"Adam took a few pieces of shrapnel, Larissa was shielded by his quick response," he replied scanning the field for them.
I tried to nod but the helmet he'd made me wear wouldn’t allow for it. "Your team?"
His eyes widened as his lips turned up in the corner. "They're Fae," his eyes sparkled with amusement.
"Same team—today," I whimpered as pain erupted inside my head.
"Syn stop talking, you're bleeding everywhere."
"Same team today," I argued ignoring the pain.
"They are fine. Immortal remember?"
"Injuries? Oh my God, Alden he was right next to me!" I cried knowing he hadn't been wearing a vest or the head gear I had been sporting.
"He's on his way back to the Guild. They sifted him back to a healer."
I closed my eyes. Of course they'd taken him back. He was acting supervisor and head of the Guild. They'd have taken him back to safety ASAP at the first sign of danger. He was too important for this shit, being in this type of danger and yet he wasn’t the type to stay hidden as many of the other Guild leaders did. The fact that they risked sifting with him told me volumes. Humans did not react too well to sifting according to our reports, so the Fae gladly avoided it with us.
"Where do you hurt Synthia?" He growled when I didn’t open my eyes soon enough.
"Everywhere," I chirped feeling the stickiness of my own blood beneath the tight vest. He'd been right and if he hadn't been so pigheaded and stubborn I'd be dead right now. Not that I would admit as much to him.
"Z, get our healer up here now. Gather our wounded and get them loaded up and back to the compound," Ryder barked out orders, his eyes never leaving mine, "Someone is sending us a message, a very loud message."
A message? "What?" I asked still trying to speak past the blood pooling in my mouth. I needed off my back but my limbs wouldn’t move, "I need up."
"I don’t think so. I can smell the blood inside the vest Syn. I'm getting my healer here to seal the wound."
"Larissa can do it. I told you last night I don’t want Fae spelling me."
"I didn’t say you had a choice and Lari has agreed that she isn't as skilled as our healers."
Lari? He was calling Larissa by the nickname I had given her? I felt betrayed that she would have told him, or that he felt inclined to be able to call her that at all. I watched the clouds parting, the suns light shining down on the scene.
My team stood off to the side, mixed with his, watching us closely. It wasn’t something I liked, but if it hadn't been for Ryder and his men, we'd all be dead. I'd have let them in closer because I'd have thought I'd be able to shield them and it would have gotten us all dead. It was becoming a pattern.
I was over my head on this one, the killer was just that—a sadistic sadist who wanted to kill as many people as he could. We kept running to the scene, looking for clues as he or she knew we would. But why? To kill the crime scene investigators, or to kill those of power who were now swarming in because of the notoriety that the killer was garnering for his kills?
"I think your right, this was somebody sending us a message," I mumbled more to myself than to Ryder. Rex had been the only fatality that I could see, bits and pieces of him littered the cold ground. He alone wasn’t high enough by any standard to warrant this much planning by the killer though. No it had to be either Ryder or Alden who had been meant to die here.
The question burning in my mind was who and why? Nothing was making sense. There was only the pattern which left the question of why the killer wasn't keeping to it. I needed to talk to Alden. We needed to put out a recall to everyone who had moved out from the Guild. If we could break the pattern maybe we could control it.
~~~~~~~~~~*
It took less than thirty minutes after the Fae healer showed up to get me off my back. Thirty minutes of Ryder sitting beside me in the dirt. Watching me. Studying me. It had been the longest thirty minutes of my life. Not to mention the healer had pulled up my shirt and exposed my black laced bra to Ryder like a roast on a dinner menu.
We'd gone from the crime scene back to his mansion again, where he'd tried to force me to sleep. As if. I was wired for sound after the energy the healer had used to heal the two inch wound in my side where the vest had left a gap large enough for the shrapnel to tear through my skin.
It had been mortifying to be exposed and yet he'd been right again. Larissa couldn’t help internal injuries and I'd have needed to visit the hospital inside the Guild for treatment which I didn’t have time to do. Not and catch a sadistic killer.