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

by CK Dawn

  A quick look over her shoulder showed that the demon had pulled Fel—his pores leaking blood—closer to her. Her exaggerated countenance made her look as if she were in as much pain as Fel was. Her sore-ridden lips had split and oozed the brackish fluid that passed for Gemma’s blood.

  Dragon turned back to the chest and pulled out drawer after drawer filled with God-knew-what, and hurled them at Gemma, hoping that something would stick. She looked to see if she’d made any impact and was horrified that Fel was barely four feet away from the demon’s outstretched arm. He was covered in blood and the skin on his forearms and face had split open to reveal muscle. The floor around them swirled with fantastically colored potions.

  Keeping her eyes—burning from the concoctions on the floor—on Fel, Dragon reached behind her and grasped the cool glass handle of a drawer, praying that in it was the perfect weapon to stop a greedy, determined, vengeful demon. She looked down at its contents before she threw it, not even hesitating at the sight of her golden dandelion lying peacefully in its bed.

  As she went into her wind up, she couldn’t help but think of Jasper, teaching her to play baseball, a game he’d never attempted in his two thousand years. She let loose her pitch, smiling grimly as the wooden drawer splintered against Gemma’s impervious chest and the weed made to yoke Dragon’s ability splashed over the demon, coating a small area on Gemma’s chest with a syrupy, fluorescent liquid. Then, like a cancerous stain, the binding spell spread, finally covering Gemma in a glowing, gelatinous fluid.

  When the spell consumed her, the power holding Fel was cut off and he hit the floor with an agonizing groan.

  Dragon rummaged through the chest for Leaf of Life and rushed to him. She dumped the concentrated powder all over Fel, making sure he licked his liberally dusted lips.

  “It’s like watching a fucking tennis match,” Saras said, limping over to Dragon. She nodded to the demon, whose right arm had shifted back to its delicate human form, and then to Fel, and the split flesh of his face that joined in a meticulous wave of healing.

  Dragon glanced at Gemma again, her eyes widening at the demon’s present form—human limbs, enormous, red barrel chest and two dicks. Her head overgrown with the twisted horns of her crown remained just as lethal as ever save for the spikes that grew from her temples, which had reverted to flaccid strands of straight, dark hair. Before Dragon could blink, the horns towering over Gemma’s forehead softened into precisely layered bangs.

  “Fuck,” the demon muttered, unprepared for the deluge of thick yellow binding fluid that took her open mouth for invitation and rushed down her throat. With her arms outspread, Gemma stiffened as if paralyzed, her big-breasted human chest bursting through the bits of remaining demon like it was a birthday piñata. Colorful sparkles lit the ends of each dick, burning a spiral path around the lengths until, with a cheerful zip and pop, both dicks gave way to a neatly trimmed pubic mound.

  Dragon focused on Fel and was relieved to see that his rent skin had healed absolutely and that his pores were slowly closing.

  His eyes fluttered and he moaned, using one hand to wave away the smoke his healing flesh generated.

  Gemma, the absurdly gorgeous human version, screamed as Saras’s binding spell finished its work, settling innocently around the former demon’s dainty feet like a puddle of urine.

  “You fucking bitch!” Gem raged, launching herself at Dragon.

  Saras easily caught her around the waist and body-slammed her to the floor to keep her still. “As long as we understand each other.” Saras met the gasping demon’s eyes and then added a conciliatory, “Nice tits.”

  “Dragon,” Fel tried to sit up. “You need to go.”

  “Sweetie, Gemma’s a human again. Permanently.” She looked at Saras for confirmation and let out a relieved breath at her nod.

  “Not permanently! Not if I have anything to say about it!” Gem shrieked, her blue eyes flashing.

  “Feisty little thing.” Saras’s grin included both Dragon and Fel who smirked back, his chuckles dissolving into hacking coughs.

  “You still need to go,” he said, standing. “Haven’t spilled this much blood since the war.” He grimaced at the large splatters that turned Saras’s simple rug of color-block cream into some sort of modern art. “Both Mahb and Doque got my blood on file. All the better to keep tabs on me.” He shook his head in regret. “Giving it to them in the first place was a bonehead move, I know. Someone from both camps could be here in three minutes or three hours. I would’ve staked my life on the latter ten minutes ago, but the serious magic that one,” he glared at Gemma who looked at the split ends of her long, dark hair unhappily, “just used makes me question every aspect of the fucking world as we know it. Where’d you get that kind of juice, by the way?”

