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

by CK Dawn

  “Willita, please give us a moment. We’ve hardly seen you these last few weeks.”

  “Quill,” Dragon whined. “Okay,” she sighed, “see me, but do it quickly.”

  Quill smiled nervously at Ch’in and Jasper. “So,” she hedged, patting the empty cushioned space between her and Jasper. “How have you been?”

  “Quill!” Dragon shrieked then calmed. “My first appointment is in forty-five minutes. Let’s have breakfast tomorrow, okay? But right now I’ve got to go.”

  “Dragon,” Jasper stood decisively, “I love you. So much it surprises me.”

  “Dad,” Dragon said a bit bewildered, “I love you too, you know that, but—”

  “You’re a slut, Dragon, and that’s got to stop here and now. Ch’in.” Jasper looked significantly at the once powerful dragon, did a double-take when he got a gander at his Guess what? Chicken butt T-shirt, then motioned with a desperate wave for Ch’in to back him up. “Tell her, Ch’in.”

  “Yes. Yes.” Ch’in rolled to his knees and settled gracefully on his haunches. He cleared his throat. “Little Sister, you have the biggest soul I’ve ever encountered, human or no—”

  “I am not a slut!”

  “You have slept with every boy you’ve ever known!” Jasper shouted.

  “—and as such, your burdens will torment you more than the rest of us, but—”

  “What Jasper is trying to say,” Quill qualified glaring at Jasper, “is that you are perhaps too free with your…body,” she finished lamely.

  “—the tender breadth of your soul does not guarantee that it can withstand the—ah rigors of frequent and ephemeral affection.”

  “That’s your speech?” Jasper ran incredulous fingers through his shaggy hair.

  “How I love is none of—”

  “Don’t even think about finishing that sentence!”

  “Jasper, calm yourself.” Quill patted his shoulder reassuringly. “Willita, what your father means is that we worry about your spirit. As Ch’in said, it is so beautiful. Not even at our best did we, gods and angels,” she motioned to herself, Jasper and Ch’in, “bring so much light, offer so much warmth. Your soul is rare and so very fine, and every piece you give away goes unappreciated by the men in your life and cripples you, mija.” Quill held out her hands to Dragon whose lips flattened with frustration before she took them. “We love you. We only want what’s best.” She cupped Dragon’s clenched jaw, caressing her temples until she huffed, rolled her eyes and finally cracked a thin smile to cover her pounding heart.

  Quill’s assessment of the situation hit so close to home, Dragon wondered if the goddess knew the truth about her ability. With all she’d done to keep the depths of her addiction from her family, Dragon doubted it. Not even Saras knew how far gone Dragon was and that bitch could spot a lie at twenty paces.

  “Mama Neck Tie calls you Tea Bags, did you know that?” Jasper said tightly. He drained Quill’s wineglass and started pacing.

  “She does not!” Dragon pulled away from Quill to cover up her embarrassment at the thought that even a four-hundred-pound homeless zombie knew the intimate details of her personal life.

  “Tea Bags?” Ch’in asked from the floor. “Is this a term of endearment?”

  Quill uttered a dejected moan, sank to the settee and covered her face with her hands.

  Ch’in turned his confused gaze to Jasper. “So perhaps not an endearment, but tea is still good, still quite something.”

  Jasper raised his hand to run through his hair and stopped. “I’ll be bald if I keep this up,” he muttered to no one. “Did you grow up under a rock?”

  “A crystal and pearl palace at the bottom of the southern seas, actually,” Ch’in corrected stiffly.

  Jasper closed his eyes and took a deep breath before striding to Ch’in and whispering purposefully in his ear.

  The light of understanding, then embarrassment, rouged Ch’in’s face.

  “I can’t do this,” Dragon said, embarrassed herself. She headed back to her room only to reemerge holding a tube of lipstick and a thin black compact, which she shoved into her bag.

  “Only humans would use irreverence to denigrate pleasure,” Ch’in mumbled unhappily. “Little Sister.” Ch’in’s deep, softly sincere voice stopped her as she fiddled with her purse’s clasp and prepared to stalk self-righteously out of the Salon. “I am unaccustomed to passing judgment. I only do so now because I find myself in the honorable position of—of having a family to cherish.” He filled his lungs with a bracing breath of air. “The last human you—ah—aligned yourself with was—was—”

  “A criminal!” Jasper shouted.

