Homestead Harem 2, page 15
The bedroom door was closed so I pushed it open gently—hoping beyond logic that Charlotte might actually be resting. But, of course, the cat-girl was sitting straight up, wringing her hands out on the quilt and trying to angle her body to be able to see out the window from the bed. Of course.
“I can’t believe you’re going to make me stay in bed for this,” she said immediately, not taking her eyes off the window. “I mean, I know Jordan is a great fighter, but is she ready to lead them in battle?”
“She will be,” I replied, sitting down on the edge of the bed.
“She’s been like this all afternoon,” Ellen sighed from her chair by the door. “We might have to tie her down when the fighting starts.”
I sat down on the bed in front of Charlotte, taking her hand and placing the pistol in her palm gently. She stared at it for a moment before looking up at me in surprise.
“You’ll need this more out there,” Charlotte said quietly. But I could already see the spark in her eye from getting to hold the weapon.
“The thing I need the most is for you to stay alive and well,” I replied. “If by some awful chance all hell breaks loose and Maven’s girls come through that door, you shoot first and ask questions later. You understand me?”
She nodded quickly, looking down and opening the chamber quickly to check for the three bullets then closing it again.
“You keep her safe,” I told Ellen, standing up again.
“You kidding?” Ellen replied flatly. “I’m hiding behind the bitch with the gun.”
All of us couldn’t help but laugh a little at that, easing the tension in the room as I made my way out, kissing Ellen on the cheek before I did.
“Good luck,” she said—that new, unfamiliar fear creeping into her eyes as she clutched onto my shirt for a moment.
“He won’t need it,” Charlotte called casually. “Now go kill that bitch Lara for me, would you, darling?”
I turned around, smiling at the pregnant cat-girl clutching the pistol in bed.
“Yes, ma’a,m,” I replied, saluting her before striding out the door and back downstairs.
Outside, everyone was gathered in front of the porch, smearing mud all over their bodies—by my orders. Lord knows the rain gave us enough of it.
“Listen up!” I shouted through the steady rain. Everyone stopped smearing and stood at attention. “Those of you guarding the house, you know your orders! You do not leave your post under any circumstances! I don’t care if we’re getting creamed to hell out there, I don’t care if the barn is on fire or Godzilla himself comes ’round the corner to take us out. You hold your ground, and you protect this home and the girls inside it. We ain’t all fighters, but those girls in there keep us fed, they keep us clothed, and they’re our family. This is our home. We die by it if we have to. Do you understand?”
A small section of girls by Jordan nodded, Alexis included.
“The rest of you!” I continued. “You camouflage yourself the best you can, and you take your place in the fields. Our intel from Blossom says Lara and her crew will wait til past midnight to strike, hoping to catch us asleep and avoid a fight. We’re gonna ruin that little hope of theirs. My watch says half past eleven now, so we might be waiting twenty minutes out there, or we might be waiting four hours. No matter how long we wait, once you take your place, you do not move. If they don’t strike tonight, we stand up at dawn. If we want the element of surprise out there, one person getting up to stretch their legs could destroy it. Am I clear?”
A sea of bright white eyes stared back at me through muddied faces.
“Am I clear?” I repeated.
“Yes!” they replied, each person raising up their weapon of choice. Some held crowbars, some shovels, some bats, some knives.
“Now I ain’t past trying to talk sense into Maven if the opportunity presents itself. But these fields are our lives, simple as that. So we ain’t gonna be having no conversations out there. We strike to kill. If you ain’t comfortable with that, I recommend you imagine us starving to death in a few months–-and if you still ain’t comfortable, that’s alright—but I recommend you get yourself back in the house right about now, because this fight isn’t for you. We ain’t playing around tonight. Have I made myself clear?”
Everyone replied yes again, but I couldn’t help but look at Blossom and Sophia, their faces grave but determined. Blossom held no blunt object, preferring the small knives she had strapped to her legs.
