Page 5 of Rule the Night (Blackwell Butchers #1)

MAEVE

I was the first one through the door at the end of the hall.

The darkness hit me like a physical thing, a wall my brain didn’t want to move past, the smell of damp earth and old concrete and something that might have been mouse shit (I wouldn’t think about the possibility of rats until I had to) filling my nostrils.

Behind me, the other girls scrabbled, their voices a murmur as they hit the wall of dark.

I pulled out my phone — no signal, which explained why the Barbarian hadn’t taken it — and turned on the flashlight, but after walking for another thirty seconds I caught the glow of a red light hanging from the ceiling.

I kept going and realized the lights were spaced about four hundred feet apart, far enough to allow for pockets of darkness but close enough that I didn’t need my flashlight.

Not yet anyway.

I slipped my phone back into my pocket, wanting to save the battery.

Fifty feet into the tunnel, another tunnel branched to the right, a second one stretching to the left. I passed them both in favor of putting as much distance as possible between the men and me.

Some of the girls behind me stopped to discuss the new tunnels, but the blonde who’d been standing next to me before the Hunt appeared at my side.

“How much time do you think has passed?” she asked.

I was glad she kept pace with me. I wasn’t here for conversation.

“Maybe two minutes?”

I thought about Main Street, mapped the shops in my head, wondered how far the tunnels went.

“This place is creepy as fuck,” the blonde girl said.

I didn’t ask her name. The red neon sign had said no names, and anyway, it didn’t matter. We weren’t here to make friends.

We came to another tunnel on the right, and without skipping a beat, the blonde made the turn.

“Good luck,” she called out.

She was obviously as determined as I was, and I wondered about her story, wondered why she was here and who she wanted dead, because for all the differences between me and the other girls, we had that one thing in common.

“You too.”

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?