Chapter 5 Maeve
MAEVE
I woke up to the clang of the outer gate echoing down the hall. My underground cell was like a sensory deprivation tank, dark except for the stark white light that leaked in from the stone hall, silent except for the buzz of the lights.
The lack of stimulus had made me hypersensitive to movement from the mice that occasionally ventured into my cell, to any sound other than their scurrying in the shadows and the light’s white noise.
But now someone was coming, and I sat up with my back against the stone wall and willed my mind to clear the remnants of a dream — the Butchers and I walking through the woods, Remy holding one hand and Poe the other while Bram stalked a path through the brush in front of us.
I only got two meals a day, and I needed to be clearheaded when Mr. Skinny came to deliver my tray and — humiliatingly — to empty the bucket I used as a toilet.
I wasn’t exactly appealing — I was in the same velour tracksuit and long-sleeve T-shirt I’d been in when I’d been taken — but he was starting to crack.
Nothing earth-shattering had happened, but he’d gotten nicer, and he’d told me I could call him Jack even though that probably wasn’t his real name.
Also, I knew he had a sister because I’d asked how he would feel if his sister was being held prisoner in an underground cell, and he’d said, “My sister’s a whore.”
The footsteps outside my cell grew louder and I prepared to greet Mr. Skinny calmly.
I’d thank him for the food (it was always a sandwich, sometimes peanut butter and sometimes just cheese), tell him his company was the only bright spot in my day if I could get away with it without sounding manipulative.
Except as the footsteps came closer, I realized they belonged to more than one person, and when two figures came into view on the other side of the bars that separated my cell from the stone hall, I saw that Mr. Skinny wasn’t there at all.
It was Meathead and Ethan Todd.
My heart beat like an overactive drum, adrenaline flooding my body as Meathead unlocked the iron door to my cell.
He stepped inside with Todd and my mind went into overdrive trying to make sense of the mental noise: June and the videos of Ethan Todd that were embedded in my psyche and the memory of being chained in the tunnels under Blackwell Falls and Ethan Todd’s face in the moments before I’d lost consciousness outside the loft with Ray.
It was all there, all part of my fucked-up connection to Ethan Todd.
Now it seemed impossible that I hadn’t known he was the man who ordered Meathead and Mr. Skinny to strip me in the tunnels, even with the masks they’d been wearing.
Todd’s hair was a mousy brown, and he was surprisingly short and lithe for a man who did so much big talking about being an alpha.
He was fit though, one of those guys who spent a lot of time in the gym and had tapped the potential of his genetic code even though no amount of gym time would make him taller or more muscular.
He had presence, the swagger of a guy who’d gotten his way long enough to believe it was his birthright.
He didn’t say anything until Meathead had locked the door behind them.
The older, bigger man stood a few feet behind Ethan Todd and watched me with wary eyes.
My nails weren’t particularly long, but they’d left bright scratches on his right cheek, and I was pretty sure his limp was more pronounced than it had been before I’d kicked him on my first day in the underground cell.
I felt a thrill at the knowledge that I’d hurt him.
“Good morning,” Ethan Todd said, folding his arms over his chest.
He wore jeans and a fitted T-shirt, the kind that probably cost as much as my rent in the apartment I’d shared with Bailey. I caught the scent of his expensive cologne and felt my stomach turn.
“Is it?” I had no idea what time of day it was but I knew it wasn’t a good anything.
He smirked. “Of course. The sun is shining. The world is our oyster.”
I looked around. “Looks like a shitty cosplay dungeon to me.”
Annoyance flashed on his face in the moment before he recovered. “Life is what you make it, Maeve.”
The sound of my name in his mouth was like a discordant note. All wrong.
“They’re going to come for me, you know.” I was aiming for bored but I heard the note of desperation in my own voice.
“Maybe, but you’ll be long gone by then.” I barely had time to register the fear that rose in my body before he spoke again. “I’m glad you’re here now though. I have questions.”
