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

by CK Dawn

  “The full name of Prince Críos is not to be spoken by a crippled goddess.” Still holding Saras by the neck, he lifted her in the air until her bulging eyes met his and her feet dangled at least two feet off the ground. “Understand?” the royal guard said.

  Dragon had been watching Saras’s hands during the confrontation, waiting to see if she was too incapacitated to reach any one of the small weapons she tucked away in the “performing” sari she wore whenever she planned a night of karaoke.

  The goddess’s desperate gasps for breath didn’t trouble Dragon too much. Saras loved to play possum before getting down to business. She reminded Dragon of Buddha in that respect.

  Dragon pulled a bowl of peanuts closer to her, shooting Frankie a grateful smile as he exchanged her half-drunk flute for a freshly made drink.

  Suddenly Saras’s twitching body went limp and her head hung from her neck like an overwatered rose. She cracked one eye open, met Dragon’s laughing ones and winked just before she embedded a set of custom brass knuckles in the guard’s face. As an amateur hand-to-hand miscellus combatant, Saras earned the reputation as a reliable closer and with this stunning professional debut (money had been thrown down on tables all over the club the minute the guard wrapped his hand around Saras’s neck), she cemented her place as a serious contender.

  The guard dropped her to staunch the blood spurting out of his nose and mouth.

  “So, Chris is it?” Saras straightened her sari, flicking the vibrant cloth to cover steel-toed boots.

  “No, not Chris. Críos,” the prince said with an irritated glare at his bleeding personal guard.

  “Isn’t that what I said?” Saras blinked at Dragon in confusion.

  “Tomāto, tomăto,” Dragon replied with a shrug.

  “So Críos.” Saras hopped back onto her barstool and examined the Field of Dreams Frankie placed before her. (A fresh coconut from a small grove Snoozy grew using sunlamps and a nature’s glory charm in Molasses’s basement, precisely chopped by the three-hundred-year-old machete of Takoo, the White Witch of Rose Hall’s lover. To its milk, add a generous measure of overproof white rum, a stick of sugar cane, fresh rose petals and a loop-de-loop straw and you had a celebratory cocktail worthy of a tone-deaf goddess or a potion that induced feelings of revenge and uprising.)

  “What’s a shit stain like you doing in a joint like this?” Saras pulled on her straw, groaned with pleasure and gave Frankie—methodically loading the pump-action rifle he kept behind the bar—an enthusiastic thumb-up.

  Críos remained silent, his three other personal guards stepping forward to menace Saras with their weapons—three visible automatic guns, two swords sheathed against the back, one belt of hand grenades and a partridge in a pear tree.

  “Wait,” she said, ditching the straw and taking a swig from the coconut. “Do you want an autograph?” She pulled a black eyeliner pencil out of her bottomless sari and scrawled her name on a bar napkin. “Here, take it.” She held the napkin out to Críos. “Don’t be shy. I stashed a few copies of my CD behind the bar if you’re interested. Nine vens. A bargain—they usually go for twenty and that’s when my inventory’s high.”

  Sixteen

  Dragon snorted, meeting Frankie’s amused eyes and giving in to her laughter.

  “I think he’s looking for me, hon,” she said, using a toothpick to pillage Frankie’s supply of fruit garnish. She turned to Críos. “So, whaddya want?” She chewed on a couple of cubes of pineapple like a cow chewing her cud just to annoy the prince.

  The only female guard of Críos’s entourage stepped towards Dragon and smiled. “Mind your tongue, pigeon.” She grinned to show off her delicately pointed teeth.

  Dragon took a discreet but fortifying breath and admitted to herself that there was no shame in being terrified. Like a sudden downpour, the risk she took by defying her family to see Fel threatened to drown her. Add recent events to that mixture and Dragon briefly considered running home to Jasper. She reminded herself of the sensuality she’d experienced with Fel like she had the right to it instead of having to earn it, and the enduring peace that bit of rest hinted at, and reasoned that hiding wouldn’t stop the bullshit that swirled around her, only prolong it.

  Her world needed fixing. Good thing she had lots a practice with lost causes.

  Críos laid a long-fingered hand on the guard’s shoulder and she stepped back into the shadows so that he could take his place in the flickering light.

