About The Collectors

by Camilla Bruce
57 pages / 25500 words
ISBN: 978-1-934166-30-7, 1-934166-30-8
Available file types - html, lit, pdf, prc

Septarian is an old dragon, or at least he thinks he's too old for the business of collecting young princes. Even when one turnd up with an essence as rare as it is tempting, he decides he's going to let the opportunity pass. Until he meets Nathaniel, that is.

Nathaniel is young, hot, and very ready to spend some quality time with Septarian. He's confused by Septarian's hot and cold reaction, though, and wonders what he can do to make it hot all the time. When Spetarian's oldest enemy steps in and tries to take Nathaniel away, though, Septarian realizes what a treasure he has, and vows to hold on to it. Can he keep his most precious prize?

Review

Kara Larson, Torquere Press author, writes: From the start, Camilla Bruce's story immediately sucks you into the world of dragons and knights, but not the one you quite expect. Yes, dragons are still the jewel-hording and princess-stealing creatures of legend, but over the years, they've bred with humans and slowly lost their wings. The knights who are their foes aren't strictly human either—in fact, no one's quite sure what they are. And princess, well, that's just a generic term for any pretty human who carries the special essence that both dragons and knights lust after.

This richly-developed world is inhabited by one Septarian, seventh dragon chief of the Den, whose duties currently include running his family's jewelry store and managing the rarer auctions that this store performs. Once a hunter and seducer of princesses, Septarian is forced out of retirement when a particularly enticing princess, a young man working down the street at the ice cream shop, catches his interest…

This Everyday Spectre is full of wonderfully-sympathetic characters, including Septarian, our dragon hero, and his knight rival, Cid. The descriptions are lush and detailed, giving Bruce's world a lovely sense of reality and surreality. This was a fun and fast read, full of playful sexiness, for anyone who enjoys a subtle twist on the legends that we thought we all knew…

After all, there's more than one way to devour an ice cream boy.

Sample

He whistled a sonata, then he paused to have a moment's silent concentration while putting the blue contact lens in place on the iris. The little piece of plastic covered up the silver colored eye, the vertical black slit that separated the slice of grey in two halves. Then he hummed a bit, tied the scaled tail to his leg with soft cotton strips and pulled on a pair of spacious pants. It looked odd, of course, he was a fit man, and the big pants seemed meaningless on his slender frame, but it couldn't be helped. It wasn't easy hiding a tail of such considerable length and thickness.

He didn't brush his hair; he wasn't a vain man. On the contrary, his female colleagues often complained about what they saw as lacks in his appearance: the clothes that had seen better days; worn fabrics and dead fashion, wrinkled white shirts and boring black ties. His cufflinks, though, were clean and shiny. The faceted blue topaz twinkled happily when he fastened them by his wrists. Even Septarian realized that it would be bad business for a jeweler to display dull silver and dirty stones.

He checked his e-mail while sipping his morning coffee, the first of several cups to follow when he came into work. The morning hours were always lazy, and it wasn't until lunch-time, when all the businessmen came in to buy diamonds for their girlfriends, wives and lovers, that the day at the store really began. But that was fine. They were never idle. They had to clean and polish the display pieces every day. And there was paperwork, cataloguing, and that other business to attend to as well, the business that really drew money to the firm.

All the e-mails were about the next auction. It would be held in the store's spacious cellar. They had just redecorated down there, golden tapestries and velvet stools. Should please many of the foreign buyers. At least that was the thought behind it. Serena had seemed so sure about it; he had just nodded and let her decide. Personally, he cared as little about his surroundings as he did about his appearance, which explained the heaps of clothes, books and magazines that were scattered around in his apartment.

The chairs in his home were in leather and the tables were expensive wood. He slept under a velvet canopy, but he couldn't care less. He had hired someone to furnish the place. But there was one thing he cared about, a trait passed down through generations; he cared about stones and precious metals. He cared about the treasure, as was his legacy.

He came in to the store before the ladies; he could tell by the lack of cars in the small parking lot behind the store. He switched on the lights and took in the scent of dust and polish. Molten gold. The carpet was the dusty part, much too old, but he liked it. It was a plum colored weave with silver fringes. Those were their trademark colors: plum and silver. All their little boxes and plastic bags, cards and signs, were made in a combination of those two colors. The store was called Dragon's Den. It was ironic of course. But people never saw that which was clear in sight. Septarian paused and scratched the back of his neck, the hair that covered it was thick and black with a purple hue to it. People never saw that either, though they might notice the shimmering, lavender colored scales that covered his neck, shoulders and most of his back, ending up in that thick and long tail. It was the reason he kept his hair long, despite his otherwise conservative style, to hide his reptile skin. The hair covered up the peculiar shape of his ears as well, long and pointed, able to adjust in many directions. They carried his one carelessness; he wore earrings, pear-shaped diamonds dangling from silver hoops. His one vanity. He had seen them on a plum colored, velvety cushion one day, and fallen in love. And so he had his ears pierced. It had frightened his co-workers as he wasn't usually one for spontaneous actions. They had thought him stressed or otherwise unbalanced, he remembered with a wry smile, part annoyed, part amused by their reaction. They might think what they wanted though, about his composure, but the old one knew that it was just this, his ability to stay focused and in control, that had helped him survive for so long, and was the reason why he still, after so many decades, led his clan in the war against the knights.

Above the counter hung a large print of a Chinese dragon, one of the old ones from back when they were beasts with wings. It was a long time since that now, ever since the dragons began coupling with the princesses, their species had developed quickly. As had the knights, unfortunately...

There were no winged dragons left now, the only real dragons were Septarian's kind, half-human, half-reptile and, as they preferred to think, with the best genes from both camps.