  “A felon.” Ch’in nodded at Jasper then reevaluated, glancing at Dragon’s narrowed eyes. “That is not the correct term? My ability to fluently communicate with humans has not developed as I’d hoped despite the years I’ve lingered on dry earth—Quillya, tell me truly. Is felon the wrong word?”

  “Hush, Ch’in.”

  “The last one was a felon!” Jasper insisted hotly. “He was caught selling drugs to an undercover anti-charm narcotic officer. Twice!”

  “Jasper,” Quill admonished, “that was two boyfriends ago. The last one was only convicted of multiple grand larcenies.”

  “Oh—I…are you certain? Then who was the one who escaped from prison?”

  “He was one of the gay parade.” Quill nodded as Jasper’s face lightened with remembrance.

  “I thought we weren’t going to include him on that roster.”

  “He acknowledged his orientation after he was intimate with Willita, but before his incarceration—”

  “And subsequent escape,” Ch’in added.

  “—so I added him to the gay list.”

  “Just how many friggin’ lists are there?” Dragon spat out through clenched teeth. “Forget it, I don’t want to know.” Fuming at her family’s intrusiveness she turned to leave then stopped, deciding instead to voice her betrayal.

  “First of all,” she began, “with respect, who the fuck are the three of you to lecture me on sex? All three of you do it when you’re horny, bored, in love, out of love, before magic, during magic—you even told one woman that a blow job was a necessary rite to help restore balance after a bit of complicated casting.” She pointed an accusing finger at Ch’in, deepening her voice and lacing it with a few breathy breaks to mimic his accent.

  “Wilhelmina! I value my privacy! I will not tolerate this—this—bah!” Ch’in finished.

  “Ch’in, you dog you.” Jasper grinned.

  “Stop this!” Quill stood, her mouth set in a firm line. “Willita, we love, we fuck,” she said, ignoring everyone’s raised eyebrows at her uncharacteristic use of vulgarity. “But that which powers us is not part of the act. The least we expect from a joining is relief. At the middling, pleasure and at best it is the physical expression of the love we feel. But you, from the outset your intention is given so that your partner may fulfill his pleasure, his dreams, his potential. And that, my love, is wrong.”

  Dragon looked away from the censure in Quill’s eyes. “He paints,” she murmured quietly. She thought of the uncomfortable joining she allowed in Junior’s dirty men’s room and revised. “I’m not seeing him again anyway.”

  “So you finally realize that screwing him is not enough to save him from a life of crime and make him into a successful artist?” Jasper asked his scowl disbelieving. “The way you realized that screwing that idiot who could fry a goddamn egg wouldn’t make him into a chef?”

  “Phooka! Your condescension is not necessary here.” Quill glared at Jasper before turning back to Dragon. “Your will is not divine,” she qualified gently, “but it is potent nonetheless. We wouldn’t be here otherwise.” Her worried eyes begged Jasper to be more reasonable.

  Still furious, Jasper nodded at Quill curtly and sat down.

  “Loving a man is fine as long as they reciprocate, Willita. The kind of men you tend to choose never reciprocate, do they?” Quill
asked, knowing full well the men in Dragon’s life wouldn’t bother to see to her pleasure when Dragon seemed more than content to cater to theirs.

  “Oh god, I can’t hear this,” Jasper groaned.

  Dragon’s gaze darted between Jasper and Quill, noting their desperate anger. “He is—was different,” she said, hoping to allay their fears even a little bit.

  “I believe you have said this before,” Ch’in said kindly, forgetting his earlier affront.

  Dragon’s past mistakes trooped before her eyes like a bread line. At the end of it was Fel. His intense gaze made her body clench in remembered pleasure. Her reaction to the memory was so visceral; she looked around to see if anyone else noticed heat rising off her body in blurring waves. No, she thought answering Quill’s earlier question. No one’s ever reciprocated. Until now.

