Chapter 7
CASSIE
I’d been running for a while when I saw a purple glow up ahead. It was the first light I’d encountered that didn’t come from my phone, and I slowed down, panting and out of breath, relieved to see more than a few feet of the tunnel illuminated around me.
The purple light came from a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, and I slowed down to look around and get my bearings. I’d gotten only glimpses of the tunnel when I’d been running with my flashlight, but now, in the amethyst wash of the bulb, I could see it clearly for the first time.
The walls were made of stone that rose to an arched ceiling overhead, the floors a mix of dirt and loose rock. And there was something else: chains attached to the ceiling, ending in thick cuffs, clearly intended to immobilize someone with their arms over their head.
I forced myself to push aside the thought. “Just keep moving, Cassie.”
The tunnels stretched out behind and in front of me, but I was also standing at a crossroads, more tunnels stretching to both the right and the left.
I cursed myself for not keeping track of my direction as I ran: I had literally zero idea where I was under Blackwell Falls.
I leaned against the wall, trying to catch my breath, and felt the cold stone seep into my skin through my jeans and hoodie.
I didn’t remember turning while I’d been running.
Julia and I had run straight before she’d left me to venture out on her own, and I’d continued along the straightaway until I’d come to the purple light.
It was possible the tunnel had curved so gently I hadn’t noticed it, especially while I’d been running at full speed, but I didn’t think so.
Assuming it hadn’t, assuming I’d been running straight, I was probably somewhere under the north side — my side — of Main Street. I might even be right under the coffee shop, Cassie’s Cuppa and my apartment quiet and empty right above me.
It also meant I was a sitting duck for any of the teams of men hunting in the tunnels. I needed to get out of the main artery leading from the holding room.
I pushed off the wall and looked both ways before going left, which I assumed would take me under the road itself and over to the businesses across the street from the coffee shop.
And now the purple lights were spaced every ten feet or so, patches of light with stretches of shadow in between. I didn’t hear anyone behind me, but I knew from my phone that my five-minute head start had expired. The men would be in the tunnels now.
Hunting.
I slipped my phone into my pocket and broke into a jog, thankful I’d worn sneakers instead of something heavier like the boots I’d coveted on the blonde in the holding room.
Boots would have offered more protection, but they also would have slowed me down, and it was becoming apparent that speed was an advantage in the Hunt.
I’d been running less than a minute when water burst from the ceiling, a cold spray that soaked my body in seconds.
I stopped in shock and looked down at the clothes plastered to my skin. “What the fuck?”
Panic washed over me. What if the tunnels filled with water while we were in them?
I squinted through the water still spraying from the ceiling, looking for the source of the leak, and finally spotted a tiny silver spout set into the stone.
Sprinklers.
Those assholes had installed sprinklers in the tunnels, and I had a feeling it wasn’t to meet some kind of fire code.
I started jogging again, hoping to get away from the frigid water, but the sprinklers were set into the ceiling every few feet, making it impossible to escape the icy spray.
I couldn’t afford to stand still though — that was what the hunters wanted, to immobilize us, to slow us down — so I kept running, racing through cold and darkness, holding my hands out in front of me so I didn’t run into anything in between the patches of light that appeared like purple beacons out of the darkness.
And then, as suddenly as the water had started spraying, it stopped.
I stopped running, gasping for breath, the sound of water dripping in a chorus of echoes off the stone.
I only felt a moment’s relief before I started shivering.
Shit. My hair hung in wet ropes around my shoulders. I was soaked, every article of clothing — including my hoodie, which I’d brought to keep me warm — drenched with the freezing water that had sprayed from the ceiling.
I forced myself to move. I couldn’t afford to stand still, and moving would at least generate some body heat.
I thought about my parents as I walked, wondered what they would think about the fact that Bram had ended up running something like the Hunt, that I was here participating in it.
I’d been ten years old when they’d died, and I lost more of them every year, my memories fading around the edges like the pictures in my mom’s old photo albums.
But one thing I did remember: my parents had been involved citizens.
I had vague memories of town meetings, of protests, and more than once I’d woken up in the middle of the night for a glass of water to find my mom, head bent to a computer, writing another strongly worded letter to one of her many targets.
Until recently, I’d thought they’d be proud of me. I only had a two-year degree, but I was a small-business owner (and yeah, Bram had helped me get started, but I was the one who kept the coffee shop in the black every year), financially independent, a good sister, a good citizen.
But they wouldn’t like that I was here, letting a bunch of masked men chase me, subjecting myself to their desires if they caught me, asking them to murder someone for me if they didn’t.
My parents would have a million objections, all of them reasonable. They would be worried for my safety, worried for the state of Bram’s inner well-being over the fact that he’d found the Hunt necessary, even enjoyable.
And yeah, that was something I tried not to think about.
Because I loved my brother with everything I was.
He’d suffered even more than me after our parents’ deaths, both because he’d been in the car with them and because he’d had to take care of me afterwards, and I really didn’t want to think about what he’d done to the girls he caught in the tunnels before he’d fallen in love with Maeve.
