Twice she had found the killers moored in tiny villages, and twice she had swum from her boat, now repaired and disguised, and slit a smuggler’s throat. One remained. One terrified killer now fleeing from what he thought to be a demon. Perhaps he was right.

  Once in Ha Long Bay, it should have been impossible to find one small boat hiding among the thousands of limestone islands with their caves and grottoes and thick pelts of greenery clinging to sheer walls. Impossible for a man—or even a girl with a warrior spirit—but not for the kris. It showed the way, through three days of a winding course.

  On the third evening, the blade took on a glow that told Seok-Teng her prey was so close that she must approach with caution. She anchored and waited through the night. This time she would make sure her prey saw his doom coming.

  At last the dawn mist began to dissipate, the islands took shape, and the sun’s first rays struck the leafy crest of the nearest island in a blaze of green like emerald flame.

  Seok-Teng slid into the water wearing nothing beyond the kris belted to her naked hip. The boat she sought was there, just beyond the island, perhaps fifty feet away. When she reached its side, she listened for several minutes until she heard the man stirring, moving slowly about, then standing on the lee side and, by the sound, relieving himself into the sea. The perfect moment!

  She was up over the side, kris unsheathed and raised, before he could turn; yet even at such a time he had kept a dagger in his hand, and parried the longer blade. Seok-Teng spun and struck again, knocking his weapon this time from his grip. He grasped her knife-wrist so tightly with his other hand that it took all her effort to keep from dropping the kris. Or almost all. Her knee tensed, began its upward strike toward his groin—but he fell back before it connected. She had only a fleeting glimpse of his eyes, widened in horror as he looked at something beyond her, his face as contorted as though her blade had pierced his belly.

  Seok-Teng stumbled, unbalanced, and still managed to slice the kris across his throat before he toppled backward into the sea.

  She swung around and saw what he had seen. A golden eye gazed down at her from the island’s greenery, and then two eyes, in a long, elegant, emerald-scaled head that lifted to regard her full-on.

  “I had him! He was mine!” Seok-Teng’s blood-madness still ran so hot that she felt no fear, no amazement that a dragon such as she had seen only on painted screens or the prows of festive longboats was here before her in the flesh. If indeed dragons were made of such. “I needed no help!”

  The dragon seemed to laugh, although what difference there might be between a dragon’s laugh and its snarl Seok-Teng did not know. Indeed, as her blood slowed, she scarcely knew whether she herself dreamed, or imagined, or even lived. She held the kris upright, flat between her breasts, as talisman rather than weapon; it quivered, but gave off no heat.

  Heat of another sort did warm Seok-Teng’s flesh as the dragon’s gaze moved slowly along her body. Did dragons lust after human women? She had never heard such tales, but after all, she herself lusted after women, though so far only in her dreams.

  “Why not?” The voice was not her own, yet unmistakably female—and it spoke from inside her head. “Who can know so well how to please a woman as another woman?”

  A dream, then. That sort of dream. Already Seok-Teng’s loins stirred with longing. Her bedroll would be damp and tangled when she woke. If only this dream would take her far enough for relief.

  The boat she stood upon had floated nearer to the island. Seok-Teng looked full into the golden eyes, not flinching when the dragon’s green coils, their scales textured to resemble leaves, loosened from the rough limestone enough that its neck could arch outward above her and descend. Even when a flickering forked tongue, impossibly long, darted across her belly, Seok-Teng held her ground, though she could not suppress gasps and jerks at the tantalizing sensations it aroused.

  “Set aside your noble blade,” the voice said, “if you would taste of more tender delights.”

  She sheathed the kris but kept it belted at her hip. This time the dragon’s laughter echoed inside her head, drowned out soon by Seok-Teng’s own cries as the deep-coral tongue lapped at the paler coral tips of her high breasts, teasing and tweaking at them until they hardened and darkened and sent bolts of pleasure close to pain down through her belly into her cunt.

