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

by CK Dawn

  Sliding her finger inside him she said, “I want to. I love knowing I can make you—”

  He shouted his pleasure as he orgasmed, his stiffening body floating them both to the bath’s surface.

  “Come,” she finished, stropping his softening cock gently.

  Fel hardly heard her over his pounding heart when she said, “The other more significant event is my grandmother’s reemergence after a twenty-year absence.”

  “Grandmother?” he murmured, allowing his relaxing body to drift to the tub’s bottom.

  “According to her, I was engineered to fit you.”

  Struggling to focus, Fel said, “And she would know this how?”

  “Been sunning the last couple of decades,” she said, her voice low with resentment.

  Fel fancied he could feel her pain and even still he envied Dragon’s grandmother. Her time in the Sun, Fel knew, would’ve been an unending collection of pain-filled moments: some abstract, giving only the impression of an ultimate goal. Others were starker, showcasing pain before pleasure or pain before pain. It was nevertheless existence in the light, and as one from which it had been veiled, Fel craved any tear that let in vibrancy, no matter how mean.

  “And she came to see you just like that?”

  “Saras called her.”

  “Some friend,” he scoffed, resting his hand on her bottom even as she stiffened.

  “She knew I needed answers. Between you and the pain my ability caused, I thought I was losing my mind. She was just trying to help.”

  Fel ignored her defensive tone. If they were going to be together, then they should be able to state the obvious—as he saw it. And if that meant fussing until things were resolved in three acts, so be it.

  As far as he could tell they were just beginning Act I, Open Hostility and Serious Arguing. Only Exhausted Communication to go before they could indulge in days of Reconciliation.

  Looking forward to those sweaty, erotic moments, Fel forged on. “How? By letting some idiot Sun lord looking to socially climb know you even exist?”

  She stood abruptly, water cascading over her lush body. “She is the best friend I have in this whole stupid world. My sister. What exactly are you implying?” she said, stepping out of the tub and wrapping the discarded towel around her.

  He pulled the rubber stop from the tub’s drain before rising, noting with enormous satisfaction the way Dragon’s pissed off gaze couldn’t help but devour his body.

  “She’s a goddess, for Christ’s sake. I remember when she was born. Humans were living in ages so dark, we actually thought they were devolving,” he said. “The few arts and humanities divinities available weren’t interested in the gig. A search committee was formed and they plucked Sarasvati out of human obscurity and tapped her for greatness.” He made the air quotes sign when he said greatness, having inside knowledge about the intolerable bureaucracy of godhood. “She would certainly know that a god—no matter how diminished by K’Davrah—inquiring about the toy of some obscure Sun lord would garner attention!”

  “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!” she yelled and stomped out of the bathroom into the bedroom.

  He followed her, belatedly realizing that he should not have voiced his suspicions, but continued on, operating under the theory that in for a penny, in for a ven.

  “Dragon, I’m not saying she’s not your friend. I’m simply saying that she either did something incredibly stupid or incredibly self-serving. My money’s on self-serving.”

  “Fuck you!”

  “Which is not to say she doesn’t care about you.” He watched her struggle into her bra and haul his T-shirt over her head. “But of everyone we know who knows that I’m unfinished and that you were…engineered, only she went looking for answers in the one place that could hurt us the most.”

  She ignored him as she pulled on her colorful skirt.

  He grabbed her shoulders, forcing her to face him. “She went looking for answers in the one place that would kill us.”

  She held up one hand, “You’re a fucking asshole,” then held up the other and counterbalanced that pronouncement with, “I’m leaving. Sorted,” she declared. “Now get your hands off me!”

  He released her and took a step back to watch her pick up her colorful blouse from where it ended up on the floor and shove it into her duffel.

  Resentment scalded him and he ducked back into the bathroom and wrapped a towel around his waist to keep himself from strangling her. He was only summarizing events as he saw it. It wasn’t his fault that her friend’s behavior was suspect.

  Don’t kill the friggin’ messenger, he thought angrily as he stalked into the bedroom to make her see that he was right.

