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

by CK Dawn

  “My whole life I’ve never loved anything as I love you. Not even myself,” he said, his broken whisper at odds with his show of unexpected power. “I will mourn you the rest of my days when mortality finally comes for you, and beg for a chance, for just one more moment with you, even this one which must surely break my heart.”

  Dragon gazed into her father’s bestial eyes, the only aspect of the phooka’s true self that remotely resembled those familiar laughing blues. For blue they still were, pupil, iris and white, though a color closer to ice than sky. As ferociously inhuman as the sled hounds of Hell’s southernmost borders.

  It wasn’t heartlessness that Dragon saw in Jasper’s wicked old gaze. It was the heartbreak. Suddenly, it occurred to her that millennia of making mischief could not have prepared him for love or the ache of a ravaged heart.

  She was training ground for this two-thousand-year-old virgin and she was failing him. Her life would be over long before his, and instead of being a daughter he could be proud of, one whose life he could look back on and say without shame, “See? See that there? She got that from me,” her legacy to him would be a basket full of elegantly wrapped mistakes that, like any parent, he’d try to justify.

  She could not do that to him, not after all he’d done for her—the instincts he’d subdued, the domesticity he learned, the offers of comfort he had charmingly declined for fear they would be detrimental to his daughter.

  “I won’t see him,” she said, forcing a smile and silencing the last of the voices like they were roaches to be squashed. “I’ll be better, I promise, Daddy.”

  “Oh God,” Jasper breathed, the ghostly form of his beast disappearing, and hauled her into his arms.

  When Jasper finally released her Ch’in said, “I would have your word child,” and slid his arms about her shoulder in a bone crushing hug.

  “Yes, yes,” she said, burying her face in the curve of Ch’in’s neck, her body shaking from her interrupted metamorphosis. Her next words were muffled. “My promise, it’s yours. Take it.” Her heart gave a funny little hitch, like a padlock clicking closed and she realized that while she promised many things in the past—to never associate with bad men just this afternoon—the consequences of breaking those pledges had been hers alone to face or so she thought. Never had her activities and their repercussions been so keenly detailed and never had her choice been so simple. Not easy, but painfully obvious.

  “Willita, mija,” Quill murmured, drawing Dragon into her arms.

  Dragon looked at her dad over Quill’s shoulder and caught him mopping his eyes with the sleeve of his shirt. She met his abashed gaze unflinchingly and said, “I promise.”

  Twelve

  Later that night after a rather solemnly eaten Pan’s Feast dinner, Quill had sent Dragon off to bed with a cup of tea liberally enhanced with Jasper’s secret stash.

  “She’s asleep,” she said, gently closing Dragon’s door and plopping on the settee. She placed a basket of nail polishes she’d retrieved from her room earlier on the coffee table and rifled through its contents, picking up one shade before discarding it for another.

  “This has surely been the most exhausting Feast I’ve ever experienced,” Ch’in said, breathing a relieved sigh as he lowered himself to one of three iron garden chaises that decorated the living room. The one Ch’in claimed was covered with a single, down-stuffed pillow of over-saturated teal more suited for a bed made for two than a lounge built for only one.

  “You outdid yourself as usual, mijo,” Quill said, responding to Ch’in’s unspoken need to have his culinary efforts praised.

  The world of humans was such a trial for him. No part of it could hold a candle to his former glory, and yet he diligently tried to make a home for himself here. Cooking was one of the ways he succeeded. He’d learned the skill out of necessity after the war, and was surprised to find contentment in the vocation. The need to feed gene, as humans termed it, wasn’t the exclusive domain of Earth, he’d determined. It wasn’t even a biological imperative, really, but a holy calling.

  “Yeah, mate,” Jasper added, staring at the glass of Scotch he’d filled and drained three times since Quill put Dragon to bed. “Definitely your finest work.”

  “Thank you.” Ch’in’s smile radiated beyond his mouth and caused his entire face to glow. “And now shall we discuss the Dragon and the odd turn her life has taken, or shall we simply ignore the trumpeting elephant in our midst?”

