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

by CK Dawn

  She rested her head against the dirt. It was the only way. Leave. Leave now. He wasn’t going to turn back for her, and if she walked away, maybe that would spare her from the pain of being left behind.

  A hand closed around her arm. “There’s a car coming,” Wash said. He lay on his stomach, leaning over the top of the berm. With a heave, he pulled her up beside him, not meeting her eyes.

  And then he was up and jogging toward the road, without a backward glance. Caitlin stumbled forward, sudden tears stinging her eyes.

  She was exhausted. He should be too, but he moved like he’d just had a good night’s sleep and a strong coffee. He’d drowned, been shot, fallen twenty stories, chased down a truck, almost drowned again, and apparently swum all night with her in tow. And he was jogging.

  Wash flagged down the passing truck, a rusted, ancient vehicle stacked with chicken cages in the back. From the frantic squawking she heard, even thirty feet away, they were full.

  The driver leaned over to the passenger side window and spoke to Wash. His eyes were on her. Her cheeks flushed from the state of her dress. She hadn’t changed after the shoot, and it was more like a shredded swimsuit at this point.

  “Can we get a ride to San Juan?” Wash asked the man. Caitlin arrived right as the driver smiled and opened the passenger door. Wash had to simultaneously climb up and duck down to squash his six-one frame into the small cab. Caitlin squeezed in next to him, catching a flash of disappointment on the driver’s face. She gritted her teeth, looking forward so as to avoid both the driver’s eyes and Wash’s.

  Not that he was looking at her. He’d done anything but look at her for the last fifteen minutes.

  Wash crushed himself into a ball, but Caitlin still had to press up against him to get the door closed. It was going to be a long, uncomfortable ride to the city. She had to separate herself from him long enough to cool off. They’d been side-by-side for twenty-four hours, through some truly harrowing experiences. Surely, her feelings would calm once she had a little perspective.

  She leaned her head against the glass and closed her eyes. She tried not to think about anything, but the one thing her mind came back to again and again was him holding her, hundreds of feet under the water, as he gave her his last breath.

  Wash was crushed inside the truck his head grazing the top of the cab, squeezed between the driver and Caitlin. She hadn’t said anything since they climbed in. Hadn’t said anything since the beach. She’d just leaned over and closed her eyes, shutting herself away from him.

  He hurt. Not physically. Somehow, physically, he was fine… but his heart ached, far more than it should have. The moment she broke the kiss, he knew he’d screwed up in a way he couldn’t recover from.

  She wasn’t part of his world, and he wasn’t part of hers. She was a princess. Not the spoiled, pampered kind. The honest to god, legendary, mythical kind. An Elven Princess, inhuman and above him in every possible way.

  For one wild moment, his heart had grabbed at every impossible dream, before naked reality set in.

  He didn’t belong with her, and she didn’t belong with him.

  She shifted, mumbling something he didn’t catch and she shifted to lean her head against his shoulder.

  He froze.

  Her hand came up to grip his wrist, but she didn’t wake. He let out a slow breath.

  “What did I ever do to deserve this?” He’d meant to say it beneath his breath, but apparently, his idea of a whisper was loud enough for the driver beside him.

  “Algo maravilloso,” the driver said with a smile.

  Wash raised his eyebrow. “No hablar español.”

  The driver flashed him a toothy smile. “Something wonderful, my friend, something wonderful.”

  He wasn’t sure if it was a reward for something wonderful or a punishment for some crime. Maybe both, somehow.

  From the way she’d fallen silent on the beach, not meeting his eyes he thought maybe the latter.

  The moment this truck stopped, she’d walk the other way. He couldn’t think about that right now, it hurt too much.

  Instead, he thought about what he’d heard just before he lost consciousness, out on the water.

  Let me in.

  The bottomless well of power that had formed in him as he fell unconscious, that was a vivid memory. Hello? He sent the thought inward.

  Nothing.

