Dela's Hunters (The Harem House Book 1)

by Charissa Dufour

  He cringed. They had turned her into a killer. She had had a simple life before they nabbed her. Now she was a killer and possibly a victim of rape. What had he done to the poor girl?

  When Adrian opened his eyes again, she was crawling out from under the man’s limp body. The girl looked even more beat up—all black and blue. What have we done? No one said anything. They didn’t need to. She was already searching the man’s pockets. A minute or two later, she had the door opened.

  All four men moved at once, trying to wedge themselves through the narrow door to get to her. After much shoving and pushing, they emerged, each one trying to examine her and just getting in each other’s way.

  “We need to move,” Gareth said, already moving on to rummage through the wooden box the local’s had put their guns in. He started flinging belts at the men. Adrian caught is and bound it to his waist in record time, tugging it down until it was secure. “Pick her up.”

  Before Adrian could act, Mason scooped her up into his arms. Adrian followed Gareth, his gun already drawn. They all suspected a fight. How else would they get past the men who still lounged around the living area near the main entrance? Adrian was sure there was a back exit somewhere, but it would be too hard to find it before they got caught. He had no problem with the direct route. Besides, he suspected most of the men were fast asleep.

  They circumvented the enormous manufacturing plant. Adrian didn’t want to admit it, but Angel had been brilliant when he chose to build his little community inside the building. It was still structurally sound and would be for generations, and with desert storms sweeping through regularly, it was a safe option. Of course, that didn’t make it easy to leave.

  They reached the front section where a few men lounged on coyote pelts. Had the living section just been a few feet farther into the building, they might have been able to sneak by, even with the door pulled shut. Gareth motioned for them to stay put before sulking forward. He reached the first man, an outlier of the group, and slit his throat. The man jerked, gurgled a bit, and collapsed. His blood coated the coyote fur.

  Before Gareth could reach the next man, the others noticed. One shouted as the others fumbled with their holsters. Adrian fired at one, knowing the shouting had already awakened the others, and killing him. Mason and Lath fired too as Gareth dropped to the ground. While they took out the few men who were too drunk to find their own dicks, Gareth slithered across the floor.

  In record time, the living area was cleared. They rushed to the main door, hearing shouts and stomping feet behind them. Lath reached the door first, dragging it open. Mason slipped through the narrow opening with the girl draped over his shoulder. She appeared to be unconscious. Lath followed Mason, and Adrian and Gareth followed. Adrian turned back, dragging the heavy door shut again.

  “What are you doing?” Gareth demanded.

  “Grab that chain.”

  It only took Gareth a second to realize what Adrian had planned. He grabbed up the chain and slid it through the thick, metal handle. From there, they wound it around a post sunk into the cement near the corner of the building. Lath appeared with an iron stake—pulled from a nearby canvas tent used for outdoor work, by the looks of it—which they drove through the two end links and into the packed earth. By the time they finished, they could hear the shouts from within.

  “C’mon,” Mason called from a few yards down the road.

  The other three turned and ran down the road after Mason, who had taken off again. They ran a few blocks before trading the girl to another pair of shoulders. They turned at one corner, then another, weaving their way back into the maze of city streets.

  Chapter Eight

  “Uerrg,” Dela groaned before she was even awake. Every joint hurt. Her head throbbed with her heartbeat, which felt like a hammer against her ribs. Something vaguely soft supported her body. It hurt to lie still, but she suspected it would hurt even more to move. She tried to open her eyes but found one stuck closed. After a moment of tender effort, she got her left eye open.

  “Cap? You awake?”

  Dela recognized Gareth’s voice before his face came into view. He knelt down beside her, his eyes roving over her face and neck. She groaned again and tried to sit up.

  “No, no. Let’s stay down. You’ve taken quite a beating.”

