“Consequences of being a dumbass.”
“You’re such a fucking brat!” Harlow hissed.
Foxx’s smile widened. “Yes, but just think, if I’d have told you, you’d still be a dumbass. But now, since you’ve suffered, you have hopefully learned to NOT BE a dumbass, and will open your mouth next time.”
“Half…” Harlow groaned, rubbing at his face. “I just had to hold back half.”
“No, what you needed to do was figure out what your maximum was, so you knew HOW to hold back half, and then from there you can now adjust to where you actually need to be. If you noticed, half of your strength is still stronger than most humans, and also too much for this course. Your ball still went flying and caused damage. If I hit at half strength like you did, so would mine, because as we have seen, our strengths are now comparable and at a similar level. Half, while always a good starting point in understanding your strength, it isn’t always where you need to adjust to.
“Strength, unfortunately, doesn’t always increase the same way, or as much or as little each time. The whole reason you couldn’t figure out where you needed to adjust to was because you didn’t know by how much you needed to adjust. To addon, even knowing all this, it doesn’t always make it easy to judge what is the appropriate level of strength to use in every situation.”
“Thus you causing internal bleeding.”
“Exactly. And the reason why is…well…because people take damage easier than other things do, and unfortunately, humans don’t exactly volunteer to let me test my strength on them.”
Harlow sighed, shaking his head. “You are such a brat.”
“I am.” Foxx giggled, dropping his club so he could wrap his arms around the man. “But I’m your brat.”
Harlow tossed his club aside, and on the club landing without damaging anything, the man turned in his hold and wrapped his arms around him. “You are. All mine,” Harlow growled, pressing a kiss to Foxx’s lips. The man was smirking as he broke the kiss and asked, “We have this place all to ourselves, right?”
He smiled, despite knowing what Harlow was really asking. “No. I’m not having sex with you in a putt-putt palace.”
The dhampir chuckled. “Aww, come on… We could get hot and heavy near the sparking clown.”
“No, old man!” Foxx laughed.
Harlow’s mouth opened, and whatever he’d been about to say never came, because the man’s phone started ringing—the secure one. He only knew which phone was ringing because, about a week ago, Foxx had set the ringtone for that particular phone as the Jaws theme song.
“Duty calls.” The dhampir released him and pulled out the phone, swiping across the screen. The man smirked at him when he succeeded at answering on his first try.
Foxx rolled his eyes and just patted him on the shoulder in praise.
“Harlow, and I assume, Foxx as well,” Tony started.
“Yep, I’m here!” Foxx chimed.
“It’s time. Go to Sunfall, Illinois. It’s about two hours from Hazard, but you’ll still get there before the ‘fun’ starts. Gear and further instructions will be waiting for you when you arrive. We stopped at least SOME of the werewolves in that area from being infected, as the man you two captured was responsible for poisoning a group there. But the vampires have likely already been dosed for hours, which makes sense, as that poison takes longer to spread. Get there and be prepared for a giant ass mess.”
It was only longer due to how low the dose was. In the time since Doc had figured out the counteragent for the vampires, he had also figured out the timelines. No matter how high the dose was for werewolves, it activated around the same time. But for vampires, the higher you went, the more immediate effects changed. For example, the victims collapse instantly at higher doses, being aware of their threads shredding, instead of suddenly feeling sick and attacking. Doc now thought that if they hadn’t arrived that day to save him, he’d have died before getting a chance to attack anyone.
“Objective?” Harlow asked.
“To save as many as we can, but as always, do not sacrifice yourselves to do it. After it’s all said and done…we will be exposing Maverick. It’s far past time that he is dragged from the shadows. Now get moving. I’ll be meeting you there.”
Foxx blinked. “You’re coming?”
“Yeah, I’m coming. I’m in charge of the operation in that area. There haven’t been any attacks yet, but we were about to gather the other locations, due to…finding a few rats in our system. To note, there will be hunter groups from outside our Guild there, because as always, we still have our normal hunts on top of this bullshit. But everyone who will be present has been vetted by Sephira for loyalty, and every paranormal that needs to has agreed to, or already has been dosed with the counteragent.You’ll be on standby when you arrive. To make sure we are able to respond as quickly as possible, teams will spread out around their designated cities. Where local law enforcement can be trusted, they have been given access to the counteragent.”
Harlow cursed. “You are trusting cops to?—”
“What we are doing is trying to save as many lives as we possibly can. Get your asses here.” The call disconnected.
Foxx met Harlow’s gaze. “It all comes down to this.”
“Let’s fucking go, I guess. Don’t get dead, brat.”
He snorted. “Let’s go!”