  “How brave are you, girl? Enough to follow me?” The voice seemed uneven now, almost breathless. The long tongue reached down between her thighs and slick lips to find the jewel of pleasure there, and a low, rough moan was wrenched from deep in Seok-Teng’s throat, followed by a keen wail as the stimulation ceased.

  “Come, if you dare!” The dragon launched suddenly from the rock, leaving it nearly bare, and dove into the water. Seok-Teng followed so swiftly that the wake of the great long tail swept her briefly off course. Attuned from birth to all the motions and secrets of the sea, she was back on course in a moment, and when the waters stilled beside an island much larger than the first, she dove unerringly through an underwater passage to come up in a pool within a grotto infused with green light.

  On its far side stalactites hung nearly to the floor, chiming like bells as the dragon’s emerald scales brushed them. Nearer, an arc of sandy beach edged the water.

  The voice came again. “One more challenge, if you are truly brave.” But this time it felt more like a plea than a dare. “Your blade…will you trust me with your blade?”

  The kris was extended in Seok-Teng’s hand before she could even recall drawing it from the sheath. “The blade chooses for itself, always,” she said. “It appears to have done so already.”

  “Place it between my teeth.”

  Seok-Teng advanced along the beach. Fear, which she had not felt until now, weighed on her like anchor chains. The dragon’s rows of sharp teeth could easily take off her arm; she would have parted with that rather than lose the weapon that embodied the soul of her lineage; but indeed, the blade had chosen. She watched in amazement and horror as the bright undulating curves of metal slid, seemingly of their own accord, down the dragon’s throat. Her hand jerked upward as though reaching out to reclaim the kris, whatever the cost, but it was too late.

  “Turn away!” This was a desperate plea and a command, all in one. “Go below the water!” Seok-Teng turned, not quite in time to miss the sight of her sacred blade’s tip slicing through the emerald scales from within; then she dove into the pool.

  She could always hold her breath for several minutes. This time she waited even longer. When hands—human hands!—reached down to pull her forth, she was too dazed for a moment to brush the water from her eyes, and when she did, the vision before her seemed no more believable than an erotic hallucination caused by lack of air.

  The woman was taller even than Seok-Teng herself, and as strongly built, with hair as wild and dark but glinting with green highlights. Her curves were both voluptuous and graceful, while her face, like Seok-Teng’s own, would have been as beautiful on a man as on a woman. In the grotto’s subdued light her golden eyes were muted to amber.

  The womanly parts swept away all thought of other matters. They came together on the beach, heat sparking wherever skin met skin and spreading like a raging fire. A very human tongue found Seok-Teng’s nipples, and a human mouth tugged and sucked them to peaks of glorious soreness. Her own mouth yearned to taste the other’s flesh, but for the moment hands sufficed, filling with sweet, bountiful breasts and tweaking coral nubs that grew ever harder in their demand for more, and yet more.

  Someone whimpered. Someone moaned, long and low. Voices had better uses than mere words. Seok-Teng’s hunger grew, and her hands left the other’s breasts to explore the further delights of a female body not her own. What her fingers had often done for herself, she tried on this dragon-woman, with the same effect and more. So soft and yet firm—wet, slick to enter, then clenching, hips thrusting forward for more, until the need to taste her sent Seok-Teng to her knees and her mouth to those demanding folds and depths. Her own tongue felt as long as the remembered dragon’s tongue, thrusting deeper, deeper, while hot sea-flavored flesh pressed and ground against her face, and her thumb worked the jewel of pleasure to its peak. The woman’s cries rang out so loud and high that the stalactites chimed again in unison.

  Seok-Teng held on until she could stand it no longer, then rammed a hand against her own aching cunt. In moments it was knocked away, replaced by a mouth and fingers infinitely more skilled than hers. They teased, tormented, swept her to the brink and left her hovering there time after time—until, when at last she tangled her fingers in the dark hair and held the mouth fiercely against her need, she was allowed to plunge over the edge. Her whole body reverberated like a temple gong, subsided for a moment, and then reached for new heights and plummeted into new depths, over and over, until at last she had not enough breath for further screams, or even whimpers.

