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

by CK Dawn

  I just nodded in stunned silence. Everything that I had learned was overwhelming and I had no idea what was going to happen. I was mostly afraid that I would either be in jail or dead soon.

  I took a deep breath before I asked her my next question, “Will I have to choose a side?”

  “No, not unless you feel the need to.”

  “I don’t,” I assured her, “I just want to be left alone.”

  She nodded, “very well,” and she stirred her tea, “we just need to get the threat of exposure gone and you both off of their radar. And then as long as you keep your mouth shut, you can live some semblance of a normal life.”

  “Good, that’s all I want,” I told her ignoring the stiffening of Liam’s body seated next to me.

  My stomach growled interrupting the quiet that had settled upon us. I covered my face in embarrassment, “I’m sorry, I didn’t have lunch today.”

  She waved me off as if it were no big deal, “go up front and get you both something to eat,” Maggie ordered Liam.

  As soon as the door closed behind Liam, she turned to face me fully. “You do know that you will never be without him now.”

  “We just met,” I argued.

  “You both have always played a large part in the lives of the other. This time for whatever reason, you met under different circumstances,” she glanced at a painting of a young man that hung on a wall between two windows, “sometimes fate gets all twisted.”

  “But I thought it was all set.”

  “Sometimes things happen and the veil is lifted, and things change” she told me, “wait here.” Abruptly she stood to leave and ended the conversation, “I’ll send the boy with the food.”

  Moments after she left the door was reopened, and Liam entered with a tray piled with sandwiches, vegetables, and fruit from the deli up front.

  “I wasn’t sure what you wanted,” he explained.

  “Thanks, right now anything is great,” I told him still feeling the embarrassment from my stomach growling so loudly before, “I’m just hungry.”

  We ate lunch and made a lot of awkward small talk. Mostly general information about ourselves. I was shocked to find out that when he was young his mother had abandoned him for a drug habit that she couldn't beat and that Dr. Griffin had taken him in, when he had went into the foster care system. He told me that he didn't know his father either, and wasn't sure if he would ever bother looking for him. I couldn't explain my reaction, but my heart instantly broke for him.

  "I'm sorry," Was all I could muster after he had told me.

  He had been looking out of the window, his posture rigid. "Don't be," he said his voice bitter, "you don't know me or anything about me."

  The abrupt change in his temperament surprised me because he had seemed so easy going just moments before. Before I could respond to his comment, the door opened.

  Maggie walked in and raised an eyebrow at the two of us. The tension was palpable after his outburst and I was thankful for her intrusion.

  "I was just on the phone with an associate of mine and he is going to work on getting you two off of the police radar."

  "Thank goodness," I breathed out.

  "But I think it would be best if you two got out of the city."

  “My house is out of the city,” I explained to her, hoping that I could just go home.

  “That’s the first place they will look for you.”

  “I know,” I conceded. I knew that would be her response, and I knew it wasn’t safe to go home. But a girl could hope.

  “I am going to send you both to stay at my house a few hours away from here.”

  I made a face.

  “It’s only temporary,” she assured me in her no nonsense way that people probably just accepted from her without question, “take Jill’s car, and I will give you two cash for food and supplies.”

  “Okay,” I agreed, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to argue my way out of going. Because it was either go or most likely get caught and die.

  “This is stupid,” Liam disagreed. “Why don’t we just go take care of Marcotte?”

  “Ridiculous,” Jill simply told him, “he is well guarded and you don’t know if he is the one after you both.”

  “He is the demon General in this area.”

  “It could be Ruz and the Angels,” Jill argued.

  “Oh, come on,” he said and rolled his eyes at her, “she has I’m going to choose the side of good all over her face.”

  “You don’t know me,” I mumbled, even though neither of them was listening to me.

  “Maybe so,” Maggie agreed, “be we don’t know for sure who is sending their minions after her.”

  He just crossed his arms over his chest and frowned at her.

  “Just like if you choose, I told Jill years ago, that it might not be good.”

  He got up and stormed out of the room, and I guessed that the animosity between the two was based on the fact that she thought he was a bad seed.

  “Get ready to leave, or you’re on your own boy,” she called after him as he exited the door.

  “Fine,” he said as the door closed behind him.

  “He’s a stubborn boy. Go ahead and get ready, he will be ready when you are.”

  Ten

  When it was time to leave, Liam, who had been nowhere to be found, was waiting beside the car.

  “I thought you left.”

  “No, I am just as wanted by the police as you are.”

  “Right.”

  “Let’s get out of here before the hag comes out and starts causing trouble,” he said watching the front windows of the shop where Maggie was watching with her hands on her hips.

  “Do you know where we are supposed to be going?” I asked him, because she hadn’t told me anything.

  “Yeah, unfortunately I have been to this place a few times.”

  I shrugged at his disdain, because I was thankful that Maggie was helping us and that we would hopefully be able to come back to our lives in one piece. Maggie seemed no nonsense and would take care of the police threat and the guys that were after us.

  “Can she really get the cops off of us?”

