Chief Somner clipped his radio back onto his uniform and eyed them. “Remind me to not be anywhere near you all when you fire.”
Harlow stiffened next to him. “Don’t tie in his horrible skills with mine,” the dhampir said, sounding very disgruntled that anyone would ever compare him to Iggy.
Foxx snickered, but then winced on catching the look on the human’s face. He smiled sheepishly. “Yeah, we can shootjust fine. It’s more just an ongoing theme at this point… Iggy accidentally shooting people, that is…”
“Right…” the Police Chief said, his eyes slowly returning to the screens while Foxx continued to stare.
Great…one of the few officers they’d run into that seemed to not hate them, and now he thought they were a bunch of weirdos…which… Well, really, the problem was that Foxx couldn’t even say he was wrong about that.
He glanced over at Harlow and found the man staring back blankly with zero emotions on his face. ‘What?’ he mouthed. His eyes started to twitch when the dhampir’s brow slowly raised in question.
Yep…not wrong at all.
“There!” Chief Somner snapped.
Foxx looked back at the screens, to where the Police Chief was now pointing. Frowning, he leaned in, Harlow doing the same next to him. The video feed showed some sort of park and two individuals, one staggering forward, while the other was moving along only a little faster.
The human slowly said, “Maybe whatever they took is taking its toll.”
“We know it is.”
“Do we know what they took? They’re…slowing down at least…”
“They’re not slowing…” Foxx said, straightening up to meet the man’s eyes. “They’re dying… And we don’t think they took anything.”
The man closed his eyes and cursed. “You think they were drugged.” Rubbing at his face, when his eyes opened again, he looked tired. “These people don’t have any control over what they are doing, do they?”
“Not that we can tell.”
“You said they're dying… How are you sure whatever it is isn’t just wearing off?” Chief Somner sounded so hopeful that the vampires could still live. As happy as it made him to know that there were humans out here like this…he had to dash that hope.
Foxx sighed. “I’m old enough that I can tell. They’ve been slowly dying since before we got here, probably since they first were drugged or poisoned, or whatever this is.”
“I guess we should have known they weren’t doing this willingly… The last glimpses of sanity we saw in some of these people, before they went on a rampage, told us that.”
“One is down, and looks to be saying something. If we want to meet these people while they are still alive, we need to go now,” Harlow said, his voice empty.
Foxx glanced back at the screen, frowning at what he saw. “Where is this?”
“Willow Park,” Chief Somner said.
Pulling out his phone, Foxx quickly typed the name into his map. “Let’s go, Harlow,” he said as he took off, even though his phone was still calculating the distance.
He nodded at Iggy and Oceana as he passed them.
The park was only two miles away. Running at full speed, it took them at most a few minutes to get there…but by the time they arrived, both vampires were on the ground, and one was already dead.
As Foxx stumbled to a stop, he hesitated and eyed the young woman who was obviously in pain on the grass, lying just off the gravel path that wove through the park. His vision slipped into his Bloodline of Fates, and he stared on, horrified at the state of her threads. Only a few strands were still intact, the rest were completely black and lifeless.
Her eyes, still wholly brown, widened when she noticed him. With tears trailing down her blood-coated face, she sobbed, “Help me.”
Foxx slowly drew closer. “I…I can’t.” His voice wavered as he saw her despair, while tears filled his own eyes.
“Please…please. It hurts… It hurts!” the woman cried, managing to crawl forward a few more feet…before she stopped and screamed out in what could only be described as agony. As the scream faded, she gasped desperately for air, each breath sounding labored and rough.
“I’m sorry…” he said, only a couple of feet away from her now. He wanted to go to her, yet…he still hesitated.
“Please…” she sobbed. “H-help me. I d-don’t know what’s going on. Please… It hurts…it hu—” Her desperate pleas cut off as she screamed again.