“Once you’re finished muddying yourselves up, take your places in the fields,” I commanded. “And good luck. Pancakes for breakfast tomorrow.”
Everyone went back to spreading mud on themselves, chuckling a little or talking quietly while I moved to Sophia and Blossom.
“Y’all gonna be ready to take down your own people?” I asked. “I’d understand if you wanted to sit this one out.”
“I know exactly who’ll volunteer to go with Lara, and I have no problem killing any of them,” Blossom replied calmly. Her primal nature was on full display, her tall frame looking more Amazonian than ever as she peered out at the treeline.
“And your sister?” I questioned.
Blossom met my eyes, her violet irises boring into mine.
“Take her out.”
With that, Blossom was gone, sufficiently muddy and striding out towards the fields with purpose. I looked at Sophia.
“I’ll be fine,” she told me. “Just worry about your people.”
“You are my people now,” I told her, reaching down to get some mud on my hand and smearing it gently below both her eyes. “You be careful out there.”
The squirrel-girl stared at me in the same way she had this morning—like I was a god or something, like she’d do just about anything for me. I wiped the mud down her neck and sent her off, turning to Jordan and Alexis.
“Stand still,” Jordan commanded before I could open my mouth, her hands already prepped with mud. I pulled my shirt off, throwing it on the porch, and her and Alexis spread it up and down my chest and back, their hands warm and eager.
“Too much more of this and I think I’ll be too excited to fight,” Alexis joked, her hands moving down my lower back and onto my ass.
“Hey, I don’t need camouflage back there,” I chided, grabbing her wrist and pulling her into my side, the mud on both our bodies intermingling. I snaked my hand up the back of her neck into her hair, kissing her wildly for a moment.
“Careful, I’m armed,” the fox-girl said woozily, stepping back from me. I slapped her ass as she turned to take her post on the porch.
Jordan rolled her eyes as she raised up on her tiptoes to reach my face, using her small fingers to paint mud around my eyes.
“How do I look?” I asked.
“Like the bear man of legend,” she replied, winking. Jordan was one of the mutant girls on this farm who believed the rumor I was half-bear before we were formally introduced.
“Perfect,” I replied, but she hardly heard me. She was scanning the fields, counting her people, making sure everyone was in position.
“You’ve got this, Jordan,” I told her, pulling her attention back to me. “I’ll take Lara. You just make sure everyone else is where they need to be.”
She nodded tightly, but I could tell nerves were bubbling under her strong visage.
“Charlotte wanted me to tell you she believes in you,” I said.
Was it a bold-faced lie? Maybe. But deep down, I knew Charlotte believed in Jordan.
“Really?” the bat-girl asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied. “Now let’s go out there and kick some ass.”
Jordan squared herself with more confidence, running away with her signature speedy grace to take her spot on the edge of the fields—the front lines, by her insistence.
I looked out at my farm, where, one-by-one, my family was disappearing, lying down between the rows of crops and fading into the rain-soaked fields without a trace.
This would work. It would have to. I bent down and grabbed a last handful of mud, pushing it through my blondish hair.
If I had to be the bear-man again, so be it.
Chapter
Twenty-Two
My estimation put us at one in the morning by the time I heard the low owl call from Jordan meaning Lara and her girls had showed up. The rain had been coming down steadily—which washed the mud from our skin, a factor I had stupidly forgotten to consider. Luckily, it was possible to roll over subtly and resoak myself in mud every once in a while. I hoped the rest of my people had realized the same.
My heart began to race as I forced myself to wait after hearing the call—one, two, three seconds. No sudden movements. Nothing that could give us away.
Then, as slowly and steadily as possible, I lifted my eyes above the line of cabbage plants in front of me to check out the scene.
