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

by CK Dawn

  She chastised herself as the second hand of Saras’s no-nonsense wall clock ticked forward for not moving, for being the biggest fool on this shadowed, uncertain earth. And still she didn’t move.

  “There’s one born every minute,” she said when Phyllis finally pulled away.

  “What’s that, Chicken?”

  “Nothing,” Dragon whispered.

  “Be seeing you,” Phyllis said softly, the apology on her face making her eyes, green again, glow like the determined shoots of new grass. Or maybe it was the glamour she’d gotten for years of service. Beats a gold-plated watch or engraved pen every day of the week.

  The door creaked open and clicked closed and Dragon took a breath to speak, but stopped at Saras’s shaking head. She went to the phonograph in the living room and wound it furiously before gently placing the stylus on a circle of rotating vinyl. G seventh minor heralded a bourbon-soaked tenor lamenting the low-down dirty blues.

  The music filled the room and Dragon, vulnerable, had to struggle not to succumb to the heartbreak serenading her.

  She picked up the scrap of fabric Phyllis left behind.

  “Man, she’s in deep,” Saras said.

  “Did you see her eyes?” Sage’s own were wide.

  “Means her master was listening. Only lifers have that kind of bond with their owners.” Saras came up and peered over Dragon’s shoulder. “What’d you get?”

  “Her phone number,” Dragon answered with a wry smile, swirling the contents of the glass. “A blood to blood spell,” she clarified at Sage’s questioning look, moving to dump the charm to contact her grandmother down the drain. She picked up the bit of cloth Phyllis left behind and read from it, her brow furrowing. “‘You were engineered to fit the darkness within him. His emptiness is the only salve to strengthen your soul.’”

  “And this means what?” Sage came to stand in front of Dragon.

  “Fel,” she whispered.

  “Dragon.” Saras put a compassionate hand on her friend’s shoulder. “I think—”

  “I want you to fix me,” Dragon interrupted and moved from between her two friends, her hands shaking at this new revelation.

  “Sweetie, we’ve tried, like a million times. At least we now know why all my past efforts were for shit. I can’t reconfigure DNA. If this were the old days…ahhh, I was a sight to behold.”

  “But you can dampen her abilities,” Sage said. “The only reason Ganesh is as fully realized in me,” he motioned to his abbreviated trunk and gracefully flapping ears, “is because the essence of his divinity—truth, wisdom—have always been a part of me. Before I took on his aspect, the closeness I felt with Sri Ganesh was there, though severely minimized. But after I took Orders, that sense was heightened.

  “Maybe Dragon’s ‘aspect’ is fully realized.” He shrugged. “If so, you can bind her abilities so that she’s simply intuitive instead of psychic.”

  “Can you do that?” Dragon looked at Saras hopefully.

  Saras grimaced and shrugged, but her fingers moved restlessly, a sure sign that she itched to get to her books. “I thought Ganesh’s aspect was permanent.”

  “It would take money—more than I can get my hands on in this lifetime, but…I took this face in good faith. To give it back would gravely insult Sri Ganesh. And me. My word is…my word.”

  “Honorable bitch,” Saras said, grinning.

  “Sticks and stones, baby girl,” Sage replied before poking his head in her cold box.

  “Can you do it?” Dragon persisted. The idea that she could live her life like a normal human—that she no longer had to rely on her tattered will to stop using her ability, that she could actually do something about this dizzying pain that floored her every time she conjured a bit of the future and the bliss that succored her like sweet poison—was so relieving that Dragon almost swooned.

  She and Fel could finally—

  “I can’t believe I’m repressing that already.” She looked at the square of fabric in her hands, its message poorly embroidered on it. “Jesus, I’m holding it and still I forget.”

  “Forget what, sweetie?” Saras took her hand and laced their fingers together and Sage, abandoning the leftover gazpacho in the cold box, slung a commiserating arm around her shoulders.

  “Forgot that I don’t get to have him.”

  “I thought you’d be happy with just a fling. A few orgasms and then sayonara sweetheart.”

  “I lied.”

  “You love him?” Sage asked incredulously. “It’s been what? A few days?”

