"Just come home please Syn, I need you here." She said and hung up on me.
I held the phone out, looking at it before shoving it back into the purse between the seats. What the hell had that been about? She'd sounded upset and I really hoped it had nothing to do with Adam. No way in hell was I playing a go between with their relationship. I shook my head and headed home.
I hit the button for the second time glaring at the doors of the elevator. I'd tried to call her again but she'd either hit ignore call or had turned off her phone completely which had made me ignore most of the speed limit signs from the highway all the way home.
The elevator doors beeped as they slid open. I rolled my eyes and stepped in, pressing the third floor and waiting. When the doors opened on our floor, I felt a twinge of fear, but it wasn’t my own fear that I felt. I groaned, hoping it had nothing to do with Larissa's fear that Adam was now Fae.
It wasn’t as if we had chosen it. We couldn’t change it either, the best we could do was ignore it until it became more dominant and then Ryder would help us as had been agreed upon earlier tonight. I exhaled and shook my head as I twisted the knob and found it locked.
I lifted my knee and groaned as the pain came back as I dug through my purse for the keys. I almost found them when the door opened and a man who wasn’t Adam stood in front of me. "You must be Synthia."
I blinked and narrowed my eyes, "And you would be?"
"Oh, how rude of me. I'm Joseph," he held out his hand which I didn’t take as I looked over his shoulder to see inside my own apartment. "Do come in Syn, Larissa and I have been waiting for you."
He looked harmless enough. Maybe we had a new neighbor? He knew my name so obviously Larissa trusted him enough to allow him inside our apartment, why she’d allowed him to answer the door was beyond me though. I could see no brands exposed from the white shirt and faded jeans he wore that would mark him Fae, or from the Guild. It wasn’t until I met his eyes that I found something off about him.
"Where is she?" I asked as my stomach dropped.
"She's inside," he said with a smile that didn’t fit right on his pinched features, his hair was a dull brown and looked as if he had been running his hands through it all day. He had eyes that held a keen interest in a shade of grey that was creepy.
I pushed past him and screamed as I felt the sudden white-hot pain in my back. It was too late. Something was pushed into one of my shoulder blades and I fell to the floor unable to move a single muscle. Tears burst into my eyes as I realized I couldn’t move. I could see Larissa though.
She was tied to a chair and blood was pouring from her face in several places. He'd come while I'd been out signing the contract. The puppet master had gotten to Larissa and I'd failed to feel anything from her from our connection. Worse, she must have been tortured this entire time by a killer I had provoked. I fought to pull any magic around or to me while his malicious laughter pulled my eyes to him. He stood over me looking down with a twisted smile.
"It won't help. Those rods were created to hold the Gods, the more you struggle, the more they lock down and drain you," he snickered, enjoying the pain that was now palpable inside the room.
"I challenged you, let her go," I said trying to get Larissa away from danger.
"No, she's too beautiful. She has great skin and her eyes…magical."
I felt bile push at the back of my throat, everything inside of me screaming that this wasn’t happening. Not again, I couldn’t watch this, I couldn’t breathe. "Mine are better, I'm Fae."
"You, I plan on keeping, you killed my masterpiece. You will get to keep your friend, well," he crouched down and moved a few stray pieces of hair from my face, "You will get to keep pieces of her."
"No, please," I whispered meeting Larissa's terrified eyes as she tried to speak through the gag tied over her mouth.
"Let's get you up. You need a better seat for the show!" He chirped as he easily picked me up and held me pressed against the wall. He had more small thin rods in his hands. He used one hand to press my head against the wall as the rest of my body obeyed him. His free hand slid the pins in one by one, as his eyes lit up. I fought the urge to scream as fire ignited and muscle gave way, tearing as each one was pressed through.
He was enjoying it, with a calmness that was unsettling. I fought nausea as I helplessly allowed it. He was going to kill us both and I couldn’t do a single thing but watch. I was going to have to relive my past again. There had to be a way to stop this, I tried to pull up a shield that would protect us but nothing happened but a tightening inside my chest.