Freak camp, p.19
Freak Camp, page 19
“So… we keep helping, and it’ll even out in the end?” Kayla asked, and he nodded. “I’ll save you some day.”
Tobias flinched. No one was saving anyone in Freak Camp. The only person who would ever save him—maybe, possibly, please—was Jake. “Whatever.”
Tobias stared at his empty plate—the guards were taking their time kicking the monsters out of the mess hall today—until he came to a decision. If they were (not friends) combining resources to survive, he might as well tell her now. At least he might not have to hear her scream.
“When Crusher comes for you,” he said, “don’t fight, don’t struggle, don’t cry, don’t make a sound. Sometimes if you’re silent,” blank, absent, “they get tired and they finish faster, they come back less often.”
She stared. “Silent.”
“It’s best if you can blank out… separate… like you’re not even there. So you don’t have to think about it.”
He couldn’t read the expression in her shapeshifter eyes. She looked away, down, and nodded.
He hoped the things that kept him alive would help her as well. Only because she still owed him and it would be nice, however briefly, to have a monster willing to take his advice.
And maybe—don’t get your hopes up, Tobias, the fight was a one-time thing, she owed you—to watch his back.
Chapter Eight
Jake woke up the morning of his eighteenth birthday buzzing from the twin highs of monster asses kicked and pain medication. Yesterday had been his first truly independent hunt. Dad had been away on a job—one of the jobs that he wouldn’t tell Jake about, muttering that it was something he had to do himself—so Jake handled it. Using public transport to get to the big, downtown library for research had been embarrassing, but it was all worth it for the adrenaline of the successful hunt.
Jake had called Dad before he went after the ogres, leaving a voicemail. If he didn’t survive, Dad would know where he had gone and be able to take care of the problem after him.
He hadn’t expected Dad to show up at the last minute to drag him away from the wreckage of the quaint little waterwheel—Jake was still appalled that of all the dark places the ogres could have settled, they chose a minigolf course—but it was okay that Dad had been there in the end, because Jake hadn’t really needed him. Though he had to admit, it had been nice to ride away covered in a blanket in the front seat of the Eldorado rather than trying to wheedle his way onto a bus without getting an ambulance called on him.
Jake stretched experimentally to see what hurt, yawned, and blinked open his eyes, not sure he could trust them. Leon was sitting on the other bed, watching him with a thoughtful, almost soft look on his face.
“Hey, Dad,” Jake croaked. He pulled himself up to lean against the headboard.
“Hey, Jake. Feeling okay?”
His head hurt, and his shoulder ached—not broken, thankfully—where he’d gotten smacked by a hamlike fist, and he had bruises everywhere (fucking golf-ball-throwing sons of bitches), but he felt good. Really good, on a level that had nothing to do with bruises and broken bones.
“Awesome,” he said.
Leon looked down at his hands, and then back up. “You did good out there, son.”
Jake blinked and grinned, a new kind of high burning through him. He knew he’d rocked that hunt—two dead monsters, no civilian casualties, and minimal collateral damage in the form of a minigolf course that looked like a tornado had ripped through it—but there was a world of difference between the satisfaction of a job well done and one of Dad’s rare compliments.
“Thank you, sir.”
Leon nodded. “Eighteen today.”
Jake blinked. “Sir?” He had only killed the two monsters last night. Unless Dad was counting the ghosts he’d helped burn, in which case it was a hell of a lot more than eighteen.
Leon smiled at him, and Jake basked in the pride on his face, even if he still didn’t understand. “You’re eighteen. An adult.”
“Oh. Yeah, I forgot, you know, with the hunt? But whatever. I can smoke, fuck, vote, and . . .” Jake smirked. “Dad, I’m already doing all of those that I want.”
Leon laughed. “Yeah. Yeah, I know.” He sighed. “Jake, I know I’ve missed a lot of them, but happy birthday.” He held out a thick letter and a hard-cover sunglass case.
Jake took both warily. He especially didn’t like the look of that letter. It could have anything in it, from a new set of lock picks to a letter from Mom. Under Leon’s eyes, he slit it open with his knife.
He read the papers, and then looked up, eyes wide. “You got me an ASC license?”
