Page 56 of Freak Camp (A Monster By Any Other Name #1)

But he didn’t let it show on his face. He closed his books and replaced them on the shelves, mentally filing away the page numbers and notes in case the Director asked. He closed his notebook and set it on the shelf with the rest of the research documents.

The first inkling Tobias got that his luck had run out was when Lonny took a heavy lead line from his belt and snapped one end onto his collar.

Tobias froze, too shocked and horrified to not let it show.

The guard grinned at him. “I told you, freak, you’re going ,” and he jerked the line down hard, sending Tobias crashing to the floor.

He caught himself on his knees, but what was the point of keeping himself together when his luck was gone? Eleven years of surviving, eleven years of clawing onto nebulous hopes, and here was the ultimate outcome.

You’re going.

There was only one place Tobias could possibly be going. It was where witches went for their executions, where monsters went when they couldn’t behave. It was the place freaks went so that hunters could study them until the freaks left in the salted smoke of the incinerators.

Stumbling after the guard down the stairs, Tobias couldn’t stop shaking.

What did it matter? What the fuck did it matter anymore?

He could feel everything in him shutting down, trying to brace for .

. . the end. He’d wished for death so often in the last six months, but since the Director had had him put the gun to his own head, he’d understood that was something too good for him to be granted easily.

Instead of taking the door out into the yard, Lonny turned toward Reception.

When Tobias tripped again, sheer terror making him unsteady, the guard pulled him up by the collar.

Tobias welcomed the more normal form of pain.

He had been here before. He had walked this way to interrogations and those brief, lightning-flash moments with Jake.

Lonny stopped outside the resource room, ducked in, and emerged with a short stack of clothes that he shoved into Tobias’s arms. Then he towed Tobias deeper into the dark corridors.

Other hallways in Reception were for the important visitors, the ones through which senators and civilians walked; scratched, fluorescent-flickering halls like this were for freaks and guards.

Paperwork , Tobias thought . Monster comes in, monster goes out, you have to have the right forms with the right numbers.

At the last door in the hallway, a heavy metal one with sigils keeping demons and other malevolent spirits from crossing the threshold, the guard turned to Tobias and dropped the lead line. “Clothes off.”

Tobias couldn’t tell what he wanted, fast obedience or a show—Lonny could go either way, depending on the day and his mood—so he compromised by going fast but facing him.

When he was naked and shivering under the fluorescents, old gray clothes neatly folded in one pile, the guard pointed his club at the second set Tobias had carried. “Put those on.”

Silently, Tobias crouched for the new clothes.

The boxers and jeans—like a hunter wore, like a fucking hunter wore, just the thought made his hands shake—were like his usual pants, until he got to the buttons and zippers.

He’d opened enough flies that he knew the theory, but doing it to himself was different, his hands stumbling.

The shirt’s buttons took a long time to open and then meticulously hook together again, but the guard gave no indication that he would start hitting Tobias with the club he tapped against his thigh.

When Tobias was dressed, head down, hands still, Lonny turned to the door with a grunt and punched a string of numbers into the key box.

He waited a few minutes, muttered something into the intercom, and then the red light above the huge iron door turned green.

Tobias only half listened. He could probably remember both the password and the number sequence if he had to—lately anything he saw went straight to long-term memory, a Director-induced survival skill—but at the moment he couldn’t care less about what Lonny was doing.

He didn’t know what sick game they were playing with the clothes. Maybe they were dressing him up as a hunter, preparing to beat him to death for the audacity of pretending to be a real person. That would at least be better than being formally studied in Special Research.

Becca had told him never to fear death, to look forward to it as something that would bring him to an infinitely better place where none of the guards would be able to touch him, but Tobias had stopped believing that sometime while Crusher had used the hot irons according to the Director’s cool direction.

It was too much to hope for, and he had learned well her other lesson: it was better not to believe in anything that sounded good.

Death sounded too nice. He didn’t expect that transition into peace and darkness.

Much more likely was the hell of Special Research sliding seamlessly into the hell after life.

