But…he still had to try. Glaring at the man who had just thrown water on him, Foxx sprinted towards him. The priest tried to jump out of the way, but he was too slow. And Foxx cackled as the guy joined his ‘brothers’ as half a man on the snow-covered ground.
Claws out, Foxx tried to slice his way through to freedom. He almost made it. He could see a clear way, but it wasn’t meant to be. Something solid slammed and wrapped around his ankles.
Foxx fell hard, chains dragging him down. That was all it took for the priests to converge on him. He fought, even as he became more and more bound. With each moment, he made sure he drew blood. Foxx fought until darkness forcefully took his consciousness. His last thought, as he crushed the windpipe of the man he managed to grab hold of, was that at least he had succeeded in taking people out with him, to his very last moment.
* * *
Harlow swiftly followedFoxx’s footprints, going down the path the vampire took back to the car.
He stopped mid-step when a smell swept towards him, carried by the wind. The familiar scent had his heart speeding up.
“Foxx,” he rasped, and without hesitating, Harlow took off. Because it wasn’t a whiff. No, what he smelled was a thick, heavy coating. Blood—he smelled blood, and a lot of it.
It was odd, the scene seemed to come out of nowhere. The trampled snow suddenly appeared there, without any indication of how the individuals reached the area. Harlow walked forward, through the blood soaked snow covered ground, and stopped near a large puddle. Bending down, he picked up a blood cover bunny ski mask. The pink and blue were now various shades of red and brown.
Clutching it in his hand, Harlow eyed the area for a moment. His heart speeding away now as he noted places where bodies must have once lain, spots where water had been thrown, and finally, where it looked like someone had landed hard and been dragged away. Once that moment passed, he took off back towards the house.
He wanted to burst into the house and demand the men tell him what they knew, but he forced himself to wait. Harlow stopped right before the steps of the house as a fierce wind burst past him.
Wasting time—he was wasting time as evidence was no doubt degrading in this forsaken fucking weather. Harlow pulled out his phone and dialed a number he’d only learned recently.
“Hello?” a deep voice answered.
“I need your help.”
“Hunter?” Santiago Florez drawled in question. “I didn’t expect to hear from you two so soon.”
“Foxx, my partner, has been taken. I don’t know who, I just know where it happened. I don’t care if you take this as an insult or not, but I need you to get your asses down here,” Harlow demanded, followed by him quickly rattling off the address. “Just look for a shit ton of blood and you’ll find the location. I need you to find something, anything. Preferably my vampire, but one of those fuckers who took him would work, too. And I need you to be quick about it. Time is passing by and evidence is already being blown further away by the wind.”
There was silence before the werewolf leader growled, “We shall be there. What do you want us to do if we track someone down?”
“Bring them to me…or get information out of them. I don’t care how.” He was about to hang up, but then decided to add. “Oh, and werewolf?”
“Yes?”
“If you hear screaming when you get here…ignore it.”
Santiago chuckled. “Understood.”
Shutting his phone, he slipped Foxx’s face mask into one of his inner jacket pockets, uncaring of the blood, before stomping up the steps and once again kicking the door open. He seized the front of the shirt of the guy who’d been doing all the talking and roared, “Who took him?!”
The man’s lips pressed into a firm line.
“That’s fine,” Harlow growled, eyes raking down his body. “Then we will do this the hard way. Cain Dole, isn’t it?” The man grunted as he shoved him back into a nearby recliner. Cain’s eyes widened when Harlow pulled a knife from the sheath strapped to his left wrist. Without hesitation, he slammed it into the man’s right thigh.
The guy howled as the others shouted in shock.
“What are you doing?!” one of the men behind him cried.
“This is illegal!” another yelled.
Harlow burst into laughter. “You are misinformed. This is just the least of what I’m legally allowed to do. The least of what I’m about to do, if you all don’t tell me who the fuck set this up.”
“We…” one started to say, but a hard glare from Cain had him going silent.
“Hard way it is. Unlucky for you, since you led my partner into a trap and all, I don’t have time to build up.” Harlow yanked the knife free. The guy hissed in pain. He stared, the ring on the man’s ring finger catching his eye. “I wonder…have you had any children yet? You look young, yet old enough to have possibly knocked up someone.”
“My family has nothing to do with this,” Cain rasped.