  “Her ability is largely inactive,” Quill murmured, thinking of Dragon’s description of her sight. “Like putting on a pair of spectacles prescribed to correct shortsightedness was her explanation, though I never believed it.”

  “Nor I,” said Ch’in. “What was that rather wondrous display?”

  “Did you feel it?” Quill sat up straighter. “For a moment I felt like the Moon again. I even raised my hand to reverse her transformation before I remembered I could no longer change man to beast and back again.”

  “Yes,” Ch’in agreed. “The Dragon has always smelled like the deepest blue sea—”

  “Like me at my fullest!” Quill said.

  “—but she has never been so…affecting before. At least not to one of us.”

  “Nor any other miscellus. Jasper you actually changed.”

  “Phooka?” Ch’in looked at Jasper for answers.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Jasper, don’t be ridiculous,” Quill scoffed, selecting a nail color as close to black as purple could be and shaking the bottle, the tiny ball inside it clicking rhythmically. “I know she smells like undiluted mischief to you. That’s half the reason you wouldn’t let any being with even a hint of power within twenty feet of her. You must know—”

  “I said I don’t know! I will not be questioned about my own daughter, do you hear me, Quill?”

  There was a note of fear in his command. Quill glanced at his bowed head as he sat on the settee, the tension that radiated down his shoulders to his arms, braced on his knees, and in his fisted hands evident. She met Ch’in’s worried eyes.

  “All I meant was that creature who abandoned her must have told you something.”

  At that, Jasper raised his eyes and peered at her through strands of chocolate hair before raking them off his forehead and shrugging.

  “Pillow talk! Isn’t that what they call it?” Quill persisted, her attention on the big toe she swiped polish on with shaking hands.

  “I don’t think she knew about Dragon. Even if she did, it wouldn’t have stopped her from leaving. Phyllis only cherished that which did not burden her. No matter how priceless, when it came to relationships, she could not be counted on for any kind of loyal stewardship,” he finished bitterly.

  “Did you never try to find her? For Willita’s sake, I mean,” Quill said, her voice scornful to distract Jasper from this wound that obviously still pained him.

  “I did.” He cleared his throat. “For my own part, I needed to make sure her leaving had nothing to do with me,” he admitted with an embarrassed shrug, for what miscellus ever questioned their superiority to humans? “She didn’t say anything she hadn’t before: Girl’s a drain to her, depressing to be around.”

  He slouched in the settee, stretched out his legs and crossed them at the ankle. “You know, I think she actually thought she was doing the right thing. She was at the end of her rope and couldn’t possibly be faulted for calling it quits. ‘Let her mother see to her,’ she’d said, and if not she’d put in a call to the Coalition for Good Works of Judas County. Then she handed me a water glass full of cheap bourbon and excused herself to change into something ‘more comfortable’.”

  He swallowed the last of his Scotch and with a rueful smile said, “God I hate her.” He met Quill’s sympathetic brown eyes and Ch’in’s. “She hurt my girl. An untried babe who chose me—the perfect trickster—to be her da. Threw her away like she was trash. Bitch is lucky I didn’t kill her.”

  Ch’in’s smile was tigerish and indicated his al
legiance to Jasper’s sentiments. “The Dragon never exhibited any anger over the unexpected change of guardianship?”

  “No.” Jasper blinked, surprised. “I mean, she shops for the perfect man like a proper boyfriend is the breath of life, but that’s natural given her circumstances. Isn’t it?”

  “For a certainty,” Ch’in said. “But so is anger.”

  “Her skin actually changed color. Did you see?” Quill used her thumb nail to clean a swipe of eggplant polish from the flesh of her little toe. “Splotches of cerulean on her cheeks and neck, emerald on her hands, vermilion on her forehead, gold leaf down her nose. For ten seconds she was an abstract painting. If that wasn’t a demonstration of anger, I don’t know what is.”

  “Fury long overdue,” Ch’in agreed.

  “So she’s pissed. So what?” Jasper said with a shrug. He refilled his glass, staring moodily at its contents before swallowing them. “’Bout damn time, I say.”

