60. Best to Match

W alking slowly, Harlow glanced over when Foxx once again sniffed the air and started to frown. This was the third damn time he'd done it in the last five minutes.

Brow raised, he asked, "Foxx, what are you smelling?"

The vampire blinked and looked at him. "What?"

"You keep sniffing the air and frowning. What are you smelling?"

Foxx's frown deepened. "I…"

"What? What is it?"

The man tilted his head. "I think… Well…you remember how the poisons had different scents…"

"Did they?"

Foxx nodded.

Harlow honestly couldn't remember. Well, with the vampire one he had been too focused on making sure that Foxx wouldn't devolve into a crazed bloodsucker and die on him, and with the werewolf… He did remember that one. Mostly due to it being extremely bitter.

Harlow should probably start paying more attention to scents. Back when he'd been ‘human', he hadn't really been big on remembering smells… Mostly as they usually made him think of what people had done there…and what he could possibly be touching that he couldn't see.

Okay, admitting that was now making him realize that his touch thing may be worse than he even knew…

"So, they smelled different… What about them?"

"I keep getting this strong waft of both of them. Maybe we are near an infection site?"

Harlow smirked. "Or…what if…rather than smelling an infection site, you are smelling the person who helped spread them both?"

Foxx's head tilted the other way, a slow and slightly evil smile slipping onto his face. "The scent isn't moving, and it is coming from the same direction each time… Yet…each time, it's the same strength as before… If it were a location…the wind would be slowly diluting it."

"Can't dilute a smell when you are carrying a few cans of it with you."

"That you can't!"

"Perhaps they decided to stay and watch the chaos?"

"Or…maybe…" Foxx's smile widened. "They were told to hang back to make sure things didn't go wrong, and they got trapped in the city when it went into lockdown quicker than they'd assumed it would?"

"Both convenient, yet…unfortunate. As it probably means You Know Who knows what we are up to."

"Well, if he knows, we might as well go say hi." Foxx chuckled. "Come on."

Foxx took off running, and he followed. "What exactly does the vampire one smell like?" he asked as he caught up.

"The vampire one smells like sour candy with a hint of decay, and in case you don't remember, the werewolf one has an extremely bitter metallic-like scent. They are a distance away still. Not close enough for a heartbeat even. It's why I kept smelling the air, because it kept coming and going, not constant."

He took a deep breath in just as the wind blew. "I've caught the scents."

Now that he did smell it, he realized the vampire one was familiar, and that he'd actually been smelling both scents for the last few minutes, just as Foxx had. Harlow just hadn't realized what it meant, or even remembered the vampire one.

Compared to the bitterness of the werewolf poison…the sour candy smell of the vampire poison was a lot less noticeable and stinging. That it smelled of decay had probably made it even less likely that he'd remember it after that first time, because frankly, by this point, Harlow was pretty used to the smell.

As for the werewolf one, while he had remembered it, the bitterness was diluted due to the distance it had traveled, so again, Harlow had disregarded it. Which told him he needed to do better.

Following the scents, he and Foxx stumbled right into the human, neither his heartbeat nor his individual scent ever making itself known. It was as they burst around a corner into a dead-end alleyway, and voices started mid conversation, that he remembered how the last idiot of Maverick's had hidden.

"I don't know what they—" The blond-haired human cut off, his eyes going wide as he saw them.

"What?! You don't know what?!" Maverick's voice came out harshly from the phone the man held, each word practically a snarl.

He eyed Foxx, who was still smiling brightly, and he figured they couldn't pretend they were human with his vampire's little fang showing so cutely with his dimples and freckles.

Fuck it! "Hey, fucker," Harlow chuckled. "Miss me?"

There was a harsh inhale over the line before Maverick ground out, "You…"

The eyes of the man standing in front of them widened.

"How's the back?" he asked with a smug grin.

"This…isn't over! Bradley, do what's right." The call went dead.

Harlow saw a flash of fear in the human's eyes, right before what he thought might be resolve. He moved without hesitation at the first sound of his teeth snapping together. Clamping down on Bradley's jaw, he used restraint, but he still felt something pop under his hand as he forced the man's mouth open, and in quick succession, he yanked the already chipped upper right canine out.

The human screamed. As tears filled the man's eyes, Bradley stumbled back, clutching at his jaw as blood dripped from his mouth. "My jaw… You broke my jaw!" Based on how garbled the man's words were, he likely was right.

Foxx clapped happily. "Oh! Look at you, Harlow, you did so well!"

Harlow, despite feeling like a little kid every time the vampire praised him with enough enthusiasm that one would assume he was joking, he still smiled. Because he knew Foxx wasn't being sarcastic. "Yep, pretty proud, brat. You taught me well."

The vampire beamed, but his nose wrinkle in irritation when the human started screaming for help.

He dropped the tooth and crushed it with his boot. "Keep yelling and that will be you."

