“Awake,” Foxx repeated.
He went to leave, but paused at something touching his leg. He glanced down to see Foxx holding onto the bottom of his coat, hand trembling.
He frowned at the fear he saw in the vampire’s eyes. “Are you not sure now? I can carry you with me, but the sun won’t be pleasant...”
“Come…back…”
Harlow blinked in confusion, before a smirk pulled at his lips, despite the situation. “Don’t worry, brat. If I intended to leave you here, I wouldn’t have bothered pulling you off that spike.”
The vampire’s brow pinched, looking lost.
He chuckled. “I’ll explain later. Until then, stay awake.”
Foxx nodded and let go of his coat.
Harlow took one last look at Foxx before taking off up the stairs that he hoped led to the outside.
* * *
Foxx staredup at the sagging second floor, his pain filled mind not making sense of all he was seeing. It hurt to breathe…and each beat of his heart was agonizingly painful.
For a brief second, he had felt nothing on waking up, and then it all sort of came back. The pain…and the freezing cold. He couldn’t say he appreciated either feeling coming back. Foxx would much rather just be numb.
On top of all the pain…there was this annoying fear growing inside him telling him that he was about to die. Or…that maybe Harlow wasn’t going to come back. Foxx was trying his best to push those thoughts away.
The dark patches in his vision that had been creeping along the edges suddenly grew, blocking his sight before reversing just as fast. Foxx blinked a few times, hoping it would help. It didn’t.
Staying awake…was looking less likely with each second that passed. Well…if Harlow did abandon him, at least he’d just die in his sleep.
What the hell had even happened? It had been a trap…well, maybe the case itself hadn’t been. Those ten vampires had been real. Real dead when they got here at least. So, who was that vampire…and why had she tried to kill them?
His vision began to fade again, this time not bouncing back. Right as he feared he was about to lose consciousness, his vision slammed back in place at the sound of footsteps. Foxx held back his sigh of relief as Harlow returned with his pink bear winter sunsuit, and what looked like some of his blood bags. That bit of fear in his heart that thought maybe he’d been left behind floated away. And he smiled up at the human, even as his eyes began to slide shut.
“No passing out,” Harlow growled as he crouched down next to him. Foxx flinched, eyes snapping fully open when Harlow slammed a blood bag onto his teeth. The human grabbed Foxx’s left hand, placing it on top to somewhat keep the bag in place. “Hold.”
Foxx did his best to keep his hand there. There wasn’t any relief from the pain, even as the blood flowed through his system. In fact, it sort of made it worse. Like someone had set fire to his nerve endings.
Next to him, Harlow laid out his sunsuit and unzipped it. Foxx couldn’t hold back his cries of pain as the human picked him up and began to maneuver him into the suit. He hadn’t done any sort of self-assessment as he’d laid there, but he was pretty sure he had a few broken bones.
“I guess you have more than just a giant hole in your chest,” Harlow muttered with a grimace. “How the hell are you more messed up than I am?”
Foxx wanted to tell him he had possibly rammed into something metal during the explosion, but he was too tired to actually say it. Well, that and he had a blood back shoved into his mouth.
He held back his cry of pain as the human slid Foxx’s right arm into a sleeve. Yeah, that was broken…definitely broken.
The man paused to switch out the blood bag for a new one, before taking over holding it as he pulled Foxx’s other arm into place and zipped up his suit. By the end of the second bag, Foxx was feeling less like he was about to keel over, yet still like death warmed over…except not warm.
Harlow swapped out the second bag for the last one he brought and they waited there silently as it emptied. Once it was done, the human tossed them all aside and zipped up his face shield, before slipping Foxx’s sunsuit gloves over his already partly gloved hands. The sunsuit added a little bit more warmth, but not enough.
“Cold…” Foxx couldn’t help but whine.
“I know it is, but you’ll have to deal with it until we get back to the car,” Harlow grunted, as he slipped his hands underneath Foxx and lifted him into his arms.
Foxx gasped, vision going white as pain sharply laced through him. Concerningly, the human swayed a bit on his feet before seeming to gain his balance.
“You…okay?” Foxx asked. His sight and senses weren’t working that well at the moment, but he could tell that the human was bleeding from somewhere. Not to mention, Foxx was pretty sure he’d taken too much earlier…so if he was still bleeding somewhere…
“I’m okay. Nothing I haven’t dealt with before.” Harlow looked down, meeting Foxx’s gaze.
