Page 14 of Rule the Night (Blackwell Butchers #1)

MAEVE

I felt like a prisoner being led to my death as I walked through the tunnels between the three masked men. They’d been intimidating one — or two — at a time, but I felt small and powerless surrounded by three impenetrable walls of chiseled flesh.

I’d still been reeling from the fact that it was really over — I’d been caught — when the big scary one who’d caught me had drawn his knife across his palm. I hadn’t even recoiled when he’d smeared his blood on my forehead.

After that, he’d slapped a gold collar around my neck and marched me through the tunnels like he’d known exactly where he was going. The blond’s greenish-blue eyes had been full of mischief when he and the dark-haired guy joined us less than a minute later.

The blond’s mouth had stretched into a grin under the elongated snout of his mask when he’d said, “We meet again.”

Ugh.

The Barbarian who’d taken my gun was the only one in the holding room when we got there.

“Knew it,” he said as we filed into the room.

I had no idea what he meant, but my cheeks burned with the humiliation of the collar around my neck.

“How many left?” asked the dark-haired guy who’d saved me from the bird men.

“Two,” the Barbarian said.

Two girls still in the tunnel. Not gonna lie, that stung my pride. If I had to be caught, I’d hoped to be the last one standing.

The scary guy who’d caught me walked over to the Barbarian and they conversed in low tones.

“Let’s take a look at that hand,” the other dark-haired guy said, tipping his head at the first aid station.

“Not until you take off your mask.”

The blond laughed. “This one’s bossy. I like it.”

The dark-haired guy stared down at me. “You don’t make the rules.”

“Maybe not, but as far as I know I still have a say in who touches me.” I was testing the statement.

Did I still have a say in who touched me? How far would my servitude to these three monsters go?

He considered my question, then reached for his mask.

I swallowed hard when his face was revealed, not because he was scary or ugly but because he was so beautiful.

His skin was tan, his cheekbones and jaw sharp.

He had an eyebrow piercing and a bunch of necklaces strung around his neck, and I homed in on the animal tooth strung onto one of the leather cords.

It made me think of dark woods and wild things and I felt my blood quicken in my veins in a way that scared me more than anything else about my situation, which was saying a lot because my situation was pretty dire.

He stared down at me with dark blue eyes, his gaze appraising, like he was taking the measure of me too.

“Happy?” He continued without waiting for me to answer. “Now let’s get that cleaned up before it gets infected.”

I followed him over to the pathetic first aid station. He surprised me by bringing a metal chair from the other side of the room where the blond guy and the leader of their pack talked to the guy who’d frisked me upstairs.

“Sit.”

“I’m not a dog,” I said. But I sat anyway because honestly, I was exhausted.

I wasn’t the only one to make use of the first aid station. The supplies that had been neatly organized when the Hunt had started were now a jumbled mess. Clearly someone else — probably one of the other girls — had made use of the safe space.

I wondered how badly they’d been hurt, hoped they were okay.

My unexpected medic rummaged around in some of the supplies scattered across the table. He picked up a plastic bottle, crouched in front of me, and reached for my hand. Then he untied the scrap of my shirt and tossed it aside.

Electricity zinged through my body as his fingers closed around my wrist.

“This might hurt.”

I barely had time to register the words when he tipped the bottle upside down, squirting cold liquid onto my tender palm.

Pain tore through my hand. “Ow, dammit!”

“Sorry.” He sounded like he meant it. “It’s dirty in the tunnels. You’ll want to wash this when we get home.”

Home. So this was it. They really did expect me to live with them. Or he expected me to live with him. Or however it worked.

“Where is home?” I needed to get my head around this part, around what would come next. I’d gambled big and failed to get justice for June. Now I had to honor the bargain and pay the price for my failure until the next Hunt in three months.

I felt sick with that thought of it: the fact that I’d failed June, that I’d have to live in servitude to the three men called the Butchers.

All of it.

“Not far from here.” He wiped tenderly around my wound with a clean piece of gauze, then rested my hand on his knee while he uncapped a bottle of antiseptic ointment.

I told myself my pulse raced because I was in pain, because I’d just been chased through the tunnels for ten hours, but it was strangely intimate to have my hand resting on the denim-clad knee of the dark-haired man tending to my wounded hand.

“Do I get to know your name now?” I asked. “Or should I pick a nickname for the next three months?”

One side of his mouth lifted in a lopsided smile and I was surprised to see a teasing glint in his eyes when he met my gaze. “A nickname could be fun, but my name is Poe.”

“Poe,” I repeated. “Like the poet?”

He shrugged. “What can I say? My mom was a fan.”

I took that in: the literary name, the mom who’d liked to read. Past tense.

Not what I’d expected.

“What about them?” I asked, looking at the two guys still wearing animal bone masks on the other side of the room.

“The blond is Remy,” Poe said, wrapping my hand in clean gauze.

Remy. A surprisingly normal name for a guy who wore a dead animal mask and chased girls through a maze of abandoned underground tunnels.

My gaze was pulled to the other one, the one with dark hair who’d commanded the room. The one who’d caught me in the tunnels, his muscled flesh as immovable as a wall of granite.

Got you.

“And the other one?”

“Bram.”

There was no way he’d spoken loud enough for the other guy to hear, but the giant named Bram turned his head on cue, like he felt us talking about him.

Like he felt me looking at him.

His dark eyes locked onto me like a missile and something wild and unfamiliar stirred at my center.

Then he reached for his mask and removed it from his face.

Time seemed to stop. His gaze was still glued to mine, but now his eyes had context they hadn’t had before.

His face was almost harsh in its angularity, his nose slightly crooked, like it had been broken more than once.

His eyes were hooded and unreadable, his lips almost vulgar in their fullness.

His cheekbones looked like they’d been forged by steel.

A long scar slashed across almost the entire left side of his face, starting just under his eye and ending near the corner of his mouth.

He’d looked inhuman when he’d been wearing his mask. Now he seemed almost mythical, a creature from another time and place, like he belonged here in the tunnels.

Like he belonged to the night.

A low hum started in my body, a vibration that worked its way outward from my center, filling empty spots I hadn’t even known were there.

It took me a second to name the feeling as desire.

I was frozen, fear and lust warring in my body.

Because now I belonged to these men.

All of them.

And if they belonged to the night, where did that leave me?