  Dragon shrugged. “Maybe, but that’s really not the point. He feels real and—I don’t know—homegrown I guess. Nothing there I had to fix. He was—is—fucked up, but there’s no picture telling me how he could be, no instructions to follow to get the upgraded version of him. The screen showing the breadth of him is definitely dark.” She smiled sadly and fingered the stitched writing on the note. “I took that to mean that it wasn’t for me to make him better.

  “God, do you know how amazing that feels? I could just sit back and enjoy who he is and what that does for me. Except apparently there was nothing homegrown about it. He’s just as manipulated as the others were only this time it’s not me who’s pulling all the strings. No matter how I feel or what I want, the magic inside me has been calling the shots the whole time.

  “Well, that’s just fucking unacceptable,” she said, pulling away from her friends and wiping her wet face with her hands. “I want—need—homemade love. I deserve it.” She ran frustrated hands through her hair, fisting it at the roots, squeezing her eyes shut and screaming for all she was worth.

  “Shiva wept, Dragon, the co-op board will have my ass.”

  “I’m going home,” Dragon said abruptly and began a disorganized search for her things. “Where’s my purse? Have you seen my purse?” She made a distracted circuit of the living room, then headed for Saras’s bedroom.

  “Dragon, what the hell are you doing?” Saras yelled to Dragon’s retreating figure. “What the hell is she doing?” Saras threw her hands in the air.

  “You’re asking me like I can actually tell you something,” Sage said, plucking the pot of gazpacho out of the cold box. “Bread?”

  “Next to the toaster. It’s fresh,” she said before Sage could ask.

  Dragon emerged forty minutes later from the sleeping quarters of the loft, hastily showered and dressed in one of Saras’s many bridesmaid saris. The waistband of the full skirt caught at her pelvic bone. The top, though constructed with demure three-quarter length sleeves, began just under her breasts.

  “All my clothes are dirty,” she said, explaining her choice of outfit. “Is there some kind of cardigan that goes with this?” Dragon pulled the skirt up over her navel only to watch it fall to reveal the beginnings of her pubis. “I can’t believe you wore this to Janice’s wedding and managed to remain unfucked. Everyone else got poked. Even that girl Tina, and she smells weird and refuses to comb her hair.”

  Ignoring that, Saras went to the padded ottoman that served as coffee table, opened the lid and withdrew a diaphanous scarf. Lined in embroidered melon silk, the navy scarf was the size of a twin bed sheet. She flung it high above Dragon’s head, watching as it floated down to drape attractively just above her eyes, over her crown and down her back. Saras drew one end across Dragon’s belly and threw the other over her shoulder.

  “There,” Saras said, tucking the hem of the scarf into Dragon’s waistband. “Now you look like a proper Hindu maiden.”

  “I stole—um, borrowed these gold combs I found on your dresser.” Dragon motioned to the ruby-encrusted accessories she’d used to hold her over-long bangs off her forehead.

  “I noticed,” Saras said with eyebrows raised.

  “Also, I used the last of your Damn-the-Frizz.”

  Crossing her arms and eyeing Dragon’s well-behaved curls, Saras said, “I noticed that too.”

  Hauling the strap of her plain black duffel over her shoulder, Drag
on slipped her feet into her sneakers and headed for the door.

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I need to go home. I need to make sure things with Jasper are okay.” She pulled open Saras’s oversized front door and stood in the dimly lit hallway, confusion and regret stamped on her face. “When I thought this thing with Fel was real, I was willing to sacrifice my home to be with him. You believe that? Now I know that sacrifice wasn’t worth shit. When will I learn?” She turned to face her friend. “When will I learn that nothing’s truer than family?”

  “And friends,” Saras added hopefully.

  “Same difference.”

  “Love you,” Saras said, wrapping Dragon in a tight hug.

  “Thank God,” she replied, letting her head rest on the shorter woman’s shoulder for a brief moment. “Later, Sage!” She pulled away and walked out of the building’s front entrance without looking back.

  Phyllis sat in her master’s conveyance and watched her granddaughter hurry down Flower Street, her colorful sari billowing after her like the tail of a streaking rainbow.

