“You’re an ass,” he said.
“Yes, I was a good little solider, and did anything I could to help kill Fae, because—and stop me if you know this part—they killed my parents…or so I thought. Anything else you want? Do you need me to say sorry? Because you can hold your breath on that one,” I warned as I glared at him. Adrian looked uncomfortable beside me, because he was riding the same ‘good soldier’ horse I was.
His men laughed, and I caught hint of a smile on his lips before he dropped back into warrior mode. “We need to move. This is too many armed Fae to have in front of a Witches’ Guild and we will have company we don’t need sooner than we like if we don’t move now.”
“Agreed; so do your invisible thingy and let’s go,” I said in agreement.
“My invisible thingy, huh?” Ryder asked as he pulled me closer to him, and looked across the street. “Are you okay?” he asked, without waiting for me to answer him on his first question.
“I’m not going to lie; seeing it like this is sad. Not knowing what we’ll find in there is even scarier. I don’t want to even think they won’t be alive, but if they were captured…it might be easier on them to have died,” I whispered.
“What they did to you…” Ryder hissed.
“I don’t want to think about that right now. Let’s just stay on point here, please,” I whispered. We hadn’t discussed what had happened to me during my stint with Faolán and the Mages, and I wasn’t ready to. I wasn’t sure I’d ever be ready to speak of what Faolán did to me and what he wanted to do before Dyson stopped him. Now definitely wasn’t the time to talk it out.
“You guys want lead?” Aodhan asked as he walked beside us, and Zahruk took flank on the other side of Ryder.
“You have to ask?” Ryder asked.
I turned to smile reassuringly at Aodhan, and caught sight of a blue strand of hair peeking from beneath his armor.
“Just figured I’d ask,” he said as he continued to walk beside us.
We approached the stairs that led into the Guild, and Z stopped us. “Do you feel that?” he asked.
“I feel nothing,” I admitted.
“No wards,” Ryder announced as he chanced a step forward. “Nothing,” he continued.
“That’s just not possible. It’s always warded,” I said, but then again, I wouldn’t be affected by it, since I wasn’t really Fae.
“Shit; why would they pull the wards down?” Vlad asked as he moved closer.
“They wouldn’t. Someone else had to have done it. No one that I was aware of knew how to remove these wards; it was a safeguard, to protect us,” Adrian said as his eyes met mine meaningfully.
I met his turquoise stare head on and shook my head. “That means anything could have done this. We were attacked often by Fae trying to get in, and if they knew the Guild was vulnerable, they wouldn’t have hesitated to make a try for it.”
Asrian moved in, his lime and grass-green eyes watching us as he interrupted. “Hate to say it, but we gotta move faster. We’re sitting ducks here.”
I looked at him and nodded before I moved up the steps with guilt in my heart that the Guild was in rubble, and the chance of anything or anyone being alive inside was getting slimmer with each new discovery.
It was hard to believe that this had happened in so little time, and although it was hard to imagine, we’d made a lot of enemies who wouldn’t hesitate to join in the destruction. I couldn’t see any sign that any of the other Guilds had come to see what was going on at this one, but if they’d been here or sent someone to report on the damages, it only made sense that they’d report back immediately and call it a complete loss.
I stepped through the doors and had to force myself to remain strong.
It was eerily silent. Huge pieces of the once elegant cathedral ceiling lay upon the floor, the stained glass ruined. The smell of sulfur was rich and pungent. The holy cross from the church in Ireland had been tipped over and chopped apart, as if someone took an axe and destroyed it on purpose, instead of damage that happened in the midst of looting.
Not that this place could be looted. The weapons were in a vault, one that you’d need a live Witch to open, and not just any Witch, one registered to this Guild. Glass crunched beneath our feet as we made our way through the main room and into the separate ones that were in the main hallway.
I paused and chewed my bottom lip. I could smell the nauseating scent of death. I could do this. I was strong enough and, as sad as it was to admit, I wasn’t a stranger to death, or the sight of it. I’d been trained to see it, feel it, learn from it, and grow stronger because if it. Problem was, I was tired of seeing my friends and people I cared about die.
I winced at the dead body that lay over the reception desk. Douglas, one of the Elders from the look of it, had a pistol in one hand and his brains on the far wall. How could it have gotten this bad and I’d not known it?