Bradley's yells cut off instantly, the human gulping. Harlow rolled his eyes and mouth twisting in disgust, he wiped the saliva off his hand, just barely holding back the urge to pull out a wet wipe.

"Fucking hell, what is with the poison tooth thing?" he grumbled.

"What do you mean?" Foxx asked.

"Two of those fucking priests I tortured had one implanted. This is the third time in under a year that I've had someone try to off themselves with a damn tooth."

"Mmm, who knows, maybe it's a staple for second rate evil villains? Though, that first guy didn't have one."

"Man was a coward," Harlow drawled.

Foxx's head tilted. "In my experience, cowards usually take the easy way out…over facing the consequences."

"Well, he was a coward who feared death more than torture. Anyway, I'm calling this in. As in, actually calling. It's not something I'd assume Tony would want us sharing over the main line."

"Probably not. While everyone here knows that Humanity's Last Stand is responsible, as far as I know, Maverick's name hasn't been revealed yet."

Grunting, Harlow pulled out his secure phone, but paused to glare at the human. "You try to run past us and it will hurt."

"A lot." Foxx giggled.

Bradley took a step back towards the dead end.

"Get his phone," he drawled with a smile as he dialed the number and hit call.

As his phone rang and rang, Harlow stood there and watched Foxx take the human's cellphone and crush it in his hand.

Tony didn't pick up, the phone call ending with some ‘the user has not set up their mailbox' bullshit.

"Maybe he's busy?" Foxx said with a frown. "Maybe we could try to convey part of the message covertly over the line?"

"Can you think of a way to say that we caught someone and now Maverick knows covertly?"

Foxx opened his mouth and then closed it, before sighing and saying, "No. I feel that no matter how we say it, there will be questions."

"Right."

His phone started ringing. "Oh good, we don't have to." He swiped and…growled, "Fucking piece of shit! WHY DOES IT ONLY WORK SOMETIMES?!"

Foxx giggled. "You are pressing down too hard." The man lightly swiped his finger across his phone, connecting the call, before quickly turning on the speaker.

"Fucking hell, Harlow, you almost got my ass a one-way trip into a fucking pine box! What the hell do you want?!" Tony roared, before taking a few deep and labored breaths. The human sounded as if he was winded.

"Did the call startle you?" he asked with a smirk.

"Fuck you."

"Mm—"

"Don't!" the man ground out. "What is it?!"

Foxx giggled.

"Well, I just thought…you'd want to?—"

"You have five seconds before I'm hanging up!"

Harlow chuckled. The man was too easy. "We caught one of the spreaders. We need a pick up with restraint capabilities."

"He broke my jaw!" the blond human whined.

Harlow rolled his eyes.

"Bloody hell, you are a whiny ass bitch," Foxx snapped. "You literally sent a group of paranormals not only off to their deaths, but on a murder spree. What makes you think our boss gives a flying fuck about your jaw?"

"Broke his jaw, did you?" Tony snorted. "Next time, dislocate it instead. Much less noisy that way."

Bradley let out a sound of disbelief.

Hmm…less noise was always a good thing. "Yeah, oddly enough, I found another poison tooth."

"No shit? Those things on sale or something?"

"Fuck if I know. Maverick says hi, by the way. You may want to release that news you planned, now rather than later."

"Might as well. I got word this morning that the government's stock of counteragent has reached the minimum capacity needed to handle immediate release to the public. And to be honest, with attacks happening all over the country, and people starting to notice that we aren't actually taking down the so-called perps, the news is already a crap shoot. Might as well blow it up even more."

"Have fun!" Foxx sang.

"You two hang tight, I'll send someone to grab the fucker."

When Tony hung up, Harlow returned the phone to an inside pocket.

Foxx, who was still standing beside the human, looked to him and then back at Bradley, who had his mouth open and was pressing at the wound. Without warning, the vampire yanked the man's other upper canine out.

"WHY?!?" Bradley screeched.

"So now they match!" Foxx explained with a sweet-sounding giggle. As sweet as it had sounded, the flush on the vampire's cheeks definitely told him that his little ball of sadistic sunshine had gotten off on that.

Harlow chuckled.

"Evil! EVIL DEMONS!" the human bellowed.

Foxx struck out with his fist. The crunch as he connected with the man's face was audible, as was the thud when Bradley dropped.

Eyeing the passed out, bleeding human on the ground, he said, "Now who needs to control their strength?"

"Oh, no. I did that on purpose." Foxx smiled.

"Brat." Smirking, Harlow slowly strolled closer. When the vampire was within reach, he tugged him against him and kissed him hard. "My brat," he growled.

Foxx licked his lips. "All yours."

"Mine!" He captured the man's lips again, only pulling apart at the sound of tires approaching.

Looking towards the mouth of the alleyway, he squinted and tried to see past the blinding headlights.