Or even the things he did with Maeve to be honest. Maeve was like the sister I never had. I didn’t want to think about her naked with anyone, but especially not my brother and his two best friends.
I slowly stopped shivering as I walked. I was still super uncomfortable — my clothes stuck to my skin, making me feel somehow both cold and hot at the same time — but at least my teeth weren’t chattering.
And now I noticed the tunnel wasn’t entirely empty. There was junk scattered here and there: old wooden crates, metal buckets, wooden pallets stacked with boxes filled with paper and miscellaneous artifacts I didn’t dare stop to investigate.
There was even an occasional piece of furniture: a warped wood table, a chipped cabinet, a stack of plastic chairs that looked like they might have come from the 1950s.
The tunnels had been built during Prohibition as a way to get alcohol to the bars and restaurants on Main Street, and almost all of the shops had doors leading to them.
I knew this because the coffee shop had one too.
I’d discovered it before we opened, when we’d been working to transform the store from the salon that had been there since I was a kid into Cassie’s Cuppa.
I hadn’t known what it was for at the time, and since one peek into the tunnels had scared the crap out of me, I’d locked the door and never looked back.
But when I’d mentioned it to Bram his expression had darkened. “Never go in the tunnels, Cass. Promise me.”
And I’d promised. Because how could I know about the Hunt my brother led there? How could I know I’d need to make use of it myself one day?
Now it was obvious some of the business owners on Main had used the tunnel as overflow storage over the years, a communal junk room filled with pieces of Blackwell Falls history long forgotten.
And there was something else in the tunnels too: twice I came across pallets of bottled water, clearly newer and placed there more recently, a surprising act of generosity from the men behind the Hunt, or maybe left over from when Bram, Poe, and Remy had run it.
Almost everyone was scared of Bram, but despite his hulking body and the scar on his face, he wasn’t a monster. I could see him, Poe, and Remy leaving water for the girls in the Hunt.
Or had it been left by the men who ran it now? And who was that exactly?
I remembered the man in the hawk mask who’d stood in front of me with the clipboard, the way his black hair had brushed his bare shoulders, the ink that so totally covered his arms and torso that he’d looked like a mountainous shadow, the smell of him, a deep and primal scent that made me think dark and dangerous things.
Now I felt the same stir of desire I’d felt in the holding room.
“Jesus, Cassie. Now is not the time to be horny.”
On the other hand, who could blame me? I was a twenty-three-year-old virgin. In the last three years I’d witnessed my best friend fall in love with the three men known as the Blackwell Beasts, and even more shocking, had seen my brother and his best friends give up the Hunt for Maeve.
Everyone was fucking — and falling in love — but me.
My virginity had become an anchor weighing me down, something I was tired of thinking about.
Because it was weirdly hard to get rid of now that I was in my twenties.
I’d tried doing it the nice way, but any guy I liked was, well, too nice to take my virginity.
They had all these questions. They wanted to be sure I was comfortable. To be sure I was consenting.
And yeah, consent was sexy and all that. Totally.
But I’d been surprised to find that in the context of my virginity, all the talk just felt awkward, like having the “birds and bees” talk with Bram when I was eleven, something that he’d tried and failed to do matter-of-factly, without stammering or blushing, until I’d finally just covered my face with my hands and begged him to stop.
I didn’t want to talk. I just wanted to fuck someone and get it over with so I could feel normal like Daisy and my other best friend Sarai, whose traditional Indian family would die if they knew the stuff she got up to on the dating apps.
All of which was why the Hunt had seemed like the answer to more than one of my problems.
If I won, the men who’d claimed me in the holding room (I’d be a liar if I said my pulse didn’t quicken at the thought of the Hawks claiming me) would kill the man responsible for the death of my parents.
If I lost, I’d have to live with them, and I’d be forced to dispose of my virginity.
I mean, I didn’t know for a fact that I’d lose my virginity if I lost, but once I’d started asking around about the Hunt, I’d heard the rumors: that the men were depraved, that they took the girls who lost home and used them like playthings for three months.
But the girls survived. I knew because I’d asked. No one had ever heard of a Hunt girl dying in the custody of the men who’d hunted them, and after sitting on a dusty shelf like an unused toy, maybe I needed to be used for a while, to get rid of my virginity once and for all.
And yeah, I was nervous and scared. I wanted to win more than I wanted to lose — wanted the man who’d run my parents and Bram off the road to die for what he’d done — but at least a loss wouldn’t come without a silver lining.
I came to another fork in the tunnels and turned right, guessing that it would take me deeper into the north side of town, across the street from the coffee shop, but then, a few minutes later, I came to another purple light at another fork and I could have sworn it was the one I passed when I first decided to make my way under the road.
Did the tunnels double back on each other?
The possibility nagged at me. Because if the tunnels doubled back, there was no guarantee I’d been putting more distance between me and the men giving chase.
And then, like I’d conjured them just by thinking about them, I heard voices.
Male voices.
And they were close.
I ran.