  “Finally questioning her,” he laughed as we got on the highway that would take us northeast out of the city.

  “Uh, well, you know.” I stuttered, “I’m just curious.”

  “I know,” and I could seem him nod out of the corner of my eye, his dark hair only slightly moving, “if I were you I would be questioning her too, but seriously she has a lot of pull with the right people.”

  “I see.”

  “I think it has taken many years, but she and Jill could get just about anyone to do what they want. But when it comes to Ruz and Marcotte, well, that will probably take some work on her part.”

  “Oh.”

  “They are both stubborn old school fools, who follow a bunch of outdated rules.”

  I just gave a quick nod.

  “All of them are,” I heard him mumble barely above a whisper, and I assumed that he was referring to Jill and Maggie as well.

  “How far away is this place?” I asked him changing the subject.

  “A couple of hours,” he said and turned the radio up to a loud metal song that I was familiar with.

  Hint taken, he didn’t want to talk. I thought to myself as I watched the city disappear in the passenger side mirror.

  “Hey, wake up,” someone was saying and shaking my shoulder.

  “Huh,” I rose up quickly and looked over to find Liam’s hand on my shoulder.

  “We need gas, and I was trying to see if you were hungry,” he said. He seemed more laid back now. Rather than the tenseness that seemed to consume him earlier.

  “Yeah, sure,” I said glancing around, “where are we?”

  “Some town, Lufkin or something,” he said looking over at the gas pump, “it’s about twenty minutes or so from the lake where her cabin is.”

  “Oh okay,” I told him, “where are we going to eat?
”

  “Something quick, I’m sure our photos are all over the internet now.” He shut the car door and finished filling the car with gas.

  Like Liam said dinner was quick and through a fast food drive-thru, and we were back on the road within minutes. Food in hand.

  “Jill is going to be so mad,” he smirked me as we drove down the highway that seemed to circle the town.

  “Why is that?”

  “She absolutely hates it when people have food in her car.”

  “Ah,” I laughed, “I can be thankful she has never been in my car then.”

  “She probably knows just from talking to you.”

  “That’s messed up,” I told him, “what do you think has happened to her?” I asked him.

  “I don’t know, but she is still alive.”

  We didn’t drive for long before we exited the highway and drove down a smaller roadway.

  “It shouldn’t be much longer now,” he said.

  I stared out of the window as I ate. We drove through one smaller town before we made it down a two lane road with a lot of curves and hills.

  After a bit more time and driving through more trees than houses drove into a semi-gated subdivision. And by semi-gated there was a gate and a guard shack, but there was no guard and the gate was wide open. It was called Pine Forest Estates, the sign boasted luxurious living on the water.

  “Great,” I muttered. I wasn’t sure how this was going to work.

  “Yeah,” Liam agreed, “I’m not a fan either.” And he drove up a driveway to a secluded brown two-story cabin.

  “Fancy,” I told him as we went inside. The place seemed to have all of the modern amenities you could imagine.

  “There are bedrooms this way,” Liam motioned for me to follow him up the stairs.

  He showed me to a room at the top of the stairs and told me that I could stay in it. The room was beautifully decorated with lavender walls and a row of windows that showed off the peaceful lake behind the cabin. I sighed and placed my bag on a large four poster bed next to the door.

  All I wanted to do was curl up on the bed and sleep until everything was over. But I couldn’t so I opened up my bag and pulled out the blonde hair dye and entered the bathroom adjacent to the room.

  Eleven

  The next morning I walked down the stairs looking for food, and found Liam in the kitchen at the stove. It looked as if he were attempting to make pancakes.

  “Do you even know what you are doing?” He jumped, and it gave me a sense of victory that I had startled him.

  “I do,” he shrugged with a nonchalance that I had never seen anyone else possess before. He hid the fact that not even thirty seconds before I had startled him very well. “It’s the only thing that I know how to cook.”

  “Awesome,” I discovered an unopened package of bacon on the counter, “I can cook that if you want.”

  “Sure,” he motioned to another pan on the stove.

  “I haven’t actually done this in a couple of years,” I explained while I opened the package of bacon, “my mother and I used to cook together all of the time.”

  He was quiet, so I looked up to find him staring at me.

  “What? Do I have something on me?” I reached up to wipe my face off.

  He eyes widened, “Sorry, your hair,” and he looked back at the pancakes.

  I brushed my fingers subconsciously through my hair, “does it look bad?” I wanted to kick myself for my sudden bout of self-consciousness. I couldn’t believe I had even asked him that.

  “No, it looks fine,” he flipped a pancake, “better actually.”

  “Um, thanks,” I turned to face him, my hands on my hips. “Did it look bad before?”

  “No it was fine.” He was refusing to look at me. “I just mean this,” he motioned to me while avoiding eye contact, “suits you better.”

  I decided to let the conversation about my hair go. It wasn’t very important, and well I only asked him more about it because I enjoyed his discomfort. Oddly enough I enjoyed it a lot.

