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

by CK Dawn

  “My final day in the Shade, Doque took me to his bed one last time, and despite the tenderness of the encounter, I experienced torments that would make Lucifer cringe in disgust.”

  “It is my understanding the Fiend prefers a more traditional encounter,” Ch’in muttered to no one in particular, his voice gruff with emotion.

  “The Devil likes him some vanilla sex? Didn’t see that coming.” Phyllis got slowly to her feet and hobbled over to the battered recliner, easing into it as if she were a hundred years old instead of a sixty-year-old who’d volunteered for slavery in order to look thirty.

  “And you were grateful for it,” Jasper sneered, glaring over his shoulder at Quill, who simply continued with her story.

  “After he’d finished and after there was nothing in my stomach left to vomit, he begged a favor of me. I said yes before he could even voice his request. There was nowhere for me to go. Powerless, friendless and a willing inhabitant of the Ninth Circle was how Mahb spun my absence from court,” she said bitterly. “Of course I said yes. He smiled then and for once his eyes did not resemble the blue-black emptiness of infinite space. They were…warm.

  “He beat me to a bloody pulp. When I begged him to stop, he only laughed and said I needed to look like I’d fallen out of a three-story building to be believable.”

  “He broke every bone in your body?” Phyllis confirmed unnecessarily. “Christ Almighty.”

  “All this time,” Dragon whispered. “You’ve been lying for fifteen years.”

  “No, Willita. I loved you from the start.” She reached for Dragon who scuttled away like a frightened crab.

  “I love you still.” Fat tears lined a trail down Quill’s face. “So much,” she said, transferring her gaze to Jasper.

  Face intractable Jasper said, “How much does he know?”

  “Jasper, please believe me. I never knowingly brought any harm to you—”

  At that blatant untruth, Jasper flew at Quill, whatever strength he got from shooting up focused on manipulating the molecules of Quill’s chest, and slid his fully transformed claws into it, his hand embedded in Quill’s body almost to the elbow. “There’s actually a heart in there. You believe that, Dragon?” he said with an awful laugh. “I would’ve bet cash money there was nothing but an echo.” He pulled his hand out of her body and pushed her away from him, watching as she fell heavily onto the settee. “How much?” he asked again.

  “Everything.” Her hand fluttered disbelievingly over her unblemished heart.

  “Jasper, honey, you fought for Doque for God’s sake. With distinction,” Phyllis said, straightening her dress and running fingers through her hair, her speedy recovery further evidence of her time in the Sun. “I don’t see how it matters.”

  “You wouldn’t,” he snarled. “I want no part of caged living, no matter how gilded or unobtrusive,” he said, returning his angry glare to Quill. “Big Brother’s constant gaze is the worst cage of all.”

  “Illusions, no matter how beautiful ultimately fade,” Ch’in said.

  “You have twenty minutes to pack your things and get out.” Jasper hauled Quill out of the sofa and marched her to her room, leaning against the doorjamb to watch as she stumbled about, shoving things into a canvas drawstring bag.

  A kind of incomprehensible horror compelled Dragon to walk a few steps to her left, far enough away from her still-angry father, but close enough to give her an unobstructed view of the catastrophic disaster she had caused.

  Bad taste in men had snowballed into keeping company with prostitutes and demons to the burning notice of the Sun to the utter destruction of the only family she’d ever wanted.

  “She’s not your mother, Chicken.”

  Dragon felt Phyllis’s vanilla-scented warmth next to her, clenched her teeth at Phyllis’s attempt to take advantage of a weak moment and cursed her own gullibility for wishing for a moment that her grandmother’s concern was genuine.

  “Neither are you.”

  “I’m your blood,” Phyllis insisted, sliding an arm around Dragon’s shoulders.

  Dragon stepped out of the embrace and regarded Phyllis through suddenly exhausted eyes. “I don’t want you to be. More than anything I wish that I could empty my veins of you and fill it with Dad and Ch’in and—”

  “Her?” Phyllis pointed at the goddess who resembled nothing more than a broken spirit as she placed framed photos and a simple fresh-water pearl necklace Dragon had made her in the bag. Watching her carefully fold the soft cotton sundress Jasper had given her to wear to Dragon’s high-school graduation, Dragon wiped her wet face and wondered if she’d ever be able to stop crying.

