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

by CK Dawn

  “You weren’t promoted,” he said to the smaller, groaning man. “You were set off. That kind of thing takes a meticulous hand and a whole lot of time,” he directed to Dragon. “For little ole me?” He pretended to straighten Haydon’s lapels and brush nonexistent lint from his shoulders. “I’m touched.” Then he shoved Haydon out of his way, scowling as the idiot stumbled then tripped on his own feet.

  “Do you even know how to use that thing?” Fel said, nodding at the whip as he strode into his bedroom and over to his dresser. He dragged a pair of jeans out of the bottom drawer and, still feeling the weakening effects of the DTs and Bobby’s antidote, turned to brace himself on the bureau as he slid first one then the other leg into the jeans.

  Dragon’s pretty eyes watched him avidly, and he grinned when her gaze, after a prolonged and thorough inspection, ascended to meet his. Her blush charmed him.

  “I love that I fluster you more than an explosion,” he said, buttoning up his fly. “We should get you out of those wet things,” he said, wishing to Shiva that he could follow through with the clichéd, yet one hundred percent effective seduction that invariably followed those words.

  Dragon nodded and plucked at her wet T-shirt, noticing for the first time that it revealed the barely-there plum bra she wore.

  “Oh,” she said. She glanced up at him and looked shyly away, her blush deepening at his hot stare.

  “Pretty,” he murmured.

  “Hello!” Haydon said irritably, wiping away the blood that leaked out of his nose from Fel’s interrogation. He’d finally gotten to his feet and put on a pair of leather gloves.

  “What?” Fel said annoyed at being interrupted, even if flirting with Dragon was a non-starter.

  Haydon’s poorly executed right hook glanced off his right cheekbone and took him by surprise.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Dragon shouted, striding towards Haydon and right into the elbow he jabbed at her face. While Dragon was bent over in pain, Haydon landed another punch at Fel. This one pounded his very sensitive fae ear, leaving no permanent damage, but causing enough auditory pain that Fel dropped to his knees in agony.

  There was no way a nothing like Haydon knew that a blow to the ear would incapacitate him. Eyes, groin, and throat were commonly known areas of vulnerability, but a high fae’s ears were a strictly guarded secret. With the capacity to hear the true song of Faerie, the ear of fae, the pointed tip having succumbed to evolution and rounded, was a jewel so rare that even if the ear was removed, the power it wielded remained true like a conch shell echoing the crash of an ocean.

  “Yes!” Haydon shouted. “I totally fucking rule!” Grinning, he dug in one of the outside pockets of his ridiculous leather duster and retrieved what looked like a black fire cracker. He pulled a lighter out of his alarmingly snug leather pants and lit the wick of the firecracker before tossing the thing away from himself and backing up slowly.

  Fel staggered over to Dragon, his ear still ringing painfully, hauled her up and put her behind him. Whatever happened when that wick burned down, he intended to take the brunt of it.

  As the flame diminished, the paper of the firecracker unraveled in a springing spiral curl. A thick, billowing cloud of glittering silver smoke heralded the appearance of a mustard yellow oven door. Chipped at the edges, the rectangular window too clouded with soot to make anything “inside” visible, Haydon pulled at the synthetic wood handle and waved his hand to disperse the smoke and enticing scent of baking flesh—which predictably smelled like chicken—that emanated from the open oven.

  With surprising authority he said, “PO quad zero five six three eight. It is now,” he looked at his watch, “nine thirteen. Haydon O’Keefe for GemSin Corporation.”

  “Gem Corp,” a mechanical voice repeated from somewhere inside the oven. “Credit one five zero zero zero zero vens and zero zero cents.”

  “I’m an authorized contractor,” Haydon said loudly. “One hundred and fifty thousand vens to Gem Corp, and fifteen percent to me.”

  “Haydon O’Keefe unknown. Contractor invoice invalid. One five zero zero zero zero vens to Gem Corp.”

  “No! No, Goddamn it. She promised me money if I delivered.” He gripped Fel’s arm and pulled him in front of the open oven door. “See?” He shoved Fel towards the door, wrapped his fingers around Dragon’s upper arm and wrenched it brutally, forcing her to her knees. “Gem’s been just dying to meet you.” He swiped the flat of his tongue over Dragon’s closed lips. “I might have to have a taste before Gem gets her hands on you.”