  It didn’t take long for us to finish making breakfast. We ate in near silence the only sound being the sounds of us chewing and our forks hitting our plates. Things were still awkward after his semi-praise of my new hair color.

  I cleared my throat to get his attention, “so what do we do around here?”

  He shrugged, “there’s satellite or we could go exploring outdoors,” he glanced out the window at the trees that surrounded that side of the house.

  I immediately wrinkled my nose at the thought of exploring outdoors. Didn’t he realize that I am one hundred percent a city girl? There could be wild animals. Bears, cougars, mountain lions, snakes. I just knew there could be wild animals out there. Did we have bears in east Texas?

  He saw my disdain for things that involved going outside and a devious smirk appeared on his face. The flesh around his eyes started to wrinkle and it was probably the closest he would come to smiling, “exploring the area around the lake it is then.”

  “No, no,” I held my hands up, “it’s okay. I can sit and watch TV. I’m sure you’re still tired from all of that driving yesterday.”

  “I’m perfectly okay,” he didn’t listen to my pleas and after breakfast I was dressed in the most-outdoorsy clothes I owned. Stretch skinny jeans, a comfortable black t-shirt, and my black converse sneakers. Part of me felt as if I should have found a pair of hiking boots. Oh well, I decided. What I had would have to do.

  Luckily I wasn’t that much out of place because Liam was similarly dressed.

  “It’s like we have a uniform,” I muttered and then hoped he didn’t hear me. “Lead the way,” I said louder as we walked out the rear door that faced the lake.

  Just past the yard was a beach area that bordered the water. Far away the water appeared to look blue, but looks were deceiving. Up close the water was a murky brown color. We walked on the beach and passed a few houses. After a while we came upon a sign that read ‘Day Use Area.’

  I stopped walking, “are you serious?” We couldn’t go there, people might be there. And someone could recognize us.

  He stopped next to me, “what?”

  “We are not going there?” I pointed at the sign, “the sign has little boating, fishing and even a swimming symbol.”

  He shrugged, “so?”

  “What if there are people there?”

  “Right,” his pale cheeks tinged red at the realization I had made before did, “people might recognize us from the news.”

  “Now let’s go back and you can teach me all you know about surviving.”

  “Surviving, what?”

  I waved a hand in the air, “all of these lunatics that want to kill us.”

  Over the next few days, we kept a routine. We cooked and ate all of our meals together. And in between we would walk only on the beach near the house. And he would usually tell me everything he had learned from Dr. Griffin and Maggie over the last few years. Oddly enough he had only been having dreams and gained the knowledge of his past lives for the last two years. Around the same amount of time I had been having my dreams.

  With his help, I learned how to banish the souls of the ones who hunted us permanently with the knife. I asked him how it was possible for us to do that. He said it was simple, they used to be people too.

  It puzzled me, because I was sure they should have powers of some sort. After all, weren’t they legendary creatures of history? But not on Earth he told me. I had also asked what makes them different. He said they may never age and live forever on earth, but their power lay in the knives and the chants. They have real power on the battlefields of Purgatory.

  It was all really screwed up. He said I would get it eventually. I informed him that I hoped not that it would be nice to go back to my normal life. Whenever I would say that he would tell me that with everything I knew, there would be no chance of going back.

  I would usually freeze up after those conversations and retreat to the other roo
m and watch TV. They scared me.

  One thing didn’t change though, there were still news reports about us. They had even featured my brother and Arianna in several. They both looked confused and sad. I wished I could contact them and tell them I was innocent.

  Once we hit the one week mark, Liam informed me that we needed to go get groceries.

  “We will drive into town and just make sure we are quick about it,” he fixed a black baseball cap over his smoothed down shaggy black hair.

  “Think my glasses will help,” I usually wore contacts but had chosen to wear them for our trip into town with my hair pulled back into a ponytail.

  He started to laugh at me.

  “I usually wear contacts, and I never wear them for photos, so I don’t think anyone would recognize me with them on.”

  He patted me on the head sympathetically, “they will fool everyone, I promise.”

  “As if that baseball hat will work.”

  He shrugged, and I looked up at him and could see in his eyes that he wasn’t bothered about being caught. He wanted to face this thing head on, and would rather get it all taken care of. He didn’t like waiting. And to make our cabin fever worse, we hadn’t heard from Maggie since we left Houston.

  “I’m pretty sure there are a lot of people that fit my description.”

  No, there isn’t, I almost said, but kept it to myself. It had to be my past lives in my head, but I was convinced that there was no one like him.

  With the internal battle in my head over, I noticed that he was looking at me curiously with an eyebrow raised.

  “Let’s go,” I said and stepped back from his tall frame.

  He nodded and with one last wrinkle of his forehead led the way to the car.

  We discussed it on our drive into town and came up with a strategy to get out of the store as quickly as possible. We each got a list and divided and conquered.

  At the checkout, an older female cashier started ringing out purchases.

  “I’ve never seen you two here before,” she smacked on her gum.

  I held my breath and gave a sideways glance to Liam, “I’m just trying to help my mom out,” I said and I gave her a big smile.