Page 14 of Loved by the Orc (Hidden Hollow #4)

13

HARMONY

W hat woke me was a pounding headache and sharp pains in my wrists and ankles.

“ Ohhhh ,” I groaned and tried to move, only to find that I couldn’t.

“Don’t bother trying to get up, Miss Ward,” a familiar voice snapped. “I’ve made certain you’re not going anywhere.”

I blinked my eyes and looked around. I was sitting slumped over in a sturdy wooden chair. Someone had zip-tied my wrists to the arms of the chair and my ankles also had zip-ties in them—they were fastened to the chair’s thick wooden legs.

“What in the Hell?” I muttered. My brain still felt like it was full of fog and my head was throbbing.

“Not quite Hell, but close,” the voice said.

I looked up at last to see who was speaking and was surprised to see Mr. Price standing there in front of me. We were in an empty apartment with no furniture and no air conditioner—I was already starting to sweat, I thought, feeling miserable.

“Mr. Price, what are you doing?” I asked, frowning up at him.

“Whatever I want, Miss Ward.” He gave me an evil grin over the rims of his reading glasses. “Whatever gives me pleasure and satisfies my hunger.”

“What?” As the fog in my brain began to clear, I began to feel panicky. It didn’t help that when I moved my feet I heard an ominous rustle. Looking down, I saw that the chair I was sitting on was right in the middle of a large, clear sheet of plastic. “What the Hell are you talking about?” I demanded. “What is all this?”

“This, my dear Miss Ward, is the last thing you’re ever going to see,” he told me, grinning maliciously. “Because you’re going to meet your end in this room—but not until I’ve had my fill.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but there was no way I was sitting there waiting to find out.

“Help! Help!” I screamed as loudly as I could. “Help, I’ve been kidnapped! Help me! HELP!”

Through it all, Mr. Price simply stood there watching me with that same smirking grin on his narrow face.

“Shout as long and as loudly as you want,” he told me when I finally stopped, panting for breath. “This building is abandoned. Nobody can hear you and come to interfere with my fun.”

“With your fun?” I was beginning to get a bad feeling—a really bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. “What are you talking about? Why…why did you bring me here?”

“You’ll find out soon enough,” he said. “Are you frightened yet? Because you should be.” His long nose twitched and he leaned closer to me and inhaled deeply. “Ah yes— now I smell the terror. Good, good…more! It’s delicious!”

“What?” I sounded like a broken record, but nothing he was saying was making sense to me. How could he smell and taste my fear?

He was right though—I was terrified. My heart was pounding and my palms were clammy with sweat. Why would he bring me to an abandoned building and tie me to a chair and put plastic on the floor like an episode of Dexter unless he meant to kill me? There was no way he was letting me go—I was trapped here and I couldn’t get loose !

Just as all this was racing through my head, I noticed something strange. There was a line of what looked like nearly invisible vapor flowing from me—right from the center of my body. And it was drifting up towards Mr. Price. Not drifting, exactly—he had his mouth open and it almost looked like he was sucking it out of me.

Oh my God—he is sucking it out of me—is that the terror he was talking about?

It was so weird and also scary. But it would have been scarier if I hadn’t spent that last three weeks going back and forth to Hidden Hollow. By now, I was beginning to recognize magic when I saw it.

“Ahh, so tasty!” Mr. Price said, smacking his thin lips.

“What are you doing to me?” I demanded. “And how the Hell are you doing it?”

“What? Feeding on your emotions? Quite easily, Miss Ward—you see, it’s my nature to feast on the negative emotions of others. And up until recently, yours were quite tasty and nourishing.” He scowled. “Until you fell in love.”

He spat the words like they tasted nasty and he wanted to get them out of his mouth.

I shook my head.

“I don’t understand.”

“Of course you don’t. Never fear, we have time so I will explain. You see, I’m a special kind of Creature I’m sure you’ve never heard of. I live by extracting pain, fear, sorrow, shame—all those tasty negative feelings—from humans like yourself. And for ages, you’ve been my main meal ticket! All the sorrow you felt every time I was cruel to you…all the anger you suppressed…and most of all, the delicious shame that overcame you every time I pointed out your weight issues.” He made a smacking sound with his thin lips. “Delectable! Shame is my favorite!”

“Oh my God, you’re a Sin Sucker!” I exclaimed, remembering the term Tark had used.

Mr. Price lifted his eyebrows in obvious surprise .

“So you have heard of my kind. How very strange.”

“Not as strange as you might think,” I said through gritted teeth. I was still scared but I was beginning to get mad too. So all this time he had been feeding on me? Sucking up the negative emotions he caused by belittling me and putting me down? What an asshole!

I squeezed my hands into fists. I was beginning to feel some tingling in my fingers—probably because my hands were going numb from the tight zip-ties.

“Ah yes—anger too! It’s not as tasty as shame or pain or fear but it’s still quite delectable!” Mr. Price—if that was even his name—pursed his thin lips and began inhaling again—sucking up my negative emotions like they were a rare treat.

“Hey—stop that!” I struggled to get free, even though I knew it was useless. “Let me go and leave me alone, you freak!”

“Now that is not very nice language, is it?” Mr. Price frowned at me. “Also, I think I’m tired of anger—it’s too spicy for my palate. How about we try some more fear?”

As he spoke, something happened…he began to change. The business suit he was wearing began to stretch and lose the texture of fabric and the gray color of his jacket and pants spread to his face and hands.

At the same time, his narrow face started distorting itself. His nose became much sharper and longer and his narrow lips spread to reveal rows of razor-sharp teeth. His thinning hair disappeared altogether, absorbed into his scalp which was now gray as well. And his hands…his hands were now claws—each finger tipped in a razor-sharp point that looked capable of slicing my throat with no effort at all.

