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

by CK Dawn

  She closed her eyes and let go of her hold on the future, allowing it to fade unrealized. Bright, burning pain skipped down her spine like a pebble across a lake and uncharacteristically dissipated before Dragon was obliged to dash to the well-kept unisex at the back of the spa.

  When she finally opened her eyes, all there was, was Fel.

  He smiled at her with straight, white teeth and movie-star glitter. His eyes were wrong, though. They weren’t confident, flirtatious or even engaging. If anything they were anxious, moody. Tired.

  Combined with the artifice of his posture and smile, the eyes told Dragon more than she wanted to know and she repeated her vow, without all the silliness, ten times in a row before turning her mind to Melissa and the hair color that would make her feel like the person she most wanted to be.

  “I’m fine,” she muttered to Saras. “There’s Marie.” She nodded at six-foot tall woman digging around in her purse as she folded herself into one of the tiny chairs in the waiting area.

  “We can talk more later if you want,” Saras said, fitting a welcoming grin on her face as she motioned her tall client to her station. “I paid up my tab at Cassidy’s,” she offered.

  Dragon nodded, distracted: the pain she experienced from using her ability had vanished almost as soon as it started, and the usual urge to seek out bliss hadn’t deigned to make an appearance.

  What the holy everlasting fuck?

  She caught Fel’s dogged gaze, ignored him and continued with Melissa’s dry cut.

  “I’ll come back later.” He approached her casually and bent to kiss the corner of her mouth.

  The muscles of her face clenched into a smile, bumping his lips away from her cheek. “I gotta work,” she said to Fel’s reflection.

  “Okay. Sure.”

  She nodded at him and smiled even as she dusted off a few tried and true excuses to blow him off.

  “Not yet, okay?” he murmured tucking a few strands of her hair behind her ear.

  “Sorry?”

  “I’m not Mr. Right and you’ve had it up to here with Mr. Right Now, which leaves us both at loose ends.”

  “So…” Dragon stood perfectly still while his moving lips repeatedly brushed over her forehead and tried not to tilt her chin up so they could “inadvertently” brush over her mouth.

  “So I’m not ready to let go. I want to stay in the game—at least for the Mr. Right Now position.”

  “Your motives aren’t exactly pure,” she said her eyes fluttering closed when he fingered her necklace. She didn’t shudder when his blunt nails lightly scraped over her skin through sheer force of will, but could do nothing about the goosebumps that erupted down each arm.

  “Gimme a chance to change your mind,” he whispered, smoothing his fingertips over her brows with a smile.

  The echo of last night’s sale’s tactic reminded her of its erotic success and took her breath away all over again.

  The man had talent. She opened her eyes and met his clear, gray ones. Every logical thought towards self-preservation vanished and all that remained was this lifelong dream of true, everlasting love. “Make me a believer,” she said breathily.

  “Wilhelmina Fergusson!” Saras’s chastising gasp goosed Dragon out of her hope-filled stupor and she bounced away from Fel like his touch was a hot coal.

  “What?” she stuttered. “I’m working. See?” She industriously clipped at Melissa’s ends to cover up the fact that her vow—notarized or not—had a five-minute shelf life.

  Fel held up his hands in surrender at Saras’s glare. “I’ll see you later?” He nodded at Dragon as he backed out of the salon, slow and easy.

  “It’s probably not a good idea,” Dragon replied without enthusiasm. She patted Melissa’s shoulder. “I’m going to grab the color. Be back in a sec.”

  “You heard her.” Saras pointed a curling iron at Fel threateningly.

  “I know when to take a hint.” He flashed a grin guaranteed to stun at Saras.

  “Apparently not,” Sage groused. “I’ve been hinting that you should take off your clothes since you walked in here, but have you listened?”

  Fel chuckled and pushed out of Elemental’s front door.

  When it closed the conversational volume went from polite to a near uproar. Dragon remained stoic as she walked through the babble back to her station. She stood still behind her client, eyes closed, hands resting on Melissa’s shoulders, trying to recover from what was quickly shaping up to be the most devastating fifteen minutes of her life.