  She barely glanced at him as she reached between the bed’s pillows and retrieved her plain cotton panties.

  Abruptly his need to argue gave way to reason. “Love, you know her better than I do. I’m just giving you my interpretation of events.”

  Her glare was murderous.

  “I’m not in her shoes. I don’t know the first thing about your friendship. I’m probably wrong.”

  She slung the bag over her shoulder and stomped out of his bedroom.

  Fel followed her, his need to be right totally usurped by his need to see Dragon’s panties hidden among the pillows or under the covers or under the bed, as long as they weren’t on her.

  “Definitely wrong,” he conceded without a qualm, coming up behind her still form in the living room. He slid his arms around her and bent to chastely kiss her neck, relieved when her hand buried itself into the hair at his nape.

  “Fel,” she said.

  Something laced her voice with fear and he lifted his head and followed her gaze to see Charlemagne slumped in the recliner. Several long gashes split his chest open, revealing muscle in some cases, bone in others, and pink healthy organ in one.

  “Jesus God,” Fel whispered, rushing over to his friend. “Charlie, Charlie,” he called, ripping off his towel and pressing it against the wound bleeding the most. “Talk to me, buddy.” He took another towel from the pile Dragon rushed into the living room, pushed the vital organ that squeezed out at every labored breath back in and placed a folded a towel over it, applying as much pressure as he dared. “Easy,” he said when Charlie squirmed in pain.

  Charlie’s eye’s blinked open and Fel said, “You kill him?”

  “Damn straight,” Charlie gasped.

  “Was it old?”

  “Blue,” Charlie corrected. “That sad-sack sonofabitch who works at Vera’s.”

  Fel looked at Dragon and nodded in the direction of the freezer, visible through the dining room’s doorway. “Not the waiter who looks like an anatomy-class skeleton?”

  “The very one.”

  “Julian,” Fel nodded, remembering the waiter’s name. “He seemed so…jovial.”

  “Gave you some halfway respectable advice as I recall.”

  Fel surveyed Charlie’s bloody chest. “Didn’t know he had this in him.”

  “You and me both, buddy,” Charlie responded weakly. “Apparently he’s been seriously depressed for years. Been hitting the bottle pretty hard. Just graduated to World of Twirls,” he said, using the current slang for heroin. “Gem ran him a tab.”

  “Which, of course, he can’t pay,” Fel said.

  “You got it.”

  Having retrieved a Pain-Eeze compress from the freezer, Dragon placed it on the largest wound. They both watched Charlie heave a grateful sigh as the charm pushed its dull gray roots deep into his flesh, its turquoise medicine pulsing visibly through them.

  “We should bring him to a hospital,” she whispered. She handed Fel a pair of jeans, a clean button down and the boots she’d retrieved when she went looking for towels.

  Fel laughed without humor. “Love, Charlie and I don’t exactly lead above-ground kind of lives.”

  “Haven’t since our collective dishonorable, you-really-fucked-up discharge,” Charlie added.
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br />   “Okay,” she said reasonably. “We’ll go to Bobby.”

  “Dr. Death pays Gemma protection money monthly. Bobby would be obliged to tell her about me and Charlemagne, and I would rather not put him in that position.” Fel packed more towels over the Pain-Eeze compress on Charlie’s chest. He glanced up at Dragon and caught her scowl. “Don’t blame Bobby, Dragon. Life is more complicated here than it ever was in the Sun or the Shade. He’s only doing what he has to do to survive.”

  “Then we need to get him to Saras’s. She has as much knowledge as anyone I know about healing.”

  “She smell good?” Charlie said with a crooked smile.

  “Fine.” Fel ignored his friend and the fact that he’d all but announced that he didn’t trust his woman’s best friend. “Hand me that tape.” He pointed to a roll of electrical tape sitting on the sill of the living room’s dusty bay windows. “There’s a phone in the kitchen,” he said, bandaging it with black tape. “Call your…friend.”

  “I trust her,” Dragon said stiffly.

