“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?
You’ve been in Faery, playing with the Fairies!
Guilt heated my face as I moved closer and looked around the room. Something was off, as an Enforcer I’d been trained to look at scenes, and Douglas had been left handed, and yet the gun was in his right hand, as was the entrance wound. The angle of the wound and the exit wound was off, even if he had been right handed. Someone had shot him, and tried to make it look as if he’d done it himself. Why? It wasn’t like the other Guilds would come investigate it, since most were probably run by the Mages, unless they were still trying to cover it up to the Humans.
Everyone had stopped outside the door, except Adrian and Ryder, who both held one of my hands and I had to shake my hands loose to gather one of the many tapestries and pull it from the wall to cover the body.
I’d liked Douglas. He’d always been nice to me…one of the good ones, which was probably why he was dead. I left the room, and started down the right hallway that led to meeting and conference rooms, using my heightened senses to search for anything living, moving, or dead. It became almost unbearable when every room held a dead occupant, but none were the ones I was looking for.