Dark Fantasy / Paranormal Romance

Date Published: February 6, 2026

Publisher: Changeling Press

Diana Kendall just had an argument with the owner of Cornwall’s pub. Now
Cornwall’s is burning to the ground. Diana’s an enigma, an artist,
beautiful and intelligent, but strangely aloof. How can Mike resist? But when
he wakes up the next morning, Diana’s gone.

It’s not until Mike sees a naked woman disappear into an art gallery
with a wolf at her side that the real trouble starts. The woman looks
incredibly like Diana. But what is the mysterious apparition trying to tell
him?

Mike needs to find out what’s really going. Does Diana’s fiery
past tell the story, or will he get burnt by Vengeful Fire?

As he watched the flames, Mike wondered if Prometheus had known what he was
doing when he stole fire from the gods and turned it over to mankind. Humans
had been nothing but trouble ever since.

The alcohol fueled flames consuming Cornwall’s Pub were hypnotic —
mesmerizing and beautiful. They writhed in an almost sensual way. No, Mike
corrected himself. The flames were sensual — the rhythmic way the tongues of
fire bent and unbent were undoubtedly sexual, as if they were alive, pyrrhic
creatures in the throes of orgasm, riding the stiff wooden beams that fueled
their passion. There was even a sense of playful capriciousness about the
sound of splintering beams, which created a staccato beat cheekily mimicking
the act — the fucking act, the act of fucking.

Mike thought there was even something sexual about the words that described
fire. Tongues of flame that licked, seething cauldrons of searing molten heat,
glowing embers pulsing white hot, bursting explosions of showering sparks,
inflamed… His mental thesaurus eventually failed him and he settled in
to enjoy the show.

Several roof beams collapsed with a whoosh. Sparks showered the street and
plumes of acrid smoke belched out of the roiling flames.

Mike looked forward to the climax of the act, when the last sinews of
structure that held the roof aloft would melt, bend and break as the building
collapsed completely into the smoldering debris of orgasm.

Moments later there was another explosion, no doubt the last of the bottles of
bourbon, gin and scotch that had lined the mirrored bar. The firecracker bangs
brought a cheer from the fickle crowd, who twenty minutes earlier had been
drinking and singing within the Cornwall’s convivial walls. The crowd,
Mike thought, were like jilted lovers who laughed self-consciously at the
misfortunes of an unfaithful ex-partner.

Adrenaline still pumped madly through Mike’s veins as if he’d just
come inside the cock-melting pussy of some stranger. He had reason. He’d
been the one who’d shouted the alarm causing these rats to desert the
sinking ship. Not one, he noted, had stayed to fight the hungry flames. No one
had been loyal and true, though they’d drunk there, as he had, for the
last several years. Ten minutes after the final climax of this act of
consuming passion they’d likely be drinking at someone else’s bar.
He felt unaccountably guilty, like the concerned friend who had to break the
news of an infidelity. Knowing that what he did would have ramifications
beyond a simple busted relationship. A step once taken…

Across from him, in the semicircle of voyeurs, stood a dark-haired girl, tall
and lithe. He remembered her from earlier in the night. She was a stranger to
the bar, a newbie, attractive enough to stop conversation… at least on
the men’s parts and, he recalled, some of the girls too.

The pulsating conflagration illuminated her pensive face. She had striking
features; high cheekbones, full lips, large dark eyes and long straight ebony
hair that reached her waist. She seemed strangely familiar but he
couldn’t place her. She wasn’t someone overtly famous, someone who
was always in your face like a movie star. More likely she was a lingerie
model or perhaps he’d seen her in a TV commercial.

His interest in her had been heightened, of course, by the ruckus she’d
caused. An argument with the manager of the place, that stuck up prick
Cornwall himself.

There followed a brief, angry exchange with the bouncer who’d been
instructed to escort her furious body off the premises. Mike had left his seat
to go to her assistance but she’d been too quickly ejected and by the
time he’d reached the street she’d gone.

She’d returned an hour or so later, just before he raised the alarm
about the fire. He noticed she’d come in the side door that led from the
alley. Her serious and cunning expression reminded him of a jilted lover who
can’t resist sneaking into the ex’s bedroom. The scene of so many
orgasms; where so much cum had been ejaculated, spilled, and swallowed. Just
once more to lie on the sodden sheets of love.

Mike made a decision and moved between the drunken observers and stood beside
her. Amazingly, despite the choking, plastic laden smoke that swirled around
them, she smelled of… oranges.

“Hi there,” he said.

“Do I know you?”

She hadn’t looked at him. Her eyes were fixed on the firefighters, those
modern knights with watery lances who battled the angry chimera; the mindless
fire-breathing beast.

“No. I saw you earlier when you had a row with that prick
Cornwall.”

“So?”