  “We have,” he said, his voice low and sensual. “As your kind says, gotten off on the wrong foot.” He smiled and Dragon was dazzled despite her better judgment. “Molasses is well known, even among the Sun as a place of—of—” he looked at his guards for help and emitted an irritated sigh at their collective shrugs “—good cheer and companionship.”

  Despite her fear, Dragon struggled to contain the laughter bubbling to the surface. “It’s hard, isn’t it, trying to entice a creature you think you’re superior to?” She naively gazed into his light-brown eyes and fell into the scene she saw there—late summer hay fields, green with new growth and buzzing with all manner of fly from dragon to house. The blood running through Críos’s veins generated the light and heat that made the seduction he laid upon her so potent she fancied she could smell the hot soil of a fully verdant earth.

  It was akin to rapture, this temptation of fae that he showed her. And yet, for all the uncultivated beauty, there was a dark note of bribery that belied the innocence of the landscape: all this could be hers if only she pledged something to him. Fealty at the very least.

  She metaphysically batted away his first, careless attempt to mesmerize her into service using the techniques Jasper taught her when she was a child. “So much effort for little old me? I’m flattered.” She swallowed the shot of reviving fifteen-year-old cognac that Frankie placed before her.

  “You should be, pigeon,” a male guard said, looking at his reflection in the bar mirror and adjusting the cuffs of his dress shirt. “Prince Críos doesn’t just bestow his favor to every human who falls at his feet. We’d never leave earth else, and I can only stand the stench of mortality for so long before I need to head back into the Sun.”

  “I thought it was just me,” the female guard said. Her sudden grin was at odds with her short spiky platinum hair, midnight suede pants, silver bustier and ruby, fur-collared leather duster combination that screamed other, badass, predictable and a host of other clichés.

  Críos gazed at them as if they were two beloved and precocious children then transferred his smile to Dragon.

  “They must be a handful,” she said. “So, Sun Prince, personal guard wrangler. How do you manage it all and still retain your girlish figure?”

  His answering laugh was forced and clearly said he humored her tiny rebellion the way a handler tolerated his animal’s friskiness.

  “Listen.” He shucked his mellow demeanor. “I can smell the criminal all over you, but just tell me this: Has anyone serious come at you yet?”

  The question totally confused Dragon. One of the reasons that Jasper’s threat to disown her left her overflowing with anxiety was that humans who chose to live in Halo City without miscellus protection soon found that daily survival in a post-K'Davrah world required a tax of some sort. Whether that monthly payment was taken out of wallets or extracted directly from one’s flesh was entirely up to the tax assessor.

  Jasper, Ch’in and Quill had given Dragon protection. No one approached her who didn’t know that one of Cernunnos’s brood, a goddess and a dragon guarded her mind, virtue, soul and any other tradable human commodity.

  “I’m ward of a phooka,” she said, watching his face closely for reaction.

  “Oh?”

  “And Inca’s moon goddess, and a dragon king.”

  “Impressive,” Críos said, staring at her breasts. “So would that be a no?”

  “And I’m seeing someone.”

  “No you’re not,” he said dismissively. He nodded at Frankie who
poured him a glass of the darkest, deadliest stout legally available in Halo City. “You think you are, but really you’ve aligned yourself with nothing. Even here on this rag-tag earth, he is nothing more than a mediocre moment, easily forgotten. So,” he took a sip of his beer, “has anyone gotten to you yet?”

  Putting aside the fact that mentioning Jasper, Quill and Ch’in didn’t make him twitch an eyelid, Dragon found it astounding that a Prince of the Sun would countenance the leftovers of a forgettable thought and said so.

  He chuckled and looked at Dragon appraisingly. “I always forget how clever you humans are.”

  “Our drooling mouths and wagging tails tend to give the wrong impression.”

  “I confess I’ve thought that same thing on many occasions.”

  They grinned at each other, true amusement never once reaching their eyes.

  “So?” Dragon said with raised eyebrows.