  “She’s pissed and lonely.” Quill ticked each attribute off on her fingers. “Her blood abandoned her for absolutely no reason at all, she’s spirit-sick, which has manifested in immediate, searing pain and the diminishment of her soul, and now she’s found a man who makes all that all go away.” She screwed the top on the polish and looked at her toes appraisingly. “Jasper, mijo. She loves you—loves us all, but do you really think that she will give up this chance to be free of all that ails her? Even if she loses us in the process?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Quill. She’s not that desperate. She just needs more guidance from us. We’ve been too lax in the past. Now that she knows that we are serious, things will be different.” Jasper gave her a brief smile before heading into the kitchen. “Any of that pie left over, mate?”

  “Torte,” Ch’in corrected.

  “Whatever.”

  Ch’in and Quill watched him saunter out of the living room then looked at each other, anxiety and uncertainty misting the air between them like a thick morning fog.

  “Things will be different,” Quill repeated dully.

  Ch’in stood up in a single fluid motion and glided to Quill’s side. “Things will be different,” he confirmed, gathering her hands in his. He kissed both sets of her knuckles reverently.

  “When I was fully myself there was no need for me to hope. I was the power mortals surrendered to. My hands eased their burdens. Who do you pray to, mijo? Now that we’ve landed on dry earth, in whose care should we submit our woes?”

  Ch’in settled himself next to Quill, draped one arm around her shoulders and was silent for a moment before saying, “I like that nail lacquer. It is lush and exotic, like you are.”

  Quill smiled sadly. “Thank you.”

  The house shrouded by the day’s newest hours, Quill tiptoed across the large oval of the living room, barely suppressing a squeak at the set of glowing yellow eyes that appeared directly in front of her. “Pichada Buddha,” she gasped, nearly losing her balance as the large cat twined between and around her legs. “Go lie down, mijo.” She led the animal to the dark shadow of the recliner and, with one last pat as the gryphonita curled into a ball, glided to the side door, closing it softly behind her. Outside, she sat on the stoop and quickly put on an old pair of Dragon’s sneakers. The need for stealth was not strictly necessary given Dragon’s spiked tea and the few crystals of valerian she’d mixed in the pot she made for Jasper and Ch’in. Just enough to keep them sleeping through her comings and goings and wake rested, patting their bellies still full from Ch’in’s dinner.

  She wove her long dark hair into a loose plait and covered her head with the baseball cap Jasper left on the oak side table in the entryway. She ignored the all-seeing gaze of the gate’s iron lion, glad the magic that created him stopped short of allowing him to talk, and made her way north towards the Shade Prince’s court located on the deserted hills of Halo City’s municipal golf course.

  At that hour the city’s streets, though littered with remnants of the Feast Day parade, were mostly empty with only the occasional homeless person pawing through curbside garbage.

  She inadvertently kicked a crushed beer can as she crossed 42nd Street, the resulting metallic skip catching the curious eyes of a kudlak demon sifting through the remains of a Chinese restaurant’s dumpster. It had obviously escaped the city’s notoriously lazy Office of Pest Control and Containment. The cowl that covered its head and neck was made of its own skin and looked tattered, as if it had been gnawed upon. Quill knew kudlaks ate anything, including drywall and electrical wiring, but never heard of one hungry enough to eat itself.

  She increased her pace, sprinting through back alleys and over a cement playground losing its battle against the invincible stalks of wild oak. Finally she soundlessly ducked through the broken window of an abandoned warehouse, panting heavily as she located a half empty bottle of harsh grease-removal soap and doused herself with it to mask her scent.

  She hid behind a rusted barrel just as the kudlak crashed through the window and began searching for some sign of her.

  A few feet away from Quill a crat raised its pointed snout and sniffed in her direction. The result of one of RUFO’s genetic experiments, the creature embodied all the worst aspects of both a cat and a rat and was a vicious foe when cornered. Before she could think better of it, she grabbed the thing by the scruff of the neck, spun like a discus thrower and launched it at the kudlak.

