He frowned. “Okay…butwhydo you want blood from the dead girl? They will no doubt be transferring some of the bodies for testing. Probably not all of them, considering how many there are. But a good number likely.”
“Not that I don’t trust them…”
“But you don’t trust them?” Harlow chuckled.
“It’s not that… I just… Well, okay, I don’t trust the Guild as a whole. I trust specific people in the Guild that I know… Beyond that… I just want to make sure that someone who actually knows what they are doing is looking into this. Which is why I want Doc to take a look.”
His brow rose at that. “Doc?”
While Harlow considered Doc Robinson an adequate doctor, and one that he somewhat trusted to take care of Foxx…he wasn’t sure what he could do beyond that.
“Yes, Doc,” Foxx said, not explaining further.
“Okay…well, we don’t need to bring the body back for that.”
Foxx frowned.“Why? Are you planning to run back to your Jeep to get my kit?”
“No.” Harlow reached into his jacket.
Foxx stared dumbstruck as seconds later the man pulled a full size, and still sealed, blood drawing kit out of one of the many pockets he had.
“Why do you have that?! Also, isn’t it unsafe to walk around with a bloody needle in your pocket?!”
And why the hell didn’t the man tell him about it sooner? They could have used it to fill up bags. Well…there was only one bag, and it looked to be a one-time use sort of thing, so he supposed they’d still have had to order shit.
“The needle is capped, and it was in a very padded pocket… I mean… I don’t know… They made us go to this seminar about two years back, and I saw it and just put it in my pocket,” Harlow said, shrugging, his expression empty. “I thought that maybe I’d need it one day, so I kept it with me.”
Foxx stared at the blank expression, some alarm bells going off as he noticed how wide and innocent the dhampir’s eyes looked. “You swiped it, didn’t you?”
Harlow slowly smiled. “I’d like to think of it as sampling.”
“Why did you take it?”
“Well, because…”
“Because, why?”
The man huffed. “I don’t know. I thought maybe it would be fun to stab someone with it and force feed them their own blood.”
Foxx snorted.The fucking weirdo, he thought. But oh, did he love him, even all the weird parts. Though…force feeding someone their own blood would be slightly entertaining, he was sure. But only if the person was human… Vampires wouldn’t give a fuck. Other paranormals would likely be averse to it though…maybe…
He shook his head and pushed the thoughts away. “Well, it is definitely better than what my plan was. Hand it over.” He held his palm out.
Harlow glanced backwards for a moment, looking to him and then to the body, and back again, before taking a few steps backwards and more to the right. Then the man held out the bag of items.
“What was that?” Foxx asked with a raised brow as he walked closer and took the kit from the man.
“Just thought I’d block the body from the street camera… You aren’t alone in having a bad feeling about this whole situation. It’s best no one sees exactly what we are doing. This way anyone watching will just assume we are examining the body.”
“Makes sense. I’ll be quick.”
Foxx knelt by the deceased woman, and opened the sealed kit. As quickly as possible, he stabbed the IV through her clothes into the crease between her groin and thigh—into the femoral vein—and held it there as the blood bag began to fill. Foxx figured it wouldn’t be an area noticed quickly.
It hadn’t been long since she died, so her blood wasn’t giving him any trouble. Even if it was oddly rotting… But would…one sample of blood be enough to figure out what this was? It had been hours, and so far, skin contact with the vampire’s rotting blood hadn’t done shit to him. Foxx was guessing that likely wouldn’t have been the case if he’d ingested it, or injected it into himself.
Once the bag was full, he pulled the needle out, unworried if it kept bleeding. She was covered already. And by the time the clean-up crew got to her, the blood would have coagulated enough that it wouldn’t flow freely when they moved her.
Capping the needle, he set the now full blood bag, and everything else, back into the plastic bag it came in. Sealing it up, he handed it to Harlow. The dhampir squirreled it away inside his jacket, as he did with so many fucking other things apparently.
