Page 39 of Freak Camp (A Monster By Any Other Name #1)

Chapter Nine

“H ey, Pretty Freak!”

Tobias closed his eyes before standing.

It had been nice to be invisible for a while.

In Freak Camp, being invisible was the best a monster could ask for.

But he’d known it wouldn’t last. It figured that Victor would be the first to break it.

In a group of sadists, thugs, and Dixons—the last of whom didn’t like to get their hands dirty outside of Special Research—Victor was the smartest.

Victor grinned at him, watching him approach. Tobias kept his eyes lowered, shoulders down. “Sir.”

“How was dinner?”

Tobias swallowed reflexively. The mealworms had gotten into the bread again.

He could tell himself all he wanted that it was extra protein, but a slice of vaguely moving bread and a cup of tepid, flavorless liquid hadn’t done anything to make him feel less like he was consuming himself instead of the food.

He had hated touching the guards, but he hadn’t realized how much of his food came as a reward for what he did on his knees until it was gone. He didn’t answer.

Victor brought his billy club under Tobias’s chin, nudging his head up. Tobias kept his eyes almost shut. “I asked you a question. Still hungry?” He tapped the club against Tobias’s jaw, and Tobias flinched away. He clenched his fists, angry at his body’s betrayal at so light a move.

“Yes, sir,” he muttered, because whatever was going to happen now, it could only be worse if he lied.

The billy club fell away. “I got a nice fat sandwich back in my office. You want it?”

Tobias’s face didn’t twitch.

“Come on,” Victor wheedled. “Don’t you even want to know what I’m asking for it?”

Tobias inhaled and exhaled deeply through his nose. Might as well ask. “What’s the price, sir?”

“You on your knees in Head Alley. One-time payment.”

Not much work, usually over quickly. Yeah, it was worth it. He just had to hope Victor really did have a sandwich in his office. Tobias jerked his head in a nod.

“Did I read that right? Let’s be absolutely clear.

” Victor held up his hands, open and mock-innocent.

“I’m not forcing you into anything. You are voluntarily offering to blow me in exchange for something extra that monsters shouldn’t get.

So don’t go running to Hawthorne with any stories when I’m doing you a favor. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“If you don’t want it, you can walk away right now. If you want it, you gotta tell me.”

Tobias sucked in his breath. “No, sir. I want it.”

“Good.” Turning, Victor strode away to the break room, not looking back to see if Tobias followed.

***

T hey started up again after Victor, but it was different.

They didn’t just force him to his knees or wrap his hand around their cocks and hurt him until he jerked them off.

There was always something—a sandwich, an apple, a blanket—after, and they always made it very clear that he had to want it. There were no interrogations at all.

Tobias figured that it was all because of Jake—he’d seen what Karl’s face looked like now, and it wasn’t pretty—and he was both grateful for the space and terrified, every day, that Jake would come back and learn what he had done, what he was doing.

Jake wanted him untouched, and Tobias was anything but that.

He shared with Kayla when he had more than what he desperately needed, building up credit for when he needed something and couldn’t get it himself.

They weren’t friends, but she watched his back, and it was good to have at least one monster who wouldn’t try to cut his throat for his blankets or just because he was the whore.

He occasionally gave her advice, which she took.

The guards called her Dream now, because after the first time Crusher fucked her, she never made a sound when they touched her.

“Carpenter’s dream,” Crusher had said, pushing her into the showers with the other monsters. “Lies still as a board, waiting to get nailed.”

Victor looked up. “Not your taste, then?”

“Boring as hell,” Crusher said.

A vamp might be Toothy because he couldn’t retract his second set of teeth, and witches were named Handy if they put out, the name traveling from one witch to the next as they died or moved on to their executions.

But Tobias called the shapeshifter girl Kayla, and she called him nothing because she hadn’t spoken since the first time Crusher got her alone.

Then one day, after an assembly demonstration—one naked werewolf, caught trying to lunge through the door to Reception, now tied between the whipping posts—Tobias and Kayla found a place where they couldn’t see the bloodstained dirt.

Tobias leaned against the wall, trying to think only about how it was a good temperature today (bound to get worse, but good right then), while Kayla looked at her hands.