  “Yes, her. I am heartbroken, but I would do anything to go back to not knowing.”

  Jasper’s face was as immobile as granite, his normally expressive eyes revealing nothing. “Then you’re a fool,” he bit out.

  “You’ve been happy here,” Dragon said, taking a few steps closer to him. “When it was just you and me you were tired all the time and I knew that was my fault.”

  “It wasn’t,” he said quickly, the hardness in his eyes softening for just a moment. “You were a good girl. Did your homework and your chores when I told you. Ate your vegetables without a peep. It was my behavior that kept me up nights. I’m a wicked old soul, love,” he sighed. “Right down to my core. Who the hell was I to think I could grow a girl-child?”

  Abandoning her fear of him, Dragon slid her arms around the Phooka’s waist and braced her chin on his chest. “You did great,” she said. “Look at me. I’m grown.”

  He cradled her face in his large hands. “Willie’d have my hide if he saw you now.”

  “Don’t say that,” she whispered tears falling freely.

  “You think you would’ve given him the same trouble you gave me?”

  “Yes! Phyllis and Katie—”

  “You cannot continue to blame them!” he roared.

  She nodded her head against his chest. “I know.”

  “No, I don’t think you do. They had you for nine years, I had you for twenty, and somehow it is their inattention that has shaped you. How in fuck is that even possible?” He pushed her away from him, his incredulous gaze shaming her like nothing else.

  “Willie would roll over if he saw you, no doubt about it, and who could blame him? I rooted for dread like it was sustenance and when I found it in abundance, ah the mayhem I wreaked. Showered the wary and unwary alike until they fell to their knees and begged. Not to any god or angel, but to me. I orgied in those days—on their terror, their despair with their sons and daughters—until I was glutted.

  “Then that Pan bullshit swept the world—surpassed even my best efforts,” he admitted with grudging admiration. “And I took it into my head to adopt a human. Out the clear blue sky.” He shook his head, amazed at his own audacity. “Thought I could love you.” His tortured eyes gazed into Dragon’s and blinked at Quill, who had stopped packing.

  “You did, Dad,” Dragon reassured him desperately.

  “Not enough,” he said, “to turn that one from the Shade or keep you from destroying yourself or us. You realize, don’t you, that if you’d loved us more than you hated her,” he jerked his chin at Phyllis, “we wouldn’t be here.”

  “Yes, I know,” Dragon said then covered her mouth to stifle her broken sobs.

  His stony mask back in place, he turned to Quill and examined her as if she were a fly crawling over his doughnut. “Finish up.”

  In that same awful voice, he addressed Dragon. “You too. I told you what would happen if you chose that addict over your family.”

  “You can’t mean that.”

  “I’m done, human. Finished. As far as I’m concerned, your betrayal of this family is on par with hers.” He jerked his chin at Quill.

  Dragon turned away from the goddess, but the portrait of Quill’s despair—bronze skin strangely ashen, one hand holding a cheap canvas bag full of everything she held dear while the other one used one of Jasper’s ke
rchiefs, carefully folded, to blot at the sluggish tears that ran ceaselessly down her cheeks—she knew would stay with her forever.

  Whatever Jasper said now, Dragon would never believe that he hadn’t been happy with Quill living here.

  The day he came home to find a still-bruised Quill on the settee, Dragon seated on the floor between her legs, the fallen goddess gently combing the tangles out of his child’s wet hair, even Dragon had felt Jasper’s relieved smile like it was a welcome blanket. He was all thumbs when it came to her hair. More than that, she’d felt him finally relax, as if watching Quill plait Dragon’s mop into a hundred tiny braids had satisfied some neglected appetite, and he could finally belch and pat his full belly.

  She’d destroyed him, just as he said. Dragon could see that now. Her antics hadn’t tested his love, they had rejected it at every turn.

