“Yes! Then...burn!”
“Burn?”
“Place! Burn...this place! Cover it up! Can’t... We... They...can’t know we’re here! And then...hide… No...ummm...” Foxx trailed off. The man frowned, his eyes flicking around, looking panicked.
“Foxx, you are sounding slightly...crazy and confused.” He slowly brought the bag closer again. “Why don’t you let me feedyou before saying more, hmm?” he said as he tried to attach the bag.
Foxx turned away. “No!” he whimpered. “You… You don’t understand! They...they will kill you! AH!” Foxx gasped. “Tony! We call him... He won’t… They won’t...” The vampire trailed off, his eyes starting to close, before jerking, gaze going wide as he croaked, “Yes, Tony! He could register...you! Secretly!”
“Foxx...” Harlow hesitated. “Why would I need to register as a vampire secretly?”
“Harlow...” Foxx whimpered, sniffling as his head rolled back. “Sorry… I-I should have noticed...” The vampire’s eyes slowly slid shut.
Harlow dropped the bag, one hand threading through Foxx’s hair as he gently lifted his head forward while he lightly tapped his face. “Come on, brat, keep those eyes open.”
Whining, Foxx’s eyes fluttered open again.
“That’s it. Keep them open. You want to tell me, don’t you? About why I need to be registered in secret? Because something about it is scaring you, right?”
“Yes.” The vampire sniffled.
“I’ll let you tell me, but you have to promise that once you do, you’ll let me feed you more blood. Will you let me do that? If you do, afterwards, I will do whatever you want me to, okay?” Harlow said, in an attempt to reason with the dazed and stubborn ass vampire. Because he figured, even if he tried to force-feed him again, he’d just end up with more blood spraying everywhere.
“Okay,” Foxx murmured.
“Okay. Now, tell me the reason.”
“It’s...because...you’re...not…” Foxx shuddered. “A vampire.”
Harlow blinked. “I’m...not?”
“No...”
“Then what the fuck am I?”
“You’re a...” Foxx swallowed hard. “You’re a... You’re a...dhampir.”
Harlow stared at Foxx like the man had grown a second head, trying to grasp what the fuck he just said...but he found everything was too loud. More importantly, the vampire’s eyes had closed again.
Holding back his urge to fire out questions, he slowly slipped his hand free of Foxx’s curly black hair, grabbed the bag and attached it to the man’s fangs. When Foxx’s eyes snapped back open, as he knew they would, Harlow grabbed his hand, stopping him from ripping another bag off.
When Foxx winced at his hold, he quickly loosened his grip, but didn’t let go.
“No,” Harlow said firmly when the vampire attempted to pull away from him. “Whatever else you need to say can wait. You got to tell me the one thing, now you drink, as promised.”
Foxx whimpered and glared at him over the bag, but didn’t try to push it away again.
Three bags down, when Harlow tried to add a fourth, the man slapped it out of his hand, huffing. “I am perfectly finenow!” Foxx even slipped off the chair and took a few steps away with a pointed glare. “You’ve fed me. I’m good. Now let’s?—”
“Wait! First... How?” This was just one of many fucking questions roaming around in his head. “I thought they were a myth.”
Foxx crossed his arms, grimacing. “They tried to make them appear as simply that.”
“Who is‘they’? You’ve said ‘they’ multiple times now.”
“The vampire council.” Foxx sighed, and appeared to be about to rub his temples, but froze instead. Holding his hands out with a frown, the vampire wiped his bloodstained hands on his pants. “Harlow, this is serious. To them, you can’t, and shouldn’t, exist. Which is why, for many millennia, they’ve tried, and for the most part succeeded, in wiping your kind out.”
“Great...another hit list with me on it. As if I needed to be on more. But Foxx...why? I know, I mean...according to the legends, I guess it means one of my parents was a vampire, while the other human. But I was born human... I suppose being a dhampir means...I feed on your kind now, right? Is that it? They just don’t like being on the food chain themselves?”
