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F oxx barely held back his giggles at the threat he heard behind their names. “Yes?” he chimed.

“ HOW in the FUCK is blowing up a building considered LOW KEY? !” Tony growled.

He snorted as a laugh almost slipped out, before giving in and just bursting into giggles. In between laughs, he managed to say, “It’s not?”

“ This isn’t funny! Why in the hell did you do it?!”

Harlow chuckled. “Technically, we didn’t blow it up, Gavin did.”

“ GAVIN! ”

“Present!” the dragon said with a laugh, before pulling one of the burgers on the table towards himself.

“ You three are a massive headache. At least TRY to say off the radar. You assholes are just lucky nothing was fucking left for them to find! If ? — ”

Gavin interrupted. “Well, no, it was nothing to do with luck. I made sure that there was nothing left. And we always planned to set the building on fire, just more electric than boom. The fact is, burning shit down is the best option when we factor in time for clean-up versus the risk of missing shit, and possibly having to bury bodies.”

Tony made an odd sputtering noise before roaring, “ DO NOT BURN ANY MORE BUILDINGS DOWN!! Fire is VERY noticeable, and easy to track, in case you fuckers forgot! Fucking hell, Harlow, has it really been that fucking long that you’ve forgotten why we rarely burned shit down unless we had to?! ”

“Okay, but I feel we should do that,” Foxx said with an evil grin. “Because I don’t want to clean up blood, and we have a dragon.”

“ DO NOT BURN ANYTHING ELSE!!”

“It really is the easiest way to get rid of the evidence. And as long as the places aren’t too close together, who cares?” Harlow chuckled, his smile just as evil as their eyes met across the table. “The explosion, yes, that was a mistake.”

“There was a gas leak and chemicals,” Gavin supplied helpfully.

The dhampir’s smile widened. “There were. But just think of all the time we will save if we stick to staging electrical fires, while letting Gavin burn the bodies to complete ash.”

“ This is not the time to be a bunch of lazy fuck s!”

“I can ensure that there is not a speck of evidence left!” the dragon chimed.

“Then it’s a plan!” Foxx giggled.

“ It is NOT the plan! ”

“Plan!” Gavin nodded.

“ I said no! ”

He mimicked, “Plan.”

“Plan,” Harlow agreed.

“ STOP REPEATING THE WORD !”

All three of them were grinning widely as they looked at each other, together repeating, “Plan.”

Tony let out a low, threatening growl. While the human took a few deep breaths in and out to likely try to calm his anger, Foxx asked, “So, what’s going on there?”

The man took a few more deep breaths before managing to answer. “ Too much. Before I get into that… First…” Tony cleared his throat. “ Any news on Maverick and Iggy’s whereabouts ?”

His brow rose, grimacing as he remembered the human’s reaction to the news of the hunter’s disappearance.

“I have some leads,” Gavin stated. “Maverick is a lot smarter than the people working for him, he knows how to remain off the grid. But I’ll find them.”

“ Right .” Tony sighed. “ Houndside Hazard Guild wise, plans are being made to rebuild, with updated security, and likely better building materials .”

“Same location?” Harlow asked.

“ Yeah, we’re staying put. While the upper section is shot, the underground was untouched. The plan is to build out and enlarge. We were cramped before, and they are building with the assumption that we will rebuild our numbers. ”

The dhampir tsked. “So, they're too cheap to rebuild the expensive underground somewhere else?”

“ Basically. ”

Foxx scoffed. “There was a shortage of hunters before, where exactly do they think the numbers are going to come from?”

“ Fuck if I know! In true pointless governmental fashion, once the Guild is rebuilt, some will be transferring in from other Guilds to even out the numbers here. The decision was made by some dunderheaded politician who seemed keen to ignore that we don’t stick to hunting only in our own region of the States.”

“I’m sure the other Guild Directors are thrilled to be told they have to transfer people,” Harlow drawled.

“ Definitely not the word I’d use to describe their feelings on the matter. But they have other shit to worry about. Not sure if you realized this, but the ‘vaccine’ mandate went out yesterday, and there's been a whole lot of fucking chaos already.

“So, unrelated to the bombs, but still related to the situation, in all their infinite wisdom, the powers that be have decided it is now our job to track down any werewolf or vampire registered who refuses the counteragent and…inject them. At this point, individuals will have two weeks to remedy the situation before that starts. That little tidbit will be released to the populace tonight. Oh, and by the way, it’s worldwide. So, hunters all over will be having quite a time soon enough. ”

Foxx’s eyes widened. “And the councils are just going along with that? Did they even agree to the counteragent?”

“ In a shocking turn of events, the answer to both of those questions is yes. After sharing some of the footage of what the poison leads to, and…letting them see the bodies we managed to recover during that last mass infection, both councils agreed that differences must be put aside for the sa fety of everyone. Though, I’ve been informed that Santiago had a big hand in ensuring the werewolf council agreed. ”

“Holy fuck,” Gavin rasped with a baffled sounding laugh.