  Of course it was nothing. Delirium had set in, that was all. He couldn’t remember because he’d probably passed out and acted on muscle memory. He still wasn’t sure how they’d survived, but he wasn’t going to question it.

  He turned his focus back to the men and orc on the boat. There was no doubt they were going to kill him, they’d said as much, but why Caitlin? Were they hoping to prove their seriousness by offing one sister while ransoming the other? That could be it. The meet was a setup then. Take the money, kill Caitlin, maybe even record it and send it off to her father.

  Her father… From what little Caitlin had said, her family didn’t sound like nice people. If they already knew…

  “Caitlin?” Wash whispered to her gently. Waking her up was the last thing he wanted to do. He knew she needed every second of sleep she could catch, but this was important.

  “Caitlin?” He added gentle shaking to his efforts.

  Her eyes shot open, wide and full of alarm, and her hand went to her astéri. The cab buzzed with power and vibration. Wash’s teeth clattered from the sudden, sharp pulse, and the vehicle swerved wildly.

  “Caitlin! It’s okay!” He seized her hand. “You’re safe. You’re safe.”

  A heartbeat passed, and then the wild panic in her eyes faded. The buzzing stopped when she let go of her necklace.

  She pressed her hands against her face, taking a shuddering breath that he felt go through her whole body.

  “We almost died,” she whispered, “How can you be so calm?”

  The realization of it all hit him. They had almost died, in the way he feared most. Why hadn’t that affected him more?

  He shook his head. “I’m not sure. But, it’s okay. We’re okay.”

  “I’m sorry, I had no right.” She turned away from him as much as was physically possible.

  Something familiar started to play through his head, as though he’d lived this moment before.

  His ex-wife, and the life they’d led what seemed like an eon ago. Miranda had wanted comfort. She’d wanted him to follow her, to be there. Instead, he’d given her space because he thought that was what she’d want. Because that’s what he would have wanted.

  Or maybe just because that was easier.

  He’d hurt her… not on purpose, at first. But then she’d hurt him back, and it became a spiral that never ended. Neither of them had the courage to stop that ride, to spin it the other way, and so they rode it into the ground.

  He knew how that ride ended, and even though this one was going to end up in smoke and flames too, he could make a different choice.

  Wash squeezed his arm around her and pulled her back toward him. She resisted for a moment and then melted into him like an ice cube on a hot day.

  “We’ve been through a lot,” he said. “A hug is the least I can offer.” He stroked her hair. Salty brine covered both of them with a fine dust, but he could still smell jasmine and sage.

  “I’m sorry about earlier,” she whispered, almost too quiet for him to hear.

  He understood. There could be no future for her with someone like him. He was just there when she needed something, and he couldn’t begrudge her that. How much would it really cost him, to be what she needed for just a little while?

  In a way, it was a relief from the last three years of emptiness punctuated with crushing despair. He could never decide which was worse. At least despair felt like something. The nothingness was… unbearable. Most days he ran on auto-pilot and by the end couldn’t remember anything that had happened.

  “Wash, there’s just no—”

  “I understa
nd,” he said, wanting to spare her the need to say it. Or maybe wanting to spare himself from having to hear it.

  “No, I don’t think you do.” She leaned back, looking up at him with her big emerald eyes. “Wash… the reason there’s just no future for us is because of my age.”

  His eyes narrowed. There was no way she was under age. I mean, she didn’t look old, but she wasn’t seventeen. Were elves so different?

  “How old do you think I am?” she asked.

  He cocked his head to one side examining her with as much objectivity as he could muster. She had no crow’s feet, though she did have some laugh lines around her mouth, which he loved. He reached up to push her hair behind her ear, gently stroking her face as he did so.

  “Twenty-five, maybe twenty-six at the oldest. I’m knocking on thirty Cait, I don’t see that as a problem, besides it isn’t like you would want—”

  “I celebrate my hundred and fortieth birthday next month.”

