From his spoton top of the large dumpster, Iggy flung one blade after another, every one landing solidly between the eyes of each vampire. Even as they landed, the vampires kept moving. They only fell after he basically destroyed their brains with his knives. He wasn’t sure what they’d been given, or poisoned with, but it was making them a pain in the ass to kill. No communication or any sort of distraction worked with them. And the only way to keep them from attacking was to kill them.
He and Oceana had followed, or rather, ran right into one loan vampire, and then a whole group had stumbled upon them. All infected, and lucky enough to remain out of camera shot.
On realizing there were only two left standing, Iggy straightened to full height from his crouch. He watched his partner fight as he twirled a blade again and again in his hand, waiting to see if she needed help.
Firing, by his estimates, a whole clip of bullets into the heart of one, as it was falling dead, Oceana flipped another vampire onto his back. Bringing the long blade that she had in her other hand down, she severed his head. Straightening, she glanced over at him, suddenly crying out, “BEHIND YOU!”
Iggy spun and…fell off the dumpster. Landing hard on his back, he croaked out a moan of pain as he rolled just in time to avoid being landed on by the vampire who had snuck up behind him. A barrage of shots rang out, one after another, as putrid blood rained over him. Seconds later, the vampire dropped dead, its body still twitching right next to Iggy.
Pushing up, grimacing at the feeling of grime under his hands, he stood with a groan. Iggy looked down at himself, at the wet marks and the dirt, on top of the nasty ass blood. He was grateful that Oceana had more guns…yet…ugh…
“So gross.”
Oceana scoffed as she walked over. “You’ve done this job for over a decade, how are you still so squeamish about blood and dirt?”
Iggy huffed. “One, this is garbage grime, which is much worse than dirt. Two, I mostly use my blades from a distance. Keywords being ‘from a distance’. And?—”
“You still had to behead shit,” she pointed out.
“I wasn’t finished! But as you brought it up, I, nine times out of ten, had a partner with me who took care of that.”
Oceana’s brow rose. “How the hell is that even possible? You old school hunters were usually always running around killing alone.”
“Keyword being ‘usually’. I was not part of the usual. My contact made sure I was always paired up with someone.”
“Why?”
“I get lonely by myself.”
Well, mostly he got lonely… The other reason…well…in part, Tony possibly worried about him fighting alone. Like, he wasn’t a bad fighter…but Iggy would admit he was a horrible shot, gun wise… He frankly didn’t understand it himself. Like, he could throw a knife with pure precision from quite a distance away…but yet…somehow he managed to still miss with a gun, even when the target was only four feet in front of him…
Oceana stared, her mouth twisting in disgust before she rolled her eyes.
He was the one who should be disgusted, he’d rolled around in dirty trash water. “Anyway, I wasn’t done with my reasons as to why this is disgusting. As lastly, number three, this is not normal blood.”
And it wasn’t, this shit was awful.
The vampire sighed. “I’ll give you that. It’s not normal… It’s like…it’s rotting already.”
Iggy grimaced. “They were alive moments ago, so rotting shouldn’t even be in the equation. But then…you told me you thought they were dying. I’m guessing the rotting just backs you up on that.”
“I have a sick feeling that even if we finish these ones off today…this isn’t going to be the end of it.”
Iggy eyed the dead, they were all either killed by a severed head, or by brain or heart obliteration. “If we could have incapacitated them by a single knife or bullet wound to the head…would there have been a chance to save them?”
“No… Whatever is infecting them, it’s killing them. Without a way to at least stop the effects, even if we could incapacitate them, they wouldn’t survive.”
That was a grim prospect. Not knowing what this was or how to fix it…meant it was a death sentence to whoever was inflicted. Iggy…like Oceana, also had a bad feeling this would only get worse. “Let’s hope your sick feeling is wrong then.”
Shots rang out behind him as Harlow sliced through the neck of the vampire he was facing. Spinning around, he kept up the momentum, taking the head off of the one who’d been coming up from behind.
Finding Foxx on the ground, grappling with a man whose skull appeared to be half missing, he tackled the fucker off him. Rolling with the vampire, he dropped his sword and just grabbed and squeezed at the vampire’s throat, his eyes widening at how easily his nails and hands dug into and through the muscles and tissue of his neck. Harlow laid there, shocked to all hell when the man’s head popped clean off, in a splash of disgusting blood and ick...that by some miracle, coated his chest, but missed his face.
Gagging, he pushed the body off him and stood, holding his gore-covered hands away from him. “You know…that felt…gross. Really…gross…”
Foxx was sitting up, still on the ground, eyeing him. “Kind of looked gross, even from where I was.” The vampire's nose wrinkled. “You probably should avoid grabbing and squeezing.It’s much better to just stab your hands in and your claws through.”
Harlow eyed the blood and gunk on his hands, and wiped them off as best as he could on the dead man’s clothes. Straightening up, he asked, “Can you get a wet wipe out of my pocket?” On seeing how wide and glossy the vampire’s eyes had gotten, his damn bottom lip even wobbling, Harlow quickly added, “Don’t laugh!”
