Page 27 of Freak Camp (A Monster By Any Other Name #1)

Only Toby was different from all of them.

Toby was special, because Toby was always the same person.

Jake could mention a hunt he and Dad had done in Las Vegas (that turned out, awkwardly, to be not a shapeshifter, but a businessman with a particular fetish), and Toby would laugh because he remembered.

Jake loved talking to Toby, but more than that, they had stories and a history together.

Jake supposed that he and Dad had history in Morgantown, West Virginia, where they had lived before Mom died, but that history was old and dead, like Mom, and they had never been back.

Toby, along with Roger, was the only thing in Jake’s life that he looked forward to seeing again.

He guessed that was why his heart jumped anytime he heard someone say Freak Camp , and why he always hoped his father would find another reason to go back soon.

But now, standing in the middle of its yard, he realized he hated the place. It made his skin crawl, and he felt dirty and gross just being there, like when that tentacle monster in Florida had tried to fight him off using its own saliva.

“J-Jake!”

Turning quickly, he saw Tobias standing against the wall of the mess hall, arms folded over his chest and hands clutching his thin blue jacket.

He was looking up at Jake—more like peeking up through his hair—but there was no trace of the usual smile he had when first seeing Jake. He looked worried, even frightened.

“Toby.” Jake started toward him, then checked himself, glancing around for any guards or monsters watching.

Abruptly he was pissed off at everything, including himself.

When the hell had he ever cared before? He didn’t have a single fucking thing to be ashamed of.

Scowling, he joined Toby against the wall. “Hey, Toby.”

Tobias seemed to be attempting to disappear into the metal wall behind him, tucking his chin in, though still peeking up at Jake every few seconds. He didn’t say anything else.

Jake sighed, shaking his head once, then reached in his pocket for the crumpled bag of chips. “Brought these for you.” He couldn’t summon his usual enthusiasm. Fuck Miller . Before they’d walked into Reception, he’d been looking forward to seeing Toby just as much as ever.

“Th-thanks.” Tobias held the bag but didn’t open it. Then he blurted out, without looking up, “Are—are you okay?”

Jake blew out his breath and slid down the wall to sit on the ground. “Yeah, Toby.” He patted the earth next to him. “It’s okay, I promise—I’ve just got some shit on my mind. Nothing to do with you. Go ahead and eat.”

Tobias dropped to his knees next to him, but he only fingered the top of the bag until Jake began telling him about this monster that he and Dad had dealt with in Northern California that, kid you not , had possessed a deadly fart attack.

At least three cops had ended up in the hospital, mauled and knocked out, because of the thing.

No way of knowing how many people had just been eaten.

He and Dad had taken the thing out, but only after a week and a half of tromping through the woods to find its nest.

“We wore nose plugs the whole trip, Toby. Dad’s nose looked, like, twice the size. It was ridiculous.”

Tobias relaxed gradually, eating each chip with care and relish, laughing at the funny parts and fixing his eyes more confidently on Jake’s face.

As he did, Jake felt better too, more sure that whatever the hell Miller or Dad thought, it wasn’t true and didn’t matter when he was here with Toby, laughing about monsters and hunts, sharing a bag of chips and an apple.

All the same, Jake stopped himself from leaning over to bump his shoulder against Toby’s. With Dad’s words echoing in his ears, it just didn’t seem right. Though he couldn’t pin down what would be wrong about it.

True to his warning, Dad was out of Intensive Containment in less than an hour. Jake was glad that a guard found him and told him that his father was looking for him. Jake didn’t want Leon to see them together, not now.

The thought made him feel horrible, and he didn’t know why he felt that either.

Jake stood up and shoved the empty chip bag into his pocket. “I’ll see you later, Toby.”

Toby whispered something , and Jake turned to look at him. Toby still crouched on the ground, looking at his hands.

“What’d you say, Toby?” Jake grinned, but he couldn’t put a lot of heart in it. “Maybe I got one of those nose plugs stuck in my ears.”

Tobias looked up. “I hope you come back soon. I just . . . yeah.”

That didn’t sound like what he’d said the first time. It had sounded like Toby didn’t expect him to come back at all.

Jake didn’t think he could stay away. He’d walk back to Freak Camp if he had to. “I’ll always be back, Toby. It’s a promise.” Jake smiled and almost reached out to ruffle Toby’s hair but thought he heard Dad approaching. He turned away.

