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

by CK Dawn

Just this once she’d like one to be straight with her right out of the gate.

  The kid followed and did his unsettling listening-to-whispers thing again. “You are a Shifter.” He listened again. “And a healer.”

  She opened her mouth to ask more questions—the hows and the whats and the wheres—but snapped her jaw shut. The kit needed help.

  “What’s your name?” No matter how much she wanted to know, the question seemed a better one than Are you a proto-Prime Fate?

  “Orel,” he said.

  Orel. An Eastern European name. Her father had a colleague in Kiev named Orel.

  Daisy pushed aside a bramble and looked down at the source of the chitters and tang in the air.

  A tiny raccoon looked up. Its chitters turned to hisses, but it didn’t move from its spot in a small nest of grass.

  “A car hit her,” Orel said. He looked up at her again with his big, dark eyes. “Will she die?” He frowned and blinked, then shook his head as if he heard a voice Daisy did not. “No, she will not. She will be fine.” He looked up at Daisy. “You are special.”

  Again, she wondered if they were alone. Some Shifters were capable of enthralling others to not perceive their presence, but if someone was literally whispering in the kid’s ear, she probably would have caught calling scents or at least sensed a presence.

  Daisy knelt next to the raccoon. “How do you know what I am?” He likely knew exactly what she was just by virtue of living in a town crawling with Shifters.

  “The car hit her and she rolled down here and I knew if I stayed that you would come and make her better.” Orel pointed at the little raccoon kit. “Please help her.”

  Daisy blew out the same ‘calm’ and ‘help’ calling scents she’d made for the wolf. “It’s okay,” she whispered.

  The little raccoon’s hissing subsided and returned to her previous chittering. In the trees not too far away, an adult raccoon chittered back.

  “Did you hear that?” Daisy asked. “Her mommy is calling.”

  Orel nodded.

  Daisy carefully picked up the kit. Her leg felt sprained, but not broken. Like Daisy, she’d gotten out of her accident in pretty good shape, but she could have internal injuries. Daisy curled her fingers around the little animal’s haunch and healed the muscle, then sent a wave of generalized healing into her little body, just in case.

  “There.” She set the kit down. The raccoon sniffed at her now-healed rear leg, then at Daisy’s hand. Her tiny raccoon hands patted along Daisy’s skin, and she chittered again. Then she patted the ground and Orel’s shoe.

  He grinned.

  The little kit waddled toward the trees and her family.

  “You did a good thing, kid. Helping the raccoon.” She touched Orel’s shoulder. “Thank you.”

  He stared at the woods. “You don’t like Fates,” he said.

  “What? It’s not like that,” she said. How could he know she didn’t trust Fates? He was just a kid.

  Orel slid his foot back. His dark eyes rounded.

  He ran away, up the slope to the dusty driveway.

  “Hey! Kid!” she yelled, but it was too late. He disappeared around a bend and out of her sight.

  Did she just frighten an eight-year-old kid? A Fate—likely a Fate—but still a child. Daisy frowned and pulled her phone out of her pocket.

  Maybe having her dad send someone wasn’t such a bad idea.

  She pushed the on button. Nothing happened. She pushed it again, and again, but her phone didn’t respond. Maybe it just needed charging, but it had been at ninety percent battery life when she left this morning.

  She tucked it back into her pocket and looked up at the billboard. “All repairs guaranteed!” it said in its grand yellow glory. She glanced at the bike, then up the hill toward where the kid disappeared.

  Daisy made her way through the creeping Charlie hoping that the sign did not lie.

  Five

  The driveway curved around a massive oak that towered over the nearby ash and pine. Someone had nailed a hand-painted sign proclaiming “Repairs!” to its trunk long ago, and the poor sign looked ready to snap under the pressure from the oak’s bark.

  Daisy ran her finger over the sign’s chipped letters and looked up at the tree’s canopy. Only its forearm-length leaves swayed in the breeze. Only its acorns littered the dirt under her feet. This tree, like so many other unmovable objects Daisy had encountered in her life, dominated its bubble of the universe, no matter what the sign declared.

