44
SEVEN
This was not good. Not good at all.
Brooks cracked his neck and flexed his fist, then drove a solid punch into G’s stomach.
G barely flinched, but then again, even I could tell Brooks was testing him.
Brooks circled G and delivered a hard hit to his kidney.
G’s eyes flickered and his jaw tensed, but he didn’t react.
Brooks circled back around, pulled back his fist and punched G in the face.
G’s head snapped back and blood ran from his nose.
The tension in the room grew to a suffocating level as the men reveled in the violence.
My fists clenched at my sides and my entire body revolted against my control.
G loosened his neck and glared at Brooks, but otherwise remained unphased.
The next two blows were back to back to G’s ribs, and I could hear his breath get stolen with each one as he grunted from the impact.
I felt each hit as though Brooks was hitting me, and ground my teeth to dust in my mouth.
The past surged—brought forth by the helpless feeling of not being able to help him.
This was tame compared to what we’d gone through back then, but that thought did nothing to ease my mind.
The next hit to G’s jaw sent him staggering backward.
He spit blood from a split lip, only for Brooks to immediately punch him again hard enough to drop him down to one knee.
Brooks circled G and allowed him to regain his feet before he lunged forward and punched G twice more—once in the stomach, then the face.
At this point, G was breathing hard, one of his eyes was already swollen, and blood dripped from his nose and lip. Brooks wound up and landed a particularly brutal one to G’s jaw and when G stumbled, Brooks shoved him to the ground.
I took a step forward. “Watch it, fucker,” I growled.
G caught himself with a hand and knelt on one knee.
He held his hand up and shot me a glare full of fire that warned against doing anything.
I growled under my breath, but stayed where I was.
Brooks didn’t mess around with the last two hits.
As soon as G regained his feet, Brooks attacked him with two punches to his ribs, and while G attempted to catch his breath, Brooks grabbed him by the neck.
Oh hell no.
I took another step forward, but once again G’s hand stopped me.
“Next time there won’t be a punishment, it will be an execution,” Brooks snarled.
G bared bloody teeth in a smirk. “That’s the first thing you’ve said that I agree with.”
Brooks shoved off G and waved a hand over his head. “Alright, those participating in the game, gather your weapons and meet in the yard. Everyone else can watch in the dining hall. We’ll have monitors brought in.”
I trailed G back to our room to prepare for the game—my mind alternated with thoughts of Emersyn, and my attempts to focus my anger at Brooks. The door of our room closed and I grabbed G’s shoulder. He tried to shrug me off, but I got in his face.
“You good?” I demanded. “He clocked you pretty good.”
“I’m fine,” he growled.
I frowned but let him be and grabbed the duffle bag of weapons from under the bed. I strapped my hunting knife to my leg and looked over my handguns.
“This is a bad idea,” I muttered.
“No shit,” G wiped blood off his chin. “This entire place is fucked. What do you know about the maze?”
I shook my head. “Not much, but sounds nasty. It’s out behind the Menagerie. I saw part of it the other day—it looks like it borders the forest so I can only imagine some of that nightmare has bled over to it.”
I checked my firearm and double checked that I had a full mag before I shoved it in my holster and palmed the other mag.
“Not a lot to go on,” I mused. “You know everyone is going to be coming for you—”
“We’ve dealt with worse,” G interrupted, irritably.
I huffed a laugh that lacked amusement. He wasn’t wrong.
We finished our prep and headed out to the yard where the rest of the men were gathered with Mahoney and Brooks.
The giant walls of the maze encroached on the forest nearby.
The storm had momentarily dulled enough where the rain had decreased to a mist, but the thunder still rumbled overhead.
Everything was shrouded in fog, and the lack of sunlight made the colors dark and muted.
“The Hurricane is somewhere in there,” Mahoney gestured to the ominous entrance of the maze that loomed darkly behind him. “First to bring her back through the entrance wins.”
“No killing for the first five minutes,” Brooks called out. “Your sixty minutes start now.”
We all took off at a jog through the entrance.
The hedges were massive—this wasn’t a typical quaint garden maze.
Several feet thick, the dark foliage that made up the walls shot up into the air a good twenty or so feet above our heads.
As I passed through the entrance, I could see the plants were unlike any I’d seen before.
Their leaves were serrated, and the vines had long thin thorns the length of my fingers.
Not something I’d want to get caught up in.
The maze conveniently branched off multiple ways once we cleared the entrance, so by the time we’d made the first few turns we were alone and wrapped up in the mist that drenched the path and muted sounds.
I’d watched the ground since we’d entered and chosen our path accordingly.
I wasn’t one to boast, but my tracking abilities rivaled few, and I was going to lean on every single one of my skills to ensure we were first to Emersyn.
Everything had a story. The ground, the mist, the gruesome looking hedges—it all told me exactly where to go if I looked hard enough. I jerked my head at G who naturally had fallen in at my shoulder. He knew this was my domain.
“This way,” I whispered.