  Branch pulled away from the breast he’d nursed from for the past twenty minutes with audible suction. He licked away the blood that trailed from the rows of puncture marks made by his pointed uppers and lowers and heaved into the leather seat across from Phyllis, a scowl on his gorgeous face. Sure sign that this bit of torture had failed to satisfy him.

  Phyllis watched the area around her areola heal, utterly resigned to what would likely be her fate this evening: loaned out to Franz and Nina, a couple whose ministrations flavored her bodily fluids with sour terror, then rushed back so Branch could gorge.

  Sunning burned. Twenty years lingering in the light and Phyllis was as good as that blackened Sunday roast that ended up in the trash.

  She could give him Dragon’s hair—the strands she swiped from the shoulder of her granddaughter’s Halo City Community Center’s “Crocheters do it with Pearls Too” T-shirt, not the locket holding a sweet curl of baby hair which didn’t exist.

  Feeling every one of her twenty years of voluntary victimization and desperate to leave them, Branch and the Sun, Phyllis withdrew the hair she’d wrapped in a leaf of oil-blotting tissue.

  “My Lord. I thank you for your devoted attentions over the last twenty years. But I am concerned that you no longer find pleasure in this flesh. You’ve often mentioned that you are bored with me and that if I found a replacement or something of equal value, I’d win my freedom.”

  “And have you found me a replacement?” Branch asked, examining his manicure. A loud sigh indicated that he’d lost interest in his nails as quickly as he lost interest in her blood. He picked up her right leg and positioned it so wide, the crotch of her lace panties strained to cover her opening. He pulled a switchblade from his breast pocket and flicked it open with a flourish that mirrored the delicate movements of a butterfly.

  Phyllis flinched badly when he sliced through the cotton panel of her underwear. Her decision made, she handed him her offering. “Something of equal value, Lord.”

  The point of the blade still hovering in front of her vagina, Branch said, “Oh?”

  Twenty

  Dragon stopped at Trash Bin Garden’s entrance, unwilling to relive those moments that left her weak with love for Fel. He’d promised to use her shamelessly and she’d promised to let him. She still couldn’t wrap her brain around the fact that banter was just them following design protocols.

  Dragon scented him moments before he hauled her into his arms and twirled her into the verdant shadows of the garden.

  “I was hoping I’d find you here. Been casing the salon for the last thirty-six hours,” he breathed before setting her down and backing her up against the alleyway’s wall. The action pulled her wrap off her head and she shivered as the silk slithered down her back to mingle with the skirt’s teal hem.

  “Oh my God,” he whispered reverently. “What the hell are you wearing?” He brushed the backs of his fingers along her soft belly, watching her face intently as he did it.

  She tried to fight it, honest to Christ she did, but her stomach quivered at his touch. Her heart sped up and a lazy heat settled over every erogenous region she had, swelling them like kernels on the cusp of popping.

  He must have sensed her condition because he emitted a pleased growl before he ducked closer, his mouth hovering a beat away from hers. His tongue traced the seam of her closed lips.

  “Open your mouth, Dragon.”

  She looked up into his eyes, the grey dilated to nearly black, and did as she was told.

  “Good girl,” he moaned before feasting.

  Dragon’s senses reeled at his taste, crisper now that he was no longer waterlogged by undertow. He was an orchard, overgrown with dangerous corners and furtive movements, but each fruit found was that much sweeter for being so darkly hidden and she let him sweep her away into his shrouded depths.

  Her soul, uncommonly dormant around Fel, fed from him, filling the cracks of its surface and its fraying edges with a psychic balm. Terrified that Fel had suddenly become as ordinary as one of her fixes, Dragon dragged her mouth from his and squirmed away from him, putting several feet between them and ducking behind a miniature cherry blossom for good measure.

  Fel licked his lips thoughtfully, the pleasure he’d experienced misting around him like an erotic perfume. A tentative breeze ruffled the straight black strands hanging over his eyes and he opened them to squint at Dragon, trying to reposition her uncooperative wrap around her shoulders.