Then he heard her voice: rough and emotionless, like the words were put together by someone with a perfect understanding of the meaning but no comprehension of the emotions involved. “I want to rip off their dicks and stuff them down their throats.”

Tobias looked at her in surprise. After a second, he licked his lips and answered the only way he could. “We don’t get to want things.”

She turned her head to look up at him, face flat and inscrutable, until she spoke with the same lack of inflection or feeling. “You want that hunter boy to come see you.”

Tobias jerked hard, twisting his head sharply away. He had reacted far less during his last beating. No wonder the guards all used that against him, if he was so transparent.

Kayla was still watching him. “Why? What does he do to you?”

He drew his arms tight around his knees, setting his chin between them.

How could he possibly talk about Jake’s visits—how Jake talked to him so differently from anyone he’d ever met, how he touched him so lightly and never to hurt, how he never asked anything from him?

There weren’t any words for it, none Kayla would understand nor believe.

Tobias didn’t have any words for it himself.

It was beyond comprehension, the brief flashes of light that were Jake’s visits, the fact Tobias had ever been in his presence.

It just was , and while he couldn’t have begun to say why Jake always returned to see him and smiled the way he did when he saw Tobias, the truth that Jake would come back ( please come back, I’ll be good for you ) was the only reason some days that Tobias didn’t rush the guards, hoping to get a bullet before a club.

Kayla’s gaze was still on him. After a long pause, she asked, “Does he fuck you?”

Tobias took a sharp inhale through his nose. “No.”

She leaned closer to get a better glimpse of his face. “But he’s going to, right? That’s why no one else’s fucked you. That’s what they all say.”

Jake had never said anything about it, not one comment or suggestive smirk. He’d never reached past Tobias’s hands, shoulder—occasionally his cheek, but never his lips. He’d never hurt Tobias, even that time he was so angry.

“I guess so.” He didn’t know why else Jake would be so interested in him.

“What’s he waiting for?” At last Kayla’s flat tone changed, rising on a note of incredulity.

Tobias shrugged and turned away. He wished he could answer, but he didn’t know. She had been silent long enough to understand his silence now.

***

N ot far into Jake’s eight-week suspension, it fully sank in just how much he had fucked up.

Four years ago, Jake had promised to get Toby out.

He’d never forgotten that promise, and he’d always known it would be fucking hard and take a lot of work, but it wasn’t like there was any amount of work that would stop him or make him give up.

Not when it came to the most important task in his whole damn life.

But somehow it had never occurred to him that this wasn’t like any other hunt that would take research, legwork, night watches, and willingness to go mano a mano with something not yet documented, including how many limbs it had or if it might spit poison or acid.

Fuck, he wished it was all those things, night after night for endless days. That, he could handle.

He had to admit he hadn’t done much research for getting Toby out yet.

Maybe he’d assumed some kind of instruction manual would be handed to him when he turned eighteen and got his official license.

But to snatch Toby out of Freak Camp—that would require something way worse than the dirtiest, smelliest hunt ever did.

Jake was going to have to suck up to the fucking Dixons .

In retrospect, assaulting and branding the face of a Freak Camp guard and refusing to apologize was not how one went about sucking up, even in Jake’s very limited experience.

But every time he remembered those smiley-face burns on Toby’s arm, he knew he was a cowardly piece of shit.

Of course he’d kiss any body part of every Dixon he could find, a thousand times over, if he could just get Toby safe.

After some research and consideration, he called his cousin Leah Dixon who worked in the D.C. office. The few times he’d needed something straightened out, she’d been a total boss at getting it done faster than a wendigo jumping a sleeping camper.

The call felt awkward and unnatural as hell, but Jake did his best to make a good impression and asked about procedures and protocols for getting a monster out of Freak Camp—and not with a short-use bait permit.

She was silent a long while on the phone, which was not a good sign. “Tell you the truth, Jake, I’m not sure. I don’t know if anyone’s ever gotten that kind of request through. I’ll ask around and let you know if I hear anything.”

Jake swallowed, resisting the urge to thud his head against the window of the Eldorado, which was where he was making the call. “Thanks, Leah. I’ll owe you everything, down to my fucking ass.”