We were too late. We were all too late.
I landed a few feet away from them, Devin holding tightly to me with his face buried against my shoulder; he always hated flying. Even a few feet away, my wings collected blood as they brushed the ground.
Devin pushed away from me as soon as we were on solid ground. His face was red, but the color drained away, his horrified expression matching mine as we faced a horror like nothing we had ever seen before.
There was blood everywhere. It coated the walls, the ground, the trash can set against the wall of the alley. It even flecked the lamp post five feet away from the mouth of the alley. Acid rose to burn the back of my throat, and I put a hand over my mouth, closing my eyes as tears trickled down my cheek.
Eli… Jack’s voice came over the comm. When I looked up, our eyes met, and the tears fell thicker at the sight of the pain in his eyes.
A hand settled on my back as I bent over. Soft and gentle, it stroked down my wings, comforting. The tears ran thicker, and I was making pathetic noises.
Eli. We need you.
I looked up to meet Gale’s eyes- he always knew, somehow. Creepy as hell. But for once, I didn’t find it disconcerting, that way he had of feeling out what the rest of us were doing, seeing, feeling. It was comforting. To know that he was there for me, when he could feel the depth of my pain radiating from the comm link.
I drew in a deep breath, and tried to swallow the bile rising in the back of my throat. I couldn’t throw up. It would be unbelievably rude. Throwing up on the bodies of my comrades- Devin would gut me for it, and I would gladly let it.
After a few of those deep breaths, I managed to calm myself down enough to stand up. A backwards glance showed me something surprising; it had been Devin who stroked my wings to help calm me down. I blinked at him, more shocked than I had been when I landed to my comrades’ blood so thick it seemed to be coating even the air itself.
Here I was thinking Devin hated us as much as we disliked him. But… if he hated me, why did he bother to comfort me. His gaze shifted away from mine, his face flushing slightly pink. I recognized that. I’d seen it when Narissa caught Farah staring at her. He couldn’t… that couldn’t be right… he was Devin.
Eli. Please. I can’t handle this without you.
That shocked me, too, and my gaze skipped back to Gale. He was the calm, logical one, the father figure, the one who made sure we all ate our veggies and didn’t lose our legs. And he looked lost. Damn it, but there were tears making trails down his face, and I had never seen Gale cry before. It wrenched at my heart.
So I did what I was supposed to do, as the oldest, the first. I swallowed down all of my emotions. I shoved them far back in my mind where they couldn’t bother me. I put on the face, the mask, of Eli the Vital, Eli the fearless, Eli the killer. My expression went cold and dead as I stepped carefully through the puddles of blood, my wings slightly spread to keep them from collecting any more of the sticky red stuff.
I knelt down next to the bodies of my comrades. It was worst than the body we’d come across earlier that day. That one had still been recognizable. These… my comrades had been reduced to bloody skeletons, deep gouge marks in the bones. There’d been plenty of time for the Soulless to feed.
The sick feeling in the pit of my stomach grew… and then it set on fire. I was suddenly furious. The bloodlust that had controlled six years of my life surged on with a vengeance. My hands curled into claws, my lip up in an animalistic snarl. My careful kneel in the blood turned into a predatory crouch, ready to jump at the neck of my prey, to lunge and rip and feel their warm blood against my teeth.
Eli… Gale’s voice was terrified in my head.
They hadn’t seen me like that for a very long time. Per human years, they had been five years old when the war ended. They’d never had to partake in it. But I, the first, a human year older than them- I’d been the soldier on the front lines. I had bathed myself in the blood of the Soulless on a daily basis. Hell, I had enjoyed it.
When the war was over, I was left scarred. The sight of blood would make me sick and dizzy to the point where I passed out when Devin broke his arm. Any sort of violence disgusted me. I hated it, hated it all, hated any reminder that I had once been a vicious, mindless weapon. It was the reason for the sex, the ice cream, the midnight flights over the dead lands that surrounded the city. All a distraction. So that I wouldn’t remember.