  “Anything?” Saras murmured, sliding a compassionate arm around Dragon’s waist and perching her chin on Dragon’s shoulder.

  There weren’t many who knew about Dragon’s fourth-dimensional sight. Other than her family, only Saras knew that Dragon’s ability had appeared when she was a child who didn’t know better than to blurt out that her mommy’s boyfriend was being followed by a ghost who looked like a homeless person.

  Dragon met Saras’s eyes in the mirror then looked away as she ran her comb methodically through Melissa’s hair and shook her head.

  “Really?” Saras asked.

  Dragon applied color to Melissa’s hair and said nothing, ashamed that her infamous ability—an expertise she took for granted—was suddenly revealed as a clock ten minutes slow. If she couldn’t see a man and the exact route to making him perfect then who was she?

  Who the hell was he?

  “My heavens,” Saras murmured with raised eyebrows. She motioned for her very tall client to follow her to the sink. “Snoozy's later?”

  “Ch’in’s cooking. I promised the ’rentals I’d be home right after work. Wanna come? Hey, I thought Snoozy didn’t have the money to stay open anymore because of the lawsuit.”

  “Ch’in’s infamous holiday meals notwithstanding, I’m pretty sure Quill and I are still fighting over that thing—”

  “That thing?” Dragon mouthed to Melissa who covered her smile with her hand.

  “Anyway, Snoozy was on the verge of closing when Bashful decided that accepting the DNA results was way easier than keeping a lawyer on retainer. It’s him and Snoozy against Happy now. The others all caved.”

  “That a fact,” Dragon said. “A hundred years of ‘you borrowed my toga and didn’t tell me.’” Dragon’s lips barely moved as she quickly conveyed the details of the feud between Saras and Quill to Melissa.

  Fel’s easy stride took him past Elemental’s front windows and Dragon opened a few drawers of her station to cover up the fact that she avidly watched as his figure disappeared.

  “I never would’ve pictured you for a hooker,” Melissa said in her staid, quiet way that was neither censorious nor condoning.

  “I didn’t pay—” Dragon started to say then stopped. Fel was what he was and for good or evil, she engaged him last night because of his professional ability to soothe erotically. “Me either,” she admitted finally.

  “It’s okay to make mistakes,” Melissa said.

  “Even if I make too many?”

  “Better too many than orthopedic shoes, five cats and gray hair at twenty-four.”

  Dragon smiled at the top of Melissa’s head compassionately. She was talking about being fearless, about the willingness to look foolish in the pursuit of happiness, no matter how cold the lead.

  Dragon thought about Jasper’s face as he tried to accept the news of her latest mistake—the disappointment and the obvious effort it took for him to believe in her word and hope that things could be different. She thought of Quill’s and Ch’in’s good intentions over the years and how desperate they’d become.

  She could not bring herself to slay their hopes again, no matter how alluring Fel was, no matter how compelling his blank future was.

  “Still, two or three cats wouldn’t be so bad. Just for a change of pace.”

  Melissa nodded. “There’s nothing wrong with temperance. When you start to wallow in it, then you’ve known you’ve gone too far and it’s time for massive cat layoffs.”


  Dragon laughed even as she questioned her own ability to resist her compulsion and withstand Fel’s assault, which would surely be ruthless, creative and deliciously effective. An echo of her earlier pain cut through her, reminding her that giving in to Fel might risk her heart, but it also might save her soul.

  Still, though she’d always had this ability, she had no way of knowing what the pain associated with using it meant, what that deterioration would ultimately do to her or who or what it made her vulnerable to. Worse, she had no idea if the offensive side of her ability would rear its uncontrollable head again or who it would target.

  Damned coming or going. Shiva help her.

  Nine

  Fel walked away from Elemental pleased with the progress he’d made. Dragon definitely wanted him. That she tried to resist was of no consequence, nor were her friends’ efforts on her behalf. Past experience told him he could seduce her into submitting until she dare not make a move without his say so.

  Of course, the majority of his past successes were due in no small part to undertow. Actually, all of them were due in no small part to undertow.