Sure enough, Lara and her crew were huddled at the edge of the Northern border of our property, each of them carrying two gas cans containing what I had to assume was Windex and weed killer—or some equally stupid concoction that would singlehandedly destroy the fields my family had been painstakingly tilling for generations. I could hear my own breathing, feel my heart pounding in my chest—not in fear this time, but anger. I wanted to rip those cans from their hands and bludgeon Lara to death with them.
But I had to wait.
My neck was strained in its awkwardly raised position, but I dared not move an inch—Lara's wild eyes could be seen roving the fields even from a distance. She had brought fewer girls with her than Blossom estimated, and I breathed a little easier seeing how much we outnumbered them. We had twelve people in the field, and Lara had only brought five.
Unlike most of our recent plans, this one was actually going in our favor. For once.
I watched with as much patience as I could muster while Lara directed her crew to their different sections of the fields, ensuring they covered every inch with their poison. They began to jog down the rows of crops while Lara uncapped her first can.
"Agh!"
I whipped my head to look at the source of the shout—one of Lara's girls had taken a hard fall by the potatoes.
"What the...?" I heard her remark.
Twenty bucks said she tripped over someone.
Well, I thought. No time like the present for an ambush.
"Now!" I screamed, jumping up and revealing myself.
All at once, we popped up from the fields like zombies, running at Lara's girls and screaming our war cries. My people had been lying in the mud for an hour waiting for this, and they were out for blood.
The fields were instant chaos. Polly the chipmunk-girl and Benny burst out from the barn on horses wielding golf clubs, galloping around the perimeter to make sure none of Lara’s girls escaped alive. To my left, Seabiscuit herself was trying to shakily unscrew the caps of her gas cans before anyone reached her—and I almost redirected toward her until Jordan dropped down from her perch and pressed her Glock into the back of the girl's skull.
"Set the cans down gently," Jordan commanded.
I couldn't help but smile to myself as I ran past, knowing Jordan didn't have a damn bullet to show for all that swagger.
“Anyone not fighting needs to dump those cans down the drain!” I shouted back at Jordan, who had already knocked the horse-girl out with the butt of her gun.
“Got it!” she shouted back, then dove down into Seabiscuit’s neck, coming up again with a face full of fresh blood.
I kept running, remembering that, sometimes, it’s better not to watch Jordan fight.
By the time I came close to Lara, she had disabled two of our own—overconfident Leaf clutching his stomach on the ground and Sophia doing her best to at least keep the psychotic wolf-girl away from the dropped gas cans. I pulled out my shotgun as I ran, not remotely in the mood to fuck around. If Lara wanted death in these fields—she’d get it, and fast.
I was twenty feet out from Lara and Sophia, fifteen, ten—before I slid like a baseball player through the mud, steadying my body on the ground and lining up my shot. I had her in my sights, popped off the safety, finger poised on the trigger—
Lara spotted me in the second I put a breath of pressure on the trigger, diving out of the way of my shot. I released my finger, swearing and tucking the gun back into my pants while I hopped over the hay bale and ran at her. With only two bullets, I didn’t intend to waste either.
“You thought you could get away with this?!” I shouted. “Your people are dying!”
Lara only pulled back her upper lip to snarl at me, hatred burning in her purple eyes.
“Take those and get out of here,” I told Sophia, who was still positioned in front of the gas cans. “Send help for Leaf.”
Sophia nodded, clearly terrified to be in Lara’s presence. She capped the cans and ran off, the liquid inside them sloshing. Lara, surprisingly, had nothing to say to me. She watched Sophia run off with a strange expression on her face.
Perhaps it was the expression of a person who knows they’re going to die momentarily.
I reached for my gun, but Lara was smart enough not to let me—lunging at me with a vicious growl. I jumped out of the way, but where I should have punched her I used my arm to grab for my gun again—giving her a moment to sink her sharpened teeth into my shoulder—deep. I cried out in excruciating pain, trying to rip her teeth out of me, but every attempt only had her sinking in deeper, sending another wave of burning pain through my arm. We fell backwards in the struggle, and I reached for my gun on the way down while Lara finally released her teeth from my flesh—only to dive for the gun and pin my hand into the muddy field before I could point it at her. She rammed her knee into my crotch while we wrestled, and I fought through the shooting pain, finding out the hard way that Lara not only sharpened her teeth but her nails—points of blood erupted on my hand as she clawed at it, trying to get me to release the weapon while I gripped onto it for dear life.
