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

by CK Dawn

  Daisy tucked the paper into her pocket. Yeah, no more random men for a while, even ones who could help her dust off her ASL. “Dragon!” she said, and patted the van as close to the roof as she could. “I’m not that rusty, am I?”

  Ladon did his staring-at-distant-objects, talking-to-Dragon look, then chuckled. “He says that if you practice while you continue your animal doctoring studies, you will not become rusty.”

  Leave it to a dragon to be practical.

  Ladon pointed around the van’s back corner. “The young man offering lessons was putting up his fliers over there.”

  Daisy stepped to the side and glanced around the back end of the van.

  About thirty feet away, a group of incoming proto-students stood in front of one of the University’s many kiosks. The senior in charge of the group—a clean-cut guy in a “Disability Services” t-shirt—pointed at the Student Union and rattled off some introduction to the St. Paul campus.

  A young woman with auburn hair turned her back to Daisy and yanked off the kiosk a rectangle of paper identical to the one in Daisy’s pocket.

  And for some reason Daisy could not quite put her finger on, the kid in the train station danced into her memory. The boy with too much anger to activate, and the one lone Fate who did good by the world with a simple, uttered, future-seeing.

  Perhaps the memory surfaced because of a scent in the air which her nose understood but her consciousness could not label. Or perhaps an eighth or ninth sense triggered.

  Orel’s words surfaced: We’re not all bad.

  She couldn’t see the young woman’s face, but she saw the foot tapping and the distracted attention.

  And more memories surfaced.

  That night, during hand-to-hand training, when Ladon had opened up about cell phones and headaches, she hadn’t done the same. She’d kept quiet.

  There was a reason. One she’d done her best to bury, because if she didn’t and a malicious past-seeing Fate read the truth, it could mean the death of a good man and his family.

  That good man’s daughter would be about the age of this year’s crop of incoming freshmen.

  And again, she thought, We’re not all bad.

  “Ladon?” she said. She closed her eyes and dipped her head, as if listening. “Do you or Dragon sense anyone?” A Fate, she thought, though she didn’t quite know why.

  Ladon sniffed the air as if he were the bloodhound. “No.”

  When she looked back around the corner, the woman and her group had moved on.

  An invisible Dragon hand touched her upper back. The touch lifted away, and his big body brushed against her side as he twisted through the van’s rear door.

  Did Dragon just offer her comfort?

  “He’d like to get to your place. He doesn’t want to vent out in the open.” Ladon pulled his keys out of his pocket and nodded to the front seats.

  The world didn’t need to see a dragon breathing fire, nor did it have to worry about bad Fates or Shifters. At least for the moment.

  Daisy would be fine. The incoming freshmen would be fine, as would Orel and his family, and Ladon and Dragon. In four years she’d be a licensed veterinarian.

  Everything was good.

  Daisy patted Ladon’s arm. “Let’s go,” she said. “How about pizza?”

  Ladon took in the campus one last time. “Sounds good.” He grinned. “You have this under control?” He waved his hand.

  Daisy shook her head. “Of course I do, big brother.” She did. She was about to spend the next four years with her head in her books.

  What could happen?

  Epilogue

  Now…

  Dragon fully retracted his talons before swiping one of the six fingers of his giant hand-claw across the screen of Ladon’s new cell phone. The damned thing screeched like a banshee and gave them both headaches, but they needed this particular tool to track the Burners across Wisconsin.

  Dmitri’s application says that a Stillwater Fire and Safety crew has responded to a major fire, Dragon pushed into Ladon’s mind. Reports indicate an unusual smell.

  One of Dmitri’s hackers had whipped up the app and loaded it onto all Land-provided phones. It seemed to be doing its job.

  “That fire? It’s them,” Ladon said. Where there were Burners, there were fires, stink, and explosions. The pack they chased set fire to every structure they touched and destroyed everything in their wake.

  I suspect so, Dragon pushed. The app has been correct about every police call so far.

  Ladon and the beast were twenty miles from the Minnesota border. At the speed Ladon pushed the van, they would hit the bridge over the St. Croix River in fifteen minutes.

  Still not fast enough. The Burners were far enough ahead that they’d make the more populated areas of Minneapolis and St. Paul before Ladon and Dragon caught up with them.

  The last Burner Ladon had taken out flattened a church. No one was inside, and the media reported the explosion as a “gas leak,” but the denser the population of normals, the more likely someone would get hurt.

  We have not fought Burners this violent since we lived among the Norse, Dragon pushed.

  “These may be worse,” Ladon said. This group took down a shopping mall in Chicago last night. An entire mall. Killed multiple normals.

  These were Burners who murdered on a scale most of their kind hadn’t achieved since the Dark Ages—and Ladon couldn’t shake the feeling they had help.

