Page 34 of Freak Camp (A Monster By Any Other Name #1)

“Found yourself a pet, whore?” Celler mumbled.

Because of the way they’d wired his vampire fangs to his human teeth, and then to his lower jaw, every word had to fight its way through two layers of clenched teeth.

He got his ration of blood intravenously when the werewolves came back from Intensive Containment—if he’d been “good.” The borderline starvation made him even nastier than vamps usually were because of the sun char. “She pay you back yet for last night?”

Tobias wished Kayla would stop flinching. Movements like that drew more attention from the nasties, whether that was monsters like Celler or humans like the guards. He kept his focus split between the vamp and Crusher, who watched from his position leaning against the wall.

“Maybe you just like to put out. Is that it, Pretty Freak?” Celler slid a hand over Tobias’s shoulders. “If you’re so hot to hit your knees, why don’t you buy us all feather quilts? I could hold you down.”

Tobias suspected that Celler was just envious. Vamps couldn’t bargain with their mouths, and unless they could offer a particularly competitive handjob, the other kind of fucking always hurt worse.

Tobias waited until the hand reached his collarbone—no way was he letting a vamp get a grip on his throat; he’d seen shifters with their throats ripped out while a vampire held their mouth under the wound so the lifeblood would seep through the muzzle.

Then Tobias slammed his head and body backwards as hard as he could, unbalancing Celler and loosening his grip.

Tobias knocked him to the floor with a quick thrust of his elbow.

Celler was up almost instantly, hiss-whining through his teeth—what would have been a scream of rage for any other monster—but by that time, the guards had decided to notice. When Celler went for Tobias’s throat, Crusher was there.

The first blow of Crusher’s club against the back of Celler’s head echoed with a wet crack through the mess hall and slammed the vamp’s head into Tobias’s shoulder.

Celler collapsed bonelessly to the floor, where he whimpered through his wired jaw and twitched his limbs.

The next three unnecessary blows silenced the moans.

“You fucking with my freak, sucker?” Crusher panted. “He’s too pretty for you. You know what might fuck you? I think I once saw a bulldog ugly enough to fuck your ugly face.”

Celler scrabbled against the floor, arms and legs not quite working right, and Crusher kicked him. “Fucking get up, Celler. You’re in the walkway. Or do you want me to get you up?”

The vampire dragged himself beneath a bench, tucking his arms and legs beneath the table. It seemed to be enough.

Tobias was expecting it, but Crusher’s punch still slammed his face into the table. “You wanna fuck a bloodsucker, Pretty Freak? You rolling that slut tongue at him?”

“No, sir,” Tobias said to the table.

Crusher clenched his fingers in Tobias’s hair and jerked his head up, arcing his neck back. “What you say, freak?”

“No, sir. I’m not going to let them fuck me, sir.” Not going to let anyone, anyone . . .

Crushed pulled his face close. “You’re waiting for me, aren’t you? I’m gonna be the first cock in your ass.” He shrugged. “Maybe second. Don’t care if Hawthorne goes first. Long as you scream for me. And you will scream for me, won’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” Tobias said.

“Think Hawthorne will want to watch while I make you scream, Pretty Freak?”

Tobias kept his breathing even. It wasn’t like Crusher hadn’t said it before. “I don’t know, sir.”

“You think I should ask—”

“Crusher!”

Tobias didn’t relax as the guard turned away. If Crusher noticed, he would take it as a challenge.

“What?” Crusher snapped at Lonny.

Lonny jerked his head around the room, where some monsters were taking advantage of Crusher’s distraction to huddle and mutter together. “Focus!”

Crusher snorted and muttered under his breath about fucking spoilsports, but he let go of Tobias’s hair after one more slam down into the table. “Don’t let it happen again, freak.”

Tobias looked for Kayla after Crusher was far enough away that he couldn’t interpret it as some kind of disrespect. She had slunk away in the confusion so quietly that neither he nor Crusher had noticed. Tobias found her two tables away, eyes down.

Smart girl , Tobias thought, even though he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to give a damn about anyone in Freak Camp but himself. Maybe you’ll learn fast enough to survive.

He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.

***

T hat night, after evening roll call, Tobias got back into the barracks just in time to see Celler filching his blanket.

For a second, a small, weak, irrational part of him thought, it’s not fucking fair —stupid, useless thought; he was a monster, and life wasn’t supposed to be fair to him. That was quickly swallowed by rage.

