Picking Foxx up, he carried the sleeping vampire back into the bedroom and laid him out, before Harlow pulled his wet boxers off and grabbed some pajama bottoms out of his drawer. Slipping those on, he went into Foxx’s large walk-in closet and grabbed a pajama set for the vampire. The top and bottoms had dancing bears on them and were bright pink. Harlow couldn’t help but grimace at the color, but he was too tired to try to find something else.
As gently as he could manage, he changed Foxx’s clothes. Once done, he got into bed with the man’s back against his chest, and tugged the covers up around them.
Wrapping an arm around the vampire’s slim waist, it wasn’t long before sleep pulled him under.
Harlow gasped,eyes opening. He frowned as he found himself lying on cold cement. There was fire all around him, smoke filling the air. Groaning, he sat up, his head ringing painfully.
“Foxx?” he called out as he forced himself to stand. “Foxx, where are you?!”
He eyed the collapsed beams and bits of wall that cut him off from the rest of the room. Finding a hole, he began to squeeze himself through. “Foxx,” he called out again.
Harlow continued to move through the rubble, and then was forced to stop as a large piece of wall was in his way. It didn’t budge when he attempted to knock it over. Glancing around, he found a small crack near the floor. Kicking at it with his foot, he enlarged the hole before crouching down and crawling through it. The world went from dim to blindingly bright sunlight. Stumbling to his feet, he took two steps forward into the light before his eyes adjusted and he saw the rest of the room.
“Foxx…” he rasped, heart beginning to race. But Foxx wouldn’t be answering.
His eyes followed a piece of charred flesh as it floated off into the air. The vampire hung suspended in the sunlight, his heart out there burning on the tip of the spike that was piercing through his body. Foxx’s eyes were open and empty, and would remain that way forever.
“FOXX!” he roared.
Harlow’s eyes snapped open,Foxx’s name on his lips. A bead of sweat slipped down his cheek.
Harlow stared up at the dark ceiling for a few moments, chest heaving as his heart raced. Glancing down, his pulse started to return to normal at the sight of Foxx snoring softly. Harlow tightened his arm around the vampire’s waist.
The man murmured in his sleep, frowning but he didn’t move.
Swallowing hard, he swiped at the sweat on his face. “What the fuck was that?” he asked the darkness.
Foxx sat there on the floor by the coffee table, legs crossed, with one of his teal couches pushed up behind for him to rest on as he watched Harlow work.
The human was sitting to Foxx’s left, in a gray puffy chair, hunched over as he typed away on his craptop, which was sitting on the coffee table—though calling what Harlow was doingtypingwas him being generous.
Sitting there doing nothing…wasn’t as boring as one might think it would be. In fact, watching the human lean in and out as he attempted to read shit on the screen was highly entertaining. Even if Harlow’s laptop constantly freezing up, and taking hours to load, made him want to chuck it against the wall.
The human glanced up. “Are you sure you are fine sitting on the floor?”
Foxx smiled. “I’m fine. Don’t feel a thing at the moment, as the pills just kicked in.”
Harlow eyed him. “You only have two more days of those and no refills.”
“Well, surely two days from now I’ll feel a hell of a lot better than I do at this moment.” At least, he hoped he would. It had only been three days since he’d left the hospital.
“Friday you are scheduled to get your cast removed at Houndside Hazard First Mercy Hospital, right? It’s the day after your pills run out, so if you need them, you can always sweet talk your way into more then.”
Foxx frowned. “Depends on the doctor. Some of them are assholes. And yeah, it’s Friday. They warned me that they’d be taking scans first, and doing some other tests, so the appointment could take a while.” He sighed. “Also, I got an email this morning. Tony wants to talk to me about something that same day.”
“We’ll drop by after.” Harlow grunted and glanced back down at his laptop.
Oh, he wished he knew of any vampire physicians, or at least a paranormal one, that was practicing nearby. But he hadn’t taken the time to ask around, and you really couldn’t just drop in unannounced. Since the government basically banned their practices, it was all on the down low.
Well, it wasn’t banned completely, but they now needed to apply for special licensing, along with some other nonsense that usually took years to get on top of them needing to be approved by a medical board. It had caused many to ‘close down’. Mainly, as state medical boards were run by humans. They generally took offense to the fact that these places usually only treated paranormals, or were species specific.
Apparently, paranormals being blocked from receiving care was fine, but humans…oh no, you can’t discriminate against them—Foxx rolled his eyes.
So, to the hospital, he’d be going. And he’d just have to ignore the nightmares he’d been having about being strapped down to a hospital bed.Yay—new fear unlocked—he thought sarcastically. Really, he was way past the age for nightmares.
Whatever…he’d get over it, like he always did. All it would take was time. While time didn’t heal everything, it sure as hell caused a lot of shit to fade into easily ignorable pieces.
And after the hospital, he’d go see Tony. Though, Foxx wasn’t sure what the man wanted, but maybe Harlow would. “Do you know what Tony wants?”