The vampire council was one thing, as they could be very pragmatic, but what exactly was Santiago’s connection to the wolf council? It was hard to even get a meeting with them, let alone one where you could freely voice all your concerns enough to convince them of changing their mind on something. But Foxx supposed…the man was older, so he could have a familial connection they didn’t know of. Not that he had ever checked exactly how old the werewolf was.

“So, we have even less people, but instead of trying to delegate a few of our tasks to other government departments, they decided to add to our workload,” Harlow scoffed. “Seems like something they’d do. I’m guessing there were no thoughts of maximizing our productivity with the limited numbers we have left by shifting our job descriptions and removing the human component? You know, sending the police after wannabe human hunters who are blatantly breaking the law, instead of wasting our highly-trained ass time? No? Not a one? Just a new, likely time consuming, report heavy, pain in the ass task. What a fucking surprise. Shocked, I tell you.”

He couldn’t say he didn’t find it questionable that they dealt with human ‘hunters’ at all. Like a human murdering another human was the police’s problem, but a human murdering someone paranormal, and it was suddenly not their problem? Talk about bullshit.

“ Yeah, the hunter shortage apparently hadn’t been brought into the discussion at all when making that decision. Screaming matches are being had between Senior Director Gwen Whitlock and the new Director of Homeland Security, Jason Vorn, who may possibly be the same very politician failing to understand how our organization works.”

Foxx frowned. “What happened to Eton Husk?”

“Arrested. Big corruption scandal, broke the day after the Guild blew up. It’s safe to say that we just traded one idiot in with another. That clusterfuck aside, at least here in the States, on top of all that, it’s looking as if every Guild will be renovating in some major way to up security over the next few months. This has not been shared with anyone outside of my secure circles, but they found explosives planted in every single one. As of two days ago, all Guilds are on lockdown information-wise.”

His brow pinched as the last part failed to add up. “It doesn’t make sense that they planted all those bombs, but then only blew up our Guild.”

“It’s because Maverick likely went off plan. The fucker was always a hothead.” Harlow sighed. “If something was not going his way, that's exactly when he’d rashly fuck up every plan in place.”

“ It’s hard to know how long the bombs had been planted there, but there was a lot of dust on them. We are thinking Maverick destroyed something his group had set in place years ago,” Tony stated. “No doubt they initially planned to set all the Guilds ablaze at once, at some point in the future. Probably after they’d successfully turned the humans against paranormals with those poisons. ”

“That’s some good news at least, right?” Gavin said as he stretched and cracked his back. “You all pissing him off significantly lowered the casualties.”

Harlow kicked Gavin under the table when Foxx sagged a bit at the man’s words. The dragon flinched, but just smiled at him while he glared.

Foxx cleared his throat. “How are the funerals going?”

“ Plans are pretty much set. Some will take place in a few days.”

Wrinkling his nose, the vampire asked, “Anyone else die?”

“ Thankfully, no. And it’s looking as if no one else will. Wes is asking after you two, by the way. He is awake and talking, but still in the hospital. He wants both of you to call him once he’s out. ”

Harlow sorted. “No, what he wants is to get into our heads.”

Foxx huffed. “Do we have to?”

Tony’s voice was more somber when he spoke next. “ Foxx, the man just wants to make sure you are okay, and see how you are handling…Charity’s loss.”

“You planning to talk to him too, boss? You were right there,” Foxx pointed out.

The human scoffed. “ I’m fine .”

Harlow knew sure as shit that the man wasn’t. Despite feeling more than he ever would, Tony usually handled death pretty well…except for when it could even remotely be seen as his fault.

Charity dying was no one’s fault, except for Maverick and his group of dumbfucks, and that was the truth. However, Tony wouldn’t see it that way. Because Charity had died on his watch. And if the man hadn’t lied that day, she in fact pushed Tony out of the way before the wall came down, taking the death that was meant for him. Which meant the fucker was no doubt drowning himself in guilt over it, and likely would be for a few months.

Instead of outing his lie, Harlow just said, “I’ll send you some good Scotch.”

Foxx glanced at him with a frown as Tony just grunted in response. Silence held for a few moments before the human cleared his throat and asked, “ You aren’t seriously going to burn down everything, are you ?”

He smirked. “Why not?”

“Yeah, why not?” Foxx chimed. “It’s the easiest way!”

“ For fuck’s sake, you CANNOT set fire to every fucking ? —”

Tony’s rant was cut off as Harlow slid his finger across the screen and ended the call. “I practiced enough to be able to do that at the perfect time.”

Foxx giggled, clapping. “I’m so proud of you, Old Man!”

Gavin laughed. “Is he being sarcastic?”

“Nope, my brat is just showering me with praise. Jealous?”

“No.” The dragon snorted.

His phone started to ring, it was Tony trying to call back. He was going to guess the man had spent a moment screaming before deciding to try again.

Harlow set his still ringing phone on the table. “I’m going to let that ring.”

“Probably for the best,” Foxx snickered .

“So, where is this scumbag we are planning to kill, and how far away is it from our next target?”

Gavin whined. “Can I at least eat first?”

Harlow rolled his eyes. “Fine.”