“Listen up, you dumb fuck. You can’t just go around trying to off vampires. There are laws.”
“But they are abominations,” Ned whined. “They have no rights!”
“It. Is. Illegal!” Harlow snapped, slamming the man’s face against the wall to punctuate each word. “Do. You. Understand?!”
“YES!” Ned squealed. “Stop hurting me!”
“GOOD!” Harlow barked. Pulling out a zip tie with his free hand, he released Ned’s neck, yanked the man’s arms behind his back, and tied him up tight. “Sit on the floor, or I’ll break more than just your nose.”
Ned slumped down on a whimper, right into the puddle of piss. Great…just what he needed in his car—piss.
Shaking his head, he turned to the vampire, who had watched the whole show silently. Harlow forced himself to ask, “You hurt?”
For the first time since entering the room, he actually took the time to examine the vampire.
What the hell?Were those overalls? Did his sweater have a pink heart on it? The creature’s large aquamarine green eyes stared up at him, and he was smiling, cheeks flushed, as if Harlow hadn’t just bloodied a man in front of him. The smile was lopsided, and only one of the vampire’s fangs showed—for fuck’s sake, he had dimples… What kind of vampire has dimples?
The vampire looked young and was short as shit. Couldn’t be taller than five-foot-four. Why was he wearing a hat? Did he have a bald spot under it?
Harlow snorted out loud at the thought. How funny would it be if he had all those black curls and then a shiny dome on top!
The male started to approach and then was suddenly clinging onto his arm like an octopus. “Thank you for saving me, Mr.! Name’s Foxx Honeywell!” Foxx said brightly, his accent on the thicker side. If he were to guess… British? The little shit actually had the gall to flutter his long black eyelashes at him—oh God, the kid had freckles on his cheeks and above his button nose.
Though, kid probably wasn’t correct. While Foxx looked to be in his twenties, that didn’t mean he was. Actually, all his instincts were telling him he was in a room with a very dangerous predator. Not a feeling Harlow often got, even when he was going against a paranormal creature that he knew had done some fucked up shit.
Damn, how out of it was he that he let Foxx get this close to him?
Harlow tried to shake the vampire off his arm, but failed. “Let go,” he growled.
Foxx pouted but did release his arm. “Want to be friends? I think we could get along quite well.” The vampire’s words were practically a purr.
“No…” Harlow drawled slowly in confusion.
What…a weirdo…
“Aww, come on.”
“No,” he said firmly this time. “ID?” he asked, pulling out his ID scanner from his pocket.
Foxx sighed as he pulled a card out of the front pocket of his overalls and held it up. Harlow did a cursory glance, just barely holding back a laugh at the sight of the birth date listed—a hundred and twenty-four, my ass,he thought. Harlow slid it through the scanner. It beeped, letting him know it had scanned. The information would automatically be sent to him in an email. Pocketing the device again, he handed back the ID and gave an awkward nod before reaching down to yank Ned up by his arms. The man whined, but Harlow ignored him.
“If you aren’t hurt, then you are free to go. The Hunters Guild will contact you if we have any questions,” Harlow grunted out. And without waiting for a response, he dragged Ned away. The only thoughts in his head were about the bed he had waiting for him at home, and the week off he’d scheduled.
He slammed the door open to the Hunters Guild he worked out of, pissed the fuck off that he was even there—in the middle of the night, no less.
Charity was sitting at the front desk. The woman was technically his handler, but sometimes played secretary when Terry, the actual secretary, was out. His handler was in her early thirties, as far as he knew, and was currently dressed in a green power suit paired with a black blouse. Her long, platinum-blonde hair was perfectly styled in curls. She was beautiful, and way too perky in personality for him—perky yet evil.
On him entering, she peered up from whatever magazine she was reading and sent a smirk his way.
“Tell me, why the fuck am I here two days into my vacation?”
She laughed. “No, no. I’ll leave that bombshell to Tony.”
Bombshell? He narrowed his eyes on her before sighing. Walking past the desk, he headed into the back of the Guild. Harlow didn’t have a desk here. This space was really more for the handlers than anything. Somewhere for them to file all the information they received from the hunters they were in charge of. There were prisoners there as well, but the office space was handler territory only.
Tony Varley was the boss—the director of the Houndside Hazard Hunters Guild. The man was the one who communicated with the police departments, the prosecutors, and the judges. He, along with the handlers, dealt with all the other bureaucratic crap that needed to be handled, so that the cases they received were nice, neat, and accurate. It wouldn’t do to accidentally take out the wrong bloodsucker, or whatever paranormal creature they’d been tasked to eliminate. Unlike most of the others here, specifically the handlers, Tony had been on this job before even Harlow had started, and had been his contact for hunting since the beginning.
The Hunters Guild looked like a typical police department—even if it was not—with desks scattered around, file cabinets, etc. They even had the random handcuffed idiots sitting on a bench against the wall, waiting to be processed.