  Críos took another sip of his drink, glanced at his guards who gathered up their injured colleague and threw a few bills on the bar. He ran his fingertips along Dragon’s cheek tenderly and cupped her chin, turning her face this way and that as if looking for flaws then left, his entourage trailing behind him like a well-dressed mini-Gestapo.

  “What the hell was that?” Dragon looked at Saras.

  “I believe that was a look-see,” Saras said, watching the prince leave. She faced Dragon and instead of being calm or at least indifferent, Saras’s forehead was furrowed with anxiety.

  “A what?”

  “Mahb sent one of her boys to give you the once over,” Snoozy said, emerging from wherever he’d been hiding. “The question is why?”

  “Fuckin’ one of her favorites, ain’t ya? News of his doings travel,” Frankie muttered around a toothpick.

  “Her favorites?” Saras asked.

  “Where’s your head gone, Sarasvati? Time was you were the go-to girl for lore, gossip, genealogy deconstruction and prophecy.” Snoozy slid onto a stool next to her. “Saved my ass more than twice.” He continued at Saras’s helpless shrug, “Flannacán map Cinid ocus Barita seirbhíseach Mahb Tóisech was thirty-sixth in line to the throne at birth. A millennia and a half later the distance between him and the throne had shrunk to eighteen. Backstabbing and murder are prerequisite learning at the bright court. Tutors are brought in for the young,” Snoozy said with a disbelieving chuckle. “Even got some remedial training seminars for those who just want to keep their skills sharp.

  “But Flannacán wanted none of it—”

  “That’s right,” Saras nodded, remembering. “There is the story of a fae sunling with grave eyes who was totally unspoiled by life at court—unheard of in fae—and remained so well into maturity. Charmed by him, Mahb kept him by her side, loving him above all things, including her own children.” Pleased with herself for remembering the story, Saras patted herself on the back and met Snoozy’s patient, expectant eyes. “Wait, that was Fel?” Her eyes widened as she stared at Snoozy then transferred them to Dragon. “Do you have any idea who the hell you’re screwing?”

  “Haven’t screwed him yet,” Dragon muttered under her breath.

  “What?” Saras said.

  “Um, no?”

  “The conspiracy theorists at court predicted that Mahb would find a way to name him her successor, whenever she decided to make the throne available, that is. Retirement and golden years aren’t exactly part of the lexicon. Still, one of the really out-there theories said she’d raise Fel from well-born to Prince and let him run the whole shebang—acting king or some such—while she lived a life of diplomatic leisure, improving relations with the Shade and humans,” Snoozy said.

  Frankie snorted and poured himself a shot of Clean grain alcohol. “More like she wanted a temp to mind the store while she shopped in greener pastures.” He threw back the shot and poured himself another. “Increasing the Sun’s borders to include worlds that had crumbled into being after the Collapse, which would’ve never washed with Sun face elite; bunch of fucking xenophobes.” he explained.

  “Very true,” Saras said. “Racial purity has been a Sun precept since the beginning.”

  “Word was, she had a plan or two brewing to make them mind,” Frankie said. “Last I’d heard, she had an offer of godhood.”

  “Okay, it’s all coming back to me now. She’d had an offer to become goddess Mahb and negotiated it to include all of the Bright court. But being imbued with divinity didn’t leave the court brimming with enthusiasm. Long life and everything they could ever want at their fingertips was enough. Widening their reality to include all creatures, light and dark alike, having supplicants and temples built in their honor went over about as well as offering someone who’d never had to work a day a job as a maid.

  “There are rules about divinity that are unbreakable,” she explained at Dragon’s disbelieving look. “It’s true. Regular hours of worship, time set aside for petitions, overseeing the training of all priests and priestesses up to and including curriculum development, coming up with signs and miracles to keep people faithful in the worst of times,” she recited and rolled her eyes. “It’s more work than you think. Hours of prep.”

  “Okay, so the Sun fae turned down the gig of a lifetime, so what?”

  “It’s not like they had a choice,” Frankie said. “Sun queen says jump, you say how high and expect to land on something sharp and debasing if you’re lucky.”

  “But if there was no chosen heir to take over in her absence…” Snoozy continued the story.