  “Fine. Call her and tell her we’re coming.” He wound the tape around Charlie’s torso, trying not to think about how close his friend was to death. There were many steps in between that eventuality and now. Binding the wound in the field was just the first.

  “Fel,” Charlie said, his voice faint. “Stop that now. Listen to me.” He took a shuddering breath and continued. “The waiter was miscellus. I don’t know what exactly, but he definitely wasn’t human. Also, whatever magic he had before K'Davrah, he has now—had now.”

  “We all lost everything to K'Davrah.” Me more than most, Fel thought, but said nothing.

  “Well, either he didn’t or he got it back somehow. His strength wasn’t human, Lieutenant. Neither was the broadsword he literally pulled out of his chest. Dude, I watched it take shape on his flesh like a tattoo. Never seen anything like it. It was breakable, though. Probably made of his bones. Broke that first one into kindling, no problem.”

  “How many more were there?”

  “Millions,” Charlie groaned as Fel gathered him gently into his arms.

  Dragon nodded at them as she went to the front door and opened it wide. “She knows we’re coming.”

  They headed down the porch steps, following the large splatters of blood. The stone gargoyles minding Fel’s house fretted at the scent of fresh blood, their agitated movements causing pebbles and dust to fall from their wings.

  “Keep up, okay?” he said to Dragon who nodded and moved the strap of her duffel from her shoulder over her head to secure it.

  “Buddy, buddy,” Charlie whispered, visibly fading. “The waiter told me that Gem knows about you. Knows that Mahb hid her stash in you. Gem’s been trying to get it first. That’s why she put out the Blushing Bride contract.”

  “What stash?” Fel asked, meeting Dragon’s frightened gaze.

  “Was hoping you’d know,” Charlie said then lost consciousness.

  Cradling his friend, Fel took off at a run, Dragon keeping pace behind him.

  Twenty-Two

  They arrived at Saras’s loft as dusk gave way to night.

  Saras opened the door before her welcome mat’s occupants could knock.

  “Put him on the floor in front of the fireplace,” she instructed, disappearing into her library and reappearing with an old trunk the size of a small loveseat. She opened it as Fel gently set Charlemagne down, laying his hand across his friend’s closed lids and whispering an age-old fae chant to ensure hope, knowing as he did that he had no power to fuel the spell.

  Dragon helped Saras push back the heavy, intricately carved lid of the trunk, pulling on one of two sturdy leather handles until a cabinet of drawers expanded up and outward like an ornate diaphragm. Each of the two cabinets’ fifty drawers were precisely labeled in Sanskrit and decorated with cylindrical drawer pulls each filled with a sample of the drawer’s contents in its natural habitat. The drawer that contained lotus oil, water and powder had a drawer pull filled with a bit of still, dark water and a tiny, pink lotus flower.

  “I don’t mean to be totally self-centered,” Dragon said, plucking a purple stained smock from the bottom of the trunk and handing it to Saras. “But did you figure out a binding spell for me?”

  Saras nodded shortly and opened three drawers before she found a single exaggerated dandelion, its seeded head populated instead with what looked like tiny yellow droplets capped with hundreds of white parasols.

  “You’re a fucking genius, you know that?”

  “Yes,” Saras answered simply.

  “So blow it on me, already.”

  “The moon has to be full,” Saras said, carefully placing the flower back in its drawer.

  “Fuck that! Infect my pristine lawn with your virulent weed. I can take it.”

  “Hey,” Fel said, laying a hand on Dragon’s shoulder. “My brother is dying. Can we please prioritize?”

  “Of course,” Saras said with a glare at Dragon. She pulled open a drawer containing Water Grass, and another filled with Leaf of Life, and still another, using her smock as a glove to withdraw a few leaves of Cow Itch.

  Dragon took a breath to question the last choice and let it out without saying a word. Saras concocted healing like a chef created new dishes: impetuously, with passion and instinct. A decade of combat experience as a medic didn’t hurt either.

  Saras tossed her ingredients in a lapis pestle and ground them before adding them to a bowl of lotus water. Peeling away Charlie’s terry-cloth dressing, Saras pulled off the Pain-Eeze and, ignoring the blood that immediately began to run off Charlie’s chest and pool on the floor, poured the bubbling mass over his wounds, then leapt back as cold, blue flames erupted on his chest.

