Passing through the portal the pain immediately disappeared and the absence of pain was so intense it was almost orgasmic. I shuddered and wiped my eyes before I looked around. It was hot in here, and it was obvious why as soon as I took that first look. I was in some kind of hotel room with a hardwood floor and plaster walls, but there were flames billowing from the ceiling in one corner, and I started to cough from the smoke. I hunched over to get further from the smoke and immediately headed over towards the window. There was no glass to the window, just some thin fabric like muslin to keep the bugs out and let the light through, and I ripped it down and felt a wave of fresh air run into my aching lungs.

I stuck my head out the window, and saw a far enough drop to the ground I immediately jerked back inside. A jump didn’t seem survivable, but I definitely wanted clothes and there was an entire steamer trunk right here. I didn’t bother dressing, I just grabbed the chest and dragged it to the window. It was heavy but I’ve always had an athletic build. I didn’t go to the gym just to keep my butt looking good, although that was part of it. I worked out so that I could do my job, and now it came in handy when I had to haul the dead weight up and toss it through the window. I didn’t wait around to watch it fall.

Instead I snatched a blanket from the bed and threw it over my shoulders. There was a pitcher of water and a basin next to the door, and I grabbed it next. I poured it over my hair and onto the blanket. It wasn’t enough water to give the blanket a thorough soaking, but it was all I had. I pulled a strip of the wet cloth across my face and put my hand on the door knob. It was warm but not hot so I pushed the door open and crawled out into the hallway. A baluster ran along the other edge of the hall, with a sheer drop on the other side. To the left it dead ended at a blank wall and to the right I could see a grand staircase on the other side of a wall of flame. It was too much to try and just rush through it naked, although I would as a last resort. For now I crawled forward and looked over the railing. There was another floor directly below this one, and it looked like I should be able to climb down to the second floor and make it to the stairway from there.

I shoved the blanket through on two sides of a banister to hang down into the gap. It wasn’t exactly a ladder but when I wiggled the handrail it seemed pretty sturdy. I threw a leg over the top and started to climb down. Inching slowly down the blanket, my churning bare feet struck the handrail on the next floor and I breathed a sigh of relief as I was able to shift over and drop the rest of the way safely to the floor. Even though I had avoided falling, I wasn’t exactly safe though. I found that out when rough hands grabbed me by the hair and hip and threw me to the ground.

I turned with it, stopping myself on my hands and knees instead of going to the ground where I’d be more vulnerable, but I didn’t have time to recover. A boot crashed into my side and flipped me over and I landed on my back, pretty sure I’d broken some ribs. A man stood there grinning down at me with a mouthful of rotten teeth. He wasn’t much bigger than I am, but he wore a sleeveless leather vest with iron rings sewn on it and his bare arms showed enough definition I knew he was probably stronger though. I rarely faced off against someone I could beat at arm wrestling so it wasn’t new to me, so I didn’t hesitate. I clutched my hurt side and drew my legs up into the fetal position and started to moan piteously. The bastard chuckled and hollered down the hallway about a chicken that had already been plucked as he moved towards me, his eyes greedily devouring my writhing body.

He came in a little too cocky and I was able to thrust my leg back out straight and ram the heel of my foot square into his crotch. He bent over making that huuuuh sound a well racked guy tends to emit as I swung my foot back and under myself. I lunged back to my feet. He was coming in and leaning over, hands on his junk as I was coming up, and I slammed the top of my head into his face and pulped his nose. The impact was enough to keep me from making it to a standing position though, so I just let myself fall, grabbing his wrist and taking him with me. He was still too stunned to fight back intelligently, so he ended up on the ground on his belly with me in side control. I immediately scissored to kick over into the mount and dragged his wrist with me, pushing it up towards his shoulder blades. I reached down with the other hand to the small of my back and a pair of handcuffs that wasn’t there.

At pretty much the same time I realized I wouldn’t be arresting this asshole, he raised his head off the floor and yelled, “Get this whore off of me.” I’ve been called worse, but I followed his line of sight and saw another man dressed the same step out of a door at the end of the hallway. This one had a sword in his hand and my mouth went dry. I planted my knee square in this fellow’s ass for leverage and shoved up on his wrist as hard as I could. We both screamed, he in pain and me in rage as I dislocated his shoulder. I immediately let go and stepped on the small of his back as I stood and turned the opposite direction. There was another man already coming from that way too and I checked the step I’d already made in that direction. I looked over the railing and it still seemed like too far to drop, but there was a door in the wall behind me. It was locked, but shoddily built and with a single shoulder rush I was able to burst inside.

The room had the same hotel room vibe as the one I’d appeared in upstairs, but this one had a bit more of a lived in feel and a teenager huddled in the back corner sobbing. She looked about 14 or 15 and rail thin wearing a ratty old shift. I took a couple steps into the room looking around for something to use as a weapon. I felt bad for leading them here, but with the fire hiding in a corner wasn’t a safe alternative for the girl anyway.

“Get up and fight, girl. They’re coming.”

She just wailed louder and I settled on the water pitcher. This one was only half full but I dumped it on myself anyway. Less for the heat this time, but it might help me stay kind of slippery. Stepping back out the door, the guy on the left was closest and I hurled the pitcher at him. Years as a third baseman paid off, and it made a beeline for his nose before he swatted it out of the air with the sword. I ducked back into the room as he yelled something at me. I didn’t quite make out the words but I feel confident they were unpleasant. The table the pitcher had sat on had three sturdy wooden legs, and I tipped it over and stomped down on one. It took me a couple of tries, but eventually I had myself a nice wooden club and I sidled close to the doorway but up against the wall where they wouldn’t be able to see me. The girl in the corner was still sobbing and I tried again.

