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

by CK Dawn

  The sight of her father, who couldn’t remember the latest pop star’s name and still drank whole milk from cows and quarreled with toll booth operators about the exorbitant price to cross a bridge that he helped to build, fighting her boyfriend with skill and even grace surprised her. It never occurred to her that her dad could be cool, that his personality might consist of more than just stories at bedtime and corny intentions to make holidays brighter.

  She struggled against Ch’in briefly then mumbled a quick prayer for forgiveness before stomping on his instep like it was multi-legged and beady-eyed. She ran in between Fel and Jasper, thinking that if her father saw her face that might jolt him out of the berserker rage that seemed to infect him.

  Fel spun Dragon out of the way before the uppercut meant for him could connect with her.

  “God fucking damn it!” Jasper shouted, piercing Dragon with a glare that managed to convey his anger at her stupidity (on many levels) and his fear for her safety at the same time. He shot Fel a look of such burning hatred Dragon could see Jasper’s muscles tense as he made ready to lunge at Fel again.

  It was Ch’in’s restraining hand and soft-spoken words that dammed Jasper’s rage. So instead of buffeting Fel with his anger, Jasper turned away from him and, to Dragon’s astonishment, roared his frustration to the heavens. She’d never seen her smiling, wisecracking dad so out of control. Jasper was a dangerous man, she realized quite suddenly. Menacingly so.

  Jasper’s bellow induced the dogs of the neighborhood to frantic barks and long bays and brought Quill rushing out of the side door, a spray bottle of glass cleaner in one hand and a cheese board in the other.

  “Bloody hell, woman,” Jasper grumbled, scowling at the cheese board. “In what way do you think a streak-free shine and a bite of aged Gouda are going to contribute to this situation?”

  “The last time you shrieked like that,” she started, ignoring the baleful look Jasper leveled her way at her unflattering description of him, “I used the Shazaam to distract the three Jacks tormenting you, then dispatched them with the cheese board.”

  “Quillya!” Ch’in said, his voice uncharacteristically harsh. “That cheese board was a gift from my brother. It’s priceless!”

  Dragon met Quill’s eyes and shook her head slightly.

  Ch’in’s brother, the Dragon King of the eastern seas, came looking for the cheese board, or more specifically, anything he could sell to raise the five hundred thousand vens he owed the Swedes three years ago. “Nasty buggers,” Kuang had said of the Scandinavian mafia that had come into prominence after the war. Then he cautioned Dragon not to tell Ch’in about the board with a pinch of her cheek (“It would kill him”) and left. Disgusted, Dragon had hot-footed down to 2nd Avenue to buy one of the bootleg replicas Jerry sold from his ramshackle stand.

  “It still works, Ch’in.” Quill squinted down at the cheeseboard. “That Petit Agour you bought for dinner tonight will look great on it.” She smiled and nodded at Jasper who suddenly looked guilty. “Oh God. You didn’t.”

  “I was hungry,” Jasper said, wincing at Ch’in’s scowl.

  While her parent’s attention was otherwise occupied, Dragon motioned discreetly for Fel to leave.

  He motioned to himself questioningly then nodded, getting slowly to his feet and making a big show out of brushing off the seat of his pants and wiping away the blood that leaked from his split lip. Then beyond all expectations, he walked over to her, cupped the back of her head and fastened his lips to hers.

  She melted.

  If that was her only response she could’ve breathed an easy breath and simply enjoyed the slide of his lips against hers, his taste, the hard heat of his body. But she responded as if his touch was familiar and more of a priority than her family’s sensibilities. She wound her arms around his neck, molded her body to his and opened her very self to Fel as if he was her husband of fifty years and the trust between them was absolute.

  “Willita!” Quill gasped.

  Dragon straightened abruptly and pushed away from Fel. “Yes?” she answered, running incredulous fingers over her swollen lips. “Uh, this is Fel.”

  Fel bared his teeth in imitation of a smile at their audience and it suddenly occurred to Dragon that he’d kissed her so publicly on purpose. Staked his claim on her and dared Jasper to contradict it, which would be flattering if it wasn’t so perplexing. Why vociferously claim her when he had no intention of keeping her?