  “Welcome,” the sign also said. An arrow pointed to three buildings surrounding the open, gravel-filled end of the driveway.

  What would have been a yard for most houses was instead a parking area for a small house that had been converted into a shop and an office. Several well-tended flowerbeds framed the walk to the door. Yellows and purples popped, and green foliage rustled in the breeze.

  The shop-office had been painted white a long time ago, and had faded into old beige. It didn’t look dirty, just old. Whoever cared for it did a good job—the door hung straight and tidy, and the steps and rails appeared solid—and had probably chosen to leave the siding as-is instead of disturbing the wall of ivy on the west side of the building.

  More creeping Charlie. Whoever lived here must like the lavender-mintiness. Daisy sneezed.

  Another welcome sign, complete with a second arrow pointing toward the door, hung on a post stuck in the center of the ivy-free flowerbed closest to the entrance. A huge bell hung over the ornate white-painted screen door.

  Across the gravel parking area, the wide, sliding door of a much larger barn or garage stood open. A jacked-up car stuck out into the sun, and tools littered the floor around it.

  The garage and another stand of trees hid most of a third, two-story building—probably another house. It, too, seemed to have once been white, but Daisy had a hard time telling through the garage’s gray-painted sides and the trees’ green leaves.

  No one came out of the garage as Daisy walked up, nor did anyone exit the shop. The oak and the flowers dominated the local scent-scape, as did the ever-present creeping Charlie, though she did pick up hints of the boy and an adult man.

  “Hello?” she called. There had to be someone around. Tools littered the garage floor, and no adult left a car up on jacks like that without supervision, especially with an eight-year-old child around.

  She walked toward the open door of the office-shop and cupped her hands to cut the glare as she looked through the door’s screen.

  Nothing but shadows. Maybe they’d all gone in for lunch. “Hello?” she called.

  Again, nothing but cool, stuffy, interior air. There had to be someone—

  “Miss?”

  Daisy yelped and swung around so fast she knocked her wrist on the screen door’s handle. “Where did you come from?” she said louder than she meant to.

  No one snuck up on her, not unless they were coming in from a stiff downwind angle. But only a little breeze stirred the air, and with the buildings, it swirled the scents more than carried them away.

  Yet the man standing about five feet away next to one of the flowerbeds had most definitely snuck up on her and her bloodhound nose.

  She rubbed her hand and tried not to frown.

  He was obviously shorter than her, probably standing around five feet, eight inches, and his frame reminded her of the kid’s—slim but still a strong, inverted triangle. Also like the kid, he had dark, indeterminate hair and eyes that seemed to oscillate between warm tones of chocolate and the cool tones of velvet.

  “Are you Orel’s father?” A present-seeing Fate might be able to sneak up on her like that. But she hadn’t felt a seer, so whatever he did, he did so without making his gift obvious.

  His eyebrows arched. He looked around. “He’s supposed to be at day camp.”

  “He asked me to help a baby raccoon and then he ran off.” She nodded toward the man. “He looks a lot like you.”

  “Nax,” the man said. “Orel�
�s my son. I think it makes him happy that we look so much alike.” He ran his hand over his head.

  Lying, she thought. Just like that, out of nowhere, some part of her brain screamed that this man who called himself Nax was not speaking the truth.

  He chuckled and ran his hand over his head again, then winked once. “I’m a class-three enthraller,” he said. “I make just enough calling scents to mess up social interactions.” He waved his hand between them. “I have yet to meet another Shifter who trusts me.”

  But she hadn’t smelled any calling scents.

  He nodded knowingly. “Sometimes I think that if I’d been born lucky enough to have control over my scents, I would have been the world’s best spy.” He winked again.

  Daisy rubbed her wrist. “You sensed me?”

  Nax tapped the side of his nose. “You were bloodhound scenting. Not many bloodhounds can do it without the little nose twitch.”

  Normals never noticed, or if they did, they kept it to themselves. But other Shifters picked up on it right away.