  The absence of a reliable dealer troubled him and as he passed a liquor/pawn store, Fel took note of the lowlifes loitering on the shop’s stoop. Of the three shucking and jiving only one sold undertow and he was known to lace his product with sea salt.

  Fel made a mental note to see how Carlos and Goat’s foray into mystical narcotics was going. If their talent for brewing was any indication then he need not worry where his next hit was coming from.

  And the money to pay for it? Well, that was another story altogether, which brought him right back to Dragon and his double-edged need for her. He silenced his conscience’s predictable nagging and concentrated on dividing the money he could get out of her by all the erotic things he wanted to do to her and multiplying the whole equation by time.

  Still, there was something sort of off about her that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. Something fragmented…

  He stopped in the shadows of Vera’s Hibachi Grille to puzzle it out. The answer hovered on the tip of his tongue like a bit of fuzz and he fingered his lower lip as if to pull it off. Without thinking he tried to magically reach for it, confident that he’d taken enough undertow to help him accomplish a task he could do in his sleep were he his old self.

  Eyes closed he envisioned the dust-covered window that separated him from the knowledge he sought then tried to metaphysically rub a portion of it clean. When nothing happened, he tried again then again and again until it felt like a pick-axe hammered at his skull.

  With a frustrated growl he opened his eyes, his resentment for the war and his suffering at its hand—even now, some two-hundred-odd years after—threatening to overwhelm him. Determining the breadth and scope of someone’s intention was child’s play to any full-blooded fae in possession of their power.

  Another hit of undertow would definitely clear away the cobwebs—allow me to piece together the puzzle that is Dragon in a matter of seconds, he thought, staring at the bandage he’d wrapped around his knuckles. The nugget he injected earlier had only been enough to finish healing his neck and make him appear well-rested. He glanced at the dealer in front of the pawn shop and mentally counted the handful of vens he’d stuffed in his front pocket.

  No.

  He couldn’t think like that anymore. The memory of Gemma’s assault pierced him like a pair of waiting, hungry eyes glowing through the dark.

  At the moment, undertow was too much like a kid’s thumb plugging a hole in a shaky dam. Having it now might help him figure Dragon out, maybe get him in her bed once or twice, but he knew that having her beneath him a couple of times wasn’t going to be enough.

  “Problems, Flannacán?” The dangerously spiked heels of a pair of thigh high boots entered the cover of Vera’s awnings with a few decisive clicks.

  Fel sighed at the intrusion and politely leveled an appreciative look at the inches of bittersweet thigh her charcoal, worsted-wool mini revealed.

  “Alechi,” he said. “You’re looking good.” He nodded at the thin scars embossing the exquisitely dark backs of her hands and the curve of breast the unbuttoned collar of her fitted oxford showed. “Genealogy’s coming along nice.”

  Delicate impala lilies decorated her flesh shyly as if their presence there was only granted after humble entreaty, while the lines that anchored each bud and petal resembled the braggadocio of a virulent weed.

  “Thanks,” the Nigerian fae said. “My mother’s a little anxious about the criminal vein,” she pointed to the thick brush stroke of her scarification, “but I kind of like the idea of a serial rapist in the family. Makes the unending line of noble kings less beige.”

  One of the more modern fae of the House of Sun, Alechi was still an accepted member of court. The majority of her family had avoided K'Davrah entirely, but a handful had fulfilled their service to Mahb’s crown and RUFO with distinction. Now Alechi was one of the more powerful members of the Sun House if her newly begun scarification was any indication.

  Only families who had consistently gained and sustained power were granted permission to immortalize their antecedents on their flesh. The process itself required not just two sponsors with at least a millennia of life each and traceable lineage to the Sun’s noblest house, but a magical dispensation from the queen that halted immortal cells from healing.

  Alechi clearly relished the freedom her upgraded status gave her. The freedom apparently to consort with known court criminals.

  “You lost?” Fel asked, his face settling into the lines of deadly civility required for survival of daily court life.

