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

by CK Dawn

  Undertow was sleight-of-hand good, cut-a-woman-in-half good, but ultimately it was just a facsimile—a copy of a copy at best. Certainly not good enough to coax life back into her friend.

  Despair coursing through her, Saras kissed Dragon’s forehead tenderly.

  “I want to give you a piece of myself. I can’t let you leave this earth without knowing me—the real me.”

  Fitting her mouth over Dragon’s, she exhaled, infusing her falsely-potent breath with her darkest secrets.

  Memories assailed her and resisting the centuries-old habit of evasion, deflection and lying to everyone including herself, Saras let Dragon see all that had informed, influenced and shaped her.

  Like her mother and grandmother were before her, Saras was dedicated to a tiny corrupt temple in her poverty-stricken village at eleven years old. By day she was untouchable, not permitted to drink from the village well or sit in the same seat or eat from the same plate as any of the other villagers. By night, forced to fulfill her spiritual calling, she carnally served the priests, initiates and any stranger requiring shelter and hospitality. Starving and in rags, this sacred prostitution was the only way she could provide for herself and her family.

  It was her final patron that changed her life. A leper and brother to a great chieftain, he’d used her, hoping as many pilgrims did that joining with a temple devotee would take his illness from him. When it didn’t immediately work, he beat her until she was a bloody puddle, assuming she was dead when he turned to dress.

  Saras gave Dragon the strength she found in that moment to stand and the fury which guided the knife she’d held all those years ago.

  Into her friend she blew the tendrils of strength that lessened her pain as she’d limped away from that temple still shrouded in night. She gave Dragon her rebirth at the hands of Brahma and Vishnu and her determination to give knowledge and choice to the most untouchable.

  She revealed her struggles to overcome the degradation of her human life and the feelings of hypocrisy that plagued her for centuries while she administered tender devotion to her supplicants, the healing that finally freed her from it all and the growing belief that eternal life might actually be a gift.

  She showed Dragon the ugly mystical scar from the wound she suffered during that Pan bullshit, the years of grief that wracked her as she mourned the loss of her divinity and her unreasonable fear that no one would ever want a human such as her—scarred, brilliant and ignorant of all forms of love. All of this she’d been saving for that charming prince she’d spun for a girl-child named Dragon more than twenty years ago. For only he could whisk her away from it all. Then, finally then, her happy life would begin.

  Disgusted by the time she’d wasted and the singular moments she’d shrugged off as everyday, she gave it all to Dragon like they were children whispering dreams and fairy tales in each other’s ears. Like they were the friends Dragon believed them to be. Like they were sisters.

  When she’d finished, Saras sat back on her haunches, feeling hollowed out. She stared down at her friend and gasped when the hollows around her eyes and mouth, made more pronounced by her death, lightened. She quickly felt for a pulse, relieved when she felt Dragon’s slow heartbeat.

  “Dragon. Come on, sweetie, wake up.” She shook her friend and pried open her lids to check her pupils, which were still unresponsive.

  With a regretful glance in Fel’s direction, Saras quickly gathered her spilled medicines and threw them in her bag. She slung it over her shoulder, easily lifted Dragon in her arms and headed for Le Salon Neuf.

  Jasper would likely kill Saras once he saw Dragon’s condition, but Saras was finished with risking everything for just herself. Her greatest rewards had come when as a goddess, she nurtured the needs of believers. Then Pan had swept the land like a swarm of locusts, eating those hard-earned lessons down to the stalk. Regaining that lost ground would take time, effort and sacrifice. As she jogged out of the park, Dragon cradled in her arms, Saras concluded that the least she could do for her friend was grow the hell up.

  “Feeling better, my friend?” Ch’in poured two cups of tea from the stoneware service he placed on the coffee table as Jasper stumbled into the living room, a damp cloth pressed to his mouth.

  “I’ve never heard of undertow affecting someone like this,” he said, easing onto the teal chaise and draping the cloth over his eyes. He moaned, his stomach clenching at the thought of his dinner, tinged neon green, swirling down the toilet.