  She kneeled in front of Jasper, clasping one of his big hands in hers. “I’m turning over a new leaf, Dad,” she said, forcing a smile.

  “Darling,” Jasper sighed, “I’m so glad to hear you say that, even if it’s the twentieth time.”

  Dragon laughed self-consciously. “The twentieth and last.” The cuckoo clock over an enormous fireplace chimed. Instead of a bird poking its head out of a door, the entire roof opened like the doors to a missile silo and a crowd of tiny swamp gnomes sang a barroom ditty before drunkenly shouting the incorrect time.

  “Can we talk more later? I really have to go.” Dragon stood, turned and nearly ran into Quill standing quietly behind her.

  Her unblinking gaze paralyzed Dragon while it scrutinized her from head to toe. “You’re seeing someone, aren’t you?”

  Dragon’s eyes widened guiltily. “No! I told you I broke up with Ryan last night.” Her voice broke like a teenaged boy’s at the lie.

  “Quill,” Jasper said with a condescending smile, “Dragon couldn’t have dumped one guy and found another in the last twelve hours.”

  “But she did,” Quill insisted, leveling a hard look at Dragon. “Didn’t you?”

  Unable to maintain Quill’s knowing stare, Dragon dropped her eyes and tried not to squirm.

  “Oh my God!” Jasper shouted horrified.

  “A moon goddess always knows,” Quill said with a grin and a curtsey.

  “Very expedient of you, Little Sister.”

  “I’m late. I’m leaving. Good-bye.” She turned and nearly tripped over Buddha whose quiet appearance before her belied his customary laziness.

  He pinned her with hard topaz eyes, and his low growl seemed to reiterate her parents’ displeasure with her.

  “Et tu, Buddha?” she sneered at the cat, convinced now more than ever that the beast had the higher-brain functioning abilities of a human—a human who was born a genius and, bored by the challenges lobbed at him, quickly graduated to lazy degenerate.

  “Move, puppy, I’m late.” She bared her teeth at the gryphonita.

  Buddha’s roar fluttered Dragon’s overlong bangs. Completely unafraid of the cat she nurtured since she found him pawing through the Salon’s garbage, his patchy coat hanging from his bony body, Dragon roared back and prepared to wrestle the cat into submission as she’d done many times in the past—as he’d let her do many times in the past.

  Jasper grabbed Dragon’s hand before she could brawl with her stubborn pet. His unhappy frown flattened to an exhausted grimace and instead of shaking her as he clearly wanted to do, he ran his fingers over Dragon’s loose chignon and along her cheek.

  “Dad, my hair,” she whined, unnecessarily tucking a bobby pin into place.

  “Love, can you just wait before you sleep with this new one? Can you do me that one favor?”

  “Jasper, the ship has clearly sailed on that one.” Quill filled the empty wine glass almost to the brim.

  Ch’in smiled sympathetically and nodded in agreement.

  Jasper’s disbelieving eyes swung back and forth between Ch’in’s sympathy and Quill’s swilling. “But it’s only been twelve hours…” His voice trailed off.

  Dragon stared up at her father, her eyes huge. In all the years they’d been a family, she’d tested his patience more times than she was happy to admit, but each time Jasper’s love for her never wavered. She knew this time would be more of the same, but her heart squeezed painfully at the broken look that dimmed his dancing blue eyes. “Gotta go, Daddy.”

  “Okay, okay.” Jasper nodded, his eyes closed as if to realign his expectations and come up with a new list of what he could live with as it concerned Dragon. “Come straight home after work tonight. It’s Pan’s Feast. No one should work on a holiday,” he grumbled and held his arms wide. When Dragon walked into them, he held her close as if an embrace could keep her safe.

  “I was going to pick up a pork loin for dinner,” Ch’in said.

  The brass gong Ch’in had installed outside the gates last week as a doorbell was struck twice, causing Buddha to yowl as if the sound pained him. With an odd, feline glare at Dragon, he padded to the side door and sat in front of it

  Jasper tightened his arms around Dragon and scowled at Quill. “I can’t believe you think that’s better than the bell I installed. I feel like I’m living in a friggin’ monastery.”

