Page 68 of Fire
Tobias glanced toward Jake, emerging from behind his building with one fewer explosive charge.
Tobias looked toward where Crusher had disappeared. This was the first time a feeling had fought its way through the dull blank horror of being back in Freak Camp, and that feeling wasoh hell no you’re not getting away.
Left to his own devices, Tobias would never have returned to this place. He would have gone anywhere in the world rather than return to Freak Camp. But he was here now because Jake was here. Blood was running through the dirt from guards and monsters alike, and there was no way he was going to let escape that fucking guard who had almost broken him and Jake. Not the bastard who had literally ripped people apart and gotten off on it, who had forced him to his knees time and again.
And Tobias had been forced every time, even when he had said yes, when he had asked for it. He knew that now, even though he still struggled every day to believe it.
Tobias caught Jake’s eye and gestured toward the barracks where he had seen Crusher disappear. Jake gave him a thumbs-up, but Tobias was already jogging toward his quarry. He hadn’t really been asking permission, because that wasn’t what partners needed to do. He was going after Crusher. If he didn’t take outthatbastard, there was no point behind this whole ride back to hell.
Tobias felt the bile rise in his throat and his palms slick with sweat as he cautiously edged around the corner. He recognized the spot viscerally, a second after his skin began to crawl and his heart rate spiked.
This was Head Alley. He might have tried to pretend it was just fear of an ambush, but Tobias knew that wasn’t the reason for the adrenaline spike. His body remembered what happened when he followed Crusher into this alley.
When he turned the corner, weapon ready, he saw Crusher swearing and fumbling with his gun. Tobias could see blood on the magazine that wouldn’t quite fit into the gun anymore. He wondered distantly if Crusher had gotten the blood on the gun during the fighting, or if it had been there since he’d raped some poor bastard another day. The man had never kept a clean dick, why would he keep a clean gun?
Rape, that’s what it is, whether you’re fucking a vamp, or a shifter, or a little girl, you son of a bitch.
“Elmer Sloan,” Tobias said, and pulled up his mask to his forehead.
Crusher looked up, teeth bared, his expression animalistic. Then he recognized Tobias. A hint of triumph came into his eyes. Crusher had hurt Tobias before, used him, and Crusher was not smart enough to understand that their positions were different now. Maybe because Crusher fucking Sloan had never changed, except to learn how he could better get away with the same old depravities.
“Well, if it isn’t Pretty Freak.” Crusher straightened and smirked at the weapon in Tobias’s hand. “Looks like someone let you hold a gun.”
Tobias’s hand clenched involuntarily. He had to consciously flex his fingers to re-tighten his self-control. He wasn’t going to waste a single fucking bullet because he let Crusher get to him.
“Yes,” Tobias answered, ignoring the distant ghost of himself that whispered sir at the end. “Jake gave me a gun, and I’m going to put you down with it.”
Crusher’s face twisted into a snarl. “I’m gonna cut your fingers off for that, freak. I’m gonna take that gun and fuck you with it and fucking blow off the roof of your mouth afterward.”
“You’re never going to fuck anything again, Crusher.” At Freak Camp, threatening a guard meant torture. Pointing a gun at one would have been death. But that Freak Camp had already started to burn. Tobias raised his gun.
Crusher brought his weapon up and got a shot off wide. He started to rush forward, and Tobias pulled the trigger.
A thousand, a million times—he’d never counted, for the same reason he tried so hard not to remember anything but Jake from his childhood—Crusher had come at him with a club, a crazy light in his eyes. A thousand, a million times, Tobias had taken it because he was helpless, worthless, powerless. A thousand, a million times, Tobias had taken whatever this bastard gave him because he had to, because he hadn’t believed he deserved anything more and it wouldn’t have mattered if he had.
But Tobias wasn’t that helpless monster kid anymore.
Crusher stumbled and fell, gurgling from the bullet hole in his chest. Tobias hadn’t wanted to risk missing a head shot. He walked toward him.
Crusher looked up at him, eyes widening, bloody foam bubbling at his lips. “Please,” he whispered. Even as he choked, Tobias could see him fumbling for the knife he always kept at his belt.
“We begged,” Tobias whispered. He could barely speak. It wasn’t nausea in his throat anymore, nor fear clouding his eyes. It was the memory of how he had felt every time Crusher had forced him to his knees, cut into him with that knife, or had someone else screaming under him. “We begged, and it never did any damn good.” With his gloved hand he grabbed Crusher by the hair, careful to keep one eye on the hand trying for the knife. “But you’ll never hurt anyone again.” Tobias shoved his gun against Crusher’s temple and pulled the trigger.
Crusher jerked, and Tobias let him drop. He fired two more rounds into Crusher’s chest, where the heart should have been, and then Tobias had to stop and just breathe.
For the first time, Tobias didn’t hate being inside Freak Camp, didn’t feel distant guilt gnawing at him for every human life he and Jake had taken. Monsters came in all shapes and sizes, and this, right here, was the worst one he had ever seen.
Tobias had killed monsters before, things that had destroyed families and communities and lives. Looking down at Elmer “Crusher” Sloan’s bloody, shattered corpse, Tobias remembered Marco, Kayla, himself, and dozens of nameless others. He couldn’t think that it was anything but a job well done.
Tobias met up with Jake after that, and except for a silent look and a nod between them, they didn’t discuss it. Jake didn’t need to know why there was blood on his glove, and Tobias didn’t need to ask where Jake’s second backup bag of weapons and ammunition had gone. He could see a handful of prisoners shooting guards instead of just ripping them apart. Most of the ones with guns were witches missing a hand or the occasional shifter. Tobias had a fleeting moment to wonder again if he would see Kayla among them, if she had survived, before they turned to the main building.
The basic core of their plan was guns-blazing and burn-the-walls-down, but in order to get away with it, they had to be smart too. Alice had told them where the facility’s records and little black boxes were kept in Administration, and she stressed that if they didn’t want footage of their faces splashed across the five o’clock news, they had to make sure to reduce that particular area to rubble.
Administration was also where Director Jonah Dixon kept his office, but Tobias knew for Jake that was more a feature than a bug.
Alice hadn’t said as much, but they both assumed that the Director would be present on the day that she gave the all-clear for the attack.
Tobias entered the building a little before Jake, past the guard station that was already empty and broken before him, laying charges as he went. He already knew where the video surveillance hub was, but he slowed down as he moved through the familiar hallways, alarms screaming in his ears and the sounds of monsters and guards in the yard fading out with distance and the thick walls. When he came to the door he knew so damn well, he stopped.