“Yeah.” Leon’s face broke into a broad smile. It looked strange on his usually tense, focused face. “I put in the paperwork for you months ago, way before this hunt. And then you just went out and did the job . . . I’m damn proud of you, Jake.”
Jake looked down at the paper. Hawthornes, especially eighteen-year-old ones, did not tear up. “Thank you, sir.”
“Go on, open the next one. I figured now that you’re official, you might like some wheels.”
Jake popped open the sunglass case. Yeah, a car would be damn nice sometimes, if only so he didn’t have to ride the bus like a loser or try to walk home if he broke a bone or something on a hunt, but . . . he didn’t really want a new car. Nothing would be as sweet as the Eldorado, and being in the Eldorado meant he was home, that Dad was back, and they would be okay. Even without Mom, even without food, even with Dad working his way through a bottle, it was home. Hard to give that up forever by opening a sunglass case with peeling faux leather.
And then his jaw dropped. He looked up and gaped, his mouth working, while Leon grinned at him.
“These are for the Eldorado!”
“You love that car,” Leon said, then winked. “I know you’ll keep the rust spots off her.”
“Holy shit.” Jake jumped off the bed and gave Leon a crushing hug. He couldn’t remember the last time they had hugged, but it felt right when his dad had just given him the best gift possible.
When they broke away, Leon was still smiling and kept his hand on Jake’s shoulder. “Knew I had to hand it over to you sooner or later, the way you love that car. I’d tell you to take good care of her, but I’m pretty sure you’ll get her cleaned up before yourself.”
Only later, after Jake had rushed out and turned the key in the Eldorado—which was his, all his—did it occur to him to wonder what Dad would be driving if Jake had the Eldorado.
A few months later, Jake thought it was stupid to be in Massachusetts chasing ghosts. Literally chasing ghosts, because there was some kind of stupid haunted livestock truck, and it was just so stupid.
And so far from Nevada.
He hated the truck too. Dad’s big black truck. The truck that he used to disappear on Jake more often, getting farther and farther away. Sometimes he left a note, sometimes just a phone message a couple of days later. If Jake had known when Dad gave him the keys to the Eldorado that Dad would be gone more, that he would have such faith in Jake that he wouldn’t even give him a heads-up before disappearing… Well, Jake didn’t know that he would have thrown the keys back in Dad’s face—damn, he loved this car—but he might have started researching ways to sabotage Silverados, Tundras, F-150s, and worked his way down the list. As it was… Fuck. Just fuck.
Black was fine, and Jake supposed that a truck was practical at least, and it had special iron/silver spiked bumpers and reinforced-steel sides and a fancy, mechanized artillery trunk—how long were you planning this, Dad?—but the Eldorado could take it in a knife fight any day.
Sometimes when he saw the hulking monster truck—for hunting monsters, haha, not funny—in the parking lot next to his, his damn Eldorado, he still had a half-smothered urge to slash the tires.
He knew he wasn’t exactly being mature about this, but Jake was pissed, and when Dad wasn’t there to be pissed at, it all just built up until Jake wanted to smash something. Preferably a certain fancy-ass piece of slag steel.
It wasn’t until Dad was gone again, leaving Jake in another ass-backwards town without a single hot chick or dude, that Jake realized he didn’t have to just sit where Dad had left him and mope and drink and fuck. He had the fucking Eldorado, and where there were roads he could drive them, and where there were bridges he could cross them. Leon fucking Hawthorne—who clearly didn’t give a damn, who had his truck to keep him company—could find him if he wanted to. Dad could find anything.
Jake could drive anywhere. He could drive to Freak Camp and see Toby if he wanted to.
Like a silver bullet finding a werewolf’s heart, that thought hit home. Jake grabbed the Eldorado’s keys, paid the hotel bill—fake credit card again, Dad had taken most of the cash—and hit the road humming at the thought. I can see Toby any time I want.
Tobias was scrubbing fresh stains off the floor of the barrack showers—on his knees with a brush, the astringent cleaning solution stinging his hands, searing like acid in his fresh burns and cuts—when a guard walked in behind him. Tobias glanced back through his bangs, saw it was Crusher, and then focused on his job.