  Dela tried to think back. She remembered the two fights, but she couldn’t remember the blows being that bad. She raised her hand to grope around her face, but never got her hand high enough. As it came into her line of sight, she saw the black bruises running up and down her bare arms. She groaned again, lowering the limb back to her bedding.

  “Where are we?” she croaked, her voice sounding more like a toad than a human.

  “We got a few miles away from Angel’s little village and hunkered down. The others are out looking for supplies and bandages for you.”

  “Bandages?”

  “The back of your head is bleeding. Your hands are cut up, especially around the nails. And you’re pretty bruised up along your arms. We might need to wait a few days before we set off again.”

  “But Angel…”

  “We’ll stay hidden. They won’t find us here.”

  Dela rolled her good eye, trying to see where they were. There was a small fire burning on the other side of Gareth. From its light, she caught sight of what looked like lumpy half walls.

  “Where are we?”

  “I think they were called ‘craft stores’ back in the day.”

  “What is craft?”

  Gareth shrugged. “No idea.” He paused. “I need to ask you an awkward question.”

  Dela closed her eyes. “No. No one raped me.” With her eyes closed, she heard Gareth sigh. “Why do you care?”

  Gareth kept his mouth shut long enough to force Dela to turn her aching head and look at him. “The Harem House only takes virgins.”

  Dela wanted to glare at him, but her face hurt too much. A few minutes later, she noticed a bouncing light approaching from her left. It kept moving from side to side, each time growing a little brighter. She used her one good eye to glance at Gareth. He was watching the light, too, but didn’t appear to worry about it. Finally, the light reached their little campground, along with Mason, Adrian, and Lath.

  “So, as it turns out,” Mason said fitting the torch into some object near the edge of their camp. The light increased, giving Dela an idea of what surrounded them. She spotted carefully suspended bundles of fabric, row upon row. Mason continued, “No one thought to ransack a craft store back during the fall.”

  “Find some good stuff?” Gareth asked as Adrian and Lath dumped the contents of their plastic baskets on the ground.

  Dela rolled, trying to get into a sitting position to see what they had found.

  “Hell, yeah, we did,” replied Lath, already combing through the various items, all packaged in plastic. “We even found…what were they called?”

  Adrian jumped in. “Oh, it’s like…like v-v-…”

  “It had food in it… back in this smaller room with the tables. Probably where the workers took their breaks.”

  “Whoa there, Cap, stay down 'till we get you checked out,” said Adrian who sat near her head. He reached for her shoulders to push her back onto her bed, and she grimaced at his touch. “Sorry.”

  Mason scooted over to her makeshift bed as he opened a package. “Try this.”

  He handed her a brown disk that looked a little like a slice of poop. Dela eyed it, a frown pulling on her various cuts and bruises.

  “It’s good. Try it.”

  She took a little nibble from the disk and found it to be sweet. Dela took a bigger bite, closing her eyes in bliss.

  “Good, eh?”

  After she had finished the two disks in the package, Gareth helped her to roll onto her stomach. It hurt, much like every other position. While Gareth prepared his new supplies, Adrian lit two more torches, making the place practically glow.

  “What about water?” Gareth ask
ed.

  Lath began to dig in their pile. “Yeah, we found some of those silly little bottles in the machine in the back.” He presented Gareth with one.

  “I can’t believe these have survived decades,” Gareth said as he cracked one open.

  Cool liquid dripped over Dela’s head, stinging the cut on the back. She felt something pull on her hair, which also hurt, followed by more water. She heard a tearing sound. Finally, something pressed against her head.

  “Can you raise your head up a little?” Gareth asked.

  Dela worked her way up onto her elbows. She felt more hands assisting Gareth by holding her hair out of the way, followed by fabric being wrapped around her forehead. They tied it off and she collapsed back onto her stomach.

  “Ow,” she groaned.

  “Okay, roll over,” Gareth ordered.

  Dela obeyed, her breath caught in her chest as she worked through the pain. Gareth began doctoring her various cuts—on her face and hands. Finally, he pulled away. Dela felt more like a mummy than a person. With the pain of his touch finally subsiding, she drifted back into sleep.