Remember what I really was.
That I was this feral animal, crouching in the blood with his thoughts turning red, yearning for the kill.
“I will find the bastard that did this, and I will rip every limb from his body and feed him to the hounds,” I snarled between clenched teeth.
A cleared throat brought my head snapping up. “No need to go searching, lapdog. I’m right here.”
My hand settled on the ground, quickly slick with blood, as I prepared to launch myself forward. The person who had talked stepped forward into the alley. I heard Ren hiss behind me, the sliding of feet as my comrades got into their fighting positions.
The man who had spoken looked unaffected. His clear blue eyes were centered on me, and me alone, full of a certain curiosity that disarmed me slightly. He was… sane. The Soulless were never sane. His pink hair, which faded to gold at the tips, was too clean for him to be Soulless. And his body, it was as perfect as mean, with lean muscles, and none of the scars I would have expected.
Most importantly, he wasn’t spattered with blood. He should have been spattered with the same blood that coated the alley.
My tension didn’t disappear entirely, but it faded, and I stood up.
Eli!
I know what I’m doing, Gale. My inner voice was quiet and calm, and I felt him settle back. Even if he was uneasy, he would trust me.
“Who are you?” I asked the strange man.
He smirked at me. “Is that really the question you want to ask, lapdog?”
It peaked my curiosity. The rest of the tension drained out of me, and I gave his question real thought. “What are you?” I finally asked.
“There. See, that’s the question you need to ask. You catch on quickly…” he paused, quirking up an eyebrow at me.
“Eli,” I answered, almost without thinking.
For god’s sake, are you trying-
I shut down my connection to their comms as the others were suddenly clamoring for my attention. Still, I could feel their glares burning into my back.
The man’s gaze sharpened. “Eli. You’re the Alpha Vital, aren’t you? The first of the last generation?”
“Yes.” My voice was tight, and my hands curled into fists. I didn’t like the look in his eyes. He looked too happy to hear who and what I was. “Where is the Soulless that killed my friends?”
“Dead,” he replied simply. “He was a decoy. Bait, if you prefer that term.”
“Bait for who?”
“For you.”
I should have known. I’d let my guard down because there hadn’t been any blood on his. Because he had been clean. My mistake cost me, because he was faster than I expected. I was barely able to see the faint glow of something cupped in his hands as he stepped forward.
“Long live the White King,” he said, his gaze intense as he focused on me. Then he slammed his hands into my chest.
It was like he held lightning in his hands. Pain shot through me, sizzling, hot in my veins. I went rigid, the scream stuck in my throat. My eyes wouldn’t close, and I was forced to watch the world move.
I hit the ground hard, blood splashing up, flecking my face. I wanted to scream. I wanted to flail and claw the blood away, but I couldn’t move. Not a single muscle in my body would listen to me. Whatever that man had done to me, I was frozen in a rictus of pain.
I managed, through a great effort that only made me hurt worse, to close my eyes. My breath came out in harsh, rattling breaths that were all I could manage in the way of a scream when there were suddenly hands on my body.
It hurt. God damn it, but it hurt. My body was on fire, and my head pounded in time with my heart racing faster than its usual hummingbird quick beat. I was half afraid it would explode in my chest. The rest of me, hoped that it would- it would give me relief from the pain that ran through my thicker than blood.
A scream tore from my throat as the pain settled deep in me. My body was free of it, free to flail and try to escape even as hands held it down. But I couldn’t escape the pain. Faintly, I could hear my comrades trying to get to me, breaking through the block I had put between my comms and theirs. But their voices soon faded away behind the pain.
A new voice took their place. One I had never heard before.
“Eli. Sleep. The pain will be over soon.”
I wanted to resist, I wanted to fight and claw my way out of the pain. But that voice. Its warmth, the subtle power threaded through it. They called to me. They wooed me down past the pain, swaddling me in darkness, bundling me deep into my mind where none of it could reach me. I listened. I slept. And I hoped the pain would end.
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