The incessant ringing of Harlow Blackmore’s phone dragged him from sleep. Blinking, he stared groggily at the gray ceiling of his bedroom. The unending thirst that was always biting at his heels hit him hard, making his vision sway where he lay. It was way past time for some water. Drinking wouldn’t make it fully go away, but it would help somewhat.
Harlow groaned as his phone continued to ring, loudly singingMy Boy Lollipop. A song he now hated with the passion of a thousand suns. Not that he really had enjoyed it before, but his handler being the person that she was, had decided the song would be his permanent sleep interrupter. Saying some bullshit about ‘this way, you’ll know when it’s me, and that you have to answer’. He had yet to figure out how to change it.
Harlow rubbed the grime from his eyes, the bed squeaking as he shifted—it was definitely time to replace the whole thing.
Harlow’s joints popped in protest when he reached out, blindly grabbing for his cell phone on the nightstand.
Once Harlow had it in his hand, instead of answering, he glanced at the time flashing across the top of the screen, and barely held back the urge to chuck it across the room.
Fucking 5am—he’d been asleep for an hour at most. With a growl, he flipped his phone open and connected the call. “What do you want?!”
“Well, good morning to you too, Honeybear.” His handler, Charity Bartlett's, voice rang out joyfully.
“Can it, Charity. I’m running on an hour of sleep, and that makes me extra stabby. But you should know that since I sent the paperwork for the last case at 3:58am. To add on, you are no doubt fully aware that my precious week-long vacation starts in about thirty-something hours. What could you possibly want me to do in that little time?”
His week-long vacation pretty much consisted of him going out to his cabin in the woods, fishing, sleeping, and maybe a s’more or two.
She snorted. “Everything makes you ‘extra stabby’, so I can’t say I’m impressed.”
This motherfucking woman…
“What do you want?”
“Call came in. There’s a rogue hunter in our area. Almost caused the death of two biters, but both were found before the sun charred them too badly. Boss and the locals want this settled pronto, before this jackass actually kills someone. As it is, he's looking at charges.”
Harlow groaned loudly. “Can’t I deal with it when I come back?”
“No.”
“Ugh, fuck you.”
“Love you, too,” Charity said in a sing-song voice.
“Die.”
“ANYWHO! I’ll email you the information. Happy hunting!”
Stupid ass hunters. No, this idiot wasn’t even a hunter, just a wannabe. Harlow was a hunter—a government-licensed hunter that was usually vampire specific, but that hadn’t stopped him from going after other creatures in the past. Well, he pretty much went after whoever he was assigned to go after now. There wasn’t exactly a plethora of hunters for them to be picky about who they sent.
Oh, if only it were the past. The good old days. Back when vampires, werewolves, and all the rest of the paranormal species, were hidden from the general public, and believed to be evil incarnate.
Only seven years had passed since the grand reveal of paranormal creatures to the world. After a violent year or so, rights activists had gotten their panties in a twist, and started a crusade of getting all the bloodsuckers and furballs, and whatever else they found out existed, the same rights as humans. For the most part, that is. There were still things lagging behind. The last time he checked, humans could not end up with a death warrant on their heads.
Either way, gone were the easy assignments where he could kill any creature on sight. And he’d gone from being a secret, somewhat shady—okay, very shady—government employee to a regular old government employee. Oh, and he also got a handler, who gave him his cases and paperwork, and dealt with his messes. His ‘lovely’ adult babysitter. Well, at least he no longer had to hide the bodies.
Truth be told, he liked being stabby. Harlow liked the violence, the blood, the terror in the eyes of the ones he snuffed out after they’d put up a good fight. Ahh, the days of that being his every job…those were the days.
Harlow would admit he was a bit of a psycho… Not certified, but he had some pretty damning qualities that all pointed towards it.
He had no blood family, as far as he knew, that gave a damn, and he’d been shuffled around between one horrible foster home to another. The only sort of family he could claim was some young punk who had a hero-worship thing going on for him. The kid sort of popped up randomly to wreak chaos before fucking off again.
But, yeah, he went through all those fun fucked up childhood things that sometimes left one with a lot of pent-up aggression…and very little moral compass. Though, in his case, he wasn’t sure he had that compass to begin with.
But, hey, he’d never murdered a human… At least, not that anyone could prove. The only ones the government knew about were those he killed in self-defense. Hazard of the job sometimes. He definitely had killed humans before. But he hadn’t killed any that had simply pissed him off—at least, again, not that anyone could prove. He counted that as a win. Staying out of jail and away from the death penalty was a massive win in his book.
Oh well… At least hestillhad termination calls. They just weren't every job now. Because as long as vampires bit the willing—which there were a lot of—or drank bagged blood, they were fit to live their second lives in peace. Same with werewolves and the various other changelings, when it came to infecting others. As long as the humans wanted the bite, and proper measures were taken to protect others during the full moon, then their existence was a-okay.
The various other creatures out there also had their own shiny, brand-new government regulations to follow as well. Though, the largest paranormal populations were vampires and werewolves, so it was rare he ran into much else on the job.