  The truck swerved, sending Wash hurtling into Caitlin. He saved himself from completely smashing her against the door by pressing himself up against the roof.

  “Lo siento… sorry, Señorita,” the driver said, pulling the truck back on the road and keeping his eyes firmly ahead.

  “Before you ask anything else,” Caitlin said, “let me warn you. There are secrets my people guard more jealously than our heads of state. If any of these secrets were to become public knowledge, Vasilikí would kill everyone who knew and everyone who could possibly know.” She shot a firm glance at the driver, whose eyes darted briefly at her, and then away.

  Wash closed his mouth. Five times his age. Five. He took a moment to let it sink in to actualize it in his mind.

  “Please say something. This is the point where most people completely freak out on me, and can’t ever look at me the same way again—which explains my lack of long-term relationships and friendships. That, and… other things.”

  Wash caught part of what she said, but his mind reeled over her age. I mean, yeah, older mythology said elves were immortal, but that was… ridiculous… right? Besides, if she were one-forty, then she lived before magic had returned.

  “You’re an elf…” he said slowly.

  “You finally put it together, huh?”

  “No,” he shook his head, “I mean, in school we were taught all the magical beings returned after magic. The dragon who terrorized Tokyo, the mass Chupacabra infestation of Texas. Even when people were born as orcs, trolls, dwarves, and elves, that was still thirty years after the event. How did you live before it?”

  Caitlin sighed, looking out the passenger window. “Wash, the Atlantis of myth is my Atlantis. It’s one and the same.”

  Wash needed a moment. He’d always assumed the media called the elven island Atlantis because it was an island that appeared in the Mediterranean. Why not call it Atlantis? People flocked to it, he’d even wanted to go see it as a kid. But… the real Atlantis?

  “We never left. Twenty-five hundred years ago, our seers saw the end of magic and the coming calamity. One which we wouldn’t survive. Our power is derived from our astéri.” She gestured to the beautiful silver necklace he’d never seen her without. “But it’s a conduit, not a source. Magic is like water, it is lazy. It follows the path of least resistance. The deeper the well, the more magic collects in it.”

  She took his hands and turned them palm-upward in a cupping shape, holding one slightly above the other.

  “Imagine this is magic.” She tapped the higher one. “If you open a conduit to this one—” She squeezed the lower hand “—the magic of the higher one will flow down to fill the empty space. It will flow until shut off, or until the powers equalize.”

  “Like osmosis, basically.”

  “Exactly.” She nodded. “Atlantis has its own source of magic, which I can’t go into, but as long as the Earth’s manasphere is powered, then magic flows into it, not out. When we foresaw the manasphere shrinking, we had to do something, or our power would drain itself dry trying to prop up the Earth’s.”

  “So you sunk the island?”

  “Well, yes, but not immediately. First, we raised a shield around the city in the hopes that the magical barrier would prevent the loss. It slowed but didn’t stop. Then, we were forced to sink the island deep under water. As far down as we could go.”

  Wash nodded, it all made sense. If the manasphere was like an atmosphere then… “Wait a second. We’ve had sonar for what? Two hundred years? Not to mention satellites. We’ve mapped the entire ocean floor. How did no one find you?”

  “When the manasphere shrank, it didn’t disappear completely. At its lowest point, it extended out about twenty-two hundred kilometers. Uh, I don’t know how many miles that is.”

  He did some quick math. “About 1400 miles, give or take. So… you were somewhere below the mantle? In the liquid outer core, right?”

  She nodded. “Yes. We stayed in the liquid core, feeding our power source with the shrunken manasphere, which let us live fairly comfortably. When the sphere began to expand, we rode it like a wave to the bottom of the ocean. After that, it was simple to disguise ourselves while we caught up.”

  The truck sped up as the driver turned onto the freeway. As old as the vehicle was, it still had computer control and the man took his hands off the wheel.