  “Goat and her lover are known for brewing spirits. It is my understanding that this foray into mystical narcotics is purely speculative.”

  “It’s purely garbage, is what it is,” Jasper said, taking the cup of tea Ch’in handed him with a grateful smile.

  “So you say.” Ch’in settled on the settee, his face placid despite the turmoil of both the night and Jasper’s stomach. “Yet you managed to get some use out of it—what is that human saying? One man’s trash—”

  “Piss off, you know-it-all sod.”

  Having made his point, Ch’in looked around the former restaurant’s large dining room, made even emptier by the absence of Dragon’s laughing energy and Quill’s good-natured nagging. “What now?”

  Jasper sipped his tea and said nothing, the room’s conspicuous silence irritating his conscience like a splinter. Almost immediately the fury he felt over this night’s revelations nearly choked him.

  “Nothing happens now,” he growled. He flung the cloth to the coffee table, stood and started pacing. “I saved her friggin’ life. I let her in my home and in my—” Jasper broke off, his voice bleak.

  “Heart,” Ch’in finished for him.

  Jasper continued not bothering to confirm or deny it. “I let her near my kid and the whole time—” He clenched his jaw and shook his head. “The whole fucking time she reported to that egomaniacal son of a bitch. She took my trust and gave it all to him.”

  “You knowingly gave him that and more once upon a time. We all did.”

  “You know as well as I do it’s not the same. Things that look clear-cut one day are murky the next. Isn’t that what the Shade does?”

  “Then you should at least understand her motives and the kind of irresistible power Doque likely had over her.”

  “I’ll never understand.” He flung himself back onto the chaise and picked up the cloth and placed it over his eyes.

  “Because she should’ve loved you more than she was afraid of him? A herculean feat in the best of times. And the Dragon?”

  Jasper fought against tears and lost, glad for the cloth that kept his sorrow from Ch’in. In those first weeks after Phyllis left, Jasper suffered from an acute case of buyer’s remorse, waking in the dead of night drenched in a cold sweat, just like a human. He’d never told Dragon, but he’d been anxious enough to make a few discreet inquiries—possible takers for an abandoned girl-child. His own imaginings of what that friend of a friend’s sister would do to Dragon kept him from giving up on her and from getting a decent night’s rest.

  He told himself that the child would be an adult in the time it took for him to blink. He’d lost count of how many times he’d looked up from whatever mischief he reveled in only to find himself in a brand-new century.

  Once grown he’d be absolved of any duty he felt towards her and could go back to seeking his pleasure in dirty, wet, lights-on trickery.

  He must have voiced that goal at some point in their relationship because Dragon routinely taunted him with all the “fun” he was missing on her account.

  “Look over there, Pops. Two extremely nubile young women. Want I should pretend not to know you for a day or two so you can work your decrepit, rusty magic? In no time at all, I’ll be out of your hair and where will you be? Stuck thinking that no one will notice you’re wearing shorts, dress socks and sandals. You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?”

  “That day or two wouldn’t be the weekend of that idiot boy’s party you’re grounded from going to?”


  “Is it? Huh.”

  He could almost see her face, still round at thirteen—at complete odds with her body, which had filled out like he’d been feeding the child fertilizer—and filled with sham disinterest.

  “Just say the word, Pops, and I’ll make myself scarce.”

  “No for the millionth time and stop calling me Pops.”

  Rusty, decrepit magic, he smiled at the memory, remembering too that the description hadn’t induced his sleeping ego to crack an eye. He’d been remarkably content with the terms of this cosmic bargain: In return for a child of his own, he willingly sacrificed everything.

  He’d become a maudlin human. He sat up surreptitiously using the cloth to wipe his wet eyes before flinging it on the table. “She made her choice,” he said, answering Ch’in’s question. “Which as I see it amply discharges me of a duty I’m damned if I can remember asking for.”

  “If she came to you and begged for aid?”

