I kept going and the voices of the other girls faded into the blackness behind me. The urge to run was profound, but I didn’t want to risk crashing into something. Instead I walked as fast as I dared, stepping with relief into the glow of the red bulbs hanging from the stone ceiling, continuing into the dark that lurked beyond their light.
I marveled at the tunnels, their walls and ceiling made of stone, the floor a mix of dirt and small rocks. How long had it taken the townspeople of Blackwell Falls to dig them without modern equipment?
I kept track of where I was as best I could, mapped the Orpheum in my mind, then the shuttered electronics shop that stood next to it, the old record store that had never been open in my lifetime. I lost track of time, felt the world aboveground receding into the background like a forgettable movie.
I had no idea how much time had passed when I reached a three-way fork in the tunnels, but I knew it had been longer than three minutes.
The men were on the prowl now.
I didn’t hear them behind me, but I knew they were back there, branching out underground, filling the tunnels like invading wolves.
After a five-second hesitation, I turned right at the fork. By my estimation I was either under the Mill, the bar that straddled the north and south sides of town, or I’d crossed into the north side of town and was somewhere in the vicinity of Monsters Ink, the tattoo shop.
Turning right put me off Main Street, and I finally felt like I’d put enough distance between the men and me that it was safe to make the turn that would take me deeper into the labyrinth.
I moved more carefully now. I didn’t know this part of town as well as I knew Main Street. I didn’t know how far the tunnels extended under the side streets or how many of the businesses off Main had even existed during Prohibition, and the last thing I wanted was to hit a brick wall with the masked men on my heels, especially the ones with the bone masks who’d been staring me down before the Hunt.
Anyone but the Butchers.
The blonde girl’s words echoed in my mind as I moved more deeply into the tunnel I’d chosen to follow. Despite the chill underground, I’d warmed up as I moved through the tunnels, but now I shivered thinking about the dark-eyed man who’d held the clipboard and his friends, all of them huge and inked,their masks making them look like monsters from a nightmarish storybook.
They might end the Hunt then and there. They might not.
If they caught me, I’d have to live with them. But there was something else I hadn’t considered: what would they do to me first, here in the dark, with no one watching?
6
REMY
We didn’t enterthe tunnels first. We didn’t need to. We knew them like the backs of our hands, could have made our way through them without the red lights hanging from the stone ceiling.
The other guys swarmed the entrance, disappearing into the darkness with shouts of glee that echoed off the stone and grew muffled as they got farther from the entrance.
We waited until they were gone to step into the tunnels. If the other masked men were warriors on the warpath, we were hunters set loose in our urban wood. We stalked into the first tunnel like the mountain lions that prowled the thick forests surrounding Blackwell Falls.
I sank into the darkness. Some of the men saw it as something to conquer, but I’d always thought of it as a partner in the Hunt. Darkness was what allowed our prey to hide, what allowed us to hunt them.
There was no game without it.
It only took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust. The tunnels smelled comforting and familiar, like dirt and cold stone and dead things long buried.
In the distance, we heard one of the girls scream.
“There’s always one,” Poe muttered.
He wasn’t wrong: there was always one girl who was caught right after the Hunt started, someone too slow to put enough distance between us and them, someone too indecisive to make the quick decisions necessary to evade capture by the horde that whooped and hollered its way through the tunnels, the men allowed to satisfy their basest instincts for the night.
To chase, to hunt, and sometimes, to fuck.
“She moved fast,” Bram said.
He wasn’t talking about the girl who’d been caught. He was talking about our prey: the dark-haired girl who’d been stupid enough — or brave enough — to bring a gun to the Hunt.
I didn’t ask Bram how he knew she’d moved fast in the tunnels.
Bram knew everything.
And I could feel it too: the dark-haired girl wasn’t slow or indecisive. She’d stepped into the tunnels with authority, ahead of the others, like she’d known where she was going when there was no way that could be true.