  “Phooka,” she whispered, easing onto her knees, Saras’s colorful loaner pooling around her in silk teal swirls. “I have trespassed on your extraordinary good nature, and though I am not worthy, I beg you, forgive me.”

  He had taught her this as a just-in-case tactic in their early days together. Paranoid that some other fae would covet his good fortune—for what was a child but the truest form of eternity to be had?—and steal his Dragon away, leaving a doll or changeling in her place, he’d drilled the rules of fae into her brain. And when he was done with that, he showed her how to bend and twist them, how to dress them up or down as the case may be, how to win with a smile while leaving your opponent feeling as if they’d gained something valuable as well. How to stay alive until he came for her.

  The silence between them lingered, illustrating in devastating detail the deep gully that separated them. There was a time when an apology from her would be gruffly accepted by her father who’d then suggest ice cream for dinner—the universal peace treaty.

  Blinking up at him she accepted this punishment—the first surprising downpour of a furious hurricane. “Okay.” She stood, hugged his unresponsive body and kissed his furred cheek, taking a moment to lay her head on his shoulder. “You’re my dad, don’t forget that. I never will. And if Willie’s turning in his grave it’s ߴ’Cause he wishes he was here. He always loved his crazy family. ‘Mama was mad as a hatter,’ he used to tell me. Then you know what he did? He smiled, with his mouth full of gold teeth.”

  She stepped away from him and regarded the beast undertow had rendered.

  His nose and mouth had transformed into a short snout, somewhere between a wolf’s and a jaguar’s, his laughing blue irises had bled into the whites and the pupils and his jet brows had lengthened, ending in a lazy curl nearly an inch away from his temple.

  She turned to Ch’in, his face impassive.

  “Don’t let him take any more of that shit,” she said, hugging him and dying a little more inside when his arms remained loose at his sides. “Love you.” She watched him closely, relief coursing through her when his bland mask cracked and his face twisted with anger.

  “I am furious with you, child.”

  “I know.”

  “You are no longer welcome here.”

  “I will nonetheless be back,” she said, imitating his speech perfectly.

  His deep brown eyes gleamed with reluctant amusement then almost immediately filled with tears, one fat drop sliding down his glistening scales.

  “You no longer have my protection,” he said his voice hoarse with fear and unhappy resignation.

  “I’ll manage.”

  “Tell the crimin—tell Flannacán that I—that I…”

  “Will drop-kick his ass into the hereafter if even one hair on my divine little head—” the rest of her statement was cut off as Ch’in swept her up in a bear hug before pushing her gently away from him.

  “Go.”

  Bypassing Phyllis altogether, Dragon met Quill’s complex gaze as she ran a hand through the thick gray fur of her father’s arm. She froze at his low warning growl, but didn’t remove her hand, concentrating instead on calming her thumping heart, the coarse fur that rasped against her fingers and deciphering Quill’s gaze.

  Failing to interpret whatever Quill was signaling, Dragon decided to smile for her even though she was terrified. Of her father and her world without him, of the jagged, exhausted, dangerous, fulfilling life that waited for her by Fel’s side. She’d never imagined starting that journey without Jasper and Ch’in certainly, but especially never without her moon mother. She still couldn’t, despite Quill’s treachery.

  But Dragon knew a few things about betrayal and the way it could be the lesser of two evils, or no choice at all, or the failed result of a go at happiness. She knew, too, that she’d welcome even the barest hint at a second chance, so she smiled at Quill. No teeth, jaw clenched to prevent out-and-out sobbing, and deliberate upward curl of the lips.

  “Love you, Dad,” she said, and walked quickly out of the living room, the thump of paws on the floorboards and Buddha’s outraged yowl making her stumble as she pulled the door to the Salon closed behind her.

  “I best go after her,” Phyllis said. “She’ll be wanting a shoulder.”

  “You truly think she would accept comfort from you? Amazing.” Ch’in shook his head.

  Glaring at Ch’in and giving Jasper a ridiculously wide berth, Phyllis left, her heels clicking like a fashionable herald of frogs and locusts.

  “You’re next,” Jasper literally growled at Quill. “Without all the melodrama if you please.”

  “I never faked how much I loved you—all, and how much I loved living here.”