  “She’s on her own. We’ll see how long it takes for that fuck she’s aligned herself with to drop her. My money’s on any day now.”

  “You’ve become a poor liar, Phooka,” Ch’in remarked after a pointed silence. “Perhaps it is better that there are no obstacles preventing you from refining your art.”

  Unsure of whether to thank or curse him, Jasper was saved by the bell at the front gate followed by furious pounding at the side door.

  “Mari coming to voice her displeasure over the fate of her latest pet?” Ch’in guessed with raised eyebrows.

  “She’s in for a big surprise if it’s money she’s looking for.” Jasper rose and walked towards the front door. “She knows we have Buddha. She should’ve kept a closer eye on her dog,” he said, feeling the absence of Quill’s customary bid for compassion like he’d suddenly been denied air.

  “Perhaps a confit of duck would appease her?” Ch’in called to Jasper’s disappearing back.

  Still occupied with peace-inducing recipes, at Buddha’s distressed yowl Ch’in leapt to his feet, fear squeezing his heart as Jasper swept into the room, an alarmingly still Dragon in his arms.

  Ch’in rushed to help Jasper place his child gently on the chaise then, his hands shaking, he attempted to assess her q’hi.

  “What in the name of the blessed seas happened?” Ch’in fisted his hands, closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Releasing it slowly he uncurled his fists and let his mind calm so he could interpret the energy surrounding Dragon’s body.

  “Start talking,” Jasper barked at Saras loitering at Dragon’s feet.

  “I got word that Mahb’s Stash was in Fel, so I went after it.”

  “And he’s where?” Jasper asked, marking Saras’s every move like these were the old days and she was prey.

  “I left him in the park.”

  “Dead?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “Finish it.”

  “I hired Mama Neck Tie. She wasn’t supposed to hurt Dragon, but too much time had passed and I—I got nervous and went looking for them. When I got to the park, everyone had been taken out. Mama Neck Tie had a branch sticking out of her chest and Dragon and Fel were on the ground.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Saras said her voice breaking.

  Unable to contain his rage, Jasper flew at Saras, tackling her to the ground. “Speculate,” he bit out, wrapping his fingers around her neck.

  “There was undertow next to Fel’s body,” Saras said not even bothering to fight Jasper. “I think Mama Neck Tie used it to kill him and Dragon tried to save him.”

  Swearing, Jasper levered himself off of Saras and returned to Dragon’s side.

  “You have to understand,” Saras said, getting to her feet. “I had a chance to get it all back—to be me again.”

  Ignoring her, Jasper gathered Dragon in his arms again. “Anything?” he directed at Ch’in.

  “She’s alive, but her energy is profoundly damaged. Like bits of confetti that must be pieced together to make her whole.”

  “I’m taking her to Doque.”

  Ch’in nodded and moved to follow him. “If anyone could save her, it would the Shadow.”

  “I get an hour or two to myself and I’m coming after you,” Jasper said to Saras before brushing past her and out of the former restaurant, Ch’in and Buddha steps behind him.

  Nodding her understanding to the empty room, Saras sank to her knees, content to wait right where Jasper could find her for her punishment.

  “Moon,” the hsigo warrior in front of Quill crooned before spinning her naked body clockwise, the chains around her wrists and attached to a low iron beam of a modified swing-set tearing into her flesh as they twisted tighter. “Mine now,” he said when she’d spun back to face him, licking the blood that ran from her torn wrists into her armpit.

  “I’m not gonna tell you again,” Reggie said, lighting a freshly rolled joint. “Get your muthafuckin’ hands off my shit.”

  Ignoring him, the hsigo ran its gray tongue up and down Quill’s upper arm, moaning as if her blood was a treat long denied, which it was.

  With stealth that belied his immense girth, Reggie ambled over to the preoccupied hsigo and imbedded his ax in its hamstring.

  Emitting a battle cry Quill thought could easily break glass, the hsigo leapt on Reggie, its barbed tail attempting to pierce the goblin’s tough flesh.