  Gemma leveled a baleful look at him. “Where else? Mahb. You for complete restoration. That was our deal. Half up front. I get the back end when I bring you in.”

  “Except you decided to take the whole nut for yourself. Bad squirrel,” Saras admonished, hefting her solid birch coffee table off her ruined rug. Inlaid with cubes of pewter and copper, the thing weighed at least three hundred pounds, but Saras lifted it like it was an empty box.

  After setting it down on her hardwood floor, she crouched at the edge of her rug and started to roll it, stepping over the wet smears of blood that had soaked through.

  Dragon went to the back pantry, grabbed the roll of twine Saras used to cook with and headed back into the living room.

  “What are you gonna do when Mahb figures out you took her loan with no intention of paying it back?” Fel asked as Dragon approached Gemma. Before the demon could answer, Dragon accidentally rammed the heel of her hand into the demon’s nose then hauled her arms behind her back and used the twine to bind them. “Oops,” she grunted over the cursing demon’s shoulder.

  “I think it’s broken,” Gem wailed.

  “Is it?” Dragon said, finishing with Gemma’s hands and starting on her feet. “Here, lemme see.” She gently cupped Gem’s face then accidently punched her in the nose again.

  At Gemma’s high-pitched shriek, Dragon said, “Damn, I can’t figure out how that keeps happening.” She met Fel’s fascinated gaze. “A couple more punches and she’ll have to buy herself a new nose. That doesn’t even come close to the agonizing pain she put you through, does it?”

  “You are so friggin’ sexy,” he said solemnly.

  Dragon grinned and turned back to Gemma, examining the demon’s broken, bloody nose closely. “Maybe just a couple more.” She raised her fist.

  “Wait! Wait. Flannacán, I’ll make you a deal. Service for protection.” She continued quickly at Fel’s sardonically raised brows. “You and Charlemagne keep Mahb off my tail and in return I’ll give you ten months of service.”

  “Isn’t this an interesting turn of events?” Fel’s grin was evil. “Bartering protection for service is Gem’s main source of income,” he said to Dragon, his eyes twinkling. “Charlie’s going to love this. Sixty,” he countered.

  “Twenty-four.”

  “Sixty.”

  “Thirty-six,” Gemma said desperately.

  Fel’s unblinking stare hit the fifty-second mark before the demon started to squirm.

  “Please,” she said, the admission clearly damaging her pride.

  “Fine. Get me a small bowl,” he directed at Saras, who nodded and limped to the kitchen and returned moments later with a ladle.

  “Untie her.” He nodded at Dragon. “Give me your hand, Gremory,” he ordered, watching the demon chafe her wrists to restore feeling. He kneeled in front of her, grasped Gem’s arm, and taking the four-inch dagger Saras handed him, swiped the tip against Gemma’s wrist, milking it until blood as thick as a milkshake dripped into the ladle. After a few seconds, he handed the ladle back to Saras and covered Gemma’s wound with his mouth.

  “What the fuck?” Dragon said.

  “It’s our way, baby,” Saras said, observing the proceed
ings impassively. “Your blood is your bond. Only real way to seal a deal.”

  Fel lifted his head and wiped his mouth. “Got anything to drink?” he directed to Saras, dropping Gemma’s hand as if it were a piece of rotted fruit. He met Dragon’s anxious eyes.

  “Taste like chicken?” Her wan smile underscored her attempt at humor.

  “More like death.” He sat heavily on Saras’s low-rider sofa—a raw-silk covered homage to her preference for being close to the earth—and drank from the glass of cloudy liquid she handed him. “Get Charlie to drink it,” he said, watching Saras transfer the liquid from the ladle to a small vial. “Charlie, not you,” he clarified.

  “Fel!” Dragon gasped at his implication.

  “I’m a twice-decorated, honorably discharged officer of C.R.A, you worthless shit,” Saras said.

  “I don’t know you. Don’t know the first thing about you. I want your word, Sarasvati.”

