Chapter 4
CASSIE
Twenty-four hours. That was how long I’d have to evade the teams of masked men standing on one side of the room.
That was how long I’d have to stay out of their clutches to win.
And I really, really needed to win.
Four girls stood on one side of the room in front of a small folding table piled with gauze, hydrogen peroxide, and Band-Aids. Above the table a written sign that had seen better days read First Aid. Next to the table, several cases of water were stacked against the stone wall.
And across from the girls were the men, although they didn’t look much like men right now. In the glow of the purple light, their masks made them look like monsters come to life.
Hulking, muscled, inked monsters.
There were way more of them than there were of us. A motley crew of demonic-looking birds, devils, bulls, hockey players, wolves, skeletons, even freaky-looking clowns that made my skin crawl.
Most of them were shirtless, their tattoos crawling over their skin like dark serpents, and all of them had knives tied in sheaths around their waists.
I swallowed the lump of dread that lodged in my throat and looked away, trying to get my head around what I was about to do.
“Hi,” a pretty brunette said next to me. She was about my age, her eyes wide, sweat beading on her hairline even though it was a little cold in the purple room.
I thought I recognized her but I couldn’t be sure. I saw so many people in the coffee shop it was hard to keep them all straight, and I’d pretty much resigned myself to feeling like everyone I came across in Blackwell Falls was at least vaguely familiar.
“Hi,” I said.
“Have you ever done this before?” She was in leggings and a long sleeve T-shirt, a sweatshirt tied around her waist.
I shook my head. “You?”
She shook her head. “My best friend did it last year. She lost.”
I nodded. “How was… how was that for her?”
Losing was a distinct possibility, but I’d calculated that it was worth the risk, that there might even be an upside to becoming a toy for the groups of men on the other side of the room.
But that didn’t mean I wanted to lose.
“It was…” She looked away. “She survived.”
Not a ringing endorsement, but I guessed it was better than the alternative.
Among the other three girls there were two blondes and a girl with hair as black as Maeve’s. I tried to find comfort in thinking about the woman my brother had hunted — the woman who’d ended up being the love of his life, the love of Poe’s and Remy’s lives too — but it didn’t really work.
Maeve’s Hunts had been different. Maeve was different: powerful, badass, strong.
Maeve carried a gun.
I was just Bram’s little sister, a wallflower who’d been locked in the ivory tower of the coffee shop, armed with nothing more than an espresso machine and a milk frother.
I just had something I wanted done. Two things actually.
Behind the girls, a purple neon sign glowed on the wall.
I consent to be hunted.
I consent to be stripped.
I consent to be marked.
I consent to be owned.
A knot of fear formed in my stomach.
It didn’t make sense. I wanted to be here. I’d risked things to be here, not the least of which was my relationship with Bram, who was going to absolutely lose his shit when he found out.
And he would find out.
Still, seeing the consent sign buzzing on the wall made it all real. I was really going to agree to the Hunt. I was going to be chased and maybe caught and…
Well, I could hardly imagine what would come next.
But if I won, all the risks would be worth it.
My gaze was drawn to movement on the other side of the room, the masked men parting like the Red Sea as one of the men wearing the bird mask — a falcon or hawk straight from a nightmare — stepped forward.
I sucked in a breath involuntarily. He was as big as a mountain, his face covered by the silver hawk mask, its metal feathers rising to points that fanned out over the top of his head. The mask’s eyeholes were narrow over a pointed beak that looked sharp enough to draw blood.
A primal need to escape burst through my chest, the instinct to run overwhelming, and I had to resist the urge to look back at the door, to make use of it by getting the hell out of here.
I’d regret it later, would regret not taking advantage of the fact that Bram had taken Maeve to Bali with Poe and Remy, that no one could call my brother and tell him his little sister was about to join the Hunt, one of Blackwell Falls’ many dirty little secrets.
The door opened and Titus walked into the room, glanced at me with consternation, and crossed the room to stand next to the biggest of the men in the hawk masks.
The masked man picked up a clipboard sitting on the folding table next to him and stepped toward us.
I took a step back without thinking.
“Welcome to the Hunt.” The hawk’s voice was low and gravelly, as cold as the trails at the top of the mountain in the dead of winter.
His brown eyes glittered behind his mask and his black hair was long enough that it skimmed his hulking shoulders.
Ink covered every inch of his arms and torso, a wall-to-wall mural I couldn’t make out in the dim light of the room.