“I really don’t think you should be standing here. The fire chief
will tell the police that the fire was deliberately lit. The police will then
interview the staff and they’ll describe you and they’ll see you
here watching the place burn down. Not a good look.”

She turned to face him then, dark eyes sizing him up. The rippling flames were
reflected in them and he found himself lost in those glowing embers, looking
for his silhouette.

“What do you have in mind?”

Infidelity, a sweet, sweet friend. “The smoke has made me thirsty. I
know a bar across town that’s not so… hot.”

Her full lips curled into a smile. One last look at the inferno and a shrug as
if it didn’t matter anymore. The deed was done. “Lead the
way.”

Mike took her arm in his and pulled her gently through the swelling crowd, now
ten deep. The Cornwall had been popular and would, no doubt because of its
prime location, be rebuilt and open for business within six months. Bigger and
better, like a whore returning to her favorite corner after a boob job.

The Glass Half Full was a pretentious little dive frequented by philosophy
students. Mike liked it. Some of the regulars even knew his name. She gave it
an appraising glance through the frosted windows before nodding and following
him in.

“What do you do?” she asked once settled on a high stool at a
round pedestal table.

Mike couldn’t help but notice how her full breasts rested on the
tabletop. “Webpage designer. And you?”

“Student. Art.”

“I guessed it.”

“And how did you do that?” she said tiredly.

He lowered his eyes to her hands. “Paint on your fingertips.”

She laughed and the pure tones resonated playfully in his ears. “I could
be a house painter.”

“Interior design?” he countered.

“Renaissance art.”

“Ah, ceilings. Just as good. Forgive me, but I may not know art but
I…”

“… yeah, yeah, don’t say it.”

He took a sip of his beer but couldn’t take his eyes off her. He felt
strangely comfortable being with her. No nerves at all, which was unusual,
given the circumstances. He was, after all, sitting with a stunningly
beautiful woman who he desperately wanted to fuck.

Usually, whenever he was alone with a new girl, he had butterflies the size of
eagles flying out of formation in his stomach. “I was in the art gallery
just the other day,” he said suddenly to fill the silence. “And I
realized the thing about reality is that it’s, in fact, an
illusion.”

He shuddered inside. What an incredibly stupid passé thing to say.
She’d think him a pretentious prat, which was precisely what he was at
that very moment.

She lent toward him, unaccountably interested. “How so?”

“Well, meaningless rays of light enter our eyes and excite some neurons.
Neuro-chemicals jump across synapses. These excite more neurons. A pulse of
electrical current travels to the next synapse and so on until eventually our
brain sorts them into some sort of matrix we can consciously interpret.”

Her nod of interest urged him on. “But it’s an illusion, something
our brains make up. It’s all a fiction. There are gaps, things we
don’t see, because of lighting or perspective. Our brain fills in those
gaps with assumptions and pre-conceived ideas. We see what we expect to see.
Due to our common brain structure and culture we fill the gaps the same way
and the result is we all share the same illusion.”

She licked her bottom lip and for a moment he lost his train of thought.

“Like a mass hallucination?” she prompted.

He nodded, grateful for her lifeline. “Something like that. I know
it’s been said before. It’s hardly an original thought, but it
struck me there in the gallery and for the first time I knew what it meant.
There was this painting…”

“How unusual to find one of those in there.” Her eyes twinkled
mischievously in the Glass’s dim lighting.

He smiled back. He knew she wasn’t being sarcastic, only getting into
the spirit of the absurd that seemed to have fallen about him this evening. He
actually liked her. “That’s what I thought,” he said,
joining in the fun. “This particular painting was just a mass and swirl
of fine lines in blue ink. The title of the painting was “Stand
Back,” so I did. And the lines resolved themselves into a face. It was
the artist resting her head on her forearm while she drew her own face while
looking at a mirror. It was quite brilliant, but it showed me that reality is
perception, excuse the cliché. That an alien being seeing that
painting, having not seen anything else from Earth, would just see some fine
lines in blue ink.”

“And apart from the face, what else did you see that an alien would not
have?”

“Emotions are hard to judge.”

“Try.”

He put on an aristocratic English accent. “It’s like looking at
paintings from the eighteenth century, don’t you know.”

He saw her lips tighten as she suppressed her laughter. “I
don’t.”

“I can see what they have painted — that shared human knowledge again.
But not what’s going on within the minds of the people depicted even
though they’re only a few hundred years in the past… because
their world view is completely different from ours… they’re an
enigma.”

“The girl in blue ink,” she said slowly. “Is she an
enigma?”

About the Author

Aussie Mikala Ash used to be a mild-mannered training & development
consultant by day, and a wild sci-fi and paranormal adventure writer by night.
Now she is a brazen full-time writer and nature photographer who is
concentrating on having among other things, “… bags, and bags of
fun!” Mikala can be found on Facebook and on Twitter.

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Publisher on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok: @changelingpress

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