Hell no, I paid for that.

“Put it back!” He picked up his stride. Celler wasn’t going to give it back, Tobias knew that.

The vamp laughed through his wiry smile. “Buy another one, whore.”

Tobias hit him with all his weight, putting a little extra speed into the battering ram motion while the bastard was distracted.

Tobias clawed for his eyes, and the vampire flinched back.

Of course he did—Tobias could never hope to match the reflexes of an identified supernatural, but he had been fighting other freaks his entire life, maybe even before Celler had become a vamp.

Tobias didn’t catch the eyes, but instead caught his fingers in the wire around both sets of Celler’s teeth.

He jerked the vampire’s head sideways and down and heard his neck crack—snapping bones Crusher had missed earlier.

He forced Celler’s head down, his other hand wrenching at the blanket in the vamp’s grip.

Celler snarled, twisted, and managed to kick Tobias’s feet out from under him, but Tobias jerked hard on the vampire’s shoulder and arm as he fell, throwing him over his own body and headfirst into another bunk bed before he hit the concrete floor.

The spectators screamed, snarled, and swore. Someone was wailing about the guards coming at any moment (“ Oh, stop, please stop! ”), but all Tobias really cared about was that Celler still had his blanket.

A smart freak would have let it go, but the thing was, he really couldn’t buy another one.

Sure, Victor liked Tobias’s mouth, but he liked variety too, and Tobias had a good instinct for when Victor wanted him on his knees and when he wanted him on a cutting table.

If Tobias tried to get another blanket, Victor would get his blow, and Tobias would get another interrogation, if he got anything at all.

So he ignored the way his back ached from hitting the concrete and launched himself at Celler. They tumbled together into another row of monsters, and soon enough everyone was doing their best to rip each other’s throats out.

In the chaos, Celler and a couple of other vamps—vampires stuck together, even when they hated each other; it was some kind of nest-bonding instinct and tended to get them in trouble—managed to pin Tobias to the floor, the very blanket he had been fighting for pinning his arms down.

Celler knelt on him, knees digging under Tobias’s ribs.

“We’re gonna bleed you,” he growled, sinking his fingers into Tobias’s throat under his collar. “Then I’m going to bleed into you, you little cocksucker. Wanna be a vamp like me? Wanna burn like me? Let’s see how much shit you get when they wire that pretty mouth shut.”

Tobias bucked beneath the vampires, almost blanking out from panic. Celler couldn’t, he couldn’t take away Tobias’s only bargaining skill, couldn’t make Tobias one of them. They’ll kill you , he thought frantically. You can’t, they’ll kill you if you bleed me.

As a vampire, Tobias would have nothing, less than nothing. In Freak Camp, vamps were in constant pain from the sun, never had enough blood to fill them, and could survive incredible amounts of damage without dying, without ever dying. Tobias remembered one vampire woman, how the guards had—

Tobias’s mind shied away ( that could be you, under Crusher) . He could imagine very few things worse than being stripped of the surety of death.

There was only one thing worse.

Jake couldn’t ever take a vampire out of Freak Camp. Not even Jake could do that, even if he’s stupid enough to want to.

Tobias struggled and fought harder than he ever could or would against the guards, he snarled every curse and threat he’d ever heard, he jerked his arms and legs in their grips until his sockets ached, but the vamps had the numbers and the advantage.

Then Kayla jumped on Celler’s back and sank her teeth into his shoulder.

Celler jerked back, knocking off another vampire, and suddenly Tobias had leverage to claw and kick the other vampires aside.

Then the vents slapped shut—the last warning before gas came hissing into the barracks to knock them out.

The monsters noticed. In the ensuing panic, Tobias wheeled to Kayla and grabbed her by the shoulders.

She almost punched him in the face, but hesitated when she realized it was him.

Don’t hesitate , Tobias thought. Don’t trust that just because it’s me, I won’t hurt you. Don’t trust that just because it’s my face, it’s me.

“Hide,” he snapped. “Now. Don’t come out.”

She stared. “But you’re—”

“Don’t let them see you, do what I say, hide now. ” Tobias shoved her roughly toward a bunk bed and spun just in time to catch a clawed hand before it ripped open his face. He hoped she had listened to him. Becca had always had him hide under a bunk in the corner during brawls.