He doubted there could be much difference.

But when Lonny grabbed the lead line again and jerked Tobias through the open door, everything he had expected shattered into a vast and uncertain lightness.

Standing in the bare white room beyond the door, face in profile, hands in his jean pockets, was Jake .

And Tobias could not imagine death, or hell, or true pain, if Jake were there.

***

W hen the guard came in with Tobias trailing him on the leash, Jake almost reeled in shock.

It hadn’t occurred to him that he had never seen Toby in anything but the gray shirt and pants provided by the facility.

In jeans and one of Jake’s button-up shirts, Toby appeared like a person Jake had never seen before, one with the look of a long-term survivor who didn’t have the resources to survive much longer.

Jake’s shirt on him was baggy, several sizes too big for Toby’s skin-and-bones frame.

“Here you go, Hawthorne,” the guard called as he shoved the door closed. He carried Tobias’s leash like it was just another weapon, like the club he also held. “Dressed up and pretty like you wanted. Madison get that paperwork to you yet?”

“Not yet,” Jake said.

“Can’t leave until you get that.” The guard grinned. “Always better to inspect the merchandise before you sign the contract. ’Specially secondhand goods.” He slapped Tobias on the shoulder, and Tobias winced and swayed.

Jake swallowed hard, his hands clenched.

He wanted to get a look at Toby, a good look.

He looked rail-thin and pale, like he hadn’t gotten as much sun as he used to, and there was something else about him, something brittle that Jake hadn’t seen the last time he saw him six fucking months ago.

Jake wanted to put his finger on the difference, but first he needed this asshole to go away.

Otherwise he would never get Toby to look at him, wouldn’t be able to see if Toby could forgive him for taking so goddamned long, for not even telling him where Jake had gone.

He was getting Toby out, that wasn’t a question, but whether or not Toby would stay with him . . . that was up to Toby.

“Can you leave us?” Jake asked. “Maybe check on where the forms are?”

Lonny’s grin faded, but only slightly. “Yeah. Sure. Hey!” He extended the leash. “You want this, or should I check it on the wall?”

Jake felt his jaw jump, and the guard must have seen some of the rage on his face, because he backed up to the door, ran the leash through the hook on the wall, and left through another set of doors to the Reception desk behind the bulletproof glass.

Tobias’s head followed the lead, his body leaning back toward the door, but he didn’t move his feet, didn’t move in any way that wasn’t necessary.

Jake waited until the door shut behind the guard before he moved forward.

Toby cringed away from his hands, a slight movement that Jake might not have noticed if he weren’t looking, but he couldn’t balk or hesitate now.

He caught Toby’s face between his palms and pushed him back with the same movement, moving him closer to the wall so that the leash wasn’t twisting his head around.

“Toby, you okay?” You okay? Seriously, that was the best he could do when he had just left him ? But Jake had nothing better.

Toby stared at him, some kind of shock in his face, and then he almost smiled. It was a slight flicker in his mouth, in his eyes, gone in an instant, but even that softening notched Jake’s tension down. But then his eyes fell from Jake’s to his shoulders. “Jake.”

Jake figured that was about the best he was going to get. “Let’s get this fucking rope off you.” He reached under Toby’s chin for where the line connected to the collar.

Toby took a deep, shaky breath, but tipped his head up, eyes closed, while Jake’s hands fumbled with the clips. When he got the head of the leash off Toby’s collar, Jake threw the fucking thing as hard as he could against the wall.

When Toby jumped, Jake laid a hand on his shoulder and smiled at him. “You never have to wear one of those fucking things again, Toby. I promise.”

Toby nodded and then smoothly stepped away from him, out from under his hand, when the door opened to let in the first guard, Madison, and an older man with his hair fading to gray at his temples and a small smile not quite reaching his eyes.

***

T obias didn’t know the woman—pretty, well-fed, dressed in a business jacket and skirt, carrying a pile of papers—but with the Director and Jake in the same room, he had a hard time breathing.