  “Well?” Mason asked once he felt sure the girl had gone to sleep. “Did you ask her?”

  Gareth nodded. “They didn't rape her.”

  All of the men breathed a sigh of relief. Mason himself felt the burden lift from his shoulders. The question was, was he relieved for the sake of their bounty or because he didn’t want to see her hurt. Mason ground his teeth together, one eye on the bandaged woman.

  He refused to believe the flutters in his chest. He didn’t have room to care for anyone else. Adrian took enough watching out for. History had proven a woman was more trouble than they were worth. Whatever happened, they always wound up at the Harem House or dead.

  Mason blindly grabbed another package of candy, tearing it open and biting into it.

  “So what do we do now?” asked Lath, speaking the words they had all been wondering.

  No one replied, each one either eyeing the fire or chewing on another candy bar.

  “Give her a day to rest, then we move on…” began Gareth, “get her to one of the cities. Piedras Negras is closest.”

  “Yeah, but they’re not the…” Lath stopped what he was about to say. “They don’t pay the best.”

  Mason nodded, thankful someone had complained about the plan. “Yeah. Hebbronville or uh…”

  “Or Raymondville,” added Adrian. “She’d like the ocean being so close…or uh…”

  No one replied. Mason suspected he wasn’t the only one growing attached to the little bundle of fire lying on a pile of fabric. In all his years of Hunting, he had never grown attached to a catch. They were a means to a paycheck, nothing more. From the nervous looks coming from Lath and Adrian, he knew they no longer felt that way. In contrast, Gareth sat as stoic as ever.

  “I vote Raymondville,” Lath said, nodding to Adrian.

  “We’re not voting,” Gareth replied, eyes on the fire. “We’re taking her to Piedras Negras. The sooner we’re rid of her the better.”

  Mason couldn’t really argue with Gareth; she was becoming a problem.

  “Are you guys serious?” the girl snapped, sitting up in a rush. Mason expected her to topple right over. She sat for a moment, clearly watching the room spin. Finally, she trained her eyes on Mason and the others. “Not one word spoken about saving those poor women in there.”

  “Look, Cap,” began Gareth, “the four of us have no chance of taking that place out. We’d all just get killed and you’d end up back in those huts.”

  “There’s five of us,” the girl corrected. “Or did I not prove myself yesterday?”

  The men were silent for a moment.

  Gareth scratched at his stubble. “Without you, we would still be in there. But in the end, we carried you out of there. Even if with your help we could take that place on, you wouldn’t be up to it for at least a week.”

  “So because we’d have to wait around a bit, you’re not willing to help them.”

  “You’re not hearing him,” interrupted Lath. “Even if we wait the week, even with your help, the five of us isn’t enough.”

  “Then we go get more help.”

  The men all sighed, shaking their heads.

  “You get more men, you save those women, I’ll go to the Harem House… no more trying to escape; no more sabotaging you.”

  "When have you sabotaged us?” asked Lath.

  “I had a few plans.”

  The men chuckled.

  “And if you get those girls out, I bet they’d be happy to marry some men. Far better than the system they’re a part of now.”

  It was time for Mason to jump in. “Cap, the Harem House only takes virgins. Those girls are as far from pure as it’s possible to be. And selling them to a whore house is hardly any better than what they have now.”

  “You really telling me there are men out there who choose no woman over a used one? Are you boys really that picky with such few options?”

  Mason smiled at her tone of shock, but it was Adrian to speak up first. “No, but it is the Harem House that pairs up a woman to her husbands. We can’t change their rules.”

  The girl tried to roll her eyes. The gesture stopped short as the pain caught up with her. “Just cause that’s how it’s been done in the past doesn’t mean we have to do it that way now.”

  “The answer is ‘no’,” said Gareth. “It would be too hard to sell off those girls without the Harem House.”

