“How long do you think it’ll take them all to move?” Foxx glanced back at the sound of tires. “Oh, looks like the reinforcements are here.”
“Yeah, that’s our cue to ramp things up.” Harlow cleared his throat. “Santiago, I know you can hear us. Tell that officer that we will be pressing charges, and to move this along and stop wasting our gas.”
Santiago shrugged but leaned down to the officer, who cut off mid-rant as he listened.
The officer looked over to them, seeming grim, and after a moment, he nodded and signaled the SWAT teams with his hand.
“Effective immediately, you are all under arrest,” the man started.
As he continued to read the Miranda rights, people began to scream and run. Either way, the path cleared pretty quickly. They waved at the officers and wolves as they passed them, not bothering to stop. Then again, why would they? They had a job to do.
“Well…that was interesting,” Foxx drawled. “Probably should avoid this town from now on.”
Harlow chuckled. “Why? Think they’ll hold a grudge?”
“Of course not. We certainly must have made friends today. I bet they will welcome us back with open arms and cake,” he said with fake and very sarcastic cheer.
The dhampir just laughed harder.
Going into the dilapidated house,Harlow had started out using guns, but switched to claws pretty quickly. The big group was actually fifty fucking vampires shoved into a two-story house. Fifty vampires who apparently didn’t know what soapand water were, or what the word cleaning meant. The BO smell alone…on top of the rotten food, and who the fuck knew what else, was enough to peel paint.
As he sliced through one vampire’s neck, stabbing his claws through the chest of another…Harlow had to say…this was…a bit… “Why is it so easy?” he asked Foxx, who was fighting just as untaxed beside him.
The vampire, now covered in blood splatter, was wearing a light blue sweater and blue overalls that had a cartoon whale on them, having taken off his yellow daisy bear sunsuit before coming inside. Which probably was the best option, as it was…disgusting and…sticky. Literally, his shoes stuck to the wooden floor with each movement—ugh.
Foxx jerked a man’s head clean off before looking over at him with a brow raised. The vampire looked so cute with his confused expression and blood splattered face.
“I mean…they are young.”
He eyed them, moving forward towards the next group. The speed at which he was able to reach them was almost jarring enough for him to pause in his attack—almost.
Slicing through them just as easily as he had done the others, he turned in time to witness Foxx rip someone’s heart out. “So, it’s like always this easy for you?”
The vampire tossed the heart aside. “I mean, they could still get some good hits in, so you can’t be careless. But generally, the vampires we’ve faced haven’t…been much of a threat to me. The only one close to a threat was probably that woman who blew that house up on us. Who you killed, by the way, as she was among the bodies.” Foxx’s head tilted. “I suppose Micah could have been one, if he’d been at full strength, as he was older…but… I’m guessing he wasn’t super strong as you were able to take him down before you were changed, and that wasn’t too long ago.”
Harlow turned, freed a knife from the sheath on his right wrist and tossed it, nailing a fleeing vampire in the back of the head. “Micah was…” He thought over that first fight with a frown. “He was a pain in the ass to take down. I won’t say he wasn’t. But…he was probably weaker than you.”
Foxx hummed, his expression thoughtful while he latched onto another vampire, who started screaming bloody murder. The scream cut off when Foxx severed his head with a quick swipe of his claws. As the blood sprayed through the air, Foxx said, “Why don’t you try to hold back? I mean, make sure they don’t shove a hand through you, but you do need the practice.”
Practice, huh… Well, Foxx wasn’t wrong… He’d barely been able to hide just how much shit he’d broken since the change. Foxx still hadn’t found out about some of it… But it was kind of hard to hide breaking a glass or mug when you got down to having only a few left. Just a bit noticeable going from ten glasses to two…
“Practice… I suppose I should.”
How…did one actually practice? That was the question…
“If you think killing them is easy, which it is for me too, just think what would happen if you were up against a human.”
He blinked. “No wonder you knocked those humans out fucking cold.”
Well…out cold, as in, passed out due to internal hemorrhaging… It's not like Foxx had killed them… The brain swelling of that first one went down just fine… The man was alive and well in prison.
“Right!?” Foxx cried as he punched a man in the face, knocking him to the ground. “It’s not as easy to hold back as you’d think it would be at my age. I mean, sure, strength depends on the individual and all, but like mine personally just keeps going up as I get older! Like, it never fucking seems tostop. Kind of annoying, I'm not going to lie. I keep having to readjust every decade to a hundred years or so.”
Harlow pulled out his gun and shot the man who was starting to get up off the floor. “How the hell did I even fight you all off? Humans, we never should have been able to…”
“I mean, you were never human. And I’m pretty sure you had above human abilities back when we thought you were. You heard better, your strength, agility, and reaction times seemed above and beyond what any human should have been capable of, especially at your age. But also, as I said, it depends on the individual. Age plays a huge factor. You stand a chance because, frankly, most of the vampires and paranormals we face are young. Not all, of course.
“Take that vampire, that ‘mafia’ boss. He was over five hundred. At the time, you mentioned believing that he was physically stronger than you, but I don’t think that was true. I think it's likely, despite his age, he was overall quite weak. Sure, compared to the vampires here, he’d be strong. And I’d assume he likely would have given you a good fight. But all that aside, you probably would have won in a fight against him, even back then.” Foxx smiled cheekily. “Well…maybe not that day, with that back issue you had, but…”