But it was his eyes that were the worst. The watery pale blue irises disappeared as a thick black film covered them. It covered the whites of his eyes too until they were nothing but two flat, black, obsidian voids staring at me.

Shark’s eyes, I thought, feeling sick. Predator’s eyes. There could be no reasoning with a monster that had eyes like that. Because Mr. Price—or whatever his real name was—had no pity in him. No remorse, no mercy or sympathy.

There was only hunger in that flat, black gaze and it was all centered on me.

“Yes…fear! How I love it!” The narrow lips parted again, revealing his jagged teeth and he inhaled deeply, sucking the nearly invisible vapor of terror from the center of my chest.

I was so scared I was afraid I might start crying and I knew if I broke down, I wasn’t going to be able to defend myself. But defend myself how? I was zip-tied to the chair and the ties were so tight my fingers were going numb. Or at least, they were tingling even more than they had been. In fact, the tingles had become almost painful.

I spared a moment from staring in terror at the monster my boss had become to glance down at my fingers. To my surprise, they were glowing.

What the Hell? I thought, looking at myself. What was going on with me?

I remembered that Tark had said I was glowing after I had passed out earlier. And how Madam Healer thought it had something to do with my magic. She had also said that I would find my magic when I needed it.

Well, I needed it now!

I twisted my wrists desperately, not caring that the plastic zip-ties were digging into my flesh. My fingers started tingling even more—in fact, it felt like they were getting hot. Experimentally, I twisted my right hand under and managed to get my fingertip to touch the thin cord of plastic binding my wrist to the chair’s arm.

I heard a thin sizzling sound and then the smell of burning plastic wafted up to my nose. What the Hell? Had my fingers gotten hot enough to melt plastic?

I didn’t have much time to marvel at my new magical skill—whatever it was—though. Because Mr. Price was coming towards me.

“Let’s see now, how about a little bite?” he asked, grinning at me to show those jagged teeth. “I like the taste of emotional pain but physical pain is extremely tasty too!”

He was getting closer and closer, shoving his face into mine. His breath smelled like death—I mean that. It smelled like something rotten and decayed and unspeakably foul. It made my stomach turn with revulsion.

“Disgust tastes nice too!” he snarled at me and then he was opening his mouth to take a bite of my shoulder.

As the points of his teeth grazed my arm, I yanked back and felt my right hand come free. Instinctively, I shoved it into his face to push him away. As I made contact with his gray skin, the dull golden-red glow that was emanating from my fingers abruptly brightened to a blinding radiance.

“Ahh!” Mr. Price’s flat black eyes narrowed in pain and he seemed to want to get away from me, but he couldn’t. It was like my hand was a powerful magnet and his face was made of iron.

Iron, I thought randomly. But my hand is glowing gold…

No sooner had the thought entered my head than something strange began to happen—(yes, even stranger than my glowing hand trapping my ex-boss who was also a Sin Sucker monster in place.)

Mr. Price began to change. His gray skin began to glow and then turn shiny and golden. At the same time, the part that had become gold—which was basically the whole left side of his face—seemed to freeze in place.

“Noooo!” he howled but already the bottom part of his jaw was going gold as well. “Nnnnnn!” His tongue was gold—I could see it. He raised his right arm and slashed at me.

I gasped and jerked my hand off his face, twisting away instinctively. I felt the tips of his claws graze my shoulder, slashing easily through the silk fabric of my work blouse and scratching my skin.

Unfortunately, when I stopped touching him, the engoldening effect—or whatever you want to call it—seemed to start reversing itself.

“Wha di’ ya do ta me?” he howled, his tongue still half-frozen but beginning to “thaw” and turn back to the grayish-black color it had been before. “Wha di’ ya do?”

He was fumbling with the golden side of his head—it really did look like a golden statue. And it must have been as heavy as gold too, because his neck couldn’t support it and he was slumped over to one side.

While he was distracted with his new affliction, I desperately tried to free my other wrist and my ankles. But now that I was trying consciously to make my magic work, I found that it wouldn’t anymore. The glow had faded and my fingers had turned back to regular digits again. No matter how much I yanked and tugged at the other three zip-ties, they didn’t melt and nothing else happened either.

“I’ll kill you!” the Mr. Price monster screamed at me. His tongue was completely unfrozen now and the left side of his head was rapidly going from gold to gray too. “I’ll kill you, you little slut!”

He lunged at me and I twisted away so violently the chair toppled over.

“Oof!” I gasped as I made contact with the hard floor under the shiny sheet of plastic. I was on my left side with only my right arm free. Frantically I tried to unfasten the zip-tie on my left wrist, but I couldn’t even reach it.

It was then that I heard a pounding on the door.

Thud…thud…thud!

“Harmony? Harmony!” a deep, familiar voice was shouting.

It was Tark! Relief flooded me. I had no idea how the big Orc had found me but I was so, so glad that he had.

“In here!” I wheezed—the breath had been knocked out of me by the fall. “In… here!”

But Tark wasn’t inside yet and Mr. Price had nearly returned to normal now.

“Is that your ‘true love’—perhaps even your Heartmate?” he asked, leering down at me. “Is he the one who likes you ‘just the way you are’? ”

“Yes, he is!” I spat at him, as furious as I was frightened.

“Then he must truly love you! Think how tasty his pain will be when he comes in and finds you dead!”

He lunged for me again and wrapped long, taloned fingers around my throat. But just then with a massive THUD! the door crashed open and Tark was there.