  Catching Fel’s still-hungry gaze, Dragon gave up trying to mimic Saras’s artistry and wrapped the ends of the scarf around her torso like a bath towel.

  “It’s see-through,” Fel said blandly.

  Dragon nodded and continued to tuck the thing more securely around her. “I don’t usually dress like this.”

  “No? Shame.”

  “Fel,” she closed her eyes against his desire and to keep her own from spilling over.

  “Is that helping?” he said, his voice, pitched to gravel, close enough that she could feel the heat of his gusty exhalation.

  “Jesus,” she opened her eyes and backed away. She watched the terrain over her shoulder for unevenness or unexpected dips or a trombone covered in sweet moss, holding the beginnings of an avocado plant in its spout, which she stepped over, just missing falling into a garbage can top filled with mud worms and the first, ecstatic shoots of Earthy Delight, the only rose known to grow and take nutrients from copulating worms.

  “I would really, really appreciate it,” she said once she’d found her balance, “if you could just stay over there.” She pointed to an evergreen shrub the piskies had grafted with dandelion weeds. The resulting plant had yellow, needle-like leaves and spontaneously molted white, sterile fluff.

  “I bet you would,” he grinned, stepping towards her.

  “Stop right there.” She pointed a shaking finger and looked at him with beseeching eyes. “Sweetie, this isn’t you. You don’t really want me. As much as I would love that.” She placed a hand on her unfashionably soft tummy. “Which is a lot. It’s more than I could dream of. Unfortunately, it’s just not real. We’re not real.”

  “Feels real.”

  “And that’s my fault. I admit that,” Dragon said with a hand over her heart to convey her sincerity. “See, I am not who you think I am. I’m not who I think I am, come to that.”

  “You sound just like the phooka, you know that?” He smiled.

  She shrugged. “He is my dad.”

  “I never would’ve figured him for the fatherly type. Before the wars,” he took a casual step closer to Dragon, “he led raids on the Sun that were unpredictable, effective and evil, even for one of us.”

  “Huh. Imagine that,” Dragon said, noticing his approach and countering with two unobtrusive lateral steps to her right, which put her closer to an old lawn chair covered in scarlet Triangle Dahlias. At her approach, the weed’s defense, hundreds of cu
rved thorns, straightened menacingly.

  “Watch Dahlia’s ire,” he warned, nodding at the bristling chair and taking another step closer.

  “Watch it yourself.” Dragon scooted behind the formidably armored chair, relieved when its thorns stopped pointing at her, having identified a larger target.

  “Okay,” he raised his hands in surrender. “Okay.” He rolled his shoulders and raked his hair off his forehead. “So if you’re not who I think you are, and you’re not who you think you are, then who are you?” He shoved his hands in his jeans pockets and bit his bottom lip to keep it from twitching, a half-assed effort that did nothing to detract from his eyes, which gleamed with teasing and seduction.

  “You’re humoring me, I see that.” She tucked the scarf in her neckline and gave up watching as it fell to her feet. “The thing is,” she said, picking it up and twisting it around her neck, “I—and I just found this out a couple hours ago—was genetically altered when I was a baby. Engineered,” she corrected thinking of her grandmother’s hand-stitched note. “For you specifically.”

  At this, Fel’s laughing eyes and smiling mouth became a grim line.

  “What?” Dragon said. “You believe me? Shit, that was fast.”

  “Did some research myself.”

  “Research told you I was changed to fit you?”

  “Research told me you hold my other half. Well, it’s supposedly a bit more than half.”

  “Wow. Your research is definitely more romantic than mine.”

  He’d taken a few steps closer to her while she was occupied with breaking it to him gently and reached to cup the back of her head.

  “Cut it out.” She flinched away from his touch. “If I’m your other half—which is totally sappy by the way—then it’s only because someone fixed it so I would be. Had I been left alone,” she said, twisting the ends of the scarf anxiously, “I would’ve learned to walk and talk. I wouldn’t have annoyed my mother and grandmother so badly that they left me or considered sunning a better alternative than my company. My dad might still be alive. I would’ve gone to school and maybe met a nice boy. We might be expecting our second or third by now.”