19. A Sick Feeling

" T eam one, lone male vampire spotted running down Hurst Street, that is two streets over from your current location."

Foxx grabbed his radio and pressed the button. "We're on it."

Instead of looking at his phone, he listened for movement, taking off in the direction of the sound of running feet. A sound that grew as whoever it was started heading their way. He supposed all they really needed to do was get in range of their hearing and these vampires would come right to them.

Foxx had just stepped out of an alleyway, onto a large street with shops and street parking, when the vampire in question appeared only two car lengths away. Muscular and at least six foot tall, the man was splattered with blood, the lower half of his face and his hands held the worst of it.

As they stared at each other, Foxx dropped into his bloodline powers, his eyes widening at the sight of the vampire's threads.

Golden but faded, it looked as if each thread was coming unraveled, the strands that seemed completely detached were dark already.

"You're sick," Foxx said slowly. "You need to stop what you are doing and let us help you."

The man's head slowly tilted, his murky, solid brown eyes were full of hunger, but there was no spark of recognition or understanding.

"Can you understand me?" he tried again.

One minute the vampire was standing there, and the next he was on Foxx. The larger vampire's full weight slamming into him, Foxx hit the pavement hard. With the wind knocked out of him, he just barely managed to grab hold of the man's wrists, preventing him from gouging him.

Gasping for air, Foxx continued to hold the man back as he struggled and snapped his fangs. With the vampire coming at him like some rabid animal, Foxx got a front row seat to the man's breath. The smell leaking from his attacker's mouth was rancid, like he had eaten something rotten.

"You need to stop!" Foxx yelled once he'd caught his breath.

Again, his words did nothing. If anything, they caused the attack to grow in viciousness. Foxx's arms began to shake under the strain, his eyes widening when he realized he wouldn't be able to hold the man back for much longer.

How could a vampire's insides look so damaged, yet still be this strong?!

"Foxx, either get him off you, or I will," Harlow warned, the man standing only a few feet away. The dhampir had stayed back, but apparently, he wasn't going to do so for much longer.

Staring into the man's unintelligent eyes, while his arms began to shake more and more, Foxx tried to tug on one of his threads, to drain him…but nothing happened. Whatever was shredding through this vampire, it wouldn't let him touch a single thread.

Tears filling his eyes, Foxx slowly closed them and spoke with resignation. "Kill him…"

The man's weight was off of him in an instant. Foxx remained lying there, eyes closed, not moving, even as he heard the swing of a sword, and both heard and felt the spray of blood, followed by two thuds. But what did have his eyes opening was the smell that followed.

"What the fuck…?" the dhampir hissed.

Foxx let Harlow pull him to his feet, while his gaze zeroed in on the vampire now lying headless on the ground, the cut looking as clean as if a machine had done it. The thickest part of the blood puddle looked black, but where it had thinned out it was brown not red…

"What did you see when you looked at him? You saw something off, didn't you?" Harlow asked.

"I…definitely…saw something…" Foxx said vaguely as he flicked his eyes to Harlow with a frown.

The man was in his normal black jeans, black T-shirt, and leather jacket, his short sword hanging loosely in his right hand. There were droplets of blood on his jacket, but not much. Foxx frowned as he stared at the blood.

He reached out to run his finger through one of the drops, but Harlow stepped back.

"Don't touch it. Whatever is in him affects vampires…"

"I assume I'll be fine as long as I don't ingest it…"

"But you don't know that."

"I already have some on me, Harlow." Foxx held out his left hand, showing Harlow the small droplets of blood that had rained down on him.

Harlow blanched. "Fucking hell, Foxx!" The man's eyes were wide as he unzipped an outer left pocket and dug around. Pulling out what appeared to be a wet wipe, the dhampir started cleaning Foxx's hand.

"Harlow…if this small amount of blood is enough to do what it did to the others, we are in trouble."

"Tell me the second you feel off! Or better yet…let's just go to the hospital!"

"Harlow, I'm fine. I feel fine." He glanced down at his strands, noting they looked as normal as can be. "The poison, or whatever this is, I don't think it caused this… Well, it may be a result of the exposure, but I don't think it's the poison itself. The blood… I've seen this occur naturally before, though usually it's not this liquid. You have too. At least, I'd assume you likely have at one point."

Harlow grimaced, and while still obsessively cleaning his hand, he asked, "What exactly is occurring?"

"His blood is, or rather was, already rotting inside him…"

"Rotting?" The dhampir looked over to the body, the hand on his freezing. "You're right… This is exactly what blood looks like when it starts to rot… Well, aside from it not being a nasty congealed sludge. The smell is definitely right, though it's never been this strong before. But I'm guessing that's likely due to me no longer being ‘human'. He just died. How the fuck is it rotting?"

"I don't know. I don't know what's causing it. And…" Foxx pulled his hand free. "I'm fine. I likely will be, as long as I don't ingest any of that. Whatever this is…it's not bloodlust. As mindless as a vampire in bloodlust can be, they can still speak, still think, even if the thoughts aren't usually rational.

