MAEVE
By the timethe scary guy finished collecting signatures on his stupid waiver, my heart was thudding like one of those big drums at the front of a parade. Inside, a voice screamed,What the fuck are you doing? But it was encased under the hard shell of my resolve, as impenetrable and cold as a thick sheet of ice.
The guy in the bone mask— obviously the leader of this whole thing — walked over to the men standing on the other side of the room and handed the clipboard full of signed waivers to the Barbarian who’d frisked me at the top of the stairwell.
Then he turned to look at us. “Any questions?”
“What if we want out?” the blonde girl next to me asked.
He pointed to the neon sign.
No names.
No safe words.
No escape.
“Yeah but… we can change our minds right?”
The question came from a tall, slender girl with short hot-pink hair.
“You can do whatever you want with your mind. But your body stays here until the Hunt is over.”
“What if we get lost in there?” a pretty redhead in a short skirt, crop top, and ballet flats asked.
The question made my stomach twist. So far I’d only been scared of getting caught, of being forced to live with my captors for three months. But now the full weight of the situation hit me. I was about to enter a series of underground tunnels that were probably cold and dark. I didn’t know the layout, didn’t have a map, didn’t know how far the tunnels extended under Blackwell Falls.
It occurred to me that there might be something worse than being caught by three of the men staring me down from behind their creepy masks: I could get lost in the tunnels, never to be heard from again.
“Better lost than found,” one of the other men said. The comment was both threatening and suggestive.
The man in the bone mask turned to look at the guy in the bird mask who’d spoken. There was a long moment of silence, and I had the sense that Bird Man had committed some kind of faux pas by speaking, that the man in charge didn’t appreciate having his little Q&A interrupted.
Finally, Bone Mask turned back to look at the redhead who’d asked the last question. “Then you won’t be lost for long.”
That meant this wasn’t their first rodeo. The men knew these tunnels. Once the Hunt was over, they would be able to find any stragglers, which meant they had a big advantage over us.
The girls around me shuffled on their feet, like the full weight of what we were doing was hitting them too.
“Any other questions?”
I wasn’t surprised when no one spoke up. The neon sign buzzing on the wall pretty much said it all. For better or worse, we’d signed up for the Hunt, and now we were going to play.
Bone Mask nodded at the Barbarian who’d frisked me. He still didn’t have a mask on, so I assumed he wasn’t here for the Hunt.
He walked down the narrow hall lit with another red bulb and lifted a bolt from the door. A wave of cool damp air wafted into the room when he opened it.
Darkness yawned from beyond the doorframe, a nightmare brought to life.
He walked back toward us and reached into the pocket of his jeans for his phone. “You’ll have a three-minute head start in…” He tapped at his phone. “… one minute.”
I caught my breath, forced myself to exhale slowly as adrenaline flooded my body.
Be calm. Be steady. Be smart.
They were things I should have told myself when I’d launched my failed assassination attempt against the man responsible for my sister’s murder.
Not her boyfriend, who’d pulled the trigger. He was already in jail.