  “None of this makes sense,” he said.

  No, it does not, Dragon pushed. We must hurry.

  Ladon checked the mirrors, changed lanes, and accelerated. Yes, they needed to hurry. They needed to take care of this before more people got hurt.

  Because he also couldn’t shake the feeling that this time, the Burner attacks weren’t random. This time, something big was about to explode their world….

  * * *

  The End

  The Fate – Fire – Shifter – Dragon series

  continues with Ladon, Dragon, and Rysa Torres, in

  Games of Fate.

  * * *

  Daisy returns to the universe in Bonds.

  * * *

  For more information about the genre-bending world of

  Fate – Fire – Shifter – Dragon, visit:

  The World of Fate – Fire – Shifter - Dragon

  Join Kris Austen Radcliffe’s Newsletter

  About the Author

  As a child, Kris took down a pack of hungry wolves with only a hardcover copy of The Dragonriders of Pern and a sharpened toothbrush. That fateful day set her on a path traversing many storytelling worlds—dabbles in film and comic books, time as a talent agent and a textbook photo coordinator, and a foray into nonfiction. After co-authoring Mind Shapes: Understanding the Differences in Thinking and Communication, Kris returned to academia. But she craved narrative and a richly-textured world of Fates, Shifters, and Dragons—and unexpected, true love.

  Kris lives in Minnesota with her husband, two daughters, Handsome Cat, and an entire menagerie of suburban wildlife bent on destroying her house. That battered-but-true copy of Dragonriders? She found it yesterday. It’s time to pay a visit to the woodpeckers.

  Read More from Kris Austen Radcliffe

  www.krisaustenradcliffe.com

  Twisted Fate

  Sharon Rose Mayes

  Twisted Fate © 2017 Sharon Rose Mayes

  * * *

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

&nb
sp; Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Twisted Fate

  Sometimes dreams are more than just dreams.

  History repeating itself is usually a joke people make to explain things that seem to happen over and over again. But what if it is more than that?

  Amelia Fitzgerald is about to find out that the saying is more than what she ever thought it was.

  After a tragic accident claimed the lives of her parents Amelia started having the most vivid dreams. The kind where the tears are very real, leaving Amelia convinced that her dreams are more than dreams. When she meets Liam it all seems to come in a bit of truth and even more questions.

  She learns that everyone’s fate is set, but that sometimes it gets twisted. Of course with the truth comes a price and there are those who want to make sure that the truth doesn’t get out.

  After all the good and the bad don’t want the world to know, people just may start choosing sides.

  One

  “You still haven’t told your brother about your dreams, have you?” Dr. Griffin asked me for what seemed like the hundredth time.

  She asked the question every time I was in her office.

  I shrugged; the answer was always the same.

  “Amelia?”

  I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. Jack, my older brother, had been sending me to see the psychiatrist for over a year now. He was convinced that I hadn’t coped well with the death of our parents two years ago. I told him I was okay.

  “No, not since he started sending me here,” I told her twirling a chunk of my red hair around my finger. Her questions always made me nervous. “I would rather not bother him with them, he’s really busy with a lot going on,” I said glancing around her office, “they aren’t important.”

  From watching TV, I was positive that counseling offices were supposed to be homey and inviting. Her office was sterile and plain, with a faint scent of lavender coming from somewhere. I just hadn’t figured out where it was coming from. The only furniture in the room included a huge mahogany desk, an uncomfortable brown couch and the chair she sat in during our visits. The only thing that could be considered personal in the whole place was the diplomas lining the wall behind the desk.

  Weren’t there usually book cases? The place was way too clinical to be a counseling office. It should be more homey.

  My seventeenth birthday had come in July and Jack who was ten years older, took care of me.

  When he had the time.

  When our parents passed away, Jack had insisted on moving back into the house to care for me while he finished college. The thought of being a burden to him was less than ideal, but it was better than moving to our aunt’s home in Austin. The fact that our parents had left money for us made the burden a bit easier. We weren’t loaded, but we had plenty to live off of without having to get jobs while we went to school. He had recently started his medical residency while I was just starting my senior year of high school.

  My goal was to make it easy on him and it had been working until about a year ago when I started having nightmares. I would have ignored the nightmares and he would have never known about them if they hadn’t started waking us both up at night. He had gotten woken up several nights in a row thanks to my screaming bloody murder in my sleep. So he started sending me to see Dr. Griffin, because he was sure that I was having trouble dealing with the death of our parents. It was easier to go see the strict psychiatrist than it was to make him worry even more than he already did.

  “I see,” she said making a note on her yellow legal pad. I despised that pad. She had tons of them that I was sure she had dedicated to me and my dreams. She sat down her ever present legal pad and turned to face me fully, she placed both hands on her knees. “Amelia, we have talked about this before,” she sighed, “as part of your therapy it is important that you keep nothing to yourself,” her expression was kind but it didn’t quite reach her mahogany brown eyes. They were always stern and a bit judgmental I felt.