  “Well, apparently you know my fucking name, don’t you?”

  “I can’t believe we’re arguing about this after what just happened,” Dragon said. “Saras, please, just do it, okay?”

  “For you,” Saras said, pointing at Dragon. “I promise to give this pestilence-ridden blood to his friend as soon as he wakes.”

  “Would it be too much to ask for a goddamn bandage?” Gemma groused, breaking the tension and nodding curtly in thanks when Dragon retrieved a couple of dish towels.

  Tying one around her wrist to dam the sluggish flow of black plasma from her wrist, Gemma used the other for her nose.

  “Quit acting like such a baby.” Saras pocketed Gemma’s indenture and slumped onto a voluptuous easy chair done up in deeply stained maple and beige linen. “It’s hard to believe you ran a successful criminal enterprise with all that whining.” She let her head fall on the backrest, took the ice pack Dragon handed her and placed it on her battered face.

  “I got a question,” Dragon said moving closer to Fel. She pushed his hair off his forehead and bent to kiss it. “How much magic were you able to siphon from Fel before I spanked your ass?”

  “Thought he didn’t have what she wanted.” Saras’s voice was muffled by her ice pack.

  “Hush, Saras, grown folks are talking.” Dragon glared at her friend then looked down at Fel whose face remained absolutely impassive.

  Preoccupied with the inadequate state of her biceps, Gemma said, “Nothing.”

  If possible, Fel’s face got even grimmer. “Nothing,” he repeated without inflection. “Not even pieces.” He leaned heavily against the back of the sofa and closed his eyes. “Fuck.”

  “It’ll be okay,” Dragon murmured. And then, so only he could hear. “I trust Saras.”

  He opened his eyes, took her hand in his and kissed it tenderly.

  “The spell you used was pretty shit-tastic,” Saras said pulling the ice pack off her face to peer at Gemma. “Are you sure the White Hot Sun, the Illuminator and one of the most powerful beings on this earth, gave you that spell?”

  “She gave me the power,” Gem clarified. “Lonnie T over at Urban Jungle sold me instructions for extracting an unwilling soul for fifty vens and a six-month pass on his protection fees. Said power was power and how you gathered it up was irrelevant. Clearly he was wrong.” Abandoning her biceps, Gem frowned at her inadequate cuticles, squeezed her eyes closed and held her breath.

  When her face turned an alarming red, Saras squinted at the demon. “My spell is solid. I don’t do shoddy work,” she said, interrupting Gem’s obvious attempt to transform into her demon form. “You’re just making yourself look constipated.”

  Gemma flipped her the bird, untied her ankles and walked to Saras’s immaculately set dining room table.

  “Why do you keep that like that?” Dragon gestured to the elaborately decorated table.

  “Sage thinks my crib could make the fall issue of Rapturous Living.” Saras looked at the ruined cement wall and her living room floor still steaming from the medicines Dragon had thrown and said, “Not anymore, obviously.”

  Grasping the edges of the vermillion damask table-cloth, Gemma jerked it cleanly out from under the hand-painted porcelain place setting for ten and wrapped it around her torso, tying the edges over one shoulder, toga style.

  When she was decently covered, Gem stepped deliberately into one of the larger smears of Fel’s blood, sighing as her weight squished cold, red plasma between her toes.

  “I was close, Flannacán. So fuckin’ close to having it all,” she sighed, kneeling to gather a palm full of his blood and slurping it down noisily.

  “That’s disgusting,” Saras said. She walked over to the demon and smacked her upside the head. “Humans don’t drink blood.”

  “You’ll pay for this, Sarasvati.”

  “All’s fair in love and war, Gremory. You should know that better than anyone.” Saras’s grin was feral.

  Dragon watched her friend torment the demon with a fond smile.

  “I want you out of here. Go home. Tell Jasper everything.” Fel gathered her in his arms and bussed her forehead. “Gem may be impotent, but I know her well enough to know that she won’t stop until she gets back even a tenth of her magic. If that happens, she’ll come after both me and Charlie to break her service contract.” His beautiful gray eyes stared into hers gravely.

  “Also, you need to avenge your friend and you’d rather not torture your best source of information in front of your girlfriend.”

  “Lest she think me ruthless and unfeeling,” he agreed.