In the struggle, the gun slipped out of my rain-soaked hand, and we both dove after it, landing stomach down in the mud while our fingers hit the weapon at the same time, my bitten shoulder bleeding profusely into the crops. Lara got her hand around the gun and I got my hands around hers—but not before she managed to get her finger hooked around the trigger. She pulled it recklessly, and the gun fired into the fields, hitting nothing.
My stomach dropped at the deafening sound. One of our most precious resources—wasted. And it was all my fault.
“Agh!” I cried out in anger, wrenching her hand back and causing the gun to go flying, landing ten feet away from us in the mud.
Lara dove again, but it occurred to me I’d be winning this fight if I wasn’t so damn focused on that weapon. So I let her dive without me, grabbing onto her tangled hair before she could reach it and ripping her skull backwards, throwing her facedown below me into the mud. She tried to crawl away, but I dropped my knee into the center of her spine, grabbing the back of her head and slamming it into the fields over and over again while the rain picked up around us.
By the time I flipped her over, she looked insane—her violet eyes wild, her face streaked in mud, her nose crooked and broken. I could smell my own blood pouring from the bite in my shoulder, but I ignored it, using all my energy not to succumb to the wooziness of blood loss while I had Lara underneath me.
“You’re a damn hateful bitch, you know that?” I spat down at her, punching her in the mouth.
To my dismay, she smiled up at me, revealing a horrifying display of chipped and missing teeth swimming in blood. I punched her again, this time in the nose, hearing the bones crunch underneath my fist.
Now she was laughing through the blood.
“You think this is funny?” I asked, punching her again. “You ain’t gonna be laughing in a minute.”
But the crazy wolf-girl kept smiling like a deranged mental patient, spitting out broken teeth and laughing and laughing.
“Your plan failed, Lara,” I shouted down at her, placing my hand around her neck and squeezing. I had the upper hand, I knew that, but still—her laughter was creeping me out, making me feel like I was missing something.
As I choked her, she started shaking her head back and forth in the mud. I eased up my grip on her neck, too curious for my own good.
“No,” she choked out. “It didn’t.”
Her words washed over me like a bucket of cold water, and I looked up in horror at the house. Sure enough, I could see a whole separate group of Maven’s girls by the aux barn, dragging someone away kicking and screaming—although I couldn’t tell who.
The field poisoning had been a distraction, I realized. To keep me occupied while they did this.
And I had no idea who they were dragging away.
Chapter
Twenty-Three
“Damnit!” I shouted, standing up off of Lara and lunging for my gun. By the time I’d found it in the mud and turned around to aim, the wolf-girl was already sprinting off toward the treeline, just far enough to be out of range. I shoved the gun back in my pants and swore, running in the opposite direction and cursing myself with every pounding step through the mud.
Of course poisoning the fields had only been one part of their plan—why hadn’t I realized it sooner? Maven wasn’t like the men I’d fought in the past, who I could always guarantee I’d be smarter than. This woman had been outsmarting her way into power for years, defeating men who were stronger and better fighters with more resources through sheer cleverness—knowing without a doubt they’d underestimate her. And here I was, doing just that, forgetting that psycho, reckless Lara wasn’t really the one calling the shots—her mother was.
The rain whipped at my face while I ran through the fields, still unpoisoned but littered with the bodies of the five girls unlucky enough to have volunteered to be on Lara’s team. A few of my people were tending to injuries, but none were dead—as far as I could tell. I didn’t spare much time or energy to count my people, however, as the kidnappers had already disappeared beyond the trees.