  From his couch on the other side of the bedroom, Doque watched the scuffle clearly annoyed.

  “This has been brewing for a while,” Fish said, raising his voice to be heard over the din. “Best let them have it out.”

  With an irritated sigh, Doque directed his angry black gaze at Quill as if to say this was all her fault.

  Of course it is, Quill thought dully, gripping the chains and pulling herself up to give her abused wrists some relief.

  She had walked through the Salon’s iron gate, closing it behind her with a farewell pat to the overworked lioness, unsure of what to do. Running was futile. Doque had so much of her blood on file, nothing short of a true miracle would ever stop him from finding her. Still, submissively going back to the place of her once and future torture rankled.

  While she stood at the gate, stroking the underside of one cub’s jaw, the choice was made for her, the pain in her wrists and the decaying breath of the hsigo waking her only moments ago.

  Casually dressed in a pair of baggy navy sweats, a T-shirt with the sleeves cut off and plastic athletic sandals, Doque stood, dodged Reggie’s flying body as the hsigo hurled it into a wall, and strode over to Quill.

  “Bored by the fight for your honor, Quillya?”

  Quill eased her weight back onto her bloody wrists and concentrated on not screaming in pain.

  “I know your last report was lacking important information.”

  Instead of being terrified that her minor defiance had been revealed, Quill was glad his success had been marred in this small way.

  She met his cold gaze and smirked, ridiculously pleased at the slap that self-satisfied smile provoked from him.

  “I can see you’re devastated at displeasing me, but never fear, you’ll have the rest of your eternal life to make it up to me.”

  Head still ringing, Quill closed her eyes and ran her tongue over her teeth, relieved that while a few wiggled, they all remained intact. She opened her eyes to find Doque still in front of her, his own gaze riveted on her mouth. She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth, unsurprised by the metallic taste of blood.

  “Let me,” Doque murmured as he lowered his mouth to hers, her rebelliousness apparently forgotten.

  Determined to resist him, Quill was nonetheless unprepared for the terror the merest brushing of his lips against hers caused and for her own desire for more, which he manipulated like her want came with contrast, brightness and tint controls.

  “My lord,” Fish’s voice was tinged with envy. “We have guests.”

  Swiping his tongue one last time inside her mouth and a
long her still bleeding lip, Doque finally raised his head, his black eyes as devoid of feeling as ever while she panted from an unnatural need for the horror of his kiss to continue.

  “Like that?” he said for her ears only.

  To her utter shame, Quill’s body responded in the affirmative.

  With a smirk that resembled the one she’d leveled at him moments ago, he stepped aside so that Quill’s hungry gaze met Jaspers furious blue eyes.

  “Phooka,” Doque said. “Long time. Too long.”

  “Shade,” Jasper inclined his head.

  “You’ve brought me a…gift?” Doque pretended to guess, referring to the bundle in Jasper’s arms.

  “My child.”

  “Is that so? I received no card of the happy announcement.”

  “Can we skip the bullshit, Doque? Or maybe postpone it for later if you just can’t do without a few minutes of ass-kissing.”

  The air chilling at least ten degrees, Doque approached Jasper, bending slightly until barely six inches separated their faces. “You think because you fought for me—”

  “I won that war for you,” Jasper interrupted, surprising Quill. She knew he was high-ranking, but had no idea he’d been that instrumental.

  “Fine,” the Shade said with a shrug. “What do you want?”

  “Save her,” Jasper said, cradling Dragon closer.

  “I require payment.” Doque raised a hand to encircle Quill’s neck and squeezed.

  He knew her well, Quill thought as black dots danced before her eyes. Had he not silenced her, she would’ve told Jasper that Doque would’ve saved Dragon for the asking.

  “Service,” Jasper offered without hesitation.

  “Fifty years,” Doque started the bidding.

  “For something you could do in your sleep? Besides, I know you want her. Five.”

  Doque snorted. “Not that much. Thirty.”

  “Five,” Jasper insisted. “Clarice owes me a favor, so it’s either five years or I’m outta here.”