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

by CK Dawn

  Before the sun fully went down the next day, I was at Hunter Academy. I sat at the same branch a distance away from the gate, hidden in the shadows, waiting. Waiting for a hunter to step out of the academy so I could command him and extract information. Waiting for the perfect prey to retrieve the ensorced stake and end this mission.

  There were no lack of hunters tonight, but none of them ventured outside the academy. I waited until my buttocks grew sore and my patience thin.

  Then I saw him. Rune. I was sure I’d hidden myself well, but he looked straight at me as though he could sense me.

  This was just a coincidence. He couldn’t have seen me this far away, yet he opened the gate and stepped outside, coming ever closer to the tree I was sitting on.

  He wore a black cashmere sweater and jeans that brought out his flat stomach, narrow waist, and mile-long legs. There was caution in the way he approached me. Nevertheless he managed to look confident.

  Where his confidence came from, I didn’t know. The older a vampire was, the more powerful they became. That was especially true for descendants of Originals. Compared to his mere couple decades, I had ten times the amount of time to perfect my combat and hone my skills. He might be a formidable enemy to normal vampires, but no one in Hunter Academy was a match for a descendant.

  He stopped at the base of the tree. “Izella Pristin, I know you’re here.”

  If my heart were still beating, it would’ve leaped. No matter how many times I told myself Jayson and Rune were different, I couldn’t completely dispel their similarity. Brydon also looked like Jayson, but if Brydon was like a brother, Rune was his younger self.

  “Izella!” He narrowed his eyes.

  I shifted on the branch and jumped to the ground, landing so close to Rune that our chests touched. He stumbled a step back, and I enjoyed the way the tips of his ears turned red.

  “Rune.” I rolled his name on my tongue. It sounded ancient and powerful, like a dormant beast about to break free.

  He regained composure in record time. “You brought the vampires here. You showed them our location.”

  “What if I did?” I spread out my arms.

  “You tricked me into revealing Hunter Academy.” A storm brewed in the depth of his eyes. I didn’t understand how he could be both furious and composed at the same time.

  I raised a hand to caress his chest. The hard planes sent a delicious tingling straight to my core. There was one time in the past, after Jayson had reiterated we were nothing but enemies, when I’d lost myself to the pleasure of flesh and blood. But no matter how many lovers I had, I could never forget the one I couldn’t have. Jayson must’ve cast a spell on me, I was sure of it. Otherwise, why couldn’t I move on?

  Something sharp pressed in the area above my breasts. A drop of dark crimson blood beaded out on my pale skin. It didn’t hurt as much physically as it did emotionally. A long time ago, Jayson also pointed his stake at me. I would never forget the coldness of his gaze or the way my chest ached.

  I was a fool. I shouldn’t still be dreaming about how it could be or how I wanted it to be. I had a mission I needed to complete. While I was at it, I would go visit Jayson’s cottage to say a final good-bye. After that, he would disappear from my mind, and everything between us would come to an end. Jayson was dead. No matter how he plagued my dreams, he no longer existed. I needed to move on.

  I grabbed the stake before Rune decided to plunge it further into my body.

  “Rune.” My eyes sought his and locked them down. “I need you to do something for me.” My voice was soft and inviting, barely above a whisper. I didn’t want to choose him, but none of the others had come out of Hunter Academy. I didn’t have a choice.

  He glared at me, no doubt thinking about how he had brought me to Hunter Academy and how he betrayed the academy’s location to a vampire. “I won’t do anything for you.”

  “Rune, you love me. You would do anything for me.” I slid my hand from his chest to his neck. It paused for a second on his pulse before I continued upward to cup his cheek. I rose on tiptoes to talk into his mouth. “You love me. You would do anything for me.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  I could feel the pounding of his blood, faster and faster. His breath came out ragged and short, and his grip loosened on the stake.

  “You do. You love me, more than you love anyone. You will do anything I ask.” My voice was soft but firm, as if I was stating a fact.

  The brightness of his eyes dimmed somewhat. “I will?”

  “Yes, you will.” I pulled his head down, so we were staring into each other’s eyes with no obstruction. “There is a stake in Hunter Academy.”

  “There are thousands of stakes in Hunter Academy,” he said.

  “It’s a special ensorced stake.”

  “Ensorced stake?”

  “Yes, ensorced stake, one that can kill off the most ancient vampires, even Originals. You would make me very happy if you could find it for me. Where is it, love?”

  He knitted his eyebrows. “I haven’t heard of the ensorced stake.”

  “It is covered with sorcery and spells. It is stored somewhere in Hunter Academy. Where is it?”

  He blinked. Once. Then twice. The more he did that, the clearer his eyes became. The third time he opened his eyes, he pushed me away with such strength that I fell to the ground.

  Damn! I was so close.

  “You tried to hypnotize me,” he said. The coldness in his gaze made me shiver.

  I stood and brushed the dirt off my hands. That was why we should’ve just followed my original plan. If Blake hadn’t revealed our mission and I could find a weaker hunter, everything would be so different.

  “Just like you hypnotized me to show you Hunter Academy.” There was pain in the depth of his eyes, as though he blamed himself for the academy’s demise.

