, when her intent was to use her power to hurt instead of to heal, she ran up against a brick wall and on several very memorable occasions, lost her magic entirely. And just like an amputee, her lost limb had still itched, still pained her even though its absence was glaring.

  “But look at me now,” she whispered, staring down at her palm, the last of the violet staining it disappearing, and back at Ryan still softly moaning. Twelve years ago, she would’ve been thrilled with this development and had she been able to control her power, she’d be just as pleased now. But she hadn’t been in control, not when she tossed Ryan into a brick wall and not while a legion of hungry whispers urged her to tear his flesh and revel in his blood.

  Not for the first time since her magic began to malfunction, she wondered if maybe it had an expiration date. As intrinsically linked as she and it had been her entire life, maybe she did too.

  “So first pain and then evil before bee-lining towards dead,” she muttered to herself. “This day keeps getting better and better.”

  “Hey girl,” a slurred voice said, startling her. “Ain’t no bathroom ‘round here, but I’m still willing.”

  Jerking her head up, she met Leyton’s gap-toothed grin and bestial gaze. She suppressed the single voice exhorting her to suck Leyton’s brains from his ear, checked the intersecting foot traffic for an open lane and awkwardly merged, struggling to keep up with the brisk pace set by hungry folk with barely an hour to eat.

  She ducked under a coffin being loaded into a medical supply truck and got into one of three rapidly moving lines of people waiting to leap over all five hundred pounds of Mama Neck Tie, sprawled in the middle of the sidewalk for her midday nap as was her custom.

  Instead of executing a flawless jeté in her three-inch Mary Janes, Dragon, remembering the humiliating reference Jasper had made about her, stepped heavily onto the hundred-year-old zombie’s hip and bounced a couple times before stepping off.

  “Hey!” Mama Neck Tie rasped, a noxious puff of black dust billowing from the slit in her throat. “I’m sleep!”

  “Fix your damn tie, you nosy friggin’ bitch!” Dragon pointed at the sagging polka-dot scarf that normally covered the opening in Mama Neck Tie’s throat.

  Killed by having her throat cut nearly ear-to-ear and her tongue pulled through the resulting slit during a bar fight in a notorious juke joint, it was her then-lover, a taxidermist experimenting with mummification, who preserved her until her infant daughter grew sufficiently into the family’s infamous voodoo powers to infuse the stale breath of undead life into her mother.

  “What’s your problem?” Mama Neck Tie grumbled, cinching the scarf more tightly about her neck.

  “Mind your own fucking business, that’s what my problem is,” Dragon snarled, glaring into the woman’s bloodshot eyes.

  “Damn baby, what crawled up your ass? Did you skip your morning cuppa? Get it? Cuppa tea!” she cackled, and plugged the corner of her wound, puffing smoke, with an index finger.

  “Fuck you. See if I ever come near that rat’s nest you call hair again.”

  “Now don’t be like that. You know I love you, even if your breath could fumigate all five blocks of the Left Street Projects.”

  Dragon scowled, turned flamboyantly and continued to work, pulling a travel tin of wintergreen flavored Debunk the Funk from her purse.

  “What I’m gonna do if I need to get my hair did?”

  Without turning, Dragon flipped her the bird. A few blocks later, she turned the handle of Elemental’s unassuming front door. She kissed the tips of her fingers and pressed them to the elegant brass plaque bearing the hair salon’s flamboyantly scrolled name, a superstitious ritual practiced by Elemental’s staff.

  “It’s an easy thing to do,” Carmen had said when Dragon started
working there. “It doesn’t hurt anybody and if it keeps us in business and me from losing my house, then hey, I’m doing it.” She’d looked at Dragon expectantly who had internally rolled her eyes, but had complied, fully expecting to land a gig at a design house any minute.

  The fallout from K'Davrah had turned Halo City’s economy into an unpredictable mash of stuttering markets, technology rewired to suit the war’s mystical requirements—which more often than not, usurped the throne ones and zeros once held—the dearth of magic, the knowledge to properly wield it, and the elements to craft it.

  Luckier than most, Dragon had had a cadre of immortal tutors eager to impart their knowledge to a curious child. As a result, and thanks in large part to her enduring friendship with a certain Hindu goddess of learning, Dragon had several very impressive and very unofficial degrees in art history (human), classic and popular literature (miscellus) and accounting (shady).

  Unfortunately, an actual degree trumped a virtual one, especially in these unpredictable times, and without warning, Dragon found herself laid-off from the one job that overlooked such details.

  Then one day after two years of not working, she saw the ad in the paper for a stylist, desperately reworked her résumé to include an exaggerated detailing of her hairdressing experience—spending her high school and “college” years doing her friends and their families’ hair for pocket money—and hauled ass down to the salon to beg for the job.

  Being able to do the books helped her beat out more qualified applicants, but then one year rolled into two without a word from that publishing house or any other job she’d applied to, then three. Her hair dressing skills picked up, a full-time bookkeeper was hired and now Dragon had a very loyal clientele and a steady income.

  She showed her gratitude by kissing the damn plaque every time she entered or exited the salon.

  With a professional nod at the customers ensconced in the ultra-chic chairs of the salon’s waiting area, Dragon stopped at the reception desk to double check her appointments. The smell of permanent and semi-permanent color, no-lye relaxer and botanically-infused conditioners helped her push her transformation and the horrible voices encouraging her toward villainy to a dusty corner in her mind.