Page 19 of Rule the Night

I shoved my phone into my pocket and left the top half hanging out so I could still use the flashlight while I looked at the cuffs.

“Which of them caught you?” I asked, inspecting the thick chains around her wrist.

“Hockey masks. Big motherfuckers. And they smeared their blood on my face too.”

They’d marked her like the two men in bone masks had marked me, and I remembered again the consent form we’d all signed.

I consent to be hunted.

I consent to be stripped.

I consent to be marked.

I consent to be owned.

The redhead had checked off three out of four.

“What did they do with your clothes?”

She tipped her head toward the floor. I rotated my body in that direction and spotted a pile of clothing on the ground.

“Assholes.” The cuffs weren’t promising. They were locked with a heavy metal mechanism that required a key. “I can’t get these off. Maybe if I had a bobby pin or something, but I don’t have anything like that.”

“Shit.” She sounded more pissed than scared. “They’re going to come back.”

I was starting to get my head around the Hunt. The men marked us with their blood to keep the other teams away, but they didn’t have to claim us then and there.

They could set us loose again. Toy with us a while.

Then, as if she’d conjured them, I heard the sound of heavy footsteps making their way toward us in the dark.

Panic flooded my body. It might be the men in hockey masks coming back to claim their prize, but it could just as easily be the men in bone masks looking for me.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and flattened myself against the wall next to the redhead.

“What do we do?” she asked.

She was clearly scared out of her mind, and I didn’t blame her one bit. I was terrified and I wasn’t chained naked to the tunnel wall.

“I don’t know.”

The footsteps got louder and a few seconds later a trio of hockey masks, creepy as fuck in the glow of my flashlight, appeared.

“Aw, look,” one of them said, “our girl is the sociable type. She has a friend.”

Their black clothing made them look almost disembodied. Thanks to the masks, I couldn’t make out any of their features.

“Unchain her,” I said. “She doesn’t want to play any more.”

“You heard the rules.” The man who spoke had a shaved head and wore a black leather vest over his bare torso. “No escape once the waiver is signed.”

The man next to him looked me up and down. “Maybe she’ll be more enthusiastic if we bring her friend.”

My heart pounded. Was the Hunt going to end here and now? Would I be claimed by the men in hockey masks instead of the men in bone masks?

“She’s already marked,” the third one said.

“Only twice.”