  “Just passing.” She leveled a thousand-watt smile at him that caused a three-bicycle pile up, several screeching tires and an afternoon melody of blaring horns, shrieks and bays on Eighth Avenue.

  “That a fact?” Fel said, unmoved.

  “Yup.”

  They smirked as they stared at each other, waiting for an opening as they circled each other looking for information.

  “Fix that for you?” she offered with a smirk, gesturing to his bound knuckles.

  “Don’t let me keep you.” Fel ignored her and the temptation of her offer. Besides, a bisou of home would never be enough, and would have him owing Alechi a favor. He’d rather be skinned than be in her debt, which is what owing the beautiful fae would amount to.

  She laughed as if their respective wariness were a delightful surprise instead of the Sun’s standard greeting.

  “Let’s have a drink sometime. On me.” She brushed her fingertips over his ear and let them linger on the cartilage of the top, conveying her direction in the traditional fae fashion.

  Fel jerked his head away. After so many years forbidden to bask in the Sun he was unused to hearing the unadulterated magic of his homeland. “Why not,” he said, trying not to flinch as she kissed both his cheeks before sauntering off. Even that brief, insincere touch left a heady whiff of court in its wake. Fel found himself inhaling that air like it was a rare commodity as he watched her long-legged saunter.

  The gilded oxygen of court was not as good as the forests it ruled, but it was like heaven compared to the impotent, unevolved atmosphere of this sinful earth.

  “The things I could do with that ass,” Charlemagne’s deep voice muttered from Fel’s shoulder.

  Fel evaluated Alechi’s legs encased in leather boots that clung to her like silk stockings, hoping his libido would poke its head out and rejoice.

  It didn’t.

  Part of Dragon’s illogical appeal was that he actually wanted her, didn’t need even the last vestiges of undertow or the promise of payment to crave her smell, get heated from the sound of her lazy contralto and be dazzled by her form. He wanted her high as the clear blue sky and he wanted her clean and sober.

  “You ever hit that?”

  Fel looked at Charlie, taking in his sunken eyes and hunched shoulders. “She’s the first Sun child I’ve seen since w
e got home from K'Davrah. She’s the first Sun anything I’ve seen since I told Mahb I was going to fight for Doque,” Fel said, referring to his decision to align himself with the Prince of Shade, Mahb’s sworn enemy.

  “Honest to God, Fel, if the choice was between her and Gem, I’d call out sick and let that bitch use me up,” he said, licking his lips at Alechi’s disappearing figure.

  “Gemma has the muscle,” Fel reminded him.

  “But that sweet, youngish thing has the power. Enough so that she wouldn’t need the brawn of a hard working stiff such as myself. I could be a man of leisure,” he mused like the very idea was on par with winning the sweepstakes. “Wake up, fuck her, have breakfast, fuck her, fuck her, have a snack, grab a beer, fuck her, go for a run, take a shower, fuck her, fuck her, fuck her, get a massage, grab some dinner, fuck her, a little dessert, fuck her and in bed by ten.”

  Fel laughed. “You’re out of your mind if you think Alechi couldn’t find use for you. You’re an immortal. She’d slurp you up and put what’s left of you to work like a half-dead battery.”

  “A man’s gotta have dreams, right?”

  They stood side by side watching the afternoon foot traffic fall all over themselves trying to get a look at the gorgeous fae.

  “Lunch?”

  “Sure, lunch would be grand.”

  They headed into the dark interior of Vera’s, Charlie limping noticeably.

  “You’re looking a little worked over there, buddy,” Fel said once they’d been seated at a circular booth tucked in the back of the restaurant.

  “Gem came to see me a couple hours ago. Ripped me a new one.”

  “Literally?”

  Charlie scowled. “You wouldn’t happen to know why, would you?” He nodded his thanks as their waitress, a former avatar of Medusa, placed a glass of water in front of him. The snakes on her head—gathered into two fat pigtails—drooped like wet, iridescent ribbons.

  “Hey, Rhonda!” a masculine voice shouted from the front of the restaurant. “Your Mice Express delivery is here!”