Page 55 of Freak Camp
“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.
***
That night, after eveningroll 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, Ipaidfor 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 getanotherblanket, 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 gonnableedyou,” he growled, sinking his fingers into Tobias’s throat under his collar.“Then I’m going to bleedintoyou, 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, withouteverdying.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.
