Page 49 of Freak Camp
Jake shrugged and gestured between him and Tobias.“Just talking.”He straightened defensively.“It’s research of my own.Can’t I research while you do?It’s the same thing, isn’t it, you talking to monsters, me talking to Tob—other monsters?”
Tobias didn’t look up, but he could feel Leon Hawthorne’s eyes boring into his head.He hoped that maybe if he didn’t move or speak, Leon would forget he had been there, contaminating his son.
Leon jerked his head.“Come on, pack your stuff.”
Jake jumped up and scrambled to sweep up the deck of cards.His hands brushed Tobias’s, and Tobias jumped.“We’re leaving?New hunt?”
“No, we’re not leaving, but you’re not staying here.”
Jake paused in the act of shoving cards and wrappers into his duffel.“Dad, if we’re not leaving ...”
“You should learn how this shit Dixon administration works.”When Jake didn’t move, Leon took a step closer.“Jake, you’re coming with menow.”
Jake straightened like he’d been slapped, but his expression was still sullen, angry.“Yes, sir.”
He continued packing up, but more slowly.Tobias was glad that anger had never been directed at him, and he marveled at Jake’s bravery, that he could be angry toward a hunter like his father.Maybe it was something that came with being a real person, or maybe it was just Jake.
“Now, Jake,” Leon said.
“I’m coming already.”Jake zipped the duffel closed and swung it over his shoulder.“See you later, Toby.”
“No, you won’t,” Leon said, and Tobias felt his lungs seize up for the second time that day.
But Jake didn’t even flinch.“Well, maybe not today.”He glanced at Tobias, but the next words were still directed at Leon.“But I’ll be back sometime.”
If anything, Leon’s scowl deepened.“Come on.”
“Toby needs to—” Jake began, but his father cut him off.
“The freak can find his own way back to the yard.Go, Jake.”
Jake was sullen and pissed off, but to Tobias’s surprise he didn’t look afraid.“Yes, sir,” he muttered, and walked past his father deeper into Administration.
Tobias expected Leon to follow, but he stood there looking at Tobias, long enough to stop his breath in his chest.
Just when Tobias had resigned himself to being whipped—at least beaten or kicked a couple of times—Leon Hawthorne turned and strode off after Jake.
Tobias breathed a sigh of relief and stole out of Administration, careful not to let anyone else see him.
***
On any given October30th, if the Hawthornes weren’t on a hunt or in the hospital, they found themselves in a bar.
This year it was the Crossroads Inn, and Leon was halfway to drunk on the hardest whiskey he could buy.
Leon was an old-school hunter, an ex-Marine who had entered the great fight against inhuman threats after his wife died at the turning point of the war, when the things crawling in the dark suddenly came into the light.He was a hard man to get to know—he had few friends, and those he had he tended to piss off—but everyone knew that with a weapon in his hand, Leon Hawthorne was one of the most frightening things the monsters would ever see.
Jerry Bentham took a seat next to the hero and bought him a few rounds of drinks.It was an honor.And, drunk enough, perhaps Leon might let slip some secrets, some insights that—beside his ruthless obsession—had made him the best.
“Where’s your boy?”Bentham asked, gesturing for another pair of whiskeys.“He’s, what, fourteen, fifteen now?”
Leon gave a bark of laughter.“Almost seventeen and growing like a goddamn beanstalk.He was here, you saw him.Left with a girl.”
Bentham blinked.He’d noticed the kid who had a couple of drinks with Hawthorne and then left with the hot blonde on his arm.He hadn’t looked twenty-one, but he sure as hell hadn’t looked sixteen.Sixteen was the age of high school drama and pimples, not that cold-eyed assessment of the room and the brazen confidence in his smile at the girl.
“Damn, Hawthorne, you’ve got a good kid there.Lucky all the way around.I’ve even heard you’ve reserved yourself a damn fine piece of monster ass.Good stuff.”
Leon’s eyes were no longer muzzy, but startled and dangerous.“Monster ass?What the fuck are you talking about?”