  “Rest for a bit,” came the voice. “Regain your strength. You will need it all, for there is yet more that I must have.”

  So, of course, Seok-Teng’s strength surged again, with scarcely more than time for her breathing to recover. “I am ready,” she said, “for anything. But first,” and she dared to place her hands on the beautiful face leaning above her as they sprawled on the sand, “tell me now who you are, and how this comes about, for I may die of pleasure before I can ask again.”

  “You may choose your tale. They are plentiful enough.” The voice paused for a long minute. “Have you not heard how, long ago when China first threatened this land, dragons were sent by the gods to protect it? They spat out gems that became the tangle of islands, and found the bay so beautiful that they stayed for a time. The mother dragon’s children stayed in their turn, some becoming islands themselves.” The dragon-woman shrugged. “As good a story as any. There are few of us now, and we sometimes sleep for eons as men count time, but I will tell you this one true thing.” Her laughter rang in Seok-Teng’s head. “A woman like you is so rare a gem that her approach will always wake me.”

  At this, Seok-Teng wrapped arms and legs about the other, and they grappled again in a delirium of lust and laughter, bodies finding joy in any contact, any stroke or pressure.

  Gradually laughter ceased, and hunger surged again. The dragon-woman rolled on top, face and body tense. “You must be strong now. I must…there are no words…”

  She moved as they had moved before, but harder, pummeling Seok-Teng’s body with her own, grinding into her until it seemed that bone must break bone. Her face twisted, became wilder, neither human nor dragon, only savage passion personified. Seok-Teng thrust back in response, adding her own strength and savagery, heedless of pain even when the hands gripping her hips and sides spread farther and claws sprang forth that pierced her skin. When the voice roared in her head with the fury of a great volcano, her own voice followed as closely as any merely human voice could.

  Sound, pain, pleasure—it was all too much. Blackness closed in around Seok-Teng.

  When she woke the daylight filtering through crevices in the limestone had faded almost away. The grotto was deserted except for herself, and the faintly glowing kris beside her.

  She sat up and grasped the blade’s hilt. There was a wetness on the blade; when she touched her tongue to it the taste was of sea salt and blood.

  Outside the grotto, catching the last reflected light of sunset, her own boat lay anchored, though she had left it some distance away. “Thank you,” she thought, for her body was now stiff and aching and bleeding from her punctured sides, and she was glad to be spared the swim.

  A faint, far voice answered from within. “You owe me more thanks than you know. Since you have tasted my blood, some day, when you have need, dreams of dragons may lead to warriors with spirits like yours, just as you came into my dreams.”

  Seok-Teng’s story ceased. She wondered, for a time, whether her tale had put Han Duan to sleep; that might be just as well.

  But Han Duan stirred. “So you dreamed of Gu Yasha, too, and many others.” Gu Yasha, the strong, tall gunner as silent as her cannons were loud, had appeared in a dream as a dragon of golden amber.

  Seok-Teng heard the hurt in her companion’s voice and knew where this was going. “Yes. But I have never lain with any as I do with you, and never will, not merely as a matter of maintaining authority.” She turned toward Han Duan and stroked the weathered face that moved her more than any beauty. “I had no dragon dream of you, because there was no need. You, I found for myself, as you found me. That makes all the difference.”

  And that was enough.

  ALL THE COLORS OF THE SUN

  Victoria Oldham

  She walked on water. Well, not really on it, but over it, like the sun shot her from a ray across the top of the ocean to drop at my feet on the hot white sand.

  She hit her knees, backlit by the sun, and her silhouette was beautiful.

  I jumped up to help her, trying not to shake sand on her.

  She looked up at me, and the sun had settled in her eyes, reds battling oranges to consume her pupils. I blinked hard, since the sun had obviously blinded me. When I looked into her eyes again, they were a beautiful light blue, contrasting perfectly with her long black hair.

  She brushed her hair from her eyes and ruefully took my hand. “Thanks. I got caught up in the riptide, and it’s taken me forever to get out. I think I’m a bit shaken up.”