  “I never said it would be the easy thing to do. I said it would be the right thing to do.”

  With that, the girl rolled over, giving them her back. Mason grimaced with her words. It had been a long time since he’d worried about the right thing. He couldn’t speak for the others, but he suspected they were feeling the same pull on their seldom-used conscious.

  Slowly, conversation perked up, the men talking about anything but Cap’s challenge. After a lot of aimless chit-chat, Mason heard tell-tale snores coming from the girl. He suspected she had broken her nose in the fight. It certainly was swollen enough. As the snores increased, the conversation died down. Finally, they were all staring at each other in silence, listening to the girl struggling to breathe in her sleep.

  Mason closed his eyes, wishing he could close his ears. The girl’s face was a palette of blues and greens. And all because she had come to save them rather than saving herself. Guilt weighed heavy on his shoulders. She was all alone in the world, and yet her moral compass was better tuned than any of theirs.

  “I think she’s right,” Lath said, breaking into the rhythm of her snores. “We need to put Angel down.”

  Mason looked up at Lath. He didn’t know the man well, but he had always taken Gareth’s partner for a teaser, a village jester. Mason had taken Lath for “shallow waters” as his mother had always said. It turned out that even under the waves of Lath’s playfulness, his waters ran deep.

  “At the same time, Gareth is right. We don’t have enough manpower to take on Angel’s men,” Mason said.

  They were all silent for a long moment, then Lath spoke again. “Why don’t we go down to Josie’s ranch? Her men would fight, and they have a number of boys old enough. We’d have a real force then.”

  “Cap stays at the ranch,” Gareth said, surprising them all. “No matter what she says, Cap stays with Josie.”

  No one argued that point.

  Chapter Nine

  When Dela woke the next morning, she had been shocked to find the men packing up. She was even more shocked to hear they planned to go get reinforcements. They exited the craft store, and Dela caught sight of her reflection. Half her face was swollen and bruised. She could barely recognize herself. Her arms and neck weren’t much better. Though she never said anything to the men, she suspected they didn’t mind putting off her arrival at the Harem House until she healed up a bit. She wasn’t exactly attractive at present.

  The group headed down the street, trying their best to keep to t
he shade. Dela quickly realized who the real leader of the group was. Gareth led them in and out of buildings, down alleyways, and through parking lots, all while keeping them vaguely heading in the right direction. Within minutes, Dela was lost. She wasn’t used to navigating between buildings tall enough to block out the sun. The only clue she had was the location of the sun, but Gareth and the men acted as though they had grown up in the enormous city.

  “Gareth, I think we need to stop,” Lath said from the back. “Cap needs a break.”

  “I’m fine,” Dela panted, unwilling to look weak in front of them.

  “I think Lath is right,” added Adrian, jumping into the conversation.

  Truth was, she ached everywhere. Sweat trickled down into her cuts which stung, and a headache was forming behind her eyes from the sun glinting off the unbroken panes of glass—few as they were. Truth was, Dela wanted them to think well of her. She frowned a little, which pulled on her cuts. When had her perspective changed? She hated them, right?

  As the four men turned to look at her, Lath produced another one of the nifty bottles they had found in the craft store, cracking the top for her. Dela drank a quick swallow and began to pass it off to the next person when Lath raised his hand.

  “Drink it all. You need it.”

  “Why the hell do I need it more than you?” Dela asked before taking another drink.

  Gareth rolled his eyes. “You’ve lost a lot of blood, and your body can’t recoup while you’re dehydrated. We’ll be okay. Now drink it all. I’ll find us a place to pass the hot hours, but for now, let’s keep moving.”

  Dela walked behind the men, drinking from the bottle. It was a nice view, she had to admit. Each one of them had the beautifully toned backside of a man who spent as much time in the saddle as they did on their own two feet. All four of them wore home-sewn denim, which had been worn dull blue in all the right places, too.