It was a bad place to be. Maybe Crusher would cut a deal, go for the blowjob, and Tobias wouldn’t have to risk fighting him off. A handful of other guards were getting too close for comfort, but Crusher always had that edge of crazy that scared him in ways no one else did.
“Get up, Pretty Freak. Hawthorne wants you.”
Tobias kept the first sharp rush of relief off his face. Relief so intense that his hands shook and he felt lightheaded. Crusher would see the shaking and think it was fear. Might even get off thinking about it later, with some other poor bastard mouthing his dick.
That image reminded Tobias of what he had done. Of all the times—
He didn’t have to fake the sick look on his face when he stood up. How could he face Jake, look him in the eye (and Jake would tell him to look him in the eye, he always did, he’d always tilt Tobias’s face up, so gently, the calluses on his fingers brushing down Tobias’s jaw) when he had been about to blow Crusher to get out of a beating?
Tobias didn’t want to go. For a breathless, insane second, he considered saying, “No, I won’t see him,” punching Crusher, running until they caught him and he fell beneath their clubs. Letting the pain and blood wash away the scalding shame that burned his insides worse than anything he’d swallowed. Better that than being in the same room with Jake, looking at Jake, contaminating the only good thing in his world with the filth he did every day and didn’t even feel any more.
He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t walk into that room.
But running was suicide. Of all the ways Tobias could kill himself, saying no to a hunter was not the one he wanted to pick. They would probably just drag him to Jake anyway, dump him bleeding on the floor. They might apologize that Tobias couldn’t suck Jake off with his jaw shattered like that, but at least he still had an ass, right?
That’s all you need, Tobias, to make him happy.
Crusher pushed him out of the showers, and Tobias wiped his hands on his pants, wishing he could stop to wash the cleaner off before Jake—
Before Jake touched him. Every visit Jake touched him, whether on his arm, his face, or his shoulder, totally unlike the way anyone else here touched him. Soft, slow, not to hurt or hurry or because Tobias was looking at him wrong, but . . . Tobias didn’t know why Jake touched him like that, but it was one of the things he couldn’t stop thinking about. Couldn’t stop craving.
Maybe Tobias wouldn’t have to talk, wouldn’t have to say anything. Maybe today was the day Jake would turn him over the table and take him—no preliminaries, no gentle questions, no smiles, no jokes that Tobias didn’t quite understand but laughed at anyway. Maybe today Jake would grind his face into the table and pull his pants down, and Tobias’s meager, pathetic dreams would die in the feel of Jake forcing his way inside him.
Shit, he should believe that. He should remember what he was—a worthless monster, a freak with only one use for his mouth—and he should not believe that nothing with Jake could hurt that badly. That Jake would never hurt him.
Of course, it would hurt. Tobias had been in the room enough times when the guards bent over some guy unwilling or unable to wheedle out of it, and he knew that it would hurt like hell, that he would bleed, probably scream, maybe not get up afterward if Jake was too rough. But he still wanted that. He wanted it to be Jake because Jake would be touching him then, holding his shoulders while he forced his way in, maybe holding Tobias there after he was done instead of dropping him or telling him to pull his damn pants up and get out of his sight. Nothing Jake did to him could be that bad if Jake really wanted it.
Better Jake than any guard, any other hunter. Better that Jake got the last part of Tobias that hadn’t gone through a dozen hands before someone else took it. Otherwise Tobias would have nothing left to offer. Jake could have anything—why would he want what everyone else had used and cast aside?
By the time Tobias crossed the yard, he was calm, almost hopeful. Of everyone in Tobias’s world, Jake was the only one who could rattle him, could send him from horror, to despair, to . . . something like contentment in the time it took to walk from one end of FREACS to the other. He wanted Jake. He wanted Jake to do anything he wanted to him. Hunter or no, real or no, Jake was the best thing in his world. Any day he saw Jake was a good day in Tobias’s book. That would be true no matter how it ended.
Then Victor smiled at him when he got to Reception, and his stomach dropped again.