  “I tell you everything though,” I insisted even though it was a bit of a lie. The last time I told her everything she tried to prescribe me a cocktail of medications that made me numb to the world. Apparently you aren’t supposed to remember dreams as vividly as I do.

  Dreams so vivid I could remember tastes and smells.

  They always felt as if I had lived them instead of just being a dream.

  She nodded, “for this week though work on being more open,” she said, “your brother cares and he just wants to help, tell him what you are thinking,” she finished just as the timer went off signifying that my session was over.

  After saying a polite goodbye to her receptionist, I felt a rush of relief when I walked out of the door into the fresh air, or as fresh as you could get in the city.

  “It’s about time,” Arianna my best friend called from the curb. She always insisted on waiting for me outside of my appointments. She knew how draining they could be on me and wanted to be there for me if I had a bad visit. She said it was because I had stood by her since we were kids. Ari claimed that I was her hero since I and had stopped other kids from picking on her when we were young. I just hated to stand by and watch people be mistreated, we had been best friends since that day.

  “She wanted to talk about the dreams again,” I whined and leaned against my car next to her, “I have to talk to Jack again. He needs to understand that I don’t need to keep going.”

  “Right,” Arianna agreed.

  “Get it through that thick head of his,” I muttered, “that I am okay and dreams are just dreams.”

  “That pretty head of his,” she sighed getting a dreamy look in her chocolate brown eyes.

  Rolling my eyes at her, “he is way too old for you,” I said shaking my head at her. Her crush on my brother went all the way back to first grade and the time that he got her a bandage when she skinned her knee from falling off of her bike, “let’s go to the market and I will get something to cook us for dinner.”

  “I’ll be eighteen soon enough,” she smirked, “ten years isn’t that big of a difference.”

  “Yeah, but he has a girlfriend,” I shook my head and laughed at her, “and it is when he will be practicing medicine on his own in a few months and well you are in high school.”

  She pouted for a moment and then grabbed my arm and began dragging me down the sidewalk, “buy stuff to cook for me, lady.”

  “Yes ma’am,” I laughed and allowed her tug me down the sidewalk.

  We lived in the suburbs and had everything there but since I had to come into Houston once a week to see Dr. Griffin we could always get everything we needed in a two block radius of her office. We started walking down the block to a market that was close to the doctor’s office. Arianna and I both liked the area, there were a lot of places to shop and a coffee shop that we went to often. Especially when we had time to kill and didn’t have to hurry back home.

  “Seriously?” I was asking Arianna as I laughed at something she had said about our calculus teacher, “his hair is more gray than not.”

  “Yeah, but he has a cute butt,” she repeated.

  I looked at her smirk and just shook my head, “ouch,” I bumped into someone walking down the sidewalk and landed on my rear onto the concrete.

  “Sorry,” a male voice said from above me.

  I looked and was instantly caught into the beauty of his green eyes. They were so familiar, but I wasn’t sure where I had seen them before.

  He offered his hand to me.

  I reached up and accepted it, and took a better look at him. He was handsome with intense green eyes and a mop of wavy black hair that came down to his chin.

  “It’s okay,” I stuttered, “my fault.” I assured him, “I wasn’t paying attention.”

  But somethin
g else must have gotten his attention because his eyes widened and he awkwardly mumbled sorry again and hurried away as if he were on fire.

  I watched him walk away as he flipped the hood of his black hoodie over his head. I watched him go down the sidewalk until he turned into a coffee shop a little way down from where we were.

  “Earth to Amelia,” Arianna said getting my attention.

  “Huh, what?” I turned to her.

  “What was that?” she asked, “you were totally creeping on that guy.”

  I shrugged dumbfounded by what had just occurred.

  “Wast not,” I rolled my eyes at her.

  I felt a connection between myself and the boy. I knew him, but couldn’t remember meeting him before. Or maybe I was just in awe of his handsome face.

  “Awkward,” Arianna mumbled and started leading the way to the market again.

  I kept thinking of him, but the rich smell of food coming out of a nearby Italian restaurant caused my stomach to growl and put me back on the task at hand. We needed groceries so that we could cook dinner.

  Even though my mission was renewed I still couldn’t take my mind off of him. I swear I knew him from somewhere. Maybe it was all in my head, but I felt certain that there was something more there than just two strangers bumping into each on a crowded sidewalk.

  Maybe I would run into him again, but in a city this large I didn’t feel that it was likely.

  “How was your appointment with Dr. Griffin today?” Jack asked while we were in the middle of dinner.

  “It was as monotonous as always,” I told him and sighed, “I think it’s time I quit going.”