“What kind of questions?” I wasn’t much interested in his questions, but anything that kept him talking bought me time, bought the Butchers time to find me.
“Let’s start with why the fuck you’d do this to yourself,” he said.
“You drugged me, kidnapped me.” I touched my neck, remembering the way he’d held his knife to my throat in the second Hunt. The cut had healed, but with Ethan Todd standing in front of me, the memory was visceral.
“You’ve been stalking me.” He paced my cell, like walking might help him puzzle it out. “And the thing is, I don’t get it. You must have known you were putting a target on your back.”
“My sister is dead because of you.”
“Your sister is dead because of her psycho boyfriend,” Todd said. “And probably because she was like every other dumb bitch who makes us crazy.”
I launched myself at him without thinking and we both went down hard on the stone floor. I didn’t recognize the screams I hurled his way as my own, didn’t even register what I was saying as I clawed and scratched at his face while he tried to pin me to the floor.
He was stronger than he looked and his fist landed like a sledgehammer to my jaw.
I stopped fighting, white light exploding behind my eyelids as I fought to stay conscious.
He was sitting on my chest, like Meathead had done in the tunnels, his hands pinning my wrists to the stone floor.
“Want me to get the drugs, boss?” Meathead asked, still standing a few feet away.
“A bit late for that, don’t you think?” Todd snapped.
Meathead took a step back, and I struggled to get air into my lungs as Todd stared down at me with a strange light in his eyes that should have been anger or hatred but looked more like glee.
He liked this. He got off on it.
“See? You’re proving my point.” He was a little out of breath too. “You do crazy, dumb shit and then you blame us when we’ve had enough.”
“Don’t you dare talk about my sister. You didn’t know her.”
He barked out a laugh. “If you know one bitch, you know them all. Point is, I never met your fucking sister, and from what I read, the guy who killed her is in prison. Which brings me back to the question of why you’d put a target on your back to come after me.”
“You wouldn’t understand.” You had to love someone — really love someone — to understand why I needed justice for June.
Men like Ethan Todd weren’t capable of that kind of love.
“What I understand is that because of you, I’m stuck here in this fucking cold when I could be at my beach house soaking up the sun.” He loosened his hold on my wrists. “If you try to come at me again, I’ll knock you the fuck out.”
My ears were still ringing from the last blow, so when he stood, I scooted back to the wall to regroup.
No need to be stupid.
He ran a hand through his hair, like he was exasperated with the situation. “Listen, you came for me, so I came for you. You’re in my world now.”
“Not for long,” I said.
“I thought you were smarter than that.” He bent down, got in my face.
The urge to lash out was overwhelming, and I fought to stay in control.
If I went after him again, he’d make good on his promise to hit me.
Meathead might get involved, and between the two of them, I’d definitely be overpowered.
I needed to be smart. Patient. “No one is coming for you.”
He said it slowly, the words all the more painful for the fact that they were said right in my face, his eyes shining with certainty.
“You’re wrong.” My own certainty was slipping in spite of my words. What if he was right? What if the Butchers didn’t come for me?
I exhaled my relief as he straightened. There was something not altogether sane about the fever in his eyes.
“Am I?”
“Yes.” I heard the doubt in my voice.
He nodded at Meathead, who unlocked the iron door while Todd waited.
He didn’t speak again until he was on the other side, the door locked between us.
“We crossed an ocean to get here,” he said. “No one even knows where you are.”
No one even knows where you are.
My poor parents.
He started to walk away and I launched myself off the floor toward the bars of my cell, my parents’ worried faces swimming in my mind.
“What are you going to do with me?”
He turned around, his face hidden in the shadows of the stone hall outside my cell.
“Let’s just say that in a few days, you’ll just be another dumb bitch fucking rich guys for money.” His eyes gleamed with anticipation. “But first, I’m going to hunt.”