  Daisy extended her hand. “I’m Daisy. Daisy Pavlovich,” she said. “I was on my way into town when I swerved and crashed my motorcycle.” She pointed up the driveway. “It’s not mine. I borrowed it. I was on my way to the train station to buy a ticket because I need a ride home and…”

  Nax pulled a cloth out of his back pocket and wiped his hand before shaking hers.

  “You know what? It’s a long story.” She pointed up the drive again. “The bike won’t start and my phone’s dead.” She tucked her fingers into her pockets.

  Nax tucked the cloth back into his pocket. “Orel talked to you?” He held out his hand at the kid’s height. “He’s rather… clipped… and doesn’t usually talk to strangers.”

  Clipped would not be how Daisy described how the kid had talked. More like one-sided.

  “He seemed preoccupied.”

  Nax nodded. “He must have left camp again. Sometimes he gets ideas in his head about how he needs to be someplace or another.” He scratched at his neck. “He’s a good kid.” Nax’s unspoken words hung between them: Even though he’s a proto-Fate.

  Except, if Orel’s father was a Shifter, the kid wouldn’t grow up to be a Fate. Shifters and Fates didn’t socialize, much less make babies together.

  Nax nodded toward the drive. “I’ll get your bike. You borrowed it, you said? From who?”

  “Marci and Jacob up at the lodge in the park.”

  Nax frowned. “Don’t know them.”

  “Like I said, it’s a long story.”

  Nax leaned forward. “Orel never fails to show up at dinner time, so don’t worry. He likes nature on his own terms and not the camp counselor’s.”

  He patted the frame holding the welcome sign. “Go on in. There’s a landline on the counter. I’ll check out your bike.”

  She nodded.

  “I don’t think you’ll make today’s train.” Nax glanced toward the northwest as if he knew her destination was St. Paul. “It runs through these parts only once a day.”

  She nodded again.

  “Orel will be happy to see you.” He flipped his hand at the door. “If you’re still here for dinner. He likes healers.”

  She never told him what her power set was. Never said a word about it to anyone but the kid.

  Daisy forced a smile. “He made sure that little raccoon was okay.”

  Nax turned away to walk down the driveway to retrieve her bike. “Yeah,” Nax said.

  The set of his shoulders did not say “Yeah” in a rhetorical, “Orel is like that” sense. His shoulders said “Yeah, I’m proud of the kid for sticking up for the little critter.”

  Or maybe Nax’s supposedly class-three, minuscule, uncontrolled calling scents had carried a hint of specificity to Daisy’s nose that Nax had not wanted them to.

  And once again, somewhere in her brain, a part of her perception yelled Lying!

  “Not many triads would willingly live this close to a Shifter enclave,” she said. It came out low and suspicious and from a place so deep in Daisy it slid right on past her logical control.

  Nax looked her up and down. “What makes you think there are Fates around?” he drawled, then walked away to fetch Jacob’s bike.

  Six

  The big bell connected to the door chimed more sweetly and with more harmony than Daisy expected, but then again, this was the home of a Shifter who caused social disharmony. Who could blame him for a friendly doorbell?

  The shop walls were more window than plaster, but an overabundance of curtains blocked a lot of the sunshine with layer upon layer of fabrics in purple, green, and the same yellow as the signs outside. Behind a glass counter, one window’s curtains puddled in a big pile of chocolate velvet on top of a table covered with little ceramic figurines. Another, deeper into the shop, had been shuttered with a triptych depicting some sort of gold-encrusted fairytale.

  Next to the door, a second, smaller glass counter held an old cash register, a toothpick holder, and a mug full of lollipops.

  The shop did not look like any auto repair waiting room she’d ever been in.

  More drapes blocked off a door that looked as if it led to a back room. Another set framed a wide opening to a second, smaller room in which sat a table topped with a tapestry, a crystal ball, and a large, open wooden box.

  Twinkling décor string-lights wove around the tied-off drapes. More framed the glass cabinet in front of the files. A set with little skulls wove around the triptych. In the corner, over the table, another string with smiling suns reflected off the crystal ball and the smooth surface of the wooden box.

