“Didn’t expect the meatheads at the door,” I said.
She laughed nervously. “Right?”
The scary guy rejoined the rest of his team and the men shifted, crowding closer together in groups of three, all with matching masks. They talked amongst themselves, glancing at us, sizing us up as they engaged in heated conversation I couldn’t hear.
Teams. They were divided into teams designated by their matching masks.
Three of them chasing every one of us.
I swallowed around the lump of fear in my throat.
The giant in the bone mask now stood off to the side with two other Herculean men, both shirtless and wearing identical masks: a shaggy-haired blond, his arms covered entirely with ink, and a dark-haired guy whose neck was ringed with chains and leather cords.
The hilt of a knife protruded from leather cords tied around each of their waists.
They bent their heads in discussion as the other guys did the same. We didn’t get to choose who hunted us, but the hunters were clearly claiming their prey.
“Hoping for anyone specific?” I asked the blonde girl next to me.
She shivered as she looked at the men huddled in groups across the room. “Anyone but the Butchers.”
I followed her gaze to the three men in the animal bone masks, all of them staring.
At me.
2
MAEVE
I hadn’t knownabout the tunnels under Blackwell Falls. Not until Hannah told me about what she’d called the Game. She hadn’t known all the details, just that it involved a nighttime game of hide-and-seek, one where the woman was always the hunted and three men were always the hunters.
It had taken some online sleuthing to suss out the details, but if there was anything I’d gotten good at since June’s murder, it was online sleuthing.
Once I’d fallen down the rabbit hole of the Hunt, mostly through firsthand accounts in the darkest corners of the internet, I couldn’t stop. Some of the women who’d done it called it a nightmare, but the more I learned, the more it seemed like my saving grace.
If I could win.
If I lost I’d essentially be a slave — for three long months — to the men who hunted me. Not exactly low stakes, but nothing about my life had been low stakes since June’s murder a year and a half ago.
I forced myself to breathe as I looked around the red-lit room. At least there was a first aid table. They weren’t going to let us bleed out down here where no one would ever find us.
Hopefully.
The scary dark-haired guy in the bone mask stepped forward and the room instantly got quiet. In his hands was a circular gold object, swung as casually as a fidget toy.
I didn’t think it was my imagination that everyone backed up a little, like he was surrounded by some kind of malevolent force field that might strike us all down.
The mask didn’t help. It was a dull gold, worn in places like it had been well used. The piece that covered his face looked like an animal skeleton, and I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if had been real. I could imagine this man killing things, stripping them of fur and skin, wearing their bones.
He stared at us through elongated eyeholes that were almost demonic, two horns jutting on either side of his head making him look like a primitive beast. His lips, visible where the snout of his mask ended, were almost obscenely full.
His biceps bulged as he folded his arms, and I saw that his eyes were dark enough to appear black through the holes in his mask.
“Welcome to the Hunt.” His voice was deep and gravelly. I felt it like a shock wave in my body. “If you’re here, you know it lasts twenty-four hours. If you’re caught, you agree to reside with your captors for three months and follow their orders. If you’re not, you get one very big favor from the men who hunted you but didn’t catch you.”
He was skirting the language of the prize, but I understood why. It was better not to put into words the fact that if we made it twenty-four hours without being caught, we could name our mark, a mark who would be quietly exterminated by the three men who’d tried to catch us.
My heartbeat quickened at the idea. There was nothing I wanted more.
