Embedded Files
Dark Fantasy / Paranormal Romance
Date Published: February 6, 2026
Publisher: Changeling Press
Heat rages out of control as the pub burns. The only thing hotter is the woman watching the flames.
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?
Excerpt
Copyright ©2026 Mikala Ash
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?”
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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.
Author Links
Author on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mikala.ash.9
Author on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ash_mikala
Publisher on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok: @changelingpress
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