Jake felt Toby’s eyes on him as he crossed the yard, but when he glanced back, Toby’s head was bowed.

***

I n addition to not much liking the entire FREACS institution, Roger wasn’t fond of the Dixons.

Before the ASC, hunting had traditionally been a violent, unpaid, loner occupation that made a man paranoid about small sounds, shadows, electrical failures, and small inconsistencies in human behavior.

It was a recipe for crackpots and excellent liars, but rarely a respectable, mild-mannered, nine-to-five family man.

Roger’s theory was that hunters were generally arrogant assholes with some level of death wish—himself included—and it worked down from there.

On an individual basis, he probably would rather kill things with fellow hunters than make small talk.

The Dixons had always been an exception for how they professionalized monster hunting generations before Elijah Dixon created the ASC.

This meant that for decades before the Liberty Wolf Massacre, they already regarded themselves as hunting paragons and were generally unbearable to be around for more than a few hours at a time.

And that was before they received the official blessing of the United States government in 1984.

Fifteen years later, the Dixons were a perfect case study of what happened when you combined the mania of hunting, an unshakable conviction in the righteousness and patriotism of their cause, a possessive family dynamic, and a tendency to conflate their own identity with the national one: you had a gang of gun-wielding, pathological liars who tended to shoot first and ask questions later—if at all.

But even if he disliked them for how they snubbed any hunter outside their pack and how proud they were of tiny Dixon kids handling shotguns and salt packages almost as soon as they could walk, he wouldn’t sit out when they needed him.

“We could use your help, Harper,” the caller said. “Rougarou, Silver City. Available?”

Roger recognized the voice as a Dixon more by subject matter and the use of we than anything else.

“Rougarous, huh? It’s been a while.” Rarer than werewolves, rougarous were more ravenous.

They were also more dangerous if they figured out what they were, because unlike werewolves, they had a chance in the first hundred and one days to shake the rougarou curse and regain their humanity, but only if they bit someone else.

“We’ve got a team here, but some of them are green. Looking to balance it out with a gray beard.”

“I ain’t got a beard, gray or any other color. All right, give me . . .” He did a quick calculation in his head. “Two hours?”

“Yeah, good. We’ll wait for you. You can reach me at this number. Ready?” The Dixon rattled off a number, and Roger took it down.

When he arrived at Silver City, it was the early afternoon. He pulled into the bar with a crowded parking lot, too many for a usual crowd of noon-drinkers.

Walking in, he nearly got shot by some hot-headed young hunter—a sandy-haired kid, not a Dixon himself, but a trainee from ASC Hunter Academy, judging by how he had both jumped in surprise and responded automatically with the shotgun.

The kid was new. If Roger had been a monster, he would have been able to rip the kid’s throat out before he got to the weapon.

Lucas Dixon snaked out a hand and jerked the kid’s elbow before he could send a shot into Roger’s chest, but the kid still pulled the trigger.

Two other hunters dove for cover behind the pool table.

The gun clicked empty—the idiot had gone for a gun that wasn’t even loaded?

— but Roger still had to work to stop his heart from beating out of his chest. If the gun had been loaded, it would have blown a rock-salt hole through the bottles on the back of the bar, if not the gaping bartender’s head.

Lucas just sighed and pushed the mortified kid away while the two older hunters—both clearly Dixons from their similar facial structure and the easy way they stood with their weapons—looked disgusted.

“That’s Harper,” Lucas said. “Better not shoot him.” Recognizing his voice from the call, Roger felt old.

Lucas had been a snot-nosed brat the first time they’d met in 1985, when the Dixons had gone around to all the other known hunters, asking them to join up.

Roger had told them he wasn’t the club-joining sort, but a year later he had to cave and apply for his own ASC license.

He might be stubborn, but he wasn’t stupid enough to pass up a sizable paycheck for what he used to do for free, not to mention a shit ton of resources and excellent healthcare.

The bartender cleared his throat. “Hey, fellas—I support the troops as much as anyone, and I can give you a free beer if you come back tonight, but while you’re handling firearms—”

“Yeah, yeah.” Lucas straightened up off the bar and waved them toward the door. “We’ll take it outside.”