  At this Dragon’s lagging attention sat up straight and she went over that memorable walk through Trash Bin and the personal details confessed. “Are you saying that the reason what’s his face—Doque,” she remembered suddenly, “approached Fel for recruitment was to keep him from ascending the Sun’s throne?”

  “And to keep Mahb from ascending to the heavens, that’s the rumor,” Saras confirmed. “Rumors also whisper that Doque had help from inside Mahb’s closest circle.”

  “Holy shit.” Dragon tried to imagine the suffering Fel experienced and caused during the war that prompted him to look for safety in drugs and prostitution. She remembered too that Fel drew scant comfort from the fact that the cause he’d given his honor to was a good one.

  “Does Fel know?” she asked.

  “Conspiracy theories overran the court like a garden long gone to seed,” Snoozy said. “Even when Fel and his men had been deep in-country for over a year, Mahb’s heart-son would’ve heard that he might’ve been played by Doque. As to whether he believed it or not…” Snoozy shrugged. “At the end of that Pan billshit, CRA’s infantry was so disillusioned, going AWOL stopped being a criminal offense and became a brave soldier’s rite of passage.”

  “My God,” Dragon breathed. “Why? Why would Doque go to all that trouble?”

  “Well now, that is the fifty million ven question, isn’t it? Big Bone Frida keeps a betting book in her lingerie shop with plenty of answers,” Snoozy said. “Fifty of my own hard earned says Doque did it just to piss Mahb off, keep her here on earth with the rest of us mere mortals. Sun versus Shade is a grudge match that’s been ongoing for the last twenty thousand years.”

  “Still.” Dragon shook her head at the idea that a powerful warrior of the Sun had been manipulated simply to satisfy the whim of a darkling prince. “Surely there were plenty of other candidates in Mahb’s own court to help her further her ambitions. Doque recruited one. Why didn’t Mahb find another?”

  “Flannacán’s one in a million,” Frankie said. “Boy’s got a weirdness about him. Not like other fae, that’s for sure.”

  “What do you mean?” Dragon’s inability to see Fel’s potential was something she’d assumed was her failing, a glitch in her process that required some sort of upgrade on her part. It never occurred to her that Fel broadcasted a universally incomprehensible signal.

  “He’s special,” Snoozy said, making the air quotes sign.

  “Gimme a break!” Saras scoffed and rolled her
eyes, reaching behind the bar for a bottle of rum to freshen her coconut.

  “It’s true,” Snoozy insisted. “Not only was he not conceived using fae enhanced fertility potions and a psychic lure to guide sperm and enhance the magnetism of the egg—the normal way—but he was a mistake. Mommy and Daddy hadn’t spoken in centuries, but managed to come together during Críos’s week-long birth celebration. Cinid’s mistress at the time caught him in his wife’s bed going in for a second bone, broke up the party and insisted her boy was too hopped up on faerie wine to know what was what.”

  “You believe that?” Frankie said with a snort.

  Snoozy shook his head. “Barita is a good-looking woman. Got a cunt that’s got teeth, but I wouldn’t pass up a chance to fuck her.”

  “And the fae don’t get pregnant by accident,” Dragon said. “I should know. Only reason Jasper agreed to keep me was because of his knee-jerk reaction to revere a child at all costs—even a human one.”

  “Maybe it was the way he got mixed in his momma’s womb, maybe not. All I know is that Flannacán’s not like other fae. Always does the unexpected. Always capable of more than just shows of brawn or magic,” Frankie said.

  “So Doque maybe, maybe not ruined Fel’s life. Fel might’ve known about it or maybe he didn’t. What does any of it matter?” Dragon reached for a few slices of orange and yelped when Frankie slapped her hand. “He is banished. I was under the impression that being in that state was kinda a permanent thing.”

  “It is,” Frankie said, handing Dragon a basket of warm rolls and red pepper chutney he plucked off the dumb waiter behind the bar.

  “So what’s with the look-see?”

  All eyes turned to the only thing resembling a soothsayer in the vicinity.

  “Don’t look at me!” Saras snagged one of Dragon’s rolls and smeared it with the spicy spread. “I haven’t been in the loop since forever. Last I heard a look-see was the way miscellus went shopping for a new toy.”

  “So maybe that’s all it was,” Dragon said.