Page 37 of Freak Camp
It wasn’t that far a drive, but it felt like forever.It felt longer than that first night when he had carried Jake into the Eldorado after Sally’s funeral, wrapping him in a coat in the front seat even though it wasn’t as safe as the back—Leon had been a careful man in those days, and Jake had been his baby, the only thing he still cared about—and driving, driving until he didn’t know the name of a single goddamned road.He figured that if he didn’t know where he was, then the Dixons wouldn’t be able to follow.If he didn’t have a plan, they couldn’t show up at his front door with that polite, insincere smile on their face, asking after Jake, asking if Leon was dealing okay, if maybe he would find it easier to deal with his grief without sole responsibility for an also-grieving four-year-old.
“He’s a child,” Elijah said.“Of course you can’t expect him to really understand what’s going on.We’d be happy to take him for a few days if you need a moment to yourself ...”
“You can get off my goddamned porch,” Leon replied.
The smile dropped off Elijah’s face, and he was the same bastard Leon remembered from the days when he had been courting Sally, when Elijah had looked at him like the blue-blooded Pennsylvania gentry he thought he was and like Leon was just trash, born and raised in West Virginia.“Watch your mouth, Hawthorne.That boy is ours as much as yours.”
Leon cocked the shotgun.Elijah looked unarmed, but he didn’t believe that for a second.“Leave and don’t come back.”
Elijah stepped back.“You can’t cut us out of Jake’s life.We’ll talk later.”He turned and walked away.
Arriving at the police station was worse, because only then did Leon realize that he didn’t have a plan.
Hunting was easy.Hunting made sense.Find a monster, then shoot it.If it’s not human, if it’s hurting people, then it’s a monster, and you put it down.He’d seen how any kind of power, any kind of extra ability could turn bad, could twist a person up inside until they weren’t really human any more.
Hell, he knew he had some black spots, and those he blamed on monsters too.Even the spots that he sometimes had to admit had been there before Sally died.It was easier.
If he walked into that station and said he was there to pick up the kid, they would check his ID, and if Jake had been giving them as hard a time as he expected—that’s my boy, give ’em hell—they would be thorough enough to see through the fakes that usually worked on civilians.The civilians would accept anything he said, but these cops ...They would want to know, especially given all the rumors about where Jake had come from.
Rumors that made going in and admitting that Jake was his son—he was Leon’s goddamned son, give him back right now—more impossible.He would be in for neglect at least—how could you leave a thirteen-year-old alone for a week?Jesus, Leon, when did you become such a bastard?—perhaps abuse; maybe they’d even have the balls to nail him for some of the things he’d done to keep them alive, back when he would have rather spit in his own eye than accept any aid from the fucking government that employed the Dixons.Now he took the stipend, collecting through so many channels that they’d never been able to trace it, but over the years he’d done everything from small-time scams and credit card fraud to shoplifting and bash-and-grabs.Yeah, he’d done things that he wasn’t proud of, but he didn’t think about them much, and no one gave a damn when he was saving their asses from the latest poltergeist.
He’d never had to think about any of that until now, when he knew any mention of his name could land him in a jail cell across from Jake.At the very least it would send up a red flag, and a Dixon would be there within a day, maybe a few hours, and then they would take Jake away from him.He knew they could.He had seen the Dixons put away enough monsters, had seen them convince enough senators and civilians that their torture camp was not only a good idea (though he had to admit, it was useful sometimes) but also a humane one, that he knew taking one thirteen-year-old away from a drunk, obsessed, criminal hunter wouldn’t be a problem for them.
But there was one way he could get Jake out with no one asking questions.Yeah, the Dixons would see, and they might suspect, and it would give them more damned ammunition to use against him if they could ever really catch him, but he and Jake would be in and out before anyone could show up here.They would hit the ground, head to Truth or Consequences, and lay low at Roger’s for a few days.Leon hated taking charity, hated bringing anyone else into their problems, but it would be good to have another head, another pair of eyes watching Jake, making sure that someone was around to protect him when Leon was being a fucking idiot.
He wouldn’t even have to say that Jake was a monster.He could just flash the ID, and no one would ask any questions, because that was how the ASC worked.They would just look in his eyes, and they would know there was a monster in their building.
Shame that they would always guess the wrong one.
***
Two states, ten days, two stolen cars, and three close misses—two authority figures and one pervert who hadn’t expected him to know how to break his fingers from that position—after running from the apartment, Jake got caught and was dragged kicking and screaming into the local precinct office.
After the first broken nose, they stopped treating him like a scared, misguided teen and took off the kid gloves.Jake was good, but they were full-grown adults, and there were a lot of them, forcing him into cuffs and dragging him deeper into the police station.
In the middle of trying to fight them off in an interrogation room, kicking kneecaps and calling them every dirty name he knew—and a few he made up on the spot—Jake realized that this prison, this confinement, was Tobias’s life every day.Trapped in a little box, held down, beat up just because he was considered less.
Like a shoulder popping into place, a lot of things that Jake had been feeling for a long time, maybe for years, snapped together, and he knew what he was going to do if he ever got out of there, if he ever got to walk out in the sun, burn ghosts, or just get out of the damned cell.
Right then he decided he was going to get Toby out, no matter what.No one should have to live like this, and especially not Toby.
It wasn’t a new idea.It had been brewing in his head for a while.But it crystallized the moment when his teeth sank into some asshole’s hand and an elbow slammed into his diaphragm.After that it was just Jake fighting them, fighting them with his eyes when his arms and legs were tied down, and waiting for Dad to spring him.He knew he would.Dad always came for him.He just didn’t know if it would be gunplay, or a bomb, or a kind of one-man extraction heist like in the movies.
When Dad finally came for him, it was terrifyingly easy.
Leon walked in and held up his hunter ID.The Agency for Supernatural Control ID that he never used, barely touched, wouldn’t talk about.
“You have the boy,” he said.
The cop swallowed.He looked into the man’s face and saw death.Cold, merciless, unflinching death.
“Yeah.I mean, yes, sir.”He nodded at the ID.“Makes sense for him to be a monster.He put up quite a fight for a, what, fifteen-year-old?Couple of our people had to get medical attention.Guess we were lucky.”
“About what I expected,” Leon Hawthorne said, tucking the stiff, pristine, silver-edged ID back in his suit.“I need you to burn everything you have on him.Every photo, every file you put together.In fact, you should forget you ever saw him.It’s better that way.Where do you have him?”
The officer had never turned a monster over to ASC before, but he knew how it was supposed to work.No questions, no paper trail.“First door on the left, Mr.Hawthorne.”
When Jake saw his father at the door, when the cop released him from the cell—but didn’t take off the cuffs—he got up without a word and let himself be pushed through the halls with a rough hand between his shoulders.All the way to the door, he noticed how eyes skittered away from him, afraid to catch the monster’s attention.