  Quill heard the kudlak roar as the crat landed on it and the loud scuffles as the crat ran for its life and the kudlak gave chase. When she heard human-sounding squeals, she quickly made her way out of the warehouse. A glance over her shoulder showed the kudlak’s black gums and rotted, pointed teeth before it leaned over its prey and slurped up the intestine of the still struggling crat.

  Outside she sprinted for a few blocks then a stitch in her side forced her to slow to an easy jog then a fast walk until she reached the guard’s nest at the gates of the Shade’s territory. Staying well away from the jungle on either side of the gate that contained the most virulent example of every ecosystem that ever existed, Quill headed up the steps of the small building and pounded on the door.

  A curse preceded a crash before a light was turned on, piercing the gloom of the early morning. Quill headed back downstairs to wait for the guard, adjusting her sweaty clothing. She picked, irritated, at the small holes in her T-shirt the acidic detergent caused.

  The door to the small shack opened, spilling light down the wooden steps before the guard, a three-hundred pound, four-foot goblin lumbered down, each step bowing dangerously as it took the creature’s weight.

  “Sigrid, that you? I’mma beat your ass if you forgot your mutherfuckin’ key again,” the guard said, pulling a joint from behind his ear and patting his pants pockets for a light. Locating a match in his back pocket, he struck it on the heel of his bare foot, lit the joint and held the lit match up near Quill’s face. “Oh, hey girl.” He waved the flame out and flicked the match into the woods.

  “Reggie.”

  “You looking fine as always.” The goblin inhaled and licked his dull green, wart-ridden lips.

  “Will he see me?”

  “Always, baby.” He reached for the large skeleton key hanging from the rope holding up his enormous trousers and turned to the lock of the gate. Nearly fifteen feet high, each copper slate was encrusted with fist-sized rubies that had appeared the moment the Shade declared the fifty acres of the golf course new home to his dark court.

  It was Reggie, eyes tearing with helpless greed as he stared at the sparkling gate, who’d enrolled in a metallurgy certificate program at Halo Community College and constructed the lock barely two feet from the ground.

  Quill glanced at the gate, tarnished now to a deep, unmemorable blue during daylight and flat charcoal at night; its fortune in rubies had lost their glint long ago. Jewels made of blood instead of ore lost their luster over time and tended to imbue those in close proximity with the details of their creation. Reason enough for Reggie to smok
e weed continuously upon waking. Undertow would’ve given him more relief, but Doque forbade it in his court.

  The lock’s tumblers echoed loudly as Reggie’s key rotated them and he pulled the great door open.

  “It’s been a decade since you held anything back from the man himself,” Reggie commented as he pushed the gate closed behind Quill.

  “I learned my lesson the last time,” she replied.

  “I know, I know. It’s just the boss man had a lottery and I won. I get to punish you if you fuck up again.” He grinned at her, his white teeth filed to arrow points as was his family’s custom. “I’m not saying I hope you came here with a few lies in your heart, but if you were so inclined, just know I’d treat you good. If lying is wrong, you wouldn’t want to be right.” A pelvic thrust punctuated each syllable, the jiggles of his droopy, pointed breasts and large, hairy belly a distasteful accompaniment.

  “Oh. Thanks,” Quill said, trying not to gag.

  Reggie thrust one more time as if to convince her of his sincerity, then groaned painfully and clutched his back.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’ll be okay.” He took several puffs of his joint as he slowly bent over at the waist and stayed there. “There we go,” he squeezed out, sucking twice more on his roach and holding his breath before explaining in a high pitch voice. “Back’s locked up. Happens all the time.” He exhaled gustily in a smokeless rush.

  “You sure?”

  “Oh hell yeah. I’ll give Clarice a call,” he said, referring to the Shade’s brownie physician. A victim of RUFO’s experimentation, Clarice’s coccyx had lengthened until it resembled a wasp’s stinger, which she used to deliver any medicine she chose to arm it with.

  “She’ll fix me right up, don’t you worry.” His smile was pain-filled and he sucked frantically on his joint as he waved her on.

  Quill nodded and began the trek to the clubhouse—Doque’s primary seat.