  With an unholy bellow, Jasper gripped Quill’s upper arm, his claws gouging deep holes in her flesh, and propelled her to the door, opening it and thrusting her through it with enough force that Quill was obliged to tuck and roll to break her fall.

  With a slam Quill was surprised didn’t splinter the door into kindling, her home was barred to her.

  She flew at the door and pounded it with her fists and feet, cursing at the minimal protection her favorite pair of sneakers offered.

  “Jasper!” she screamed shocked at the way her bellow echoed throughout the neighborhood, provoking a cacophony of barks.

  Rather glad that she too could spook the locals, she pounded the door again.

  “Jasper, I know you’re there. I can hear you breathing. Listen to me this last time, Phooka. I never told Doque about Willita’s abilities because…because, well fuck him, that’s why. He beat the shit out of me every time I reported to him or found some foul way to torture me. By the time I pieced together exactly what it was Dragon was capable of, Doque had used me in so many vile ways, I stopped being so grateful. At first keeping Dragon’s power to myself was a lark to see what I could get away with, but then I fell in love with her and it became a matter of life and death. My child was at stake.

  “He knows she has power but doesn’t know she’s been accessing it. I swear it on the life of the only child I’ve ever wanted.”

  The heavy oak door swung open and Cernunnos’s firstborn stood in its frame, fully changed into an animal capable of dark, bloody mischief.

  “If that is true then I pity you, Moon,” he said his voice full of terrible dread. “You cannot evade the Shadow forever. Your own will run tattling to him before long.”

  At Quill’s confused expression he flew at her, pinning her on the cobblestone walkway. “That’s how he finds you,” he snarled. “Linger long enough in his presence, especially if you’ve exchanged fluids,” he enunciated in her ear, making her struggle frantically, “and he can track your shadow. Lord of all those gray places, isn’t he?” He released her then walked slowly to the Salon’s door as if a great burden weighed him down.

  “Get the fuck out of here,” he said and disappeared into the dark interior, the creaking door seeming to swing neatly home with a mind of its own.

  Twenty-Four

  Dragon made it to Trash Bin just as her stoic façade ran out of gas. At the base of a young dogwood, she eased to her
bottom, fitting her clavicle and shoulder against its smooth trunk. Curling her legs under her borrowed skirt, Dragon bowed her head and sobbed, totally unmoved when the piskies pushed a chipped clay bowl under her leaking face.

  Rarely seen, piskies were no bigger than a sugar spoon and possessed bodies like long thorns: pointed, almost-willowy heads and torsos graduating to legs and feet that were disproportionately wide. They sweated a clear fertilizing slime as they walked, like slugs.

  Ingeniously dressed in daisy petals for the males and breathless pink tulip petals for the females, they argued among themselves as Dragon wept. Their bark-colored bodies vibrated like tuning forks as angry words that sounded like the abbreviated whistles of a base-clef wood chime passed between the group of three gripping the right side of the bowl and the couple on the other.

  The delicate crunch of grass startled the piskies into silence and the two glowing orange dots in their thin, peaked heads watched as Phyllis, barefoot, placed her gorgeous shoes on the ground as if it were carpeted with eggs and lowered herself behind Dragon’s body.

  Dragon felt Phyllis’s diaphragm contract at the sight of the piskies as she breathed, “Holy shit,” returning the piskies wary gaze before resting her head on Dragon’s shoulder. “Let it out, little girl.”

  “Don’t touch me,” Dragon replied, making no move to get away from her grandmother.

  “I won’t, baby,” Phyllis said, hugging her closer as Dragon continued to weep into the piskie’s bowl. “Promise.”

  Phyllis held her as she cried, whispering nonsense words to her as grief jerked and shuddered an inelegant path out of her body.

  Finally Dragon’s sobs eased to the endless trickle of tears. The piskies had exchanged the full clay bowl for a small dented saucepot and her tears pinged into it, reminding Dragon of the Salon’s living room littered with pots and buckets whenever it rained too hard.

  The memory threatened to overwhelm her, but Phyllis’s one-sided conversation caught her attention.