  “I’m guessing your technique is more involved than punching her in the nose.”

  “Just a bit.” His eyes gleamed.

  “Okay, I’m outta here.” She pulled away from Fel and held her arms wide for Saras. “Come gimme kiss. Love you.”

  “Love you,” the goddess said, falling easily into their hug.

  “Don’t leave me,” Gemma begged, scooting away from Fel, who’d found a blowtorch from somewhere and was testing it while looking at Gemma speculatively. “Dragon, that’s your name, right? Do you need sheets? I know a guy who can get you Egyptian cotton at cost.” She acknowledged Fel’s toothy grin by cowering behind an end table decorated with a statue of Siddhartha washing the feet of a maiden. “Jesus, Dragon. I’ll give you anything you want, just don’t leave me with him.”

  Ignoring Gemma, Dragon strode to Saras’s front door. “Find me,” she ordered Fel.

  “Always.”

  Twenty-Three

  Walking 30 blocks alone at minutes to midnight was just stupid, Dragon thought as she hurried through streets slowly crowding with third-shifters, club-hoppers, Halo City’s dwindling police force, robbers and grifters of every variety.

  “You looking for a date, sugar?” a nine-foot ogre said from the flickering light of Heavenly Food’s broken sign. The white bulbs that intermittently blinked “Heavenly” had given out years ago, and some enterprising soul had affixed a thirty-six-square-foot piece of plywood with the word “dog” exuberantly graffitied to the left of the orange neon “Food.”

  “No thanks,” Dragon said, trying not to notice the bulging flesh his sequined thong couldn’t contain. She hurried past what could only be one of the full-grown Jack flies the hob elevator operator had told her about, tearing through the curbside garbage of Vinnie’s Cat House. The creature’s joints were a fiery red and leaked synovial fluid.

  At the corner of Sixth and Thirty-fifth, she was obliged to cross the street to avoid a crumbling ten-story office building, the most recent victim of the war’s many hidden landmines. Its brick-and-mortar face gave way to a colorful frieze that resembled kente cloth. Marble sunflowers—some in bloom, others more shy—sprouted then wilted at the structure’s gables, causing a few passersby to take cover as marble petals crashed to the sidewalk. Copper sea grass flowed over some of the building’s windows with granite and stone daffodils, ivy and Birds of Paradise dominating the rest.

  “Hey there, sweetness,” a man still clothed in pr
ison orange said, though in his defense he wore the flexed-wings pin of a recent parolee. “Wanna suck my cock?” The charm of his grin was so at odds with his offer that Dragon couldn’t suppress her chuckle.

  He unbuttoned his jumpsuit and thrust his tiny wrinkled appendage at her. “They called me Pinocchio on the inside,” he said proudly.

  “The more you lie the bigger your dick gets?” Dragon guessed, blinking at his soft nubbin. “You look like you you’ve been castrated.”

  “And you should seriously think about putting on weight. A drunk super model could kick your ass.”

  Dragon took a deep breath, preparing to tell him where he could go, but stopped when she glanced at his dick.

  Like helium filling birthday balloons, his cock slowly inflated, gaining two very respectable inches and hardening.

  “That’s incredible,” Dragon said fascinated, his earlier insult forgotten. “Lie some more.”

  “Okay, okay. Lemme think. I got one.” He rubbed his hands together. “You’re having a fantastic hair day.”

  Dragon raised a hand to her head, realizing that the quick knot she’d twisted her locks in had fallen. Instead of luxuriantly curly tresses falling over her shoulders, the hairs on the left side of her head followed the path of least resistance, initiating a wave-frizz pattern that made half her head look a good six inches shorter than the other half. The right side had frizzed totally. Unfortunately, without any real direction the last three inches of her hair clung together in an unstylish mat.

  But all of this was forgotten as the parolee’s dick grew another two inches and thickened to resemble a red, store-bought ice pop.

  “Holy shit,” Dragon said.

  “A couple more lies and you’ll be aching to top me off,” he predicted, scratching his head. “I got one. I love eating pussy. I could lick your snatch all day every day and not have enough.”

  This time Dragon kept her eyes on his cock, squeaking when it grew at least three inches and gained another inch of girth.