  The edges of a deck of tarot cards shimmered from the shadows inside the box. They were oversized, and the design on the back face of each card appeared hand painted. The gold also looked hand leafed.

  Whoever made the deck had put in significant time and effort.

  She looked around the office space again. No waiting chairs and magazines. No potted plants. Just a lot of gold decorations, glitz, and sparkly lighting.

  She’d walked into the showroom of a fortuneteller.

  Daisy glanced out the door. Nax had vanished from her view. No one else was in the office—no other human scents wafted out of the back room, though the front area with the weird curtains and the glass curio-case-counter carried hints of the minty freshness of creeping Charlie.

  Somewhere in the little building, out of her sight, someone had a vase full of ground ivy cuttings.

  Why the creeping Charlie? Why the fortunetelling décor that shouted Fate involvement? Why did her gut keep whispering Nax is lying?

  She should leave. She should walk right out that door, down the hill, and the miles of road back to the lodge because this place was way, way too weird.

  Or she could suck it up and find the landline. Maybe there was an old-school phone book around as well and she could call a taxi, or maybe the lodge.

  Nothing obvious behind the register, nor behind the larger, empty glass cabinet. A peek into the back room revealed only more shadows.

  Daisy let go of the back room’s heavy curtain. A small puff of dust curled off the fabric and for a second, she watched the specks float in the air like shimmering fairy dust.

  She glanced at the crystal ball.

  A thicker layer of dust coated the tied-back curtains, but none touched the crystal ball or the wooden box. The tapestry covering the table also smelled freshly washed.

  The chair in front of the ball sat askew, as if someone had run off before pushing it in. Daisy nudged it back into alignment, but a leg caught on the carpet and the chair banged into the table.

  The ball called out like a flute. It sang as the table’s vibrations rattled through its metal base and its leaded glass. The box seemed to sing also, as if it too had been fashioned from a material of great resonance.

  Daisy let go of the chair.

  A bag fell from somewhere under the tapestry. A notebook followed—a tough, thick thing made of quality
paper.

  Daisy fished under the chair and picked up both the bag and the book.

  Art pencils filled the bag. Lots of pencils—at least fifty, maybe more—all high-quality and in every color imaginable. She flipped open the book.

  Dragons. Big dragons. Little dragons. Mythical European dragons with wide wings and fiery breath. Smooth, sinewy Asian dragons with long, gracefully curving bodies. Colorful dragons. Dragons in black and white. They were all sketched out with great care.

  The artist was good. Raw, but good. She ran her finger over a particularly detailed golden beast sitting on a pile of rubies and sapphires.

  The next picture also had a knight. The next, a princess. The next, a samurai. Every drawing showed a fairytale or a myth. Not one reflected a real dragon.

  The world had Shifters and Fates. It also had dragons. Two dragons, to be precise. Two secretive, elusive, wonderful beasts who lived with two equally secretive and elusive humans.

  They had to hide. When you’re thirteen-feet-long snout to tail and breathe fire, people tend to scream. At least the dragons’ camouflage-capable hides mimicked the environment so well they effectively became invisible, allowing them to hide from an over-reactive planet.

  Mostly Brother-Dragon and Sister-Dragon lived their long immortal lives with their humans and stayed away from normal people.

  Bright colors from the sketchbook’s next page peeked out from under the current scene of tiny fire lizards buzzing around a bubbling stream. Daisy lifted the paper’s corner.

  “Orel doesn’t like anyone looking at his sketchbooks.”

  She gasped and dropped the book on the table. It bounced and knocked the crystal ball, which wobbled precariously. Daisy snatched it up so it wouldn’t roll onto the floor.

  Nax stood in the exact center of the office space, his arms crossed and his eyes narrow. “That belonged to his mother.” He walked forward and gestured at the room. “Most of this belonged to her. I keep it for Orel.”

  He tilted up his chin and waved his fingers at the orb.

  How the hell did that man continue to sneak up on her? No class-three enthraller had enough control or strength to mask his scents and his movements the way Nax did.