My little nap turned into five hours- which didn’t honestly surprise me. Ren wore me down every time he snuck into my room. What surprised me was that Devin hadn’t barge into my room to wake me up.
Since he’d given me that long, I decided to take longer; twenty minutes in the shower with blazing hot water calmed most of my aching muscles. When I got out, dripping on the carpet, I had a satisfied smile on my face as I stretched out.
It was habit to stop in front of the mirror, checking to see if anything had changed. I was always afraid I would have an incident like Jack did; I would just wake up one day to find out my whole face had shifted.
Thankfully, I still looked the same. I was short, perhaps a bit too skinny- but I never ate enough to make up for how quickly my high metabolism burned calories. My hair was still blue, short and shaggy, and my face had the same soft curves. The eyes hadn’t changed either, those unnerving bright red eyes that had deep purple pupils.
I turned slightly to see the tattoos on my back. A deep shimmery blue, they had a tribal look, an abstract painting of wings I had never gone to get inked into my skin. Even the scientists couldn’t explain it; the tattoos just showed up, as if surfacing from under my skin, every time I pulled back in my wings.
A small frown pulled at the corners of my mouth. I already missed the wings, the freedom of them. Great eighteen foot feathery monsters, they were white at the top, but they faded into blue as they swept down, and that same blue flecked the white feathers like somebody had flicked paint onto them. The wings were the only part of my body I truly appreciated; their feathery soft warmth, the freedom flight could give me, left an empty hole in my heart when my wings were hidden inside my body.
“Eli!”
My frown grew. There was the voice I had been waiting for, shouting my name. The person it belonged to barged once more into my room like he belonged there. It had become a trend since we were partnered together two years ago, and it was really starting to annoy me. Hell, Devin was really starting to annoy me, no surprise since literally everybody he ever met hated him within a week.
I ignored him, dropping my towel to the floor and running a comb through my hair- it was too thick to go without if I didn’t want it to be horribly tangled. I walked out into my room still dripping.
Devin’s face tinted red, and he quickly turned his back on me. “Damn it, Eli, how many times do I have to tell you not to walk around naked?”
“You’re the one who walked into my room,” I pointed out.
His silence meant I had made my point, and I grinned at his back. Served him right. My steps were light as I crossed the room to my closet. I never bothered to look at what I grabbed; Devin picked through my closet while I was busy and separated everything out into acceptable outfits. I pitied him a little, because my closet was extensive, one of the perks of being a genetically modified freak kept until lock and key.
“Are you dressed yet?” Devin asked, short and sharp.
I snorted, and my tone was mocking. “Why don’t you turn around and see?”
He ground his teeth, muttering something about ‘those damned Vitals’ and ‘learn some damn boundaries’ under his breath. I had to press my lips together to keep from laughing as I dressed.
And damn but it took forever to get dressed. There wasn’t any jeans or tee shirts for me- oh no, wouldn’t want to give the community a bad impression. At least the suit was tailored to fit me, sleek black with accents the same blue as the color on my wings. I adjusted the cuffs carefully, making sure the tie was perfectly straight, before slipping into the comfortable black boots that waited just by the door of the closet.
“Alright, I’m dressed. You can turn around now, prude,” I sniffed.
“I am not a prude just because I understand social boundaries!” Devin snapped back. There was a frown on his face when he turned around, but it quickly slipped away, replaced by a soft look that could have been affectionate. “You did your tie wrong again.”
My mouth pressed into a thin line, and I felt heat rise to my face; no matter how many times I tried, it was always wrong. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll just go without it.”
“Let me fix it for you?”
In moments like that, I almost couldn’t remember why I hated him. He stepped forward with all of the anger drained out of him. Devin could be almost attractive when he wasn’t scowling; hell, I’d be lying if I said he wasn’t attractive even when he was. He had that classic beauty that always made girls swoon, shoulder length golden hair and eyes a perfect clear blue, his lean build hinting at muscles hidden under his button down shirt. I would have considered going after him- except that he was such a complete narcissistic ass most of the time, and I couldn’t stand it.
“There you go, now you’re ready.” Devin’s hand rested against my chest for a moment. I knew he could feel the impossibly fast beat of my heart; it beat fast on its own, like a hummingbird’s wings, and I could only imagine how it felt to Ren or Jack when they worked me up.
I backed up a step, dismayed by where my thoughts had gone. It was rude to think about other men when Devin had that tender look in his eyes. Even if I could never think about Devin that way, I should at least respect his affection for me. At least, that’s what Jack told me when he got too drunk to remember he was supposed to hate Devin.
“Yeah, thanks.” The distance was in my tone, the distance that was supposed to be kept between a Vital and his Guardian.
Devin pulled away from me, and the anger was back in his eyes; he actually seemed almost hurt by the barrier between us. “Right. We ought to go see what they wanted from us, then.” There was the sharp tone I knew, the Guardian tone. They all had it when they were near us. I sometimes wondered if they even had any other tone of voice.
“Who called us?” I asked, snatching up my comm from the stand by the door. It was the only way to communicate; after the Mod War, which wiped out most of the planet, any higher technology was kept strictly to the highest of officials. Lucky me, I had access to them.
Narissa, the only one of us old enough to remember a time before the Mod War, said the comms looked like tablets. Hell if I knew what that meant. The small, thin membrane was about the size of my hand, and when I laid it into my arm, wires so small they couldn’t be seen attached themselves to my skin. I winced at the sting, and watched the membrane take on a pale blue color.
Good morning, Alpha Vital Eli.
The familiar words scrolled across the membrane before it glowed to life. In the top corner were all my vital signs, my heart rate and the levels of all the important chemicals in my blood; they would be reported back to the scientists in charge of me by the time I got back from whoever I would be reporting to. In the right corner was a tab that would lead me to the most recent case file- a red cross over it meant we’d already taken care of that particular problem.
It was the bottom half that concerned me. A large, empty space, it would glow when touched, and opened up the path of communication between the Vitals’ comms. It had a direct link to our brainwaves- at least, that’s how the scientists explained it. All I would have to do to contact another Vital was think about them; if they accepted the contact, we could have a whole conversation from across the city in seconds.
“We don’t need any of the others for this. It’s a routine snatch and grab. They only called us in because he’s already claimed a victim.”
My hand paused where it hovered over the comm. I could see my saddened expression reflected in it; I may not have know the person who had been killed, but to know somebody had died in such a way… it made me sick.
“So, did they find the intruder or the body?”
“The body. We’ll have to play hunting dog today, but it shouldn’t be that hard. According the labcoat at the scene, there was blood from two different people.”
“So he’s injured,” I sighed, disappointed. It was always easier when they were injured, and that took all the fun out of it. Not that I took any pleasure in hunting down the intruders; I just found there were better things to do in a day than spend it hunting an easy kill.
“Fine.” I let my arm fall to my side, the comm going into sleep mode. “Let’s hurry up and get this over with. I want ice cream when we’re done.”
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