Page 11 of Bleed the Shadows
“If they’d known, we wouldn’t be alive right now.” I turned to double back the way we’d come. “This way. There’s another shortcut.”
Now that we’d run into the Butchers, I wanted to find the girl more than ever. It was a natural inclination: to hunt, to compete with other men.
That I could take something that belonged to them, that I could break something that mattered… well, that was just a bonus.
9
MAEVE
I staredat the clock on the wall of the tunnel and felt my stomach sink: three hours. I felt like I’d been underground for ages and it had only been three hours.
I reached into my pocket for one of the granola bars I’d brought. I wasn’t super hungry yet, but at least it was a distraction. I’d been prepared for the Barbarian to confiscate the three granola bars and two packets of powdered electrolytes I’d brought to the Hunt, but he’d surprised me by chuckling and shaking his big meaty head.
“You’re a piece of work,” he’d said.
He’d been referring to Rose, the Sig P365XL that I’d tried to smuggle into the first Hunt. That had been a different kind of preparation, back before I’d known weapons weren’t allowed. Now I knew better, knew what to expect, and I’d known if I lasted long enough in the tunnels, I’d get hungry and thirsty.
I’d also have to pee, but there was nothing I could do about that problem.
I walked more slowly while I ate my granola bar, feeling like I was the only person in the world now that I was on the other side of Main on the north side of town.
I’d finished my granola bar and was stuffing the wrapper in my pocket when I spotted four packs of bottled water stacked up against the tunnel wall.
I tore into the pack on top and uncapped one of the bottles, then dumped one of my electrolyte packets into it before guzzling half of it in one shot. Then I took another bottle and stuffed it in the pocket of my jacket for later. I’d dump it if I had to run, but I didn’t know how long it would take to come across more water, so it made sense to grab it while I could.
I kept going and passed a stack of old pallets covered with cobwebs and a couple wooden barrels. It was weird to imagine the business owners of Blackwell Falls using the tunnels a hundred years earlier, weird to imagine them opening the occasional locked doors I passed as I made my way deeper into the maze.
I’d thought about using the doors during my research of the tunnels. I’d even snuck down into the basements of a couple of local businesses until I’d found one of the doors that probably led to the underground system.
Gaining access to one of the doors — assuming I could find it once I was underground — would have given me a way out of the tunnels. I could have dipped from the Hunt, ridden out the clock in the basement of the used bookstore or the flower shop that had been a jazz club in the 1920s.
But the thought had made me feel strangely guilty. I wasn’t a cheater. If I was going to agree to the game and all its rules, it was only fair that I play by them like everybody else.
What I wanted wasn’t a small thing. If I won, I’d be asking someone to commit a crime on my behalf.
Asking them to take a life.
Maybe it was my dad in my ear — he’d been quoting Mark Twain (“It is better to deserve honors and not have them than tohave them and not deserve them”) since I was little — but it felt cowardly not to compete fairly for the win.
I was lost in my thoughts, thinking about my dad and wondering what he’d think about what I was doing, when voices stopped me in my tracks.
A few seconds later they sounded again and my heartbeat kicked up a notch as I realized they were coming not from behind me, but from somewhere up ahead.
I’d suspected there were switchbacks and shortcuts in the tunnels, but it had been impossible to confirm. The tunnels themselves had never been drawn or planned by the town: they’d been created by the townspeople to funnel alcohol to local businesses during Prohibition, when alcohol had been illegal.
Now my suspicions were validated. No one had passed me during my initial sprint into the tunnels, which meant someone had taken another route to cross under Main, placing them somewhere in front of me instead of behind me, where I’d assumed the teams of men still were.
Shit.
I told myself my pulse was racing because of the potential threat, but deep down I knew there was another reason: seeing the Butchers again — up close and personal, alone in the tunnels — did all kinds of unfortunate things to my mind and body.
I stopped cold and looked frantically for a place to hide when the voices got louder, but this stretch of the tunnel was barren, nothing but the dirt floor and dank stone walls.
I was contemplating going back the way I’d come, taking my chances on running into one of the other teams, when I heard the voice of a woman from beyond the intersection up ahead.
In the last Hunt I’d come across one of the girls chained naked to the wall. I’d tried to get her out of the heavy cuffs around her wrists, but it had been impossible without a key,and eventually I’d been chased off by the team wearing hockey masks.
That girl had been screaming for help. This one was talking in what sounded like a normal voice.