  “Are you sure you haven’t seen the ensorced stake?” Despite myself, I asked again.

  He replied by leaping at me with his stake.

  The stake glowed an eerie blue. It pierced through air, straight for my chest. Unhesitating. Unrelenting. I didn’t know why, but the ache in my chest grew. I wanted so badly to find out if he would really bury the stake into my body.

  This was foolish. Of course he would, just like Jayson if he had an opportunity. I was a vampire, a descendant of an Original whom all hunters wanted to kill. There were no friends between hunters and vampires, much less lovers.

  I spun around at the last second to dodge the stake. Its tip brushed my arm, and a part of my skin burned.

  It took much longer than usual for my body to start repairing the damage. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought the stake in Rune’s hand was the one we were after. It certainly wasn’t lacking in the power department.

  “I don’t want to hurt you. If you really don’t know about the ensorced stake, you can return to Hunter Academy,” I said.

  Anger brewed in his eyes, and he attacked with renewed rigor. The blue light of his stake slashed through air like a comet tail: fast, deadly, and beautiful.

  He told me he hadn’t heard of the ensorced stake, and I believed him. Originals and their descendants had special skills like command, but my sire said no one he knew was nearly as good as me. If Rune said he hadn’t heard of the ensorced stake while he was under my influence, then it must be true. Maybe students such as he were not given the privilege to know where the stake was.

  I seized his wrist. “Rune, can you do me a favor and ask one of your instructors to come out? If you can get the headmaster, that would be even better.”

  He yanked his wrist back and swept me off my feet. Before I had time to roll over, he pinned me down with his knee and held the point of his stake to my throat.

  Adrenaline rushed to my body at the heat of the excitement. It had been too long since I’d faced a worthy opponent, but he was still no match for me. Two hundred years and the physical difference between a descendant and a human were a gap that couldn’t b
e closed easily. Even now, if I wanted to, I could shove him away with sheer strength. As long as his stake didn’t completely pierce through my chest or throat, I would recover.

  But for some reason, I didn’t. I lay there, staring into his chocolate and coffee eyes, listening to his heavy breathing and the quickening of his pulse. His knee pressed down on my stomach with a delicious heaviness. He seized my wrists and held them over my head with one hand while the point of his stake dragged from my throat to the valley between my breasts.

  “Were you the vampire who injured Brydon?” The point dug in, breaking skin.

  The appearance of my blood and the smell of his sweat excited me more than they should have. He was furious. I could tell by the deadly glint in his eyes and the tension in his body, but my own body was ready to melt.

  “What if I was?” I shifted underneath him. The tips of my lips curved into a half-smile.

  “You hypnotized him to make him forget.” The stake drove deeper, his hatred even more intense than before.

  I should have felt pain, yet perhaps because of the way he was forcing his weight on me, the only thing I felt was excitement.

  It was weird to be turned on while in life-threatening danger. There was a possibility, no matter how slim, that he could dig his stake through my chest and end me right then and there, but the fury in his eyes was the only color I’d seen in a while. After Jayson left, my life had become black and white. I was bored, bored with feeding off blood and sex, bored with life in general, and so I’d slept. Now, for the first time in two centuries, I felt alive.

  Rune must have felt something too, for he didn’t jam the stake into my chest. I slid one hand free from his clutch and grabbed the hand that was holding onto the stake. His skin was warm, reviving me with his heat. He froze to the spot as I guided his stake down and down, thrusting aside the edge of the flimsy dress.

  His pupils dilated and he stopped breathing altogether. I could tell he tried not to look. He worked hard to fix his gaze only on my face, but he wasn’t always successful.

  I giggled at his reaction. The sound came out before I could stop it. He was so cute. Naïve and cute. If I didn’t know any better, I would have thought he’d never seen a woman’s body before.

  I shouldn’t have laughed. It seemed to break his trance. He pushed me back and jumped to his feet. The emotion in his eyes intensified even more. He blamed me for his body’s reaction, for the weakness of his flesh. Mixed with hatred and loathing were embarrassment and something else, something I couldn’t put my finger on.

  “Hunter Academy doesn’t have what you’re looking for. Leave, and don’t bother us anymore. The next time I see you, I won’t hesitate,” he said. And then he left.

  My throat clogged. I’d heard something like this before. Two hundred years ago, when I was still a newbie vampire too young to know anything, Jayson had caught me and held me under his mercy. Instead of ending me, he told me to leave. The next time he saw me, he would kill me.

  I pushed to my feet, adjusting my dress back to its place.

  There were still young hunters behind the gate, squinting at me, trying to find out what was going on. For a moment, I thought about luring out another one. I killed that thought right away. Rune didn’t know anything about the ensorced stake. There was no reason another student would. I either had to command an instructor or infiltrate Hunter Academy myself. But instructors might not know about the ensorced stake either, and getting one to come out of the academy was a hassle, not to mention trying to command one. Thanks to Blake, they would be on guard against such questions. Even if they gave me information, it would be much harder to ask them to steal the stake.

  That left me with only one choice. I had to enter Hunter Academy.

