“Tell me again why I’m stuck watching this guy?” Brittany said into her Bluetooth ear piece.

“Because Rose is in no condition to, and I still haven’t fully recovered from last night,” came Reese’s response.

Brittany tossed the empty cheeseburger wrapper on to the passenger seat of her car. “No, I mean why are we bothering with him? What happened to ‘we’re not responsible’ and all that? He clearly wants nothing to do with us, and I’m perfectly fine with that. We can just live in peace and take the occasional job from the guild when the money runs low.”

She heard Reese sigh. “We’ve been over this already. That guy is dangerous right now, no matter how wimpy he looks. We need to keep an eye on him until the council makes a decision.”

“I am not following this pathetic excuse for a man everywhere he goes. There are better things I can be doing right now.”

A car pulled in to the space next to hers. She glanced over to see a man that she might have considered attractive ten years ago, but she’d long learned that men who relied on their looks generally led towards trouble she didn’t want to deal with. She ignored the wink and cocky grin the blond sent her and refocused her attention on the wimp’s apartment door.

She was lucky she’d been able to follow his trip back to the apartment and see where exactly he lived. The other option had been to track his phone’s GPS and hope they spotted him exiting before he left again. The address listed on his driver’s license was an old one from another town, so that wouldn’t have worked as a means of finding him. Fortunately, she’d watched him enter his apartment three and a half hours ago and the door hadn’t opened since. At least it hadn’t until the same blond guy that had winked at her started pounding on the door.

“Oh, we’ve got some movement,” she said.

“What’s happening?”

“Someone’s visiting him. Cocky looking blond dude. Yep, he must know him. Walked right on in.”

“I guess this will be the first test then. Remember, we’re still not sure what he’s capable of. All we know for sure is that he can give me orders. Who knows what else?”

“I think he failed his first test,” Britt said a couple minutes later as she quickly got out of the car. She spotted the blond easily drag the recognizably lanky form of Phil out the door and toss him over the railing. She was already running as his mop of black hair disappeared into a tree in front of the apartment complex. “Tell Rose to get ready, we’re probably going to need her.”

“On it. What happened?”

“Blond dude tossed him from the fifth floor. I’m going to retrieve him now before blondie can finish the job.” She quickly made it to the tree where she’d seen him disappear from view but saw no sign of Phil on the ground. Looking up, she saw the skinny guy draped over a large branch, his breathing short and ragged, eyes wide in surprise. “Hang on, kid. I’ll have you down in a second,” she called up to him. He waved her off, then pointed.

“Chuck,” he wheezed. Whipping around, she saw the guy from before standing behind her with a cocky grin.

“Hey, sweet tits. You a friend of his?” Chuck casually strolled up as he spoke. Then he laughed. “Of course not. I was the only friend he had. You must be a party member, right?”

Britt didn’t say anything. She just took a step back for every step that he took forward. It wasn’t long until she felt the tree at her back.

“Why don’t you just forget about him and come play with me? Body like that, I bet we could have fun for days.” He punctuated his words by licking his lips as he eyed her up and down. His gaze then settled on hers, his hazel eyes glowing briefly. She took a step forward and he grinned triumphantly.

“Incubus. No, they’re extinct… half incubus, am I right? A hink?”

The grin vanished from his face, replaced with anger. “Do NOT call me that! What the hell are you that I have no effect?”

“Orc,” she said, grinning.

He scoffed. “Impossible. They’re extinct, just like all the so called ‘fantasy’ races.”

She raised an eyebrow. “You mean like incubi and succubae? Orcs may be extinct, but their descendants aren’t. And we happen to be immune to your little charm effect, so you can take your nauseating smile elsewhere while I collect my party leader.”

He shook his head. “No can do, babe. I gotta kill him. Even if you offered that fine ass of yours to me, I’d just have to kill him when we finished. No matter how this goes down, it ends with him dead.”

Britt shrugged. “I don’t particularly care, actually. I ain’t attached to him beyond a magic spell, so you’d really be doing me a favor. But a dear friend of mine seems to have taken a liking to the wimp, and I don’t want to see her sad.”

“Awww, thanks babe!” Brittany had completely forgotten that she still had her earpiece in. “Could you hurry this up though? We kind of need to get him some medical attention, don’t we?”

