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H arlow eyed Foxx as he stood up, his expression blank while wiping tears off his cheeks. The empty expression didn’t last though, with fury taking its place swiftly, even as more tears dripped down. “Someone did that to her…” Foxx rasped, his gaze meeting Harlow’s.

“Yes,” Harlow said slowly, his head tilting.

“They will…pay!” the vampire snarled. “I will make them pay. Every single person who was involved, I will make sure each and every moment until their well-deserved death is nothing but agony.”

That was his vampire, moving from sad to murderous in seconds.

“I have no doubt you will, Foxx.” He smirked, before adding, “And I’ll help.”

“You better!” Foxx hissed, glaring at him, but then his gaze flicked down to the dead vampire, his brow pinching.

“I recognize her,” Harlow drawled. “She was in the first video… That man she said she liked… Yeah, she killed him.”

The vampire winced. “Well…hopefully, they are together now.”

“Come on, let’s report in and head back. All that is left here is…” Harlow glanced down at the woman before saying, “Clean up.”

“Pick her up.”

Harlow blinked, his gaze snapping to Foxx. “What? Why?”

“I want to get a sample of her blood… I have a small blood testing kit somewhere in my duffle, just in case I ever need to test my supply for spoiling…” Foxx wrinkled his freckled nose. “It’ll just be a small test tube. Would have been convenient if I had thought to buy a second blood drawing kit for the car, but oh well…”

He frowned. “Okay…but why do you want blood from the dead girl? They will no doubt be transferring some of the bodies for testing. Probably not all of them, considering how many there are. But a good number likely.”

“Not that I don’t trust them…”

“But you don’t trust them?” Harlow chuckled.

“It’s not that… I just… Well, okay, I don’t trust the Guild as a whole. I trust specific people in the Guild that I know… Beyond that… I just want to make sure that someone who actually knows what they are doing is looking into this. Which is why I want Doc to take a look.”

His brow rose at that. “Doc?”

While Harlow considered Doc Robinson an adequate doctor, and one that he somewhat trusted to take care of Foxx…he wasn’t sure what he could do beyond that.

“Yes, Doc,” Foxx said, not explaining further.

“Okay…well, we don’t need to bring the body back for that.”

Foxx frowned. “Why? Are you planning to run back to your Jeep to get my kit?”

“No.” Harlow reached into his jacket.

Foxx stared dumbstruck as seconds later the man pulled a full size, and still sealed, blood drawing kit out of one of the many pockets he had.

“Why do you have that?! Also, isn’t it unsafe to walk around with a bloody needle in your pocket?!”

And why the hell didn’t the man tell him about it sooner? They could have used it to fill up bags. Well…there was only one bag, and it looked to be a one-time use sort of thing, so he supposed they’d still have had to order shit.

“The needle is capped, and it was in a very padded pocket… I mean… I don’t know… They made us go to this seminar about two years back, and I saw it and just put it in my pocket,” Harlow said, shrugging, his expression empty. “I thought that maybe I’d need it one day, so I kept it with me.”

Foxx stared at the blank expression, some alarm bells going off as he noticed how wide and innocent the dhampir’s eyes looked. “You swiped it, didn’t you?”

Harlow slowly smiled. “I’d like to think of it as sampling.”

“Why did you take it?”

“Well, because…”

“Because, why?”

The man huffed. “I don’t know. I thought maybe it would be fun to stab someone with it and force feed them their own blood.”

Foxx snorted. The fucking weirdo , he thought. But oh, did he love him, even all the weird parts. Though…force feeding someone their own blood would be slightly entertaining, he was sure. But only if the person was human… Vampires wouldn’t give a fuck. Other paranormals would likely be averse to it though…maybe…

He shook his head and pushed the thoughts away. “Well, it is definitely better than what my plan was. Hand it over.” He held his palm out.

Harlow glanced backwards for a moment, looking to him and then to the body, and back again, before taking a few steps backwards and more to the right. Then the man held out the bag of items.

“What was that?” Foxx asked with a raised brow as he walked closer and took the kit from the man.