  The freeway on this part of the island rose up a hundred feet to cross inlets and small towns. The next stop was San Juan. From the elevated position, it was easy to see the majestic towers of Ocean Park. Including the building with a stylized O on it.

  “So, if Atlantis is the Atlantis…” he said, looking at the massive building shooting up from the ocean. “Osiris…?”

  Caitlin’s features darkened for a moment, but she nodded. “Yes. He’s the Osiris. The other… deities… are real, too. I know my people aren’t perfect, but at least we didn’t try to rule the world like petty dictators.

  “Some of the beings gifted with enormous personal power decided they were gods and tried to rule. I laugh every time I see footage of Osiris taking on the modern-day Egyptian army like it was his divine right. He deserved the butt whooping they gave him. When we came back, we spent the first ten years catching up. Since we hadn’t slept the millennia away like the dragons or the… gods…” She said the word grudgingly “…we knew the Earth had changed. I was pretty young when we finally revealed ourselves to the surface.”

  She glanced down, and he remembered what she had told Milo. “Young and stupid. There are things I wish I could take back, but I can’t. Milo is one of them.”

  Milo must have been in his twenties when they dated. Against his will, he felt a surge of pity for the man. To spend fifty years of his life, first trying to keep her, then trying to get her back, only to grow old as she stayed young and forever beautiful.

  “You get it, right?” She said to him, a hint of desperation in her voice. “I can see the wheels turning in your head. Do you understand why I… can’t be with you? No matter how much I might want to?”

  That admission was like a sudden burst of light and warmth inside him, and a dagger to his heart at the same time.

  “You were young when… that was sixty years ago, I don’t…”

  Wash closed his eyes, knowing every one of his feelings would show through them if she looked at him. He’d never been any good at hiding his heart. Miranda used to laugh at him for it. Laugh, and find a way to use it against him when she was angry.

  Caitlin was a hundred and forty. A century and then some. An order of magnitude more cunning, intelligent, and experienced than a human could ever be.

  What could he possibly offer her?

  He needed to stop. His fists tightened pressing his nails painfully into his palms. It wasn’t fair. He knew it, she knew it, but fair had nothing to do with it.

  What would they do? Go home to meet her parents, then live with her for—what—thirty years at most until he was old and failing. She would be forever twenty-six, leaving him behi
nd far before he was an old man.

  “I understand.” He turned back to face the road, unable to look at her eyes anymore without imagining falling into them. Their brief kiss on the beach had filled him with… foolish hope. Even after she pulled away, and stopped meeting his eyes, a small part of him—a part he hadn’t even recognized—had hoped.

  The silence in the truck was so profound, he almost thought he could hear something breaking apart inside him.

  Eight

  Telling him was for the best. Caitlin knew this as truth. It hurt him now, but it was better this way. He would realize that, eventually.

  After all, liking him would do him no favors. She couldn’t do that to him.

  Not him.

  When Wash turned away from her to focus on the road, her heart dropped to shatter like so much glass on the ground.

  He’s human. He’ll die. Sooner or later, time will take him like everyone else.

  She could tell herself this all day, but it didn’t matter. Her heart wanted what it wanted. She shook her head. Her mother had taught her better than this. Wash was nothing more than a science experiment. A human who could hear spirits and somehow disrupt her magic with a touch.

  Nothing more. She couldn’t let him be more.

  Ocean Park came into full view, looking none the worse for wear after the previous day’s tsunami. A real Coup d'état for Osiris and his stocks. People had to be rushing to invest in his company now. She stifled the anger building in her and purposefully looked away.

  Osiris was old, almost as old as her people, and for all his age what had he done the moment he couldn’t re-establish his empire? He created a new one.

  That was his problem. She wanted nothing to do with it. Atlantis and the old gods had a treaty of sorts and they left each other alone. Atlantean history taught her that Atlantis had fought war after war with Egypt, the Mesopotamians, even the Athenians. Atlantis had freely shared their advances with the world in an effort to uplift the humans who were barely past using stone knives and bear skins.