“Right,” Britt said. “We’re going to leave now, ok? If you try to follow us, I’m going to shove your head so far up your ass that lump in your throat will be your nose.” She reached back with one hand and pushed the tree over, both making it easier to get Phil and demonstrating her strength to the pretty boy in front of her. He held his hands up and backed off.

“I do so look forward to our next meeting, my dear. I’ll show you just what an incubus is capable of and you’ll never look back, babe. Phil, mi amigo, see ya round, buddy.” Chuck vanished from where he was standing, reappearing next to his car. Britt watched as he threw a salute her way, then he climbed in to his car and drove off.

“Hurry, Britt.”

“I know, dammit. Give me a second.” She walked over to the tangle of branches that now encased Phil and pulled them apart, leaning over him to reach them all. “Sorry about that, guy. Had to scare the prick somehow. Your friend’s a real charmer, you know that… seriously!? You’re still staring at my tits!?”

*

Brittany dumped the unconscious sack of flesh named Phil on the couch as Rose ran up to evaluate him.

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“Oh my god! How is he still alive? What happened to him?”

Britt shrugged as Reese joined her at her side. “Hit a tree on his way down.”

“How many trees did he hit?” asked Reese, eyeballing the fist shaped bruise forming on his cheek.

“Not enough,” muttered Britt.

“You know beating our party leader is heavily frowned upon, right?”

“If he didn’t like it, he should’ve ordered me to stop.”

Rose looked up from the side of the couch. “I doubt he was able to say much after you broke his jaw.” She sighed. “This is going to take me days to heal. Do me a favor and carry him to his room, please? Without inflicting any more injuries, if you’d be so kind?”

“Are you sure you don’t want him to suffer just little bit more? After all, he-”

Rose cut her off. “That was that, and this is this. Whether anyone likes it or not, he’s one of us now. I’ll deal with my personal feelings on my own time. For now, just let me do my job.” Brittany grunted, but did as Rose asked, gently lifting him and carrying him to the former guest room that they had assigned to him.

“So, an incubus?” asked Reese.

“Yeah. Damn handsome one too. Glad someone in my family tree had an orc fetish. I’d have been putty in his hands if I didn’t have that blood running through me. Wonder why he was friends with a loser like this.” She gently laid the loser in question on the king size bed, then stepped aside so Rose could get to work on him.

“Probably leeching off of him,” suggested Reese.

“What?” asked Britt.

“Full blooded incubi are extinct, right? They were the ones who could charm with their own power. Like the rest of us, their heritage has become muddied and diluted after generations of breeding with other races and humans. I’d imagine a modern day inc would need a source or two to pull from. I’m willing to bet Phil’s issues with people, especially women, started about the same time he met his friend, Chuck. I’m not sure how he did it, but he was sucking the charm and charisma Phil naturally had and using it for himself.”

Britt scoffed. “You’re telling me this guy here was supposed to be some sort of ladies’ man?”

Reese laughed. “No. At least no more than any other man. Chuck just enhanced what he was taking with his own innate ability, allowing him to get his foot in the door. Phil probably isn’t a total loser, he was just being used as a charm reservoir. Now that we’ve separated the two and brought him to the protection of the house, he should start getting some of his mojo back. Provided my theory is correct, anyway.”

Britt rolled her eyes. “Great, as if he didn’t stare at us enough as a wimp. Just wait till he starts feeling manly again.” She turned to leave. “I’m gonna go jump in the shower. That Chuck fella and this little chat has left me feeling all kinds of dirty.”

Reese nodded and turned to Rose. “What’s the plan, doctor?”

She looked up from where she was sitting on the bed. “I put him under a deep sleep spell for now so he shouldn’t feel any pain while I’m working, but this is going to take a while. The actual tree impact crushed his ribcage. He’s lucky nothing punctured a lung or his heart. The other ‘tree’ strikes were calculated to maximize pain over actual injury, it’s just the number of them that’s an issue.”

“Hopefully that tree learns to get along with him in the future. With any luck he’ll be with us for quite a while.”

“And without that luck?”

“He leads us into a party wipe. The only upside to that is that we’ll never have to worry about anything ever again.”

They both went silent and watched Phil sleep for a bit.

“You know,” said Reese, “he’d probably be kinda cute if he actually put in some effort.”

