Her bottom lip trembling, she bit it and shook her head slowly.
“That’s right. You are going to a hospital, but there are no priests there. The priests that hurt us, they are in jail. They can’t get to you. Unfortunately…” He gently brushed a strand of her hair back behind her ear. “You came into contact with someone who hates us just as much as they do. They hurt you, and I know you are confused, and in pain, but I promise, if you go with these paramedics, you will get the care and answers you need, while remaining safe.”
Cindy stared at him, trembling, but after a moment, the vampire slowly let go of his hand.
Smiling, Foxx said, “Thank you for living.” Then he extracted himself from her.
Standing back, he watched as they loaded Cindy into the ambulance.
“Well, that’s an unexpected connection, but…I bet you're feeling pretty happy right now.”
At the words, Foxx glanced up at Harlow, who had moved quietly to his side while they’d watched the ambulance drive off.
The connectionhadbeen unexpected, but… He smiled wide and giggled. “Yes, I’m happy. Even if I am, at the same time, incredibly angry that someone who had already suffered so much had to deal with more bullshit. What shitty luck. What are the odds…?”
Harlow’s arm came around his waist. “I don’t know, I think her luck is excellent. How else could she end up at death’s door, and yet manage to be found by the one person who is willing to do all he can to save her and keep her going, not once, but twice?”
Foxx hummed. “That’s one way to look at it.” His smile widening, he said, “Come on, let’s get back to looking!”
They took off again, wandering aimlessly. Foxx, honestly, wasn’t sure that Cindy ending on death’s door twice could beseen as lucky, but the fact was…she hadn’t just ended up there…she had passed the threshold.
Cindy…had died that day. It was why he remembered her face. She had been one of the ones he’d felt slip away, as he laid there close to passing out.
Really, her luck wasn't about him being there, but the fact that Foxx had a partner who was willing to do anything to find him. She survived because Harlow and his team had shown up in time to bring her back. Foxx…just hadn’t realized they had brought her back.
But he wasn’t her luck. Her luck was that Foxx was lucky enough to be claimed by a psycho. And that, that same psycho was apparently a little bit of a klepto, who had no qualms about siphoning blood from a dead body. Because Foxx wasn’t sure if they’d have gotten away with what they had done if they had needed to bring the body back with them. Likely, they would have been noticed.
Huh, maybe lady luck was actually a six-foot four psycho with sticky fingers?
Shaking the silly thought away and smiling even wider than before, he slid his arm through Harlow’s. As they continued to stroll, he asked, “What do you think Maverick will do next?”
“It’s…possible he will release all the poison he has at once.” Foxx started to frown at the man’s words, until Harlow added, “But, then again, I don’t think he will.”
“Why not? Releasing it would likely cause chaos and a lot of death, and would lead to even more in the aftermath.”
“He wants humans to turn on paranormals.”
“Us, you mean,” Foxx corrected.
“Yes, us. To turn on us paranormals. But releasing it now, after people know what is happening…would just paint him and his group as villains.”
“With what has happened, how aren’t they already??”
Harlow snorted. “His thinking doesn’t have to be perfectly logical to make sense. He claimed before that all they had done was strip down the mask of civility that we hide behind.”
“Ah,” Foxx sighed. “I see what you are saying. Knowing the herd mentality of some humans, he knew that many would believe that this was just who vampires and werewolves were, without questioning further. But revealing that it’s a poison, something involuntary on the paranormals part, and something that can be counteracted, would prevent that lie from standing.”
“Pretty much.”
“But,” Foxx huffed, “That would always be the case, wouldn’t it? Like, there is no way that lie would have stood.”
“Yeah, but I’m guessing he hoped that by the time it was revealed, the relationship between humans and paranormals would be irreversibly damaged. If you think about it, things were on their way there. Just with the first incident, some humans had begun to side-eye the paranormals around them.”
“True…” Foxx sighed as the face of the older news reporter as he looked at his co-host flashed into his mind. One incident was all it had taken to cast doubt.
As the callcame in that all threats were gone, Harlow wasn’t surprised. He figured, after barely saving the woman an hour ago, by now, the rest would be dead. Though, he assumed whatever werewolves had been infected, and not found, had probably died an hour before they’d even found the last vampire.
Harlow did have to say that Tony was being a bit long-winded with his fucking speech. Had there really been a reasonto tell them the number of injuries and deaths? It had been three minutes already. Fucking hell… It would be nice to get off the streets BEFORE the sun rose.