  “Good to know someone among us is still having fun.” Oscar’s annoying voice cut off my thought.

  I spun around to face the descendants I’d hoped to avoid.

  “Most of the hunters don’t know about the ensorced stake,” I said, ignoring Oscar’s sneer. “We have to enter the academy.”

  He folded his arms across his chest. “Of course we do. I knew your plan wouldn’t work.”

  If he was intentionally trying to piss me off, he was succeeding quite remarkably.

  “Now, now.” Blake beamed. “I’m sure Izella would have better luck with her plans if we hadn’t messed it up.”

  “Right,” Oscar said.

  I fought the urge to slam my fist into his face. He was older than me by a good century. I didn’t understand where all his maturity went.

  “An opened gate burns less than a closed gate,” I said. “The fences around the academy burn at the same intensity as a closed gate. There is a possibility that an opened gate won’t burn us into ashes.” And as long as we were still alive, we could recover.

  Oscar shot up an eyebrow. “So you are saying we should just brace ourselves and charge in, hoping the spell won’t kill us?”

  “Is there any other way?” I tilted my head back.

  “You do realize that the alarm will go off and everyone in the academy will jump at us, don’t you? At our weakest moment,” Oscar said.

  I’d thought about it. It wasn’t the brightest ideas, but what other choice did we have? “And how was attacking the academy outright, like you did last night, any better?”

  Neither were good plans. If the spell burned us into ashes, then Hunter Academy would finish off four descendants of Originals in one night. That had to be some sort of a record.

  “We won’t get burned,” Symphony said.

  Sometimes I forgot she was even there, with her short frame and quiet nature. I looked down at her. “What was that?”

  “We won’t get burned,” she repeated.

  For a moment, I wondered if she had been with us all this time or if she was in her own dreamland. Of course we would get burned if we tried to make a pass at the academy gate. I still remembered the ugly wound and the pain.

  “How so, Symphony?” Blake asked.

  She brought her bunny to her chest. “I know of a way to make us almost humans temporarily. In that state, we won’t trigger the alarm.”

  “Please explain.” There was skepticism in Blake’s voice.

  “There is reversification,” she said as if the single word explained everything.

  It did not.

  “The what?” I asked.

  “Reversification,” she said.

  I blinked at her. Repeating what she said didn’t clarify it any better. The word was not in my vocabulary. I doubt it was in the dictionary of the old and the new.

  “Reversification might get us past the gate, but it will leave us vulnerable to attacks.” Blake rubbed his chin like he knew what Symphony was talking about.

  “We would be like newborn babes. Anyone could kill us.” Oscar scowled.

  It seemed like I was the only one who didn’t know what Symphony meant. Perhaps spending most of my time sleeping did have its downsides.

  “How would reversification help us get past the gate?” I asked.

  “The spell at the gate targets vampires by our fear of sunlight,” Symphony said. The disinterested monotone of her voice contrasted with her youthful appearance. “If we could reverse vampirism for a short period of time, we could enter the gate like humans.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “How does one reverse vampirism?”

  “It’s not a complete reversal. Reversification doesn’t make a human out of a vampire. It just brings us to an almost human state for three days, and only Originals or descendants have the ability to perform reversification.”

  I could immediately see how this would be helpful. “Three days are more than enough time to get what we want.”

  “You spoke too fast, Izella.” Blake turned to me. “By reversing vampirism, you’re also losing your strength and special abilities.”

  No vampire would risk the dangers of becoming as weak as humans just to see the sun. If we did this, it meant we would be the hunters
’ game for three whole days. Whether or not we survived to escape Hunter Academy was another story.

  I tried to remember what I was like before I turned, and I shuddered. I would definitely not make it out of the academy alive.

  “You lot are crazy if you’re considering reversification.” Oscar folded his arms across his chest. “We’re not that desperate to retrieve the ensorced stake.”

  “Actually, we are.” Blake’s permanent smile faded a little. He didn’t elaborate, and I couldn’t shake off the unease his words stirred within me. “But we could wait for Celtric. He might have a safer plan.”

  I pressed my lips together. Celtric again. I didn’t understand why someone like Blake would rely on anyone for anything. He didn’t seem to be a vampire who needed hand holding.

  “When is he coming?” I frowned.

  “Soon.”

  That told me absolutely nothing. I stared at the academy gate long and hard. To charge through it meant getting burned, probably to death. To use reversification meant crossing the gate in a condition as weak as a babe. Both probably led to the end of my existence, unless … unless I could somehow walk into Hunter Academy without anyone recognizing me for who I was.

  The thought got stuck in my head. It was nearly impossible, for many hunters had seen my face. Even if I managed to change my appearance, the hunters were not stupid enough to welcome strangers at this critical time.

  “Come, let us return to Izella’s mansion and wait for Celtric,” Blake said.

  I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to get that stake and walk through the house Jayson had lived in so many years ago. The night was still young. We had hours before us. We could use it on something better than waiting for the vampire who was too busy to come.

  “Izella!” Oscar cried over his shoulder.

  I wanted to tell him to leave without me, but I didn’t know what else I would be able to do here. We needed a plan, something better than what we had right now.