"There was nothing in the man's eyes… No recognition that he understood what I was saying. But his blood rotting made sense with what I saw. He was dying before we got here. Dying while we were here. It was slow, but if what I saw kept up, he would have been dead before the night's end."

Harlow glared down at Foxx's hand for a moment, before tossing the dirty wipe into a nearby rubbish bin. The man then reached into his pocket again, pulled out another, and started to clean off his jacket. On throwing away the dirty wipe as he'd done the first, the dhampir asked, "What exactly did you see?"

"His threads were shredding, pulling apart, and extinguishing. If I can check over the course of the night how far along the damage is, maybe I can determine how fast the poison spreads once a vampire has been infected?"

"So, when you said threads, you really meant actual threads?" Harlow asked, sounding bewildered.

"Yeah, they are basically large glowing threads, formed by a whole bunch of tiny ones that are filled with life energy. They swirl inside the shape of one's body, and all I normally see is the middle sections, as the ends usually fade and hide in that shape. But with him, the light was fading, and pieces were fraying off and already dark."

Harlow stood there trying to wrap his head around the idea of actual fucking floating threads. The world…was fucking weird… This case was also fucking weird… Weird and off.

He eyed Foxx, who was staring down at the dead body, his brows pulled together. He glanced at the vampire's hand. It looked clean, but… Harlow grimaced. Was it really clean?

His gaze flicked back up to Foxx's face, and he sighed as he forced himself to push away the growing need he had to find and bathe Foxx in disinfectant. His current obsessive need to clean his boyfriend would have to wait, as he had to first deal with his boyfriend's…emotions…

"If he was already dying, then it's likely the rest are too. We don't know how to help them. And even if there is a way, by the time we figure it out, it will be too late. So…" Harlow cleared his throat. "The only way we can help these people right now is to kill them."

Foxx didn't answer at first, but then his shoulders sagged a bit and he nodded, murmuring softly, "Yes…"

"Right… That being said…no hand-to-hand fighting. They—" He frowned. "Why couldn't you push him off? Though, now that I'm thinking about it, while I got him off you quickly, it didn't feel easy." His head tilted, and after thinking about it more, he confirmed, "Yes, I had to use my full strength, I think."

Foxx's freckled nose wrinkled. "He…was stronger than me."

His brow rose at that. "Stronger? The Police Chief warned us that the group seemed to be hard to take down. Them being able to possibly break through scriptured chains…was… Well, I honestly thought that the scriptured chains not working just meant that something was interfering with the so-called holiness itself, but maybe it was a sign of abnormal strength."

The vampire frowned. "Yet…I could still hold him back. So, he is stronger, but not that much. Certainly not strong enough to suggest he could break through scriptured chains with strength alone. I'm not sure any vampire, regardless of age, should be able to do that. I mean, the originals could, but then religious artifacts don't really hurt them anyway. Maybe…some of the first few they turned can, but I just don't know."

"Is he…older?" Harlow asked, as he leaned down and wiped his sword off on the man's clothes before sheathing it.

"That's the odd part… He was under a hundred."

"So, whatever they've been dosed with must be causing an increase in strength, and possibly interfering with the effectiveness of holy items."

"Maybe? It would be the only thing that makes sense? Unless he was just naturally strong to begin with…?"

"You don't sound like you believe that."

"Well…I'm naturally talented myself. Him being naturally strong at his age shouldn't make a difference to me."

"Fucking hell, ain't this just great. We are surrounded by vampires that are hopped up on a drug that is not only killing them, but making them stronger at the same time!" He eyed the vampire sharply. "Are you sure you feel fine?"

Foxx huffed. "I'm fine."

Fine, but for how long? Harlow sighed.

Something was off about all of this… He didn't know exactly what was going on, but…it didn't take a genius to realize that this situation was majorly fucked… Because something that managed to make vampires look like monsters, while at the same time killing them…honestly sounded like a religious fanatic's wet dream come to life.

"Well, as I was saying, no hand-to-hand. I don't want you getting coated in this stuff, and I don't want to chance you swallowing any of their blood. Also, keep an eye on yourself… Though I really think we should just go to the hospital and start running tests."

"No…" Foxx said, his eyes back on the body, looking sad as fuck.

He tsked and pulled the vampire to him, his arm slipping around his waist. "Ah, my poor, kindhearted brat." He leaned down and gave Foxx a peck on his nose, causing the man to wrinkle it and glare up at him.

Smirking, Harlow pulled his radio out of his pocket and pressed the button. "Team one, reporting in. Vampire neutralized."

There was a noise as someone connected, followed by fucking Iggy saying, "Roger that."

"Fucking bastard," Harlow growled as he slipped the radio back into his pocket.

When Foxx snorted and tried to pull away, Harlow held him closer, wrapping his other arm around him now too. "Just let me comfort you."

The man rolled his eyes. "Yeah, you swearing about someone else is sooo comforting."

"The comfort is the hug, not the words I was saying."

"You do realize he's stopped hitting on me, or didn't you notice?"

He had noticed. But how did that change anything?! "It's the audacity of him doing it at all!"

Foxx tugged out of his hold and spun away, snapping, "Let's just start looking for the next one!"

From his spot on 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."