  The ringing in Fel’s ears had lessened to the dull clang, but his nerve-endings still spasmed wildly. Even still, he side-stepped falling into this speakeasy entrance to Hell.

  “You don’t wanna go in?” Haydon shouted. “Fine. She’ll do.” He hauled Dragon to her feet, gripped the back of her neck and steered her towards the oven door.

  Fel raised his hand and called for his magic to stop him. His blood warmed and his hand glowed with power for a second then nothing. Swearing, he crawled to his bureau, the clanging in his head vibrated down his spine making every move feel like his joints were being frozen. He dragged open his top drawer and fumbled inside for his Glock, falling onto his hip as he turned to take aim over his shoulder.

  His image of Dragon and Haydon wavered and melded together and before he could think better of it, he shot.

  The bullet tore through the meat of Haydon’s tender inner thigh and he shrieked like a spider monkey as he fell to the floor.

  Dragon went down with him. Immediately she scrambled to her feet, “inadvertently” stepping on Haydon’s groin as she gained her balance.

  He screeched again, this time more piercing than the last, cupped his genitals and curled to his side.

  From the still-open oven door, abnormally long fingers, the tips of which were round and flat like a tree frog’s, grasped the edge of the opening.

  “Inventory?” a discordant voice asked, politely enough even though its question caused the wallpaper to split and bleed.

  Another set of fingers joined the first and the steaming head and shoulders of a Sous emerged from the door, its two intact eyes trailing phlegm down its face like tears. The rest of its head had been precisely skinned and the veins and capillaries pulsed heavily. A pair of black openings marked the space a nose might have occupied and its mouth, devoid of all but a few rotting teeth, was home to a colony of roaches, the three million brand-new births which crawled over the Sous’s mouth like a twitching beard.

  Fel raised his gun, debating whether to take out the Sous demon or finish Haydon off. His joints squawked in pain and he aimed for Haydon.

  He squeezed another round into Haydon’s shoulder, hoping the smell of the fresh wound would keep the Sous distracted.

  “Inventory?” the thing asked again, preparing to lever itself into the here and now.

  Still stiff from Haydon’s strategic punch, Fel could only watch as Dragon heaved and pushed a still-groaning Haydon into the Sous’s sight. “There. Take him,” she said.

  “Inventory?”

  “Yes,” she said, taking a quick step back when the demon looked at her as if to include her in its count.

  “No!” Haydon countered, trying to crawl away from the opening while protecting his bruised dick.

  But the Sous, following normal inventory retrieval protocols, had already latched onto Haydon’s ankle and wrapped a fluorescent yellow receipt tag around it.

  Dragon ran to kneel by Fel’s side as Haydon’s screams permeated every molecule of the Yorktown, weighting them with the purest fear available. Had one of the many vendors of such a commodity been on hand, Fel could’ve stockpiled enough product to see him through every minor coronation ceremony of the Sun and Shade for the next decade.

  Hand over hand the Sous reeled Haydon in, the scent of brim intensifying as Haydon disappeared into the oven.

  “Tell Noah I’m sorry.” Haydon’s desperate eyes met Fel’s. “Tell him I loved hi
m.”

  When the last of Haydon was swallowed, the oven door slammed shut, a voice said in a mechanical monotone, “Thank you come again,” and a receipt slithered out of the puff of smoke left behind as the door disappeared from this plane.

  Fifteen

  “Are you all right?” Fel said, his voice hoarse with lingering pain as he tilted Dragon’s face up and gently probed her swelling eye.

  “Are you?” she murmured, wincing at the press of his fingertips.

  He grunted in answer then slowly got to his feet, hauling her up with him. “You’ll live.”

  She grimaced then stiffened at the furious pounding against the front door.

  Fel warned her to be quiet with a single finger pressed to his lips, ejected the Glock’s magazine and frowned at its contents before sliding it back into place and heading for the door.

  “Who?” he said.

  “Me,” a muffled voice responded.

  Fel put his hand on the knob and Dragon gasped, horrified.