“Here to see Hawthorne, Pretty Freak?” He made a mark on his clipboard. “Good boy. Jake’s looking good, you know, full-grown hunter. He’s got special plans for you today—requested a private interrogation in Room Three.” If anything, Victor’s expression got nastier. “Real shame. No cameras.”
Tobias’s mind shut off. Sure, a hunter would ask for no cameras if he wanted to fuck a monster in private, but he might also ask for no cameras if he wanted to cut a monster up without bothering with questions, without bothering with the forms and pretense of an interrogation.
Suddenly, Tobias couldn’t think of Jake, a hunter, without thinking of all the other hunters, the other guards who had tied him down and laughed while they hurt him, even as the cameras ran. He could imagine Jake smiling at him while he—
Tobias shut down the thought, clamped down hard, and retreated until he felt nothing, until he couldn’t feel the cold air around him. Jake could do whatever he wanted with him, of course. Tobias was just a monster. That was what he told himself. But he knew, deep down where he hid all the things he could never admit even to himself, that if Jake tied him down and started cutting, Tobias wouldn’t be able not to care. And without that shell that had kept him alive for nine years, he didn’t think there would be anything left of him. Or anything Jake would find worth saving.
What are you doing, Jake Hawthorne?
The hardest part had been rattling off the ID number and not saying that he wanted to see Toby. They’d shown him into an interrogation room: stainless steel walls, table, and two chairs.
After what felt like an hour but couldn’t have actually been more than fifteen minutes, the doorknob turned, and Tobias stepped in.
He looked tired, thinner than he was the last time Jake saw him (and he hadn’t thought the short, skinny kid could get thinner), his eyes sunken and dark. He didn’t look healthy, but what stopped Jake’s breath was Toby’s blank, hollow expression. He could have been a sleepwalker or a ghost. A little panicked, Jake looked for some kind of recognition, and he thought he caught a flicker of some half-sick, half-longing expression, but then Toby’s face shut back down.
He sat without a word and put his hands on the table, palms up, fingers slightly curled. He didn’t blink.
Jake shifted in his seat. Something was wrong. Something was really fucking wrong. “Hey, Toby.” He had no idea what the words would do. Maybe Toby would actually look at him. Maybe he would shatter. Jake couldn’t fucking tell.
Thank God the hollow-eyed stranger in front of him relaxed slightly and became Toby. He didn’t change his position at all, but Jake could see the sharp, brittle edge of fear draining out of him. Toby tilted his head and met Jake’s eyes. He tried to smile and failed. “Hey, Jake.”
Relieved, Jake reached across to rest his fingers inside Toby’s palms. Toby jumped at the contact, but that didn’t worry Jake. Toby always twitched at first contact in every visit. Jake rubbed gently, careful not to push too hard on the reddened skin, smelling ammonia. Toby must have been on some kind of cleaning duty again.
“Hope you don’t mind the change.” Jake lifted one shoulder to indicate the room. “I was getting tired of people eying us everywhere we went.” Toby’s eyes flickered to the camera mounted in the upper corner. “I told them to turn it off.”
Another layer of blankness thawed from Toby’s face. “Just so we could . . .” He swallowed, and a smile and some deeper, softer emotion flickered stronger in his eyes, a spark that could almost light.
Jake grinned. He never failed to get a nice buzz from producing that reaction in Toby. “I’m a Hawthorne. What are they going to do, tell me no?”
Tobias ducked his head, but Jake saw the flash of a grin before it disappeared.
Jake squeezed his fingers. “Sorry it’s been so long. I was chasing a bunch of ghouls down the East Coast, then got stuck hunting down a swamp monster in Florida. And then I was in Massachusetts.”
“That’s okay,” Toby said, as he always did. He was looking at Jake’s hands over his, the faintest smile still on his face. “So you got them all?”
Jake launched into his stories about the hunts, from the start of the drive down from Ohio and the weird-ass family he’d met on the way, along with all the other quirky details he’d filed away as Things to Tell Toby. He probably talked more about that stuff than he did about the actual hunts. He’d worried once about whether it was rude to recount his adventures killing monsters to Tobias, but Toby insisted he didn’t mind. “They’re doing bad things,” he’d said. “It’s good to kill them.”
