Hi all!
First off, sorry this is a couple of days late (unless you're from the future, you won't know any different). While I try to adhere to my posting schedule, this last week was just a string of bad luck. I liken it to the suddenly pipes bursting in your house. You gotta get that shit fixed and it takes time, but rest assured that the Hawthorne family is well and good. Just very tired. Regardless, I appreciate the emails and such asking if I was doing okay. It means a lot to me that the community here can be so supportive.
If you're a new reader, welcome to my story about a man who gets a magic house and has tons of action/sex packed adventures. You're gonna be so goddamn lost if you're jumping in now, so why not go back and read the other 63 chapters? Don't worry, we will wait for you.
Returning reader? Welcome back! I have some great news for you! Starting next month, Dead and Horny will be wrapped up and I will be back to posting two chapters of HFHM a month. I will likely stick to that schedule for a good chunk of time.
As a quick recap, last chapter we had Mike arrive in Oregon to meet Velvet the Arachne. Beth did a soul swap with Naia and something went awry. Lily announced her plans to impregnate everyone in the house with Mike's sperm, but she was just joking...right?
Please remember to leave some stars and comments, I love the community here, you all are amazing!
Conflicted
The snow crunched beneath Mike's feet as he walked through the forests of Oregon. In front of him, Yuki walked on top of the snow carrying her shield, leaving no trace of her passage. Up above, Abella circled.
The Nirumbi, in their haste, had made no effort to hide their tracks. The ones who had survived the slaughter at the cabin had gathered into a larger group and headed north. Though his tracking skills were only slightly better than the average person, the thirty-foot wide path made of tiny footprints and discarded spears made his job easy.
"Anything up ahead?" he asked, then looked up. Abella held up both fists, which was the signal for NO. He adjusted the strap on the rifle Velvet had loaned him.
"Then we keep going," Yuki said. They had spent the night in the cabin, and were now trying to track the Nirumbi. The plan was to find where they were hiding in the woods, and then figure out what to do with them. The internet had been no help—in fact, his phone had been unable to acquire any kind of signal since their arrival.
With Bigfoot still sleeping off his poison, they would have to wait for him to wake up before they could leave. Quetzalli and Dana had stayed behind with Velvet in case of another attack. Not only could Quetzalli shock any attackers, but the away team would hear the resulting thunder and be able to send Abella back to assist.
"Here's another one," Yuki declared as she knelt down in the snow. Mike joined her and frowned.
The Nirumbi had been quick to carve up their own at the cabin before being forced to run. While fleeing, some had obviously fallen due to injuries and had received similar treatments. This one had been hastily hacked apart and was missing both legs and an arm.
"Why the fuck do they do this?" Mike asked.
"Don't know," Yuki replied. "Quetzalli had some ideas, but her information is rumors from hundreds of years ago. Her best guess was that it was a way to honor the dead or the act has some kind of religious implications."
"Thou shalt eat thy dead?" He looked away from the little man on the ground. "Would hate to see the other nine commandments."
"It's not really for us to judge," Yuki said as she summoned a blanket of snow to cover the body. "To them, the act of eating their own is no different than you brushing your teeth after meals."
"That serves an actual purpose, though," he objected.
"And you think this doesn't? At a bare minimum, their bodies become food for others. You only find it detestable because you were raised with the idea that you don't eat grandma when she dies."
"Maybe that started because grandma is too chewy," he said. "Not a lot of great meat on an elderly woman."
Yuki snorted. "Maybe humans don't eat grandma for the same reason that Nirumbi eat each other—as a sign of respect."
Mike nodded. Though cannibalism didn't make complete sense to him, his own lifestyle could be seen as immoral and confusing to others.
They continued onward for a few more minutes before the path narrowed, leading them down into a small ravine surrounded by majestic trees and thick bushes blanketed in snow. If not for the footprints, they would have missed the narrow path that ran beneath a trio of very large pine trees.
Yuki crouched down and went ahead of him. He knelt to follow, but paused when he heard Abella thump into the ground behind him.
"Nowhere to land inside," she told him. "It's completely surrounded by trees."
"Great," he muttered, then followed Yuki in. When he emerged from under the tree, he stared in awe at the large stone overhang above them. They were surrounded by trees on every side, and the overhang itself formed the entrance to a large cave.
"Wow," he muttered, then snapped a few pics with his phone. "Do you think this is one of the goblin caves?"
"Maybe." Yuki inspected the mouth of the cave. It was only a few feet tall, and Mike would need to crawl to properly fit inside. "From what I can tell, they all went in here."
"So, what's the plan?" he asked. "Find a way to follow them in, maybe flush them out?"
"Hold up." Abella moved to the mouth of the cave and inspected the rim. She traced the edges with her hands, then moved away from it with a frown. "This is a recent opening."
"How can you tell?" he asked.
"It would be hard for you to notice, but you can see where the edges look clean." She pointed at a few areas. "Moss grew along here, but there's a thin line where there used to be stone. This cave was blocked off at some point, but it's been recently opened."
"Hmm." Yuki swished her tail, and the snow around their feet turned into frosty cyclones as the snow shifted about. What would have taken hours to find with shovels became only a couple of minutes when a pile of rubble was revealed away from the mouth.
"Aha!" Abella picked up a small boulder and hefted it up to the opening. She rolled it back and forth, then pinned it against part of the wall. "This piece came from here," she noted.
"So the Nirumbi dug their way free?" he asked.
"When you dig, the dirt goes behind you," Abella told him, then dropped the boulder. She inspected the rim of the cave again. "There are scratch marks on the outside. Big ones."
"Bear?" he asked.
"You wish." Abella opened her hand and put it against the stone. "Some of these gouges are deep enough for even my fingers to fit inside."
"Something dug them out?" He moved to where Abella was standing. "Who and why?"
"All questions we may not like the answers to." Yuki looked down at the rubble. "If we can fit this back inside, I can help seal the entrance."
Mike stood back as Abella pushed and rolled boulders back into the opening. Yuki created a ramp made of ice, which caused the boulders to roll further down into the cave. He kept expecting the Nirumbi to arrive and fight back, but assumed that maybe they had had enough.