“Just thought I’d block the body from the street camera… You aren’t alone in having a bad feeling about this whole situation. It’s best no one sees exactly what we are doing. This way anyone watching will just assume we are examining the body.”

“Makes sense. I’ll be quick.”

Foxx knelt by the deceased woman, and opened the sealed kit. As quickly as possible, he stabbed the IV through her clothes into the crease between her groin and thigh—into the femoral vein—and held it there as the blood bag began to fill. Foxx figured it wouldn’t be an area noticed quickly.

It hadn’t been long since she died, so her blood wasn’t giving him any trouble. Even if it was oddly rotting… But would…one sample of blood be enough to figure out what this was? It had been hours, and so far, skin contact with the vampire’s rotting blood hadn’t done shit to him. Foxx was guessing that likely wouldn’t have been the case if he’d ingested it, or injected it into himself.

Once the bag was full, he pulled the needle out, unworried if it kept bleeding. She was covered already. And by the time the clean-up crew got to her, the blood would have coagulated enough that it wouldn’t flow freely when they moved her.

Capping the needle, he set the now full blood bag, and everything else, back into the plastic bag it came in. Sealing it up, he handed it to Harlow. The dhampir squirreled it away inside his jacket, as he did with so many fucking other things apparently.

Standing, Foxx said, “Let’s head back.”

Harlow followed Foxx past the blinding fucking light barrier. The damn thing would have given him an instant headache every time he passed it…but his headache would have had to go away for him to get a new one, and it had pretty much been constant since arriving here.

The vampire had remained silent for the whole walk back. Harlow was just relieved that, so far, coming into contact with the infected’s blood didn’t seem to be a method to spread whatever the fuck this was.

As they made it past the barrier, they found the Chief of Police talking to a group of officers.

“You are to treat the bodies you find with respect. There is more going on here than we know. Anyone caught disrespecting any remains will find my foot lodged up their ass, do I make myself clear?” Chief Somner barked.

“Yes, Sir!” the group yelled.

“Good! Dismissed!” The human turned to them as the other officers walked off, no doubt to carry out whatever order was given to them.

“The bodies here, and the ones in the two surrounding cities, will be taken to Lowville General Hospital. They happen to have the largest amount of mobile morgues in the area, due to the death toll during last year’s tornado season. They will all remain there until the vehicles that will transfer them arrive.”

“The Guild wants you to collect all the bodies for transfer?” Harlow asked, slightly surprised they would want them all.

Chief Somner nodded. “Those were the orders given to me.” The man hesitated before asking, “You…talked to the girl before she died. What did she say?”

“She was confused. Begged us to help her,” Foxx replied sadly. “There was no helping her.”

“Whatever was given to her…killed her, right?”

The vampire sighed. “Yes.”

The human cursed, rubbing at his mouth. “I…I have a daughter, she had cancer. Terminal...” The man swallowed hard. “After the violence and bullshit, after paranormals were granted the rights they should have had in the first fucking place, I found out a long time friend of mine wasn’t human.”

Harlow stared, not sure how to respond to this. So he wisely kept his mouth shut.

“He changed her?” Foxx murmured softly.

“Yes…” Chief Somner swallowed again, his eyes going glossy. “She was all I had left after my wife passed. I couldn’t lose her too. What was left of me was dying with her. He saw that. Jason didn’t have to save her, but he did…and it was…a miracle. So many accused me of condemning her, but she’s alive!”

Foxx reached out and gave the man’s hand a squeeze. “She is alive. As am I. As is your friend. We are alive, and we're just…people trying to live our lives.”

“You are… And beyond being alive…she’s happy, and bright… She’s no demon or devil. My friend…” He hesitated before shakily admitting, “Newly my husband now, actually, and he is no demon or devil either. You two are certainly not. Whatever happened tonight was the devil’s work. So please, find out what the fuck happened to these people…because they are people, and they didn’t deserve this.”

“We will,” Foxx promised. “We will find out, and the people responsible will pay.”