  “No problem. Want a drink?” I turned away to grab water from the cooler, more than a little worked up. Her navy blue bikini was shot through with vines of green and looked painted on; her long wet hair hugged her sides and wrapped around her flat stomach. She was the hottest woman I’d seen in ages, and I didn’t want to blow it. “Do you want me to grab a lifeguard?”

  “Water would be great. I don’t suppose you have an extra towel? The current pulled me pretty far from my stuff, I think.” She leaned over and wrung out her hair on the sand, letting loose a waterfall before wrapping it in a bun-thing on her head. I tugged at my swim shorts, suddenly glad they were loose enough not to show how wet I was getting looking at her.

  I handed her the towel I had been using as a pillow and yanked a T-shirt over my sports bra. I was vaguely disappointed when she wrapped the towel around herself, hiding that gorgeous figure.

  “I’m Cree, by the way,” I said, holding out my hand.

  “Ashley. But please, call me Ash.”

  I shook her hand and nearly pulled away in surprise. Her skin felt as hot as a branding iron.

  “Wow,” I said, “I can’t believe how warm you are with the water as cold as it is.”

  “Warm blooded, I guess.” She looked at me and smiled, and I felt like a kid being given the best gift ever on a perfect spring morning.

  “I’m going to walk down the beach to find my stuff. Thanks for the water.” She took off the towel and handed it back to me, and once again I focused on how perfect and soft her body looked.

  “Yeah, sure. No problem.” She walked away, and her firm ass under her tiny bikini bottoms made me sweat. “Hey! Maybe I could walk with you? I mean, what if you don’t feel well or something?” Okay, so it was lame. But her body had me tongue-tied.

  “I’d like that. Thanks.”

  She grinned, and I handed her the towel again. I needed to sound like a reasonably intelligent human being, which meant she’d have to cover up a bit.

  “I thought I was the only one to brave this area of the beach in March,” I said, keeping my eyes on her silver toe rings. One was a bird of some kind, and the other a tiny little sun.

  “I like the peace. I don’t like crowds, so the beach this time of year is perfect. I avoid it the rest of the time. How about you?”

  “I’m a water rat, really. I’ll come all year long, but the off season is the best, when it’s just you and the waves.”

  She nodded like she understood. “So you live around here?”

  “Yeah. Two blocks away. It’s tiny, but being so close to the ocean makes it worth living in something the size of a closet. You?”

  She frowned and shrugged. “For the moment. I move around a lot.”

  “A free spirit, huh?” I said jokingly.

  “Yeah, something like that.” She looked at me so seriously for a moment I wondered if I’d said something wrong.

  “Cool.” I curled my toes in the sand, not sure what to say. How do you speak to a woman who almost literally washes up at your feet? At least in a club you have the music to keep you from having to make conversation. With only the crashing waves as a soundtrack, though, I was at a loss.

  She stopped suddenly and looked around. “I’m sure I left my stuff by this lifeguard tower. I mean, it was only a towel and my keys, but I’m sure I left them here.”

  I looked around at the nearly deserted beach, an idea forming. “Damn, that sucks. A lot of the homeless will grab whatever they can to keep warm this time of year. They must have taken your stuff when you weren’t around to keep an eye on it.”

  She was looking at me with her head tilted to the side, and it made me think of the way a bird will watch you from the trees, which in turn made me giggle a bit.

  “Is it funny?” she asked with a small grin.

  “No, not at all. Sorry. In fact, if you want to walk to my place with me, I probably have some clothes that might fit you. Then I can take you to your place, or wherever you need to go.”

  “Are you always this solicitous to total strangers?”

  The heat from her touch scorched me when she placed her hand on my forearm. I felt like the yin-yang tattoo under her hand could spin right off my skin.

  “No. I mean, if someone’s in trouble I try to help, but you know, I mean, you did fall at my feet.” I stopped talking, feeling the heat rise to my face. I ran a hand through my hair, thinking it must be sticking up in all directions after my day in the sun.

  “I’m teasing. Obviously I could use the help. Thanks.”