  “Wilhelmina,” Jasper growled, infusing his hard stare with a palatable amount of dire consequence should she choose to disobey, a look she hadn’t seen since she was a teenager. “Get over here.”

  Dragon scuttled to her father’s side.

  Jasper’s furious gaze never left Dragon even as he addressed Fel. “You’ve got a hell of a lot of nerve, coming here, violating my child. Flannacán,” he sneered, leaving Dragon with no doubt that her father knew Fel and, more importantly, hated him with a virulence that made her irrationally worry for the health of his immortal heart.

  “Jasper, please. Remember your blood pressure,” Quill said, seeming to read Dragon’s mind.

  “Quill,” Jasper said warningly.

  “I don’t care if you’re immortal!” she cried. “Your current intent would surely incinerate us all had you your powers. Since you don’t, your heart must bear the brunt of this—this.” She motioned to Fel with a glare, threw a bewildered look at Dragon and finally met Jasper’s shellacked gaze beseechingly.

  He nodded stiffly to Quill and finally transferred his gaze tot Fel. “You cannot have her,” he said.

  Dragon quailed and wondered how Fel withstood this clipped verbal assault, which felt as sharp as a physical one.

  “But I will,” he murmured with perfect equanimity.

  The air stilled unnaturally for a moment, like it knew there was an uncommon predator in its midst, then Jasper flew at Fel.

  Ch’in caught the phooka easily, his dragon’s strength a service to him as something other than a furniture mover for once.

  “I’ll kill you!” Jasper screamed as Ch’in forced him into the Salon. “I’ll fucking have your head, you worthless piece of shit! You’re nothing, do you hear me! You’re a worthless fuck that even the Sun knew was garbage!”

  The heavy oak door slammed behind them, leaving Dragon quivering in the suddenly silent courtyard.

  Quill looked at her sympathetically, but said, her voice as hard as diamonds, “Go inside, Willita.”

  “I’ll call you,” Fel said, ignoring Quill’s furious glare.

  Dragon’s eyes darted back and forth between Fel and Quill once before she buckled under years of adhering to her parent’s judgment. “It wouldn’t be a good idea,” she said and rushed inside.

  When the heavy door shut with a delicate click, Fel said, “I will have her, Quill. She has already accepted me.”

  “Do not address me so familiarly, sir. I am a cherished goddess of the moon and am not without some power even in these intolerable times. You will show me the proper respect.”

  Fel clenched his jaw and made a mental note not to rely on their previous meetings for any advantage where Dragon was concerned. He included the foxhole they—two opposing commanding officers of K'Davrah—had shared during a category six hurricane haphazardly cast by a newly minted human colonel as well as the two memorable times he encountered her coming out of Mahb’s pleasure chamber covered in blood and obviously replete. “I do humbly beg your pardon, lady.”

  The silence before them lengthened before Quill finally broke it. “She is not for you, Flannacán, no matter what has passed between you. You are banished—declared insupportable by your own queen. Even if that were not the case, you have made yourself into a whore. You sell your sex for coin. In this city, the city in which Dragon will live out the rest of her life, that is unacceptable. I forbid the connection.”

  “You don’t have the right.”

  “She—a child of man—begged for aid nineteen years ago and th
e phooka accepted. By any miscellus law, he is at worst her guardian and at best her father bound to her spirit by longing and prayer. He has the right and I support him.”

  “And what of her wishes?”

  “If she truly wanted you, boy, she would be here now.” Quill’s intractable stare pierced him like a dagger. “It will go badly for you if you return,” she said before turning and disappearing into the rooms of the legendary restaurant.

  She leaned against the heavy door and closed her eyes, praying for calm. The house was quiet now, but that would soon change. Jasper would explode and Ch’in would not be able to contain him.

  What was Dragon thinking of aligning herself with a wrecked warrior of the Sun? Surely Jasper described to her his own allegiance to the Shade’s idealistic prince and the profound enmity that has existed between both courts almost since the first sloppy steps of the fae’s beginning.