“We can take them, honey. I’m a cop. I need you to get off your ass and help me, and I can get you out of here.”

She stopped caterwauling long enough to speak. “You’ll make them angry.”

I stared at her incredulous. They’d already tried to rape me, they’d apparently set the building on fire, and she was worried about what they’d do if we made them mad? You can’t appease the bad guys, at best it just drew a bad situation out even longer, but I didn’t have time to try and explain because the first man had arrived. He entered the room blade first, but I swung overhand from the side so it wouldn’t get in the way. He had fast reflexes and some training because the sword immediately parried my strike, pinning the table leg up against the door frame. He held it there and followed through with the other hand in a full out punch to the face as he continued into the room. I lost my grip on the club and staggered back almost falling on top of the bed. There had been some real power behind that punch, it hadn’t been like sparring with gloves on. A little lower and he would have broken my jaw, a little higher and he would have broken his hand. As it was I could feel my eye already starting to swell shut and I knew I had to end this fast. I wouldn’t be able to trade punches with this asshole.

He stepped the rest of the way into the room then, letting the table leg fall to the ground and I swept the blanket off the bed up into my hands. He moved warily, circling in towards me as I backed further into the room, and I heard a voice from the hallway. “Keep the bitch alive. That one owes me.” That sounded bad, but then the big guy in the room with me grinned and called back over his shoulder without looking away. “I won’t kill her but you get sloppy seconds. I like breaking the ones with a little fight.” That sounded even worse, but it meant he wouldn’t just chop me down if he got close. The thought made me bold and I took a chance.

I threw the blanket like a net, keeping a loose hold on one edge so it would flare out and cover him. He immediately started flailing to tear it off him, but his vision was obstructed if only for a moment and I charged in close. I slipped under a wild swing and spun around behind him just as he got the blanket clear of his face. Jumping up, I got an arm around his throat, my forearm and bicep pressed against the carotid while that hand locked onto my other arm in a rear naked choke. An oddly appropriate choice considering I still hadn’t managed to find time to grab some clothes. I’m something of an expert on choke holds, or lateral vascular neck restraints as I called them in court. An air choke can take minutes to put someone out, but a properly applied blood choke will result in unconsciousness in around 30 seconds. It sounds fast, but when your buck naked, fighting a sword wielding rapist in a burning building thirty seconds can be a really long time. One of his hands came up and grabbed at my elbow in front of his chin, trying to pull my arm down. That was futile since he hadn’t tucked his chin before I got locked in so it didn’t bother me. The other arm was slamming his elbow back towards my body, but he was so tall my feet were off the floor anyway. Each swing just rocked me out of the way and without resistance he wasn’t really doing any damage. The dangerous part was that he was spinning. He probably outweighed me by at least a hundred pounds and I didn’t look forward to getting smashed against the wall once he figured that out.

In the end it was worse than that. We’d both lost track of the room while we were struggling, and when he decided to squash me like a bug by charging backwards into the wall he doomed us both. Dumbass ran straight towards the window. My shoulders burst through the muslin curtain and I released my hold with one hand to reach for the wall. There was too much mass going too fast to stop it though, and we both pitched through the opening towards the ground below.

I’d like to claim I had the presence of mind to flip him over and ride him down, maybe jumping back off his body to take up a little of the force right before we hit. There wasn’t time for any of that. I swiped for the wall and missed it, and I was still inhaling to scream when we hit. Blind luck left me on top. Even better than that, it lined his head up with the chest I’d thrown from the other window above this one earlier. His skull shattered like that one comedian’s watermelons, and I felt things crunch in his body underneath me. I was able to stand on shakey legs though, and a quick check showed nothing but bruises.

A head stuck out of the window and a familiar face showed up over a mishapen shoulder. “I’m coming for you, you poxy cunt.”

I looked up and gave him a cheerful wave. “You already lost one fight with me, cocksucker. Sure you want to risk another go?”

He started to swear and his head popped back into the building, and I leaned down and checked the body. There was a leather belt with a sturdy knife in a sheath and a coin pouch tied to it, and I started untying that while I looked around. There was the sound of rioting down one street, a stable or some sort of barn right across from me, and what looked like some kind of apartment building straight ahead. I wanted clothes before I tried to escape through town, and as I pulled the belt off the corpse I turned the chest over with my foot to get to the latch. It turned out the latch was pointless, because the trunk itself had broken open when it hit. As I turned it with my foot, clothes dumped from the bottom. It was a tangled mass of lace and cotton, almost all white and before I had a chance to sort it, another of those weirdly dressed guys came running around the corner.

I pulled the knife out and got in a ready stance, when from the other side a guy in a blue cotton shirt ran forward and plunged a spear into the first guy’s guts. Okay, so there was more than one team in this mess, but that didn’t necessarily mean anybody was on my side. Spear guy turned and looked at me, apparently more shocked by the sight of boobs than the man hemorrhaging out the last of his life’s blood onto the street in front of him. Before he could do anything about it though, there was more shouting and a gaggle of people flooded the street and the spearman was caught up in the fight. I still had the blanket and I shoved an arms worth of the stuff from the chest on top of it before gathering the corners and slinging the bundle on my back. I only needed a hundred meters to get out of this mess, so knife in one hand, bundle in the other I turned the opposite direction of the fighting and started to run.