Page 45

W ith his gun drawn, Harlow snorted as he looked through the door’s window over Foxx’s head. “I think they’re all in one room.”

But then, it wasn’t like there was much point trying to hide, as there wasn’t really anywhere to go. The top floor was divided into three large labs, and in fact, opened up into one of them right out of the stairwell.

Smirking, he waved at the terrified human who spotted him.

Foxx giggled on trying the door. “They locked it.”

“Likely a manual override,” Gavin mused.

His eyes narrowed as he spotted a man holding a needle. He glanced down to Foxx, and sighed on seeing no sort of bulk under his clothing that even remotely suggested the vampire was armed.

“Foxx, you don’t have your guns on you, do you?”

“Nope!”

He growled. “Do I need to tie one to you or something? Start carrying at least one gun with you!”

The vampire huffed. “But the straps of the holsters don’t always match my outfit!”

“Your—” he sputtered, cutting off at just the sheer ridiculousness. “Foxx, we are literally on a murder spree! Your outfit doesn’t matter, and close combat isn’t always the answer, especially when we are fighting freaks with needles!”

“‘ Doesn’t matter?! ’” Foxx gasped in horror. “It ALWAYS matters. I’m sorry I care about fashion, Mr. Wears The Same Damn Outfit Every Day!”

Gavin chuckled. “OH, he’s got you there.”

Harlow glared. “Oh, but he didn’t. As my outfits don’t all match, because some insane bratty vampire without boundaries stitched a bunch of shit on all of my things.”

Foxx leaned up and kissed his cheek. “You bet I did. Though I think a man who grunted ‘mine’ at me, and threatened to kill anyone I dared to try to date, before we were actually dating, really shouldn’t be trying to lecture me on boundaries .”

Chuckling, he tugged the vampire against him and planted a hard kiss on his lips. “You are, and I will. Complaints, Brat?”

The vampire giggled. “Not a one, Old Man.”

Sighing, he asked, “If we get you a set of holsters in other colors, will you wear your guns more often?”

Though Harlow didn’t really understand why one would bother trying to match clothes that were about to be ruined, but whatever.

“Guns and holsters?”

He scoffed. “That’s going to be an infinitely more expensive request.”

Foxx pouted. “I can afford it.”

“Mmm, my rich, bratty—” Harlow cut off as he stumbled to the side, his arm clenching around Foxx. He sent Gavin, the one who’d just shoved him aside, a warning glare as he snarled.

“No, NO! You do not get to be mad!” the dragon hissed. “Like, what is wrong with you two?! I swear, it’s like you see nothing besides each other half of the time. But I am here to say, you ignoring me does not mean I am not fucking here!”

As his eyes narrowed on them, without looking at what he was doing, Gavin grabbed the door handle and broke it open with a hard jerk.

“I'd rather deal with people trying to murder me than be here witnessing you two creepily flirt and do shit I don’t want to see!” With a hmph, the man entered the room of scared humans, slamming the door behind him.

“Sounds jealous to me,” Foxx said with a sniff.

“He is just a different kind of brat.” Letting the man go, he pulled out his other gun and handed it to him. “Shoot the ones with needles.”

Taking it, the vampire chimed, “Will do!”

Opening the door, he shooed his boyfriend inside. “Go be a menace.”

Giggling evilly, Foxx ran off into the room that was already in a state of chaos, with bullets flying and Gavin chasing people around.

Stepping in, he eyed his surroundings as he listened and counted the heartbeats. At the same time, he started to take headshots from where he stood. The room had a lot of desks, chairs, beakers, vials, surgical instruments, operating tables, not to mention a bunch of large medical equipment, some of it overturned and more toppling as he watched.

And just like all of the members of Maverick’s idiot crew that they’d met so far, they were men. Many were in lab coats, but there were also others in all black outfits, with Kevlar and guns.

If Harlow were to guess…not a single one of them knew how to fucking shoot. Like, he was standing still and not a single shot had hit him.

While the numbers were decreasing, there were still about fifty-five-ish—he took another shot, dropping a man as his head popped up from behind a desk he’d been uselessly firing from—fifty-four-ish humans left.

Harlow smirked as three large men rushed him. Taking two of them cleanly out with a bullet each, he twirled his gun in his hand, slamming the butt into the human’s nose when he reached him on knowing it was empty. The guy screamed as part of his face caved in, his hands grasping at the wound.

Harlow, on the other hand, was staring at his clearly cracked gun with horror. “FUCKING HELL!”

He just barely stopped himself from throwing it. Growling as he held back his scream of rage, Harlow started to angrily bash the rest of the man’s face in, going down to the ground with him, when the human collapsed, to finish the fucking job.

Once the man was dead, with an exasperated groan, he tossed the now useless piece of scrap metal aside and pushed to his feet. “Fucking paranormal strength… Just… FUCK!” Harlow kicked the corpse.

“What’s wrong?” Foxx giggled as he leaped onto the back of a human who had been running towards Harlow in his attempt to flee.