  No. Quill caught herself before her irritation at Dragon’s reckless behavior could overwhelm sense. Jasper would not have told the girl-child he adopted about the initial split that rendered the exalted race of fae into shades of either black or white. That discussion would have surely been as uncomfortable as explicitly detailing conception and birth to a child. An explanation of the Shade court and Jasper’s place in it would have elicited similar questions about anatomy, sexuality, loyalty, friendship, love, pain and duty and how blending two, three or all could amount to law or social structure or economy or punishment.

  Entirely too much for a phooka defrocked of his powers, who must need suppress the overwhelming urge for mischief towards humans to raise one.

  Quill looked down at the stone floor of her home’s atrium and the chipped polish on her toes. After all these years, that she was here, squatting in this abandoned restaurant with two veterans of the Shade, still had the power to surprise her. As did her longing for Mahb or the profound betrayal Quill suffered at her hands, for it was Mahb who’d thrown Quill to the wolves nearly forty years ago. Mahb who’d watched with an indecipherable smile on her face as a handful of Shade warriors had infiltrated one of their infamous teas looking for a Sun officer to capture. Mahb who’d made her escape with laughable ease while Quill—still naked and staunching the sluggish flow of one of Mahb’s love bites with an embroidered napkin—was subdued by a charm steeped in the personal power of the Sun.

  To this day, the injustice of that moment made Quill want to scream.

  Her own power reserves low—she’d been donating all her magic to Mahb’s cause—she was born away to the Shade, stripped of everything except her immortality and left to rot in a POW camp where she was routinely raped by a creature she could hardly credit had been naturally born of Night.

  After a few years, when she stank of resignation and despair, the Shade himself came and opened her cage, apologizing profusely for her state. Quill remembered that she’d nearly swooned when he cradled her bony body in his arms, his cool, soothing scent washing over her like a gentle bath.

  With a look directed at her jailers that promised the darkest punishment, he took her to his realm and bathed her with lotus water. He saw to her wounds, both spiritual and physical, made sure she ate and nurtured her as well as any mother. And just when Quill was sure she might drown from the weight of her own gratitude, Doque politely asked her for a favor.

  “Watch this human child,” he’d said, brushing Quill’s hair as he did every night. “I would know the details of her growth.” He’d cupped her chin tenderly then and smoothed his thumb over her eyebrow, the action sweetly demanding that she meet his gaze, which she did, happy to do anything that pleased him.

  There was something new in his blue-black eyes. Something inescapably destructive, like water over time. He took her to his bed that night, though she’d been begging him to have her for many months, his feathered caresses and drugging kisses instilling in her a kind of mindless terror that she’d never imagined existed for a goddess; he made her fear death that night.

  “Tell no one,” he’d said when he’d finished and she lay utterly petrified.

  Of what he’d just done to her? Of what he wanted her to do for him? Of what he was capable?

  It hardly mattered. She would comply. And so she had, making no complaint when her jailer from the POW camp came for her the next day, beat her bloody and left her on the steps of Le Salon Neuf.

  Fifteen years was a shamefully long time to live in fear.

  Flannacán’s interest in Dragon was something Doque would want to know.

  “No,” she said out loud, the word echoing throughout the small stone chamber. She’d allowed her terror to put her family in enough danger.

  Her family.

  The thought warmed her like nothing she’d ever known. She could hardly believe that giving away her heart would fulfill her more than twenty thousand years of divinity.

  Doque may have inadvertently gifted her with this love, but she would not allow him to take it away from her. She refused to allow the memory of the Shade’s response to her last attempt at defiance deter her.

  He had given her to her old jailer, a hsigo beast.

  The creature, a seven-foot ape with enormous batlike wings and a long, hairless, barbed tail, had grinned at her, its skeleton face creaking and crumbling like old stone, and licked his chops with his long tongue, gray with putrefaction.

  Doque and his first circle had quietly watched while the hsigo sodomized Quill with its tail for one hundred forty-three minutes before she broke. Instead of ending her torture, he’d prolonged it, granting the hsigo permission to taste her. It was only after the pus from the creature’s tongue dripped into her mouth and down her throat, after it rooted noisily between her thighs, after it lapped at her bleeding anus, that she gave Doque what he wanted to know.