Rose shook her head and gave a small smile. “You always did have a soft spot for hard luck cases. Go on, get out of here. I need to get to work. Try arranging something with the guild to get his stuff from his apartment and brought here. I sense he’ll be more likely to listen to you when he wakes up than when he left this morning.”

*

“You do realize she will actually pull your eyes out of your head, right?”

Phil groaned and looked around. He was laying on the couch in the estate’s living room, but everything felt off again. Sitting on the arm of the couch staring at him was Tiny Bruce.

“She does realize that if she dangles them over the face of an immobilized man, he’s really got no choice but to stare, right?”

Bruce shrugged. “Don’t let facts get in the way of her feelings. She could poke you in the eye with a nipple and still get pissed you looked. Anyway, I’m not here to talk to you about that, as enjoyable as the subject is. Do you understand now why the girls were dead set on keeping you here?”

Reluctantly, Phil nodded. He’d truly underestimated just how much his life had changed in the last day. Accidently killing a man was bad enough, wasn’t it? Now there were people out to kill him? Chuck, of all people! The man he’d known the longest!

“What the hell is Chuck? How was he able to move like that? To toss me around so easily?”

“He’s an incubus.”

Phil furrowed his brow, trying to place the term. Bruce rolled his eyes.

“It’s the male version of a succubus. He draws power from sex, usually with woman, but not always.”

“What? You’re making that up,” Phil scoffed.

“You’re having a chat with a two foot tall version of the man you killed last night, personally witnessed someone healing you with magic, and was tossed over a railing like you weighed nothing. Is the idea of your friend being a creature of legend really so unbelievable? Remember what you told me before? About his track record with women?”

“You mean his perfect record? Yeah.”

“That never struck you as odd? When have you ever heard of someone with that kind of success with women? Every single woman he’s gone after has caved. In fact, until today, I’ll bet he’s never met a woman capable of saying no when he’s used his power.”

“Yeah, about that. Did I hear her correctly? Did she say she was an orc?”

“I’m sure Reese has a whole lesson plan worked out for you about this, so I won’t steal her thunder.”

Phil got up and paced around a bit. “Okay, I have to ask. Are you actually Bruce? Some figment of my imagination? If I asked the girls about this, would they freak out?”

Bruce jumped to his feet. “Don’t mention this to them! They’re already unsure enough about you as it is. If you tell them you’re talking to a mini version of their old party leader in your dreams, who knows what the consequences will be. Especially with Rose and Reese. That could shift their opinions of you in a very negative fashion, and you need all the allies you can get right now. Reese would definitely toss you to the wolves.”

Phil held his hands up in surrender. “Alright, I won’t say anything. You have to know what I’m going to ask next, right? You’re in my head after all.”

Bruce’s shoulders dropped. “You want to know what I did to her, don’t you?”

Phil nodded, but didn’t say anything.

“Out of respect for her privacy, I won’t go in to the full details. If she chooses to tell you at some point in the future, take that as a measure of how much she’s grown to trust you, ok? What I will tell you is this: I didn’t beat her or anything like that. I was a despicable human being, though. Not because I forced her to do something she didn’t want to do. It was just the opposite, in fact. I won’t say more on that. Just know that you must be careful about what you order them to do as a party leader.”

Phil stared at the tiny man. That wasn’t an answer. Not really. If anything, he was more confused than he was before.

“I suddenly don’t feel like talking anymore,” said Bruce, hopping off the couch and heading for the foyer. “This is a recreation of the house from my memories. Familiarize yourself with it while you’ve got the chance. You’re going to be asleep for a while anyway, so it’ll keep you occupied. Any locked door you come across is someone’s personal area. No snooping the girls’ rooms for you. Don’t give me that look. I live in your head, buddy. I know the thoughts you have. My old room is also locked, not that you’ll find much more than a shrine I dedicated to myself.” Tiny Bruce shook his head. “God, I was such a bastard. Anyway, I’ll leave you to it.” He waved, then vanished in a puff.

Phil stared at where he was for a few seconds, then shrugged. He still didn’t really have any idea what was going on, or if he was really in a dream state or not, but until he woke up or whatever, he may as well wander around. Stepping into the foyer, he decided to start at the top and work his way down. Climbing the stairs, Phil started exploring his literal dream house.