Hesitantly, he accepted the call. “Yes?” he asked slowly when she didn’t say anything.
“Sometimes action causes more damage than if one were to just sit back and wait,” the woman said, her voice smooth and airy.
Tony groaned. “Why am I surrounded by people whose only purpose on this planet seems to be giving me a headache and heartburn.”
Sephira laughed. “Surely you aren’t referring to me, dear Tony?”
“I’d never. Mostly as I’d like my body parts, as old as they are, to remain where they are and continue to look how they should.”
“I’m sure you do.”
As much as he knew she had never been wrong before, Tony couldn’t help but ask, “Are you…sure, Sephira?”
“If you do what you were about to do, you will lose all that you were trying to save.”
“So, if I do nothing, things will be fine?”
She tsked. “Things are not fine, but when have they ever been? Understand, the normal as it was, is well and truly gone now. Yet, as it always does, life will go on. Turmoil comes first. Followed by more disasters and uncertainty. But eventually, the dust will settle, and with it there will be a new normal once again.”
He rubbed at his head with a sigh. “Great…clear as fucking always, Sephira.”
* * *
Sweat dripping down his face,Foxx’s grip on the steering wheel tightened more and more the closer he got to where the tracker had pinned Harlow’s location. The city fell away to suburbia, and suburbia to open farmland. Houses going from close together to sometimes many miles apart.
His gaze kept flicking to the map on the screen, the minutes ticking by. Was he…already too late? Had he been too late hours ago? If he…if he had noticed earlier…would he have been able to save him…?
He swerved at the sound of a horn, just barely missing the car whose lane he had drifted into. The darkness was back, his vision narrowed to just the road. Taking a gasping breath, his hands clenched around the wheel.
At the sound of the wheel creaking, he forced himself to loosen his hold. Taking a deep breath in and out, Foxx prayed. “Please, Nycinthea, please let him be alive. Please don’t let me be too late.”
He swallowed hard as the dot on the map grew closer, stiffening when the navigator told him to turn up ahead.
Foxx turned onto a nondescript dirt road. He didn’t bother with stealth. He didn’t care if they knew he was coming, because he was going to kill each and every one of them. Even if he had to track them down one by one, they all would die.
Dust puffed up as he sped down the road, a large ranch-style house appearing in the distance. He kept on going, rolling down the window as he sorted past the noise of the road and the engine, zeroing in on the house.
Foxx let out a whimper of distress, tears forming in his eyes while he tried to deny and rationalize what he was hearing. But there was no lying to himself… There were only two heartbeats, not enough to lead to any confusion… And even from here, he could tell…no one…currently alive inside the house…was human.
Taking shallow breaths in and out, Foxx barely held back his sobs. “Calm… Calm… It doesn’t mean he’s dead… It doesn’t mean that!”
He focused on the beats, willing them to tell him who they belonged to. One of them was sluggish, so much so, there was no way they were conscious or healthy. The other…was slightly strange…vampire-like, yet odd. It was like the beat had an echo…
The oddness of it pushed back the avalanching panic more than anything. More so when between one second and the next, the beat was as normal as any vampire's was. Why did it…feel like he knew what that echo meant…?
Coming to a screeching stop in front of the building, he put the car in park and jumped out, only for the wind to suddenly shift and hit him in the face, blasting him with the scent of blood.
Foxx staggered to a stop and took a deep breath in. There was so much of it. Like a massacre had occurred. Yet…while he smelled Harlow’s blood mixed in, there wasn’t much of it… No, there wasn’t enough of it! Harlow wasn’t dead. Whoever was dead in there, it wasn’t Harlow! Harlow… Harlow had to be alive! He had to be, he could smell him, but not his blood, so…
Shaking his head, he rushed forward and kicked the door in, his eyes widening as he got his first look of the blood he’d smelled. Bodies littered the ground…
Foxx slowly walked into the house, his gaze flicking around at the carnage. Blood spatter was everywhere, the smell was putrid, with flies buzzing around. At the same time, he remained focused on the heartbeats. Neither were moving.
He stopped by one of the bodies, or rather a part of a body—a male lying face down, who just so happened to be missing his lower half. There was a trail of blood starting at an opening to the right that led straight to it, along with bloody handprints, telling him he’d dragged himself to this spot before dying. The long top he was wearing prevented Foxx from being able to actually see the wound.
Foxx flipped him over with his foot, brow pinching on realizing that the man hadn’t been cut in half as he assumed…he’d been ripped. It looked like he’d been attacked by a werewolf, yet he didn’t catch any scent other than vampire anywhere. What he did smell near him…was burning leaves…
He glanced at the other bodies and found them much the same… All these vampires had been literally torn apart.