  All of that for the details of Dragon’s latest report card.

  The hsigo was one of many nightmares she’d endured since Mahb’s betrayal. With her former power, she could reduce every one of those terrors to ash. Were she the Moon again, with each aspect—Crone, Mother, Maiden—fully realized, she could make the Sun scream with regret.

  Jasper’s raised voice questioning Dragon’s sanity dispelled Quill’s fantasy and she hurried into the living room.

  “Have you lost your friggin’ mind?” Jasper raged, pacing in front of the enormous fireplace. “Idiot girl! This is the stupidest decision you’ve made by far.”

  Dragon flinched as if her father had slapped her and turned her face away to hide the tears that streaked down her cheeks.

  “Phooka!” Quill gasped, rushing to gather a stiff Dragon in an embrace.

  “I’m okay,” Dragon lied, pulling away from Quill and mopping her wet face with the backs of her hands. She met Jasper’s contemptuous gaze shakily.

  “What? What have you to say to me, daughter?” Jasper said, his stance unyielding.

  “Daddy,” she whimpered, giving in to his disappointment and her own censure like a marionette whose strings had been cut.

  Jasper rushed over to her and gathered her in his arms, murmuring “hush, baby” as he eased them onto the silver settee and cuddled her close. “Never mind,” he said. “I didn’t mean it. Not a word. You are my beautiful girl, my one and only baby girl. Hush now.” He kissed her forehead and sang her an old fae lullaby, patting her back lightly to keep rhythm as he did when she was a child.

  “I’m sorry,” Dragon whispered between sobs.

  “I know, baby. Never you mind. You’re okay. You’re okay now,” he crooned.

  Safe at last, Dragon sank into her dad’s embrace, forgetting about her dissatisfaction, her unhappiness, and comforted by the thought that this homely love could sustain her as well, if not better, than the erotic connection she searched for in vain.

  Jasper took the white handkerchief Ch’in handed him, dabbed at Dragon’s cheeks and held it over her nose. “Blow,” he instructed.

  Dragon rolled her eyes, snatched the hankie from him and wiped her nose herself.


  A disgruntled yowl sounded at the side door and Quill jumped up with a muffled shriek to let Buddha in. “Pray that he merely toyed with the neighbor’s dog and the idiot creature still lives.”

  Jasper watched Quill dash out of the room and looked at Dragon with gentle eyes. “Feel better, love?” He ran his hand soothingly over her hair.

  “Good,” he said at her nod. “Get off me. When’d you get so heavy?”

  “Does he look oddly full to you?” Quill asked, following Buddha into the living room.

  Four pairs of eyes watched the gryphonita lumber to its favorite recliner, struggle onto the cracked leather seat, turn two restless circles then flop into an inelegant sprawl.

  “I can’t tell,” Dragon answered Quill nasally before blowing her nose.

  The cat yawned magnificently, licked his chops with a few languid strokes and let his eyes drift closed.

  “Oh my God!” Quill moaned. “Mari’s going to kill me. Do you know how much spiny pugs cost?”

  “You don’t know for sure that the cat ate Mari’s pet,” Ch’in said.

  Ignoring him, Quill continued. “I suggested that she get a spiny pug after that—that bottomless pit over there devoured her pit bull.”

  “Never seen anything like that,” Jasper mused. “He,” Jasper nodded at the softly snoring cat, “had flattened his wings to his back and let loose a few mewls, like he was hurt or something. And like an idiot, the pit bull fell for his harmless act. When it got closer, wham! Buddha embedded his claws in the dog’s tongue. While the poor pit struggled to remove four-inch claws from its tongue, Buddha used the rest of his body to hold the dog still so he could rip into it. Every so often, Buddha would ease his hold on the creature, so the dog would wriggle around, thinking to escape. Then Buddha would tear into—”

  “Thank you, Jasper,” Quill interrupted. “I’d completely forgotten about the details of that incident and how you unexpectedly disappeared during the cleanup.”

  Jasper shrugged. “All that blood—reminded me of the good old days. Needed a few moments to myself.”