“Let’s go over the rules. Well, let’s go over your rules.
We have no rules. That’s something you should know from the jump. We do what we want in there.”
“That doesn’t seem fair,” one of the blondes said. She was wearing jeans and a hoodie, her feet clad in big black boots, and I looked at my sneakers, wondering if I’d made a mistake opting for speed instead of protection.
His eyes flashed. “It’s not. You’re prey.
If we catch you, we do what we want with you.
The end.” He paused, like he was waiting for someone to object, then continued when no one did.
We all knew what we were getting into. “The Hunt lasts twenty-four hours. If you’re caught, you’ll be marked, and for the next ninety days, you belong to the team who claims you with their collar.
That team may or may not exit the Hunt with you at that time. ”
“But… if we’re caught, isn’t the Hunt over?” the brunette next to me asked.
The man in the hawk mask laughed, a maniacal thread of darkness that wound its way through the room like acrid smoke.
“It’s over when we say it’s over. The team who claims you can leave the tunnels with you at that point, after which you become their property for ninety days, submitting to any and all demands.
But they can also keep you in the tunnels for the full twenty-four hours. ”
Silence settled over the girls around me as we all thought about what that meant, what might happen to us underground once we were caught.
“The holding room is a safe zone. You can come here for water or first aid at any time. You won’t be hunted, but if you’re still here when the clock runs out, you automatically lose and become the property of whichever team claims you first.” He paused.
“If you manage to stay unmarked during the entire twenty-four-hour period, you win, meaning you can demand a specific kind of favor from the team that hunted you.”
We all knew what the favor was: it was why we were all here. But it was also dangerous — and criminal — to say it out loud, for the men who would do the favor and the women who would be asking for it.
“How do we know who hunted us if we make it to the end without being marked?” the second blonde asked.
“You don’t,” he said. “But we do.”
I glanced back at the other men, all of them staring at us like sharks eying fresh chum in the water.
The other two men in hawk masks stood at the front, their hair hidden by their masks, making them seem even more like faceless animals.
They were just as muscular, just as covered in ink as the guy standing in front of us.
The men leaned in to speak to each other, their voices a murmuring, indecipherable echo in the underground room, their eyes sliding over us like dessert at an all-you-can-eat buffet.
They weren’t just sizing us up. They were choosing.
And now I realized something else: there weren’t enough of us to go around. Twenty-one men in teams of three and five women meant there would be a scramble to claim us early, a handful of mice in a cage teeming with snakes.
My pulse raced at the thought.
You can leave, Cassie. Just tell them you changed your mind. They’ll let you go, if only because you’re Bram’s little sister. They don’t want you here anyway.
The man with the clipboard handed it to the blonde who’d said the rules didn’t sound fair. She looked at it, hesitated, then signed whatever was attached to the clipboard.
He advanced to the girl with black hair, then the second blonde, then the brunette standing next to me. It was like being marched to my death, except in reverse, death marching toward me wearing a hawk mask and enough ink to graffiti a skyscraper.
I could smell him, an intoxicating mix of sweat and worn leather, cold air and iron, and I was surprised to feel desire pool between my thighs.
What the actual fuck?
The brunette signed and the hawk advanced until he was standing right in front of me.
He held out the clipboard, his dark eyes lit like burnished gold behind his mask. I had the sudden urge to pull it off his face, to reveal the truth of who he was, to see him as a man instead of a beast.
I took the clipboard from his hands and read the typed form.
I consent to be hunted.
I consent to be stripped.
I consent to be marked.
I consent to be owned.
There was other verbiage too: language about the duration of the Hunt (twenty-four hours), about the cost to us of losing (residing with the winning team for ninety days as a “personal assistant”), about our prize if we won (“a single demand, details TBD”).
Then there was the boring fine print: the organizers of the Hunt weren’t liable for injuries, blah blah blah.
Like any of us were going to end up in court.
This wasn’t a company picnic. This was the Hunt.
This was Blackwell Falls.
We kept our secrets in the family, and few secrets were as guarded as the Hunt.
Still, I didn’t blame them for making us sign. It was an extra layer of protection in case somebody got stupid.
I looked up to find the man in the hawk mask staring at me. “Last chance, little rabbit.”
There was a challenge in his voice, and I took the pen from his hand, signed my name, and handed him back the clipboard before I could change my mind.
“I’m not a rabbit.”
“Then let’s play.”