Page 34 of Freedom
Rolling to his feet, Tobias wheeled. The lantern was still burning on the ground beside Jake, lighting the grassy banks with an uncertain half light, but he could see the other monster well enough: the same species as the dead one, but this time, he could see those dark, beady eyes and the hate in them, how the creature moved sinuously, flexing its claws and baring its bloodstained mouth.
Knife in one hand, searching backward with the other, Tobias moved until he could crouch over Jake and feel his pulse. When he found it, he almost shuddered with relief. He had never seen Jake so still, so absent. There was a frightening wetness matting Jake’s hair, but his breathing was steady, and the pulse under Tobias’s fingers was strong.
Tobias straightened. What do he had to do now was get Jake back to the Eldorado, patch that head wound, clean the wound on his leg, and get him somewhere that didn’t smell like wet and rot. He couldn’t fucking do any of that because the monster before him—a fuath, he recognized it now, type of fairy, territorial—was revealing its bloody fangs and hissing long and low as though it recognized him, monster to monster.
Tobias reached over and pulled the crowbar from the other monster’s corpse. Then, armed in each hand, he bared his teeth. “Come on, you bloodsucking, ugly piece of shit.”
There was a hint of intelligence in those beady eyes, a flicker of understanding in the way the beast moved away from the iron and snarled at his words. But not enough for it to know what it faced.
The fuath charged. Tobias crouched down to meet it.
~*~
When Jake finally roseback to consciousness, blinking in confusion at the dim light filtering through their hotel’s drapes, the first thing he took in was Toby’s pale, intent face above his. The image receded for a moment—Jake took a couple rapid, unsteady breaths, bracing against the wonkiness of the world—but then Toby came close again, came into focus. He peered closely at Jake’s eyes, then glanced at the nearby clock and wrote something down on the yellow legal pad in his lap. Jake followed his motions, unsure if this was real or a hallucination courtesy of one too many sudden impacts to his cranium.
He tried to speak. “Toby?” His voice came out in a croak, with an embarrassing crack he hadn’t heard in years.
Tobias’s eyes snapped back up, and he leaned forward as he reached for a glass on the table. “Hey, Jake. How are you feeling?”
Jake’s next effort to speak only ended in a hoarse grunt, and Tobias raised the glass, angling the straw to Jake’s lips. Water, cold and crisp, hadn’t tasted this good in years.
After a few mouthfuls, his tongue was down to something like normal size and his voice less like sandpaper in his throat. “What happened?”
Tobias’s brow creased, and he looked more worried. “Do you remember anything?”
Jake started to shake his head, then gave it up as a bad idea. They’d left for the hunt, hadn’t they? There had been darkness and stars and the ground uneven beneath his boots and Tobias beside him and... even that much might have been part of whatever dream he’d just had. “We were hunting, right? Did we get jumped?” Shit, was Toby hurt? Would he just be sitting there with a notebook on his lap if he were hurt?
Tobias was still watching him intently, eyes never leaving Jake’s face. His mouth had a new set to it. “A second fuath knocked your head against a rock out by the river. Can you feel all your limbs? How’s your vision?”
Jake thought about it. His body felt heavy and removed, but he could shift his legs and arms and feel his fingers and toes. “No, nothing weird... Toby, how long have I been out of it?”
“A little over twelve hours,” Toby said tersely.
“Shit.” Jake let his head fall back onto the pillow. Try as he might, he couldn’t remember more about the river. How the hell did they get back to the hotel? “What the hell happened?”
Tobias drew a breath. “I killed the fuath. Dragged you away from the riverbank, toward the Eldorado. Then you woke up, but you were in and out, w-walking but s-stumbling into me, and then this car slowed down by the road—saw my flashlight, I g-guess. It turned out to be that waitress. D-Darla? She stopped to ask if we were okay, then she saw—your c-condition. Offered to give us a ride back into town, and maybe to the doctor if you n-needed it.” Tobias took a deep breath, making a small, futile gesture. “I didn’t know how else... I had my knife, so I could... but I remembered what you said about how most reals are nice and mean well and want to help. And she seemed... safe. So I said okay, and we helped you into the car. You were talking and seemed pretty awake, except your speech was a little—like some nights, after you go out. You told Darla you didn’t need a doctor, that it was just a scrape, and we just needed to get back to the motel. I gave her the address. Are you feeling dizzy?”
Jake had closed his eyes in an attempt to cope with the idea of Toby talking to people—well, one person—in a prolonged conversation, of his own initiative, when Jake had clearly been worse than useless. He opened them again and shook his head slightly, with better success this time. “No, Toby, it’s just... holy shit.” He grinned, but Tobias didn’t smile back. He looked just as serious and tense as he had when Jake first woke up. Jake’s eyes fell to the notepad in his lap. “What’s that for?”
Tobias smoothed the top sheet, running his fingers over the edges. “I’ve been keeping notes of any changes in your condition, in case... I wanted a record so I could show—the doctors, or whoever, at the hospital. Darla asked several times if we were sure you shouldn’t see a doctor, and she wrote down her number for us to call her to check in, no matter what.”
Jake whistled low. “Look at you go, tiger. You scored your first number, and I don’t remember a thing.”
Tobias bit his lip. “Maybe we should go to a doctor. Memory loss, that’s... that’s not good, could be a sign of something worse—”
“Nah, Toby, don’t worry. This ain’t the first time I’ve had trouble piecing together a night.” Jake tried for his cheekiest grin, and Tobias finally managed a wobbly smile, a poor imitation of the one just yesterday.
Jake took a good, hard look at him. Tobias was pale and pinched, but that wasn’t much different from how he generally looked, especially under stress, although Jake had just begun to think he’d helped fill those edges out.
Jake glanced at the other bed. Toby was always obsessively, neurotically tidy, but it didn’t look like he had even sat on the bed. “Did you get any shut-eye, or was I just that gorgeous to watch?”
Toby hesitated. “I d-didn’t want to miss anything, in case you...”
Toby’s chair looked pretty damn uncomfortable, and Toby agreed, if his hunched posture over the notebook was any clue. Slowly, stiffly, Jake worked his left arm out from under the sheet and patted the space beside him. “C’mere, tiger.”
Tobias hesitated for just a moment before setting the legal pad aside and moving quickly around to the other side of the bed. He crawled cautiously to Jake’s side, careful not to jostle him, and stretched out facing him, pressing his hands between his knees.
Jake gingerly turned on his side, wincing at the throb in his head. Tobias’s hazel eyes flickered. “Careful.”
