The door was still leaning against the outside of the house. I hadn’t missed and hit the wall beside the opening, either. There was a barrier keeping me in this house, just like the one keeping me on the property last night. Except this was much more overt. Reaching out, I pressed a palm against the invisible wall. Magic sparked against my skin, faint enough to not notice when not paying attention.
“By the Muses, are you good? How much can humans bleed before they pass out? Because that looks like a lot of blood.”
I glanced down at my clothes and cringed. My pants had stains, and the blood was drenching my top layer sweater and the entryway carpet. Clearly the orc didn’t know much about humans, though, because the amount was insignificant. Heavy footsteps shook the floor my sore butt was sitting on, and I scrambled up to face the beast. He’d come closer, his body filling the hallway and making me claustrophobic in my little entryway. If he wanted to attack me, the only way I could go was up.
“Don’t come any closer to me,” I said, warning him as if he couldn’t destroy me in seconds.
To my surprise, he held up his hands (gods above, those were some huge hands), and backed up a step. One step for him was about a metre of distance, giving me room to breathe.
OK, Hadley, focus on your breathing. He’s not an immediate threat.
I gave myself the calming instructions internally this time, drawing in a big breath.
Good job, Hadley. You still got this.
“How long do humans bleed for when injured?” the orc asked, disrupting my meditation.
If I didn’t know better, I would say he was trying to make himself seem smaller. His arms were both in front of him, body crouched so his height was less intimidating. “It’ll stop soon,” I said.
My voice didn’t tremble.
“When it stops, we’ll have to strip you down and get you cleaned up.”
The small sense of calm I’d gathered vanished in an instant. His tone had a hint of flirtation, and panic rose in me again. I’d rather not be assaulted, especially not by a giant orc. The thought horrified me so much I was considering whether I would rather have the ghost back as my main problem.
Actually, still not as bad as the ghost.
But either way, I fucking bolted.
Taking the stairs two at a time, I heard a curse behind me, but the orc’s heavy footfalls didn’t follow. Each stair creaked with my weight, but was sturdy beneath me. When I reached the top, I veered to the left. I had the thought in my head of using the pine tree’s branch to climb out an upstairs window, avoiding whatever barrier was placed on the front door. I spotted the branch and kept up my pace until I slid to a stop in front of it.
Then I tried to shove my hand through the window.
No luck. My fist hit the barrier, which appeared to be a seal on the entire house, not only the doors. I’d tried to reach out slowly, but in my eagerness it had been more of a punch to a solid wall. My knuckles ached a bit.
Unwilling to go back the way I came, I turned to the nearest door and flung it open, hoping to find somewhere to hide. Instead, my jaw dropped damn near all the way to the ground.
Bent over a bed in the middle of a generously sized bedroom was a tiny man. Smaller than anyone I’d ever met and pixie-esque in his features. Pitch black hair fell to shoulder length, creating a curtain over his face but still revealing the pointed tips of his ears. His pale skin was glaringly bright against the deep red bedspread, and there was plenty of skin on display.
All of it, in fact.
He was naked, his body covered by another man’s. The other man was bigger; not orc big, but larger than most human men. Every inch of his skin was hairy, thick enough to almost be fur rather than simple body hair. Dark brown locks were bunched into a bun on the top of his head. I was trying to ignore his bare ass and the way his thick cock was pounding into the pixie at a punishing pace.
I should have listened before opening this door, because the pixie wasn’t taking it quietly.
When my wandering gaze caught on an iron-barred cage in the far corner of the room, my fingers clenched on the door and started to slam it closed again. I didn’t want to know what they had a cage for.
At the creak of the door, the larger man had glanced over at me, but his pace hadn’t slowed. “We’re almost finished,” he growled out. “Go find someone else first.”
I didn’t have to be told twice, though I didn’t plan to meet anyone else. The orc and ghost had been enough for me. Turning on my heel as the door thudded shut, I sprinted back down the hall and past the stairs. My face was flushed from all the sprinting, my nose refusing to stop bleeding while it was running from exertion. This time I listened before pulling open a door, finding myself in another bedroom.
The bed in this one was massive, large enough to fit five people. Rumpled grey sheets fell half onto the floor, and multiple comforters were piled in the middle of the bed. At first glance, no one was in the room with me, but then I spotted something twitching and moving in the far corner. I flattened my back against the door that had fallen shut behind me, cursing under my breath when voices trickled through the wood.
Everyone was looking for me, and there was no way out. Nowhere to hide. As hard as I tried not to let the panic weigh me down, there was grey in the edges of my vision. Something was in here with me, and multiple somethings were out in the hall. Since everything so far terrified me, I would take my chances with this one being the least scary of the bunch.
Slowly, I moved away from the door and toward the movement. The corner was drenched in shadows, not letting me glimpse what horror it held. I crept closer, startling when a voice shouted from directly outside the door. Maybe I should hide in a closet?
I looked back to the corner and my throat went dry. Oh. It had moved while I’d been distracted, slinking closer to me. The end of a scaled, dark green snake tail. From here I saw I was at the back of the snake, the thick body of the rest of the creature leading my eyes up to the ceiling and across a set of rafters that must have been put in specifically for this beast.