“Broke my fucking gun.” He stared blankly, unmoving while arterial spray hit him as Foxx cut clean through the man’s neck.

“What did we learn?” the vampire asked once he hopped up off the corpse he’d ridden to the ground. Pulling the gun Harlow had given him from his chest pocket, the vampire held it out to him.

Sighing, he took it and holstered it. “To not use my firearms as clubs?”

Foxx patted him on the head. “Exactly!”

He snorted and dragged Foxx aside, as he grabbed the wrist of a human who had been trying to sneakily stab Foxx with a needle. He wasn’t sure how the man hadn’t realized Harlow could see him. Even if the human was the same height as his boyfriend, it wasn’t as if Foxx blocked his view, but whatever.

Giggling again, the vampire skipped away, yelling, “Have fun with that!”

His gaze was drawn with interest down to the blond human, on finding himself dragged forward in the man’s efforts to break his hold.

“What the fuck?!” Gavin shouted.

Harlow glanced towards the dragon at the man’s startled yell, his brow raising when he spotted Gavin on his ass, rubbing his jaw. Scales covered half of the dragon’s face, and his mouth was bleeding. However, Harlow couldn’t see who the man had been fighting from where he stood, as there were just too many left still.

“Forgot about the modified ones, didn’t you, Gavin?” Foxx laughed from wherever he was in the room.

Harlow’s focus flicked back to the short human, when he was forced to step back and release his hold in order to avoid the fist coming for his face.

Smirking, he met the human’s glare, and on finding a bit of confusion there, Harlow laughed. “What? Did you think we couldn’t get one of you to talk? ”

His words implied torture, and they usually would mean torture, but for once, they hadn’t actually done that.

The man growled and lashed out in anger, rushing at him. While the human was faster and stronger than he should be, he was also clearly untrained.

Harlow sighed, lazily backstepping and avoiding each hit. He supposed, wanting a bunch of lab rats and doctors to be skilled fighters was too much to ask for. He wasn’t sure why he had expected better from Maverick’s men…but he had.

No, he knew why…the man was a motherfucking ex-hunter, why the hell was he leading these pathetic rotting bags of dogshit?

Honestly, Harlow had assumed he’d have run into some ex-hunters he’d known by now. But so far, not yet. Maybe they just weren’t willing to work under a bunch of pencil pushing laboratory jockeys, who would likely also see them as lab rats? Or maybe Maverick was putting them to better use, like capturing the paranormals they were experimenting on? It's not like the guards they’d run into so far would have been able to manage that.

When the man swung towards him again, he caught his fist, squeezing and bending it backwards as he did. The human screamed as the bones in his wrist cracked and broke. Harlow used his hold to jerk the man towards him.

While just inches from his face, he growled, “If you know you may end up fighting against people who are stronger than you, the least you can fucking do is prepare for it.” He headbutted the man as he said the last word, letting go after their foreheads connected.

Harlow chuckled, uncaring that he’d injured himself when he felt blood trailing down his brow, while he watched the man howl and try to nurse his injuries. “A little pain and you are falling apart.”

“Shut up!” the idiot roared as he lunged towards him, his good hand outstretched.

Harlow didn’t move, his smile just widening when the human wrapped his hand around his throat. Standing there as the man started to squeeze, cutting off his oxygen, he felt a familiar rush of adrenaline. Not a big rush, but a little.

After, at most, two minutes had passed, the human's face turned red, and chest heaving, the hand he’d wrapped around Harlow’s neck started to shake. Seconds later his air flow returned, while the man’s strength clearly left him.

How…odd—very odd. Harlow had to wonder if the man was just a flawed experiment, or one still in the works. In his mind, there wasn’t much use to having supernatural strength and abilities if one didn’t have the stamina to maintain them.

“Are you done?” he asked between the pauses in the man’s loud, ragged breathing.

The hand on his neck tried to clench again as the human gritted his teeth, but he barely felt it.

Harlow smacked the failed experiment’s hand aside with a laugh, and wrapped his own around the human’s throat. “Let me show you how it’s done.” Harlow squeezed hard without thought…and without holding back.

His left eye started twitching as his hand sank right in and through, the man’s head bursting off like a damn party popper.

“Oh fuck. Not again. Ahh…FUCK!” Harlow gagged, shaking his right hand out as far away from the rest of him as he could, while he still felt the flesh pressing against his skin and under his nails. “Ugh!”

He quickly unzipped his outer left pocket, and opened the pack of wet wipes inside, tugging one free as he swallowed down bile.

With an automatic rifle in his hands, Foxx passed by in front of him, the vampire laughing maniacally as he mowed down a group of humans. Harlow followed him with his eyes as he began to try to wipe away the ‘feeling’ in his right hand. When his boyfriend passed again, chasing after another group, Harlow winced on accidentally meeting the vampire’s gaze while he was meticulously cleaning underneath his nails—shit…