  “Leave it,” she said, pulling Fel back. “The flames are neither hot nor cold. They act as needle and thread.”

  They watched the flames rise higher until the licking tips caressed Saras’s rose-quartz-and-crystal chandelier. When they turned fuchsia and finally blue again, Saras’s intercom buzzed.

  She pressed the answer button. “Who?”

  At the lack of response she looked at Fel and Dragon and shrugged, jumping a foot when a fist pounded against her door.

  “Jesus,” Saras whispered, wiping her hands with the hem of her smock. “Hold your goddamn horses,” she shouted when a fist hit the door with enough force to rattle it. Six feet wide and ten feet tall of solid steel intimated by a knock Saras rushed to give the abused door some relief.

  She ignored the peep-hole and opened the door, uttering an incredulous, “Holy Jesus wept,” when Gemma stormed in, transforming into her demon form.

  “Honey,” she grinned at Fel. “Been looking for you everywhere.”

  Fel grabbed a ten-pound hunk of raw amethyst from Saras’s mantel and hurled it at the demon’s head, embedding the chunk of amethyst in Gemma’s face. The force of the blow propelled Gem out of Saras’s front door and into the wall directly opposite with an echoing thud.

  Saras slammed the door shut and quickly twisted the three deadbolts.

  “That won’t stop her,” Fel said, reaching into the blue flame engulfing Charlie and lifting his friend into his arms. “Bedroom?” he directed at Saras who pointed down a shadowy hallway. “You need to get out of here,” he said over his shoulder to Dragon as he disappeared then reappeared seconds later holding both of Saras’s court scimitars. He tossed one to Saras who caught it easily just as what Dragon assumed was the hunk of amethyst shattered against the door.

  Gemma’s enraged roar shook Dragon to her core and she automatically took a step backward.

  Fel put a hand on her shoulder, making her jump. “We’ll keep her busy, so you can go.”

  Another roar tore through the building followed by Gemma throwing herself against the steel door with enough force to shake the rafters.

  “When you get home, tell the phooka everything. He will protect you.”

  “Protect you from what?” Saras said.

 
; Dragon nodded at the door that shuddered as Gemma rammed it again.

  “She’s after you?”

  “She will be once she figures out that Fel doesn’t have what she’s looking for.” She glanced at Fel’s tightly clenched jaw. “I’m assuming she’s not an idiot and will look to those closest to you once she figures out you don’t have Mahb’s Stash.”

  Fel’s clearly furious gray eyes met Dragon’s briefly before his face became deliberately impassive. “Yup, Gem’s definitely not an idiot,” he answered finally, running a frustrated hand through his hair.

  That familiar move abruptly reminded Dragon of their argument earlier and, interpreting the slur against the demon as a bit of backhanded name calling, flashed him an angry grimace before turning to Saras. “Sweetie, I know you know. What’s Mahb’s Stash?”

  “Uh, well the only reference I know of is a rumor, which has been mentioned enough that it has attained urban legend status, which is to say that it’s completely untrue.”

  Another booming hit against the door made all three of them jump.

  “Bullet-point it, sweetie,” Dragon muttered with a wary look at the front door.

  “Magic’s pure energy. It doesn’t just disappear, no matter how bloody the war.”

  “You’re talking about K'Davrah,” Fel said.

  “I’m talking about us,” she responded fiercely. “We weren’t wounded during combat and then given the choice between amputation and death. Legend says we were tricked into giving up our powers then lay perfectly still so they could be harvested. Legend says Mahb’s Stash is all miscellus power lost during the war.”

  At that, Gemma punched her way through the front door.

  Saras launched herself at the enraged demon; her flying sword raising sparks each time it connected with Gemma’s tough flesh.

  “Go now!” Fel said, raising his sword.

  Dragon sidled carefully around Saras and Gemma. The demon had Saras pinned to the floor and pummeled her face repeatedly.