  “You’re satisfied that ‘me’ isn’t another assassin?”

  “Yup.”

  She threw her hands up and looked wildly around the room for some kind of weapon. “‘Me’ could be the friggin’ devil, but as long as you feel safe...”

  “The devil hasn’t been upstairs since he was a boy. Besides,” he opened the door and pointed his gun at the shadow in the doorway, “it’s only Charlie. Come on in, buddy.” He stuck the muzzle against Charlemagne’s temple and did a quick sweep of the hallway before slamming the door shut.

  “Helluva group of neighbors you got there, buddy,” Charlemagne said, shrugging out of his leather jacket, slow and easy while Fel patted him down. “You could be dead and rotting in here and they’d just leave you to it.”

  “Minding your fucking business is a line item in the rental contract,” Fel said, uncocking his weapon, clicking the safety on and throwing it back in his sock drawer.

  “So,” Charlemagne clapped and rubbed his hands together as if ready to get down to business. “Where’s the fuck up? Did ya kill him?” he asked hopefully.

  “A Sous took him,” Fel said, jerking his head up and down several times as if to dislodge water from his ear canal.

  “Fuck. That’s my ass,” he shook his head. Noticing Fel’s movements, he said disgustedly, “You let him peg your ear?” He went to the decanters on the bureau, grabbed the unobtrusive brown bottle and a coffee mug that said, “World’s Best Dad,” and ambled to the ugly green couch.

  “You told them about that?”

  “Had to. Gem didn’t think he had the chops to fulfill the contract. It was either let the idiot take a stab at you or come here and do the job myself, which would’ve just killed me. I mean, it would’ve killed you, buddy, for sure, but it would’ve really hurt my heart.”

  Dragon followed the serve and volleys of the conversation before she met Fel’s exhausted gaze meaningfully.

  “What?” he said.

  At her raised eyebrows he blinked as if to clear the cobwebs. “Oh. Charlie, Dragon. Dragon, Charlie.”

  “Pleasure,” Dragon smiled warmly.

  “Enchanté,” Charlie said, standing from the couch with a few graceful bulges of lean muscle. He took her hand and brought it to his lips. “Votre serviteur, damoiselle. ”

  “Vous m’honorez, majesty.” Dragon sketched an awkward curtsy.

  Brows raised in surprise, Charlemagne said to Fel while he studied Dragon’s wet T-shirt, “I like her, Flannacán. He said you were cross-eyed and buck-toothed,” he confided to Dragon with a grin that could easily devastate the world if seduction and allure were weapons of mass destruction, before easing back onto the sofa.

  Dragon cocked her head to one side and examined Charlie’s long, jean-clad legs and the bulge at their apex thoroughly. She met his twitching lips with a slow luxuriant smile of her own, then closed her eyes as if to gather strength like a long-jumper’s running start.

  “What’s she doing?” Charlemagne asked Fel without taking his eyes from Dragon.

  “Don’t know,” Fel said with a bemused smile.

  “Will it hurt?” Charlie rested a large hand on his flat stomach. “’Cause I kinda hope it does.”

  Eyes still closed, Dragon stifled a giggle as she powered up her second sight, unsure that it would work on him; though he was technically human, he had been immortal for centuries.

  When she finally opened her eyes it was Charlemagne, King of Franks who took his leisure on an ugly green couch, wearing the mantle of his full potential. His pristine white T-shirt was saturated with yellowing spots of spit up and his socks were mismatched as if he’d dressed in the shadowed dawn hours, or worse, as if dirty laundry had piled up to such a degree that he was lucky to find one clean blue sock and one clean white one. A fanny pack accessorized his waistband and a tiny toy bulldozer poked over the lip of the fraying breast pocket of his T-shirt.

  Despite the exhaustion that warmed this version of him like down fleece, there was an easiness about him, a kind of casually-worn confidence that made his bad boy image—gained during his years in modernity—and his kingly regality merge into something infinitely touchable—as inviting as fur at wholesale prices.

  When the image finished rendering the first hot tendrils of pain gripped her body like a length of iron heated in fire and placed against her skin. She clenched her jaw against that pain, breathing through it until dizziness twirled her head, indicating that the worst of it was over.

  “You’re caught, gorgeous,” she said. She curled her trembling hands into fists and forced a grin at Charlie, hoping that Fel’s calming darkness would keep her addiction from hungering for his friend.

  “Not me.” Charlemagne poured a bit of liquid in the mug.

  The faint scent of sun-warmed hay fields tickled Dragon’s nose, revealing the bottle’s contents, the bottle itself revealing its distiller. She glanced at her forearm, expecting to see her balm racing down it toward Le Roi in a wave of translucent, deep purple; instead Fel’s presence slowed her frantic heartbeat and eased her stomach, still cramping for a taste of bliss. For the first time she faced a man free of the need to fix him.

  She released the breath she’d been holding as Charlie took a measured sip of the wine of fae—as interpreted by a man and his goat lover in their commode—and then another. The tip of his tongue laved at his full lower lip and she smiled as her libido, unenhanced by any artificial additives, hummed in appreciation.

  “What’s her name?” he asked finally. “She smell good?”

  A knock on the door interrupted Dragon before she could answer.

  “Mr. Fel,” the lightly accented voice of Muhammad called. “So sorry to interrupt,” he said when Fel opened the door. “But the authorities have been called—not by myself, of course, nor any of my kin nor my wife nor Edgar, the third shift doorman who bade me tell you.” Muhammad withdrew a scrap of paper from the breast pocket of his silk tunic and read, “‘Upon my life I swear that I am no rat’—and will likely descend upon you at any moment. What is your advice? I’m so sorry to intrude,” he finished with a brief bow.

  “God damn it!” Charlie said, took another swig of wine and got up to shove his arms in his jacket.

  “Shit,” Dragon said, giving her soaked T-shirt and sweats a helpless look before tugging on a pair of battered sneakers. “I have to go.” She stood, caught a glimpse of herself in the large mirror centered on the dresser and covered her mouth to catch her distressed moan. She fingered her frizzing pigtails and used the wet hem of her T-shirt to wipe at the melted mascara under her eyes.

  “Stay,” Fel said. “Not here, obviously, but with me.”

  “I’d love to,” she said to her reflection, still rubbing at the imperfections that running make-up left behind. “You have no idea how much, but if my father knew I was here…” She met his eyes in the mirror. “Next time for sure.”

  He caught her arm as she sidled by him and Muhammad who executed another bow at both
her and Charlemagne.

  “The phooka doesn’t know you’re here?”

  “Officially, I’m spending a girlfriend’s-only weekend at Saras’s. The Hindu stylist at the salon,” she clarified at his blank look. “But if he suspected I was here, he’d leave me.” She averted her eyes from his incredulous look. “He’s promised it would be so and Quill and Ch’in have pledged their troths to him.”

  “A phooka, a goddess and a dragon king threaten you with abandonment should you blink twice at me, yet here you stand. You sure you don’t love me?”

  Dragon huffed a self-conscious laugh and pressed a shy kiss to the swirling scarification on his shoulder. She eased past Muhammad before Fel could give her a proper kiss and pushed through the emergency stair exit.

  “I’m outta here, buddy. You coming?” Charlie said.

  “Right behind you. Cyan protocol?”

  “Which one is that again? The one where we hire the people and go to the place that guy from Queen’s Port told us about? Or is it the one where we find the guy who knows about the Exit 54 job?”

  “Neither. Jesus Christ, Charlemagne,” Fel said, shaking his head.

  “No worries.” Charlie grinned at Muhammad as he left Fel’s motel room. “I’ll figure it out.”

  Smiling at his friend’s forgetfulness—which had ironically saved them more times than Fel could count during the war—Fel tried to make sense of Dragon’s effect on him. He dug under his bed for an old duffel and threw a few essentials in it: jeans, T-shirts, boxers, the gun from his sock drawer, a few extra mags, the knife that lived under his pillow, four carefully rolled wads of money he’d hidden in the hollowed out armrest of the ugly green sofa.

  Stopping, he raised his hand and called for Charlie’s half-full mug of faerie wine on the floor. The liquid in the cup splashed a bit as if something had just dived in, but otherwise remained unresponsive.