Fire (A Monster By Any Other Name #5)

Chapter 1

The closer they got to the Crossroads Inn, the less fucking sure Jake felt about showing their faces.

It was stupid to ride into Kansas like this in his gorgeous but maybe a touch recognizable car. Stupid to bring Toby into a place with this many hunters. Stupid to head straight into what could be a trap. And very stupid to arrive while still in the dark about who they were even looking for.

But this wasn’t about following a case’s loose ends or checking up on a fellow hunter. It was about figuring out whether Toby was in danger and making sure no one had the jump on them.

The first two digits, Toby explained, indicated the year the inmate entered the camp.

The next two letters identified the type of supernatural: SS for shapeshifter, VP for vampire, WW for werewolf, and so on.

He only remembered a couple other prisoners who’d had the same UI in their ID number that meant unidentified.

Unidentified government bullshit, in Jake’s opinion.

“None of us had any powers.” Toby shook his head, his gaze distant. “They ran a lot of tests”—Toby’s voice was measured, even, but Jake clenched the steering wheel hard enough to leave indents—“but never found anything. At least not on me.”

Even the release papers that Director Jonah Dixon had handed Jake the day he’d taken Toby out of that fucking prison didn’t give a hint about what “unidentified” meant. They also didn’t say anything about why Toby was locked up in the first fucking place when he was all of five years old.

“I don’t remember anything.” Toby stared out the windshield, his hands folded together in his lap. “Nothing of before, or how I was brought there, or when I arrived. My first memories have always been—” He broke off, shaking his head.

Jake didn’t want to ask. He never had asked.

To be totally honest with himself, he didn’t know if he could handle hearing about Toby’s first memories of his life in that place.

He’d always known Toby was so much stronger than him, but he rarely felt like such a straight-up coward.

Maybe he could get an adulthood gold star for knowing his limitations or whatever bullshit. He doubted it.

The least he could do was not make this harder for Toby than it already was.

They took a hotel room one town over (no sense being any more obvious than the Eldorado made them already) and got takeout for dinner.

Jake spent the rest of that evening cleaning his guns, his knives, anything he could get his hands on.

More than once he looked up, sure that Toby was watching him (and didn’t that suck, if Toby could tell that what they were doing wasn’t exactly smart).

Each time Toby’s gaze was focused elsewhere.

If his avoidance came from fear, it would have made Jake sick, but he was pretty sure that it was worry hunching Toby’s shoulders and keeping his hands moving.

Kind of like Jake’s own, come to think of it. He couldn’t blame Toby for that.

* * *

The silence between them in the motel was a strange thing, almost a conversation in itself.

Toby didn’t want to break it, even if sometimes all he wanted was for Jake to laugh and tell him something random, like a movie reference or his latest suspicions on whether the Eldorado might have been making a weird noise.

But there was too much under the surface.

They moved around each other in the motel, sharpening blade after blade, putting them away again, repacking bags, silently aware that they may not be returning to this room.

For his part, Tobias tried to will the knowledge to Jake that he was here for him, beside him for whatever danger they were about to face.

He wasn’t completely sure it was working.

“The Crossroads Inn doesn’t open until eleven,” Jake said, breaking the silence. “No use showing up until then.”

The blade Tobias had been cleaning almost cut him when he twitched. Carefully, he put the knife aside. “You want to head over right at eleven, or later?”

“Might be a lunch rush later.” Jake scrubbed at his eyes and ran his hands through his hair. “Yeah, showing up around eleven would probably be good. I’m not sure . . . yeah, as long as Barbara’s there, I can put in a word with her and then we can get the hell out.”

Tobias nodded. That made sense. He didn’t know much about Barbara, and what he knew about the Crossroads Inn was mostly gossip and casual references picked up over the years, but he didn’t want Jake there any longer than he had to be either, not without backup.

Objectively, Tobias knew that Jake wouldn’t face the same danger as Tobias from a room full of hunters.

But by that same logic, he knew that Jake wasn’t as safe there as he had been when he had only been Leon Hawthorne’s son.

Before he became a freakfucker, the voice in the back of his head whispered.

Tobias shoved it away. It wasn’t true, either by Jake’s definition or literally.

Still, plenty of hunters saw Jake that way now.

Tobias had never heard anyone say so outside of FREACS (the only hunter they hung out with was Roger, after all), but he’d heard it countless times inside the camp.

Those hunters held a derisive contempt for what they assumed to be Jake’s intention, like that qualified him as freakfucker in some way that didn’t apply to them.

As Jake put it, if hunters and assholes were to be believed, screwing monsters didn’t make you a freakfucker. Giving a damn about them was the real crime.

“You can drop me off somewhere in town before you go to the Inn.” Tobias hoped his voice was steadier and more certain than he felt. “Somewhere close, and you can meet me afterward.”

Jake raised a quizzical eyebrow. “You’re not staying here?”

Tobias didn’t want to be that far from Jake. He wanted to stay close enough to be there if shit hit the fan, even if it cost him his life. But common sense told him that waiting in the Eldorado while Jake walked into a bar full of hunters was not a good idea.

“I want to be in town. I c-can’t go with you, but . . .” Tobias shrugged. “M-maybe a restaurant or something? Then you could come back after and fill me in.”

Jake nodded, slowly, but his eyes were a little wild. Tobias wasn’t sure how much he was hearing, how much he was actually processing. “Yeah. I’ll be glad to have you there, Toby.”

And that was good too.

* * *

Jake dropped Toby at a little diner called Tina’s Cafe not far from the Crossroads Inn.

He waved as Jake drove away, his backpack slung over his shoulder like he was an honest-to-God college student.

Worry flashed through Jake that his looks would send up a flag, like someone would notice there wasn’t a college or anything in the area.

Then he could have kicked himself. Tobias was young enough still to be in high school, so that was how he would pass.

Just another kid trying to get some homework done without being bothered.

Jake was stalling. He turned the Eldorado out toward the edge of town and the Crossroads Inn.

Located an hour outside Dodge City in Coldwater, Kansas, the Crossroads Inn had been a watering hole for hunters as long as Jake had been alive.

The rumors were that the owner, Barbara Mikhailov, had been a hunter at one point herself, or someone close to her had been, and that was why the place welcomed the profession.

Jake had even heard that the establishment had been hunter-friendly before the ASC existed.

It wasn’t a place where you went to flash your badge and give a report.

Rather, it was an establishment that offered cold drinks and sympathetic ears for wherever life had taken you . . . or taken out of you.

It wasn’t much to look at, but that was exactly the way the hunting community liked it.

Just a basic bar surrounded by hay fields, just outside the tiny town.

It was far enough from civilization that whatever was said (and whatever nasty might attack the place, should it come to that) could go unnoticed.

Jake had only been there a handful of times with Leon, but he knew the regulars fairly well.

It had been a good place to stop, lick their wounds, and catch up on whatever was going on beneath or around the ASC.

The bar looked the same as Jake remembered. Dark, battered wooden siding and a handful of pickup trucks in the gravel parking lot. Jake scanned them but none were black like his father’s, and he didn’t recognize any of the other ones.

Stepping through the door, he re-entered a world he thought he’d left behind for good.

He’d been in bars since getting Toby out—hell, he’d been in bars with Toby.

But here, hunting protocols were brazenly obvious for those with the training to notice.

He walked over a Devil’s Trap scratched lightly into the floor, and most of the half-dozen men slouching at the bar were openly armed.

They didn’t turn to look at him as he came in, but he could feel their eyes on him as he took a stool at the bar.

It made his skin crawl. He hadn’t been expecting the easy camaraderie of years past: a backslapping greeting, a couple crude jokes, and all the beer he needed to wash down his sorrows.

He also hadn’t expected to feel this much of an outsider.

Barbara herself was tending bar. She wore her curly gray hair pinned up and a blue western-style button-down. While her eyebrows shot up when she saw Jake, her smile looked genuine. The mild edge of concern was real too.

“Jake, long time no see. What can I get you?”

It wasn’t noon yet, but Jake felt that the moment called for a drink. “Beer. Whatever you’ve got on tap.”

“Sure thing.”

Barbara moved back around the bar, grabbing the glass and angling it under the tap. Jake was very aware of the eyes of the other men on him. Their gazes felt like spiders skittering across his skin.