  “Your buzzer was like a starting shot to the gate and only someone pushing the buzzer again would stop it from copulating—have a good day, Willita,” Quill called to Dragon as she pulled away from Jasper and grabbed her bag.

  Grabbing a handful of salmon-flavored finger bones from the coffee table’s drawer, Dragon nodded at Quill, whistled at Buddha, now sprawled like a red sequoia in front of the door, and tossed the treats on the battered recliner.

  A few excited thumps prefaced the sight of the cat crouched in the chair, nose buried in its torn cushion, wings and hind-quarters raised to the heavens, his erect tail barring his asshole to all and sundry.

  “Love you!” Dragon yelled with a bit more enthusiasm than necessary, hoping that truth would downplay the others her family detailed only a few mortifying moments ago.

  The three immortals stared at the front door that still echoed from the slam, looked helplessly at each other then sank exhaustedly onto the nearest piece of furniture.

  “We can draw hope, I believe,” Ch’in said from an ottoman embroidered with the scene of many naked, erect men chasing after one, large-breasted woman, “that at least the Dragon is aware that her behavior is troubling.” He allowed himself to hope that this latest man would see Dragon’s magnificent soul and do all within his power to nurture it. A long shot, he knew, but he was desperate to believe, as they all were, that Dragon’s fire was at last well and truly given.

  Jasper raised an eyebrow at Ch’in’s attempt at optimism, but said nothing.

  “What do we do when she comes home in tears because this new one—whoever he is—breaks her heart?” Quill said quietly.

  “Same as always,” Jasper sighed.

  Quill nodded. “And if more than her heart is damaged?”

  “Is it pompous if I say I’d never let that happen?” Jasper directed at Quill who’d accused him of that just last night.

  “I said sanctimonious.”

  “I believe know-it-all was your—”

  “Ch’in,” Quill warned then sighed dejectedly. “Not pompous. Wishful thinking, perhaps,” she qualified at Jasper’s glare. “We are not who we once were. No one is, anymore.”

  “We live in very strange times,” Ch’in agreed.

  “Willita’s intention may be potent, but it isn’t bottomless. If she is broken by yet another man taking all she has to offer, I honestly don’t know what any of us could do to fix it.” She reached over the settee’s armrest and patted Buddha’s head as he loudly chewed the last of the finger bones. He yawned then invested a few uncommitted licks in cleaning his paw and fell asleep.

  “Perhaps we are mistaken in believing that she will not be able to recover when this affair ends. Perhaps, like the rest, she will simply grieve when they’re gone then heal.” Ch’in looked hopefully
at Jasper and Quill, willing them to reflect what he was feeling. What he saw was fear and he cursed his dragon’s heart for portraying the truth, for he had felt afraid too.

  “We love her. She knows this. That will help her well from going dry,” Quill said hopefully. “She cannot give away the love that we have given her. Our hearts are for her alone.”

  “Her soul is fading. She thinks I don’t know, but I can feel it,” Jasper murmured to no one and let his head fall heavily on the settee’s backrest. “My beautiful girl.”

  “Indeed,” Ch’in said, watching Buddha yawn and roll to his side, the feathers of his spotted wings fluttering briefly in shuddering jerks. “I wonder who was at the door. The cat has never responded to the bell at the front gate before.”

  “No. No he hasn’t,” said Quill.

  Six

  Dragon closed the thick, oak side-entrance door and rested against it for a minute before heading for the front gate. She allowed the sadness she’d felt while the intervention was happening to consume her. That the people she loved and trusted the most were forced to such extreme measures on her behalf made her feel lower than the living slime that scavenged the bellies of terapedes. But what filled her with despair was the familiar lament that if she could control her need to see the possibility of the men she became involved with, none of this—her humiliation, her degrading episode with Ryan and the overwhelmingly erotic encounter that immediately followed—would’ve ever happened.

  How many times had she tried to turn it off or restrict its all-encompassing net to more suitable candidates? Hypnosis, spells, naturopathic medicine. She’d even paid a drained genie twenty vens for the chance to hold his pruney hands and make a wish. He’d warned her that he had no juice left, but she’d been desperate. Nothing had worked and now even her parents had noticed the damage her ability caused.