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F oxx jogged up the steps, passing the fourth floor without pause. When he reached the fifth, he found the door was windowless and unlocked—thanks to Gavin’s skills.

With the others behind him, he opened it, and was unsurprised to find himself in a small room. But then, that had been on the digital reconstruction of the building that Gavin had shown them. The room was likely there so one could leave without risking letting out any of the screams of the paranormals they’d captured.

“Odd that they didn’t put a fancy lock on the inner door,” he mused.

“As much as it was a pain to find and hack into the cameras and servers, the electric door locks they used, and the rest of their security here is pretty low tech,” Gavin informed them.

Foxx would think putting an extra door lock on the floor where they were holding paranormals would be a priority. But what did he know? He was just the stupid, violent vampire breaking in and killing everyone.

Foxx pulled open what turned out to be a pretty thick door, breaking the soundproof barrier. As he stepped in and heard the groans of pain, growls, and animalistic screams, he quickly realized the heartbeats he’d heard were all paranormal.

“The rest of the humans must have gone all the way up.”

He eyed the hallway, which was half the length of the ones they’d seen so far, past the stairway doors below. There wasn’t much to see besides closed doors. But they’d set the floor up almost like a maze, and he knew the cells didn’t start until you passed the bend of this hallway, the doors here leading to security rooms and offices.

“All of the cells are here, right?” Mari asked.

“Yes,” Harlow grunted.

“Should we let them out?—”

“Shh!” Foxx cut the dragon off as he heard something. Listening to the heartbeats, there were thirty-eight in total, which told him the teen had likely been a new capture, but more importantly, they told him that six of the paranormals were not confined.

Foxx spun, and only managed to take a step back before the wall beside him burst open in a rain of plaster. He went down under the snarling brown female bipedal werewolf, who had just broken through, its clawed hands pressing down on his shoulders.

Seeming stunned from going through the wall, Foxx used the time the wolf took to get her bearings to wedge his feet under her.

He tried to shove her off him, swearing, “Fuck!” when he only managed to lift her up.

With one last shake of her head, the wolf’s glowing green eyes focused down on him, her clawed hands clamping down on his arms. Foxx pressed himself back against the floor, doing his best to avoid her teeth as she snarled and tried to bite him, her spittle raining down.

He heard other growls and hisses, along with the sound of fighting going on around him as he continued to hold her back—the other five had apparently followed her to them.

“Don’t kill them!” Mari cried.

Foxx would have looked to see what was going on when the noises and sounds of fighting suddenly stopped, but he was too busy trying to avoid getting his face eaten.

Dropping into his bloodline powers, his vision flickered as the wolf’s threads lit up. Foxx’s eyes widened, his brow rising high in question at what he saw, as it frankly didn’t make any bloody sense.

When the werewolf was yanked off him, his normal vision dropped back into place. Harlow pulled him to his feet as he watched her slam into the wall at the bend in the hall.

“You’re bleeding,” the man huffed, his hands brushing over his arms .

Foxx met the dhampir’s gaze and smiled. “Just small nicks, I’m fine.”

Harlow grunted and frowned, before looking back at the werewolf who was getting to her feet. “Witch, do something or it dies.”

“She,” he corrected. “Or, at least, biologically they are female.”

The dhampir didn’t respond to that as he was already rushing to meet the charging wolf.

“He’s never checked my injuries before, or even looked at them,” Gavin grumbled.

Foxx looked over at the dragon, before glancing around, his brow pulling as he spotted five new faces—five blank new faces, two who were very naked. He recognized the three vampires from the grainy cell footage they’d watched—sort of. The footage had been both pixelated and blurry.

The question was…why were they neutralized, but not the wolf who had attacked him?

Looking back at Gavin, who was clearly pouting, he cheekily said, “Well, he’s dating and fucking me, soooo…”

Though now that he thought about it, even before they were dating, the few times he’d gotten injured, Harlow had checked them. Or at least looked. Even during that cult case. Well, maybe that had just been to point out that he had stupidly gotten shot.

Though, he supposed it was hard not to check when the man had found him impaled that one time… But Harlow had taken care of him when he’d been healing. He'd even checked, cleaned, and rebandaged his wounds, along with bathed him, and they definitely hadn’t been dating then.

“So because I don’t have a fat ass, he doesn’t care?!”

“I mean, from what I can see, you do, but it's likely he would have checked if you had been seriously injured.”

When had Harlow started checking the small things? Was it in that house full of blood moon powered werewolves?

Gavin peeked at his own ass. “It is pretty nice.”

Foxx snorted.

“What did you see?” Mari asked.

Glancing at her, he frowned. “Something’s wrong with her threads. She was a turned werewolf, but her blue lines were…” He trailed off, his frown deepening as he thought about how best to describe it. “Shattered. It was like they had been turned to glass and someone had shattered them, or blew them up, as the shards were sticking out of her white threads.”

Foxx winced when Harlow was thrown through a wall.

As the man appeared back out of the Harlow-sized hole, the dhampir growled, “Decide, witch!”

Brushing off the plaster dust, Harlow leaped at the wolf, who had started towards them, grappling her to the ground.

“Witch!” the dhampir growled impatiently, as he was bucked off again and pushed back to his feet.

Mari sighed. “Kill her, there is nothing left but a violent, mindless beast.”

Harlow didn’t hesitate. In quick succession, he pulled out a gun and fired, putting a bullet into the creature’s skull. The werewolf jerked, hesitating as part of its head burst, but just as with the others who were infected, one bullet hadn’t killed it. It wasn’t until the third that the werewolf finally fell.

Foxx slowly approached, eyeing the body. “What the hell did they do to her?” he rasped, as what he saw made about as much sense as her threads had.

The wolf wasn’t changing back…the body remained shifted, as if even in death her humanoid side was truly lost.

Gavin, who had followed, cleared his throat. “I stole the data on their servers and computers before we even came here. I can go through it and see what I can figure out. From the brief glance I did through some of it, I know they didn’t keep names, but I’ll see if I can figure out who she is, so at the very least her family will know what happened…and they can stop looking, if they are.”

Foxx sighed. “Maybe we should go through and grab whatever we can find of the drugs they were making here. Data or not, it would be good to have.”

He glanced at Harlow, who’d walked up beside him, and brushed some of the dust off the man.

He didn’t smell any of the dhampir’s blood, so he could only assume Harlow was fine, but he still asked, “You good?”

“Peachy.” The dhampir smirked. “However…I don’t know if you noticed, but I saw quite a bit of smashed up shit on the floor in the labs below. I think whatever they did have is likely already destroyed.”

Foxx wrinkled his nose. “Well, I guess that just means less work for us, but more work for Doc, or whoever looks into this.”

“It’s fine. Unlike the other locations, they kept excellent lab notes, from what I saw, with everything broken down, so…” Gavin shrugged. “We don’t really need it.”

“The question is…why did they? The other places didn’t even have cameras, let alone an internet connection or a server.”

“It's likely that first place would have at one point, as there were computers on the upper floor, and cameras that had yet to be connected or turned on. I’m guessing, most of their labs will be this way, as they’d need to document to make any progress on the shit they’d been working on.

“To be honest, the way they set everything up is quite secure. In that no average or even semi decent hacker would be able to find, let alone access the servers, but as I haven’t been average in a long ass time—” Gavin chuckled. “—I know how and where to look.”

Foxx felt that if someone were going to have a secret and very illegal operation, one would stick to things that couldn’t be hacked…like…cameras that didn’t save the feed in another location or…

Harlow scoffed. “This new fucking generation and their obsession with technology. Why the fuck wouldn’t they just write their progress down? Use files—paper files? Or go fucking analog or some shit.”

“Harlow, you are such an old man.” Foxx giggled. “Also, aren’t you just a generation before?”

“I’m generation X, thank you very much.”

“Elder gen Z, here!” Gavin laughed. “But I agree, analog or even more simple, a pen and paper, would definitely be the way to go.”

“I—" Foxx started to say, but stopped when Mari cut in.

“Are all the paranormals on this floor?”

The dragon turned to her. “All of the cages and cells are on this floor. And since they kept to a consistent routine while carrying out their twisted efforts, everyone that is still alive would be here at this time. I’m guessing they just let the six out in the hope they’d take care of us.”

Foxx couldn’t help but wonder what exactly the humans had planned to do if the six had succeeded. As, great, they’d have gotten rid of the attackers, but now they had six highly violent and dangerous paranormals running rampant, instead of three paranormals and a witch.

Mari hummed. “Then while you finish off the rest, I’ll handle things here.”

He frowned. “Are you sure? While these six were the ones who were consistently volatile, I don’t know what state the rest will be in.”

“It will be fine.” She smiled. “Go kill the bastards. I’ll be waiting for you all at the meet up point, my grandson and his friends should already be there.” Mari started to walk away after that, but paused to add, “Oh, by the way, I’ll be removing the barrier as I leave, so no one will question a burning building making no sound. You should be fine still though, as the floor you’ll be on is soundproofed.”

He grimaced as he remembered exactly where he had spotted the meet up location on the map. “The city park is quite a walk from here.”

“All will be well.” Without looking back, she waved them away and walked further down the hall.

Foxx eyed the blank faced paranormals as they passed him, following her, before smiling as he looked at Harlow and Gavin, saying, “Let’s finish this.”