Waging War (7 page)

Slick yelled at the goon outside the door,
making me jump. “Watts!”

The door opened and an improbably tall Asian
guy stepped into the room. Slick’s voice was sharp and angry. “Cuff
her hands behind her and take her to the museum.”

I tried not to show him how very terrifying
the words “cuff her” were to me, but he saw something on my face
that made him smile. “Oh, little girl, if I really wanted to hobble
you I could shoot out your kneecap or take off a foot. Try to run,
and I will reconsider my leniency. For now I’ll content myself with
your eminent discomfort.”

He waved a dismissive hand, and in a matter
of seconds, my wrists were zip-tied behind my back and I was
stumbling out of the office ahead of Watts. When the office door
closed behind us I actually considered hurling myself headfirst
down the stairs in hopes that I could summersault fast enough to
get out the door before they caught me. With no hands, I couldn’t
hope to draw a spiral, and that escape hatch had been the ace in
the hole that kept me calm in front of Slick.

A second goon, even bigger and meaner
looking than Watts, met us at the bottom of the stairs. I dubbed
him Beefcake, for the face that made a cow pie look good in
comparison. He grabbed one arm, Watts took the other, and they
frog-marched me to the back of one of those windowless white vans
into which children disappear, never to be seen again. I hated
those vans on principle. The streetlights were conveniently out,
and it was dark enough outside that I doubted I’d been seen by
anyone when I was unceremoniously hurled inside. And when my ankles
were zip-tied, and I was covered by a blanket that smelled like dog
poop, I developed a gut-sink of epic proportions

It was well past tea time, and I assumed the
Armans had gotten worried and called someone at Elian Manor. Connor
knew where I’d gone, and he might check with Cole and Melanie, but
whether Cole had actually managed to follow us across the bridge
and would tell him, I didn’t know.

Part of me wanted to just roll with this and
see where they took me. Maybe “the museum” was where they were
holding the other mixed-bloods they’d taken. Maybe someone there
would have something sharp enough to cut through the zip tie and I
could get us all out. And maybe the two huge guys in charge of my
discomfort were sweet mama’s boys who wouldn’t hurt a fly, much
less an eighteen-year-old girl, hog-tied like a pig for
slaughter.

The van lurched as the screech of tires and
a horrific smash of metal on metal filled my ears. One of the goons
swore impressively as the van hit something that sent me crashing
into the back of the seat. I heard the front doors fly open, and
then the sound of something impacting with flesh.

I struggled to sit upright in the cargo area
of the van, but the blanket had tangled around my head and
shoulders, and panic made it hard to breathe.

A gunshot rang out – a very rare sound in a
country where handguns were illegal – and then a voice I knew like
my own called my name. “Saira!”

“Archer! I’m here!”

Sirens sounded in the distance. People were
shouting, and suddenly the back doors of the van were thrown open,
and sounds of wet gasps filled the space. The blanket was dragged
off my head and then Archer collapsed next to me.

“No!” I couldn’t reach him. My hands were
still locked behind my back, the plastic zip tie cutting into my
wrists as I tried to yank free. His eyes closed, and the
wet-sounding breaths came from a gunshot wound in his chest. A
fatal wound.

He was dying. “Archer! Stay with me.” It
wasn’t just the chest wound though, it was everything. Every bloody
gash, every trauma, every wound I’d ever seen him get bloomed on
his body as it fought to close the hole in his chest. There was no
blood left in his skin – it leaked out of his ribs, impaled on
Wilder’ sword, his stomach where a knife had gone in, his face,
from his Tower fall, and even his neck where Wilder had torn into
his skin to infect him with his plague.

I lost my ability to reason as I struggled
to get to him, crying his name, tearing at the skin on my wrists to
free them from the bonds.

Someone held my arms and I thrashed against
them. The only thing I could see was Archer, dying in front of me.
Tears and snot and screams flew from my face as I fought to get
away from whoever held me back from him. And then the zip tie was
cut and I practically fell on his body with the force of my
freedom. I could feel his heart beating. I could feel a rasping
breath at my neck. But he didn’t move, and he didn’t open his
eyes.

I didn’t let go of him until a growling Bear
voice pricked its way through the sounds of my sobbing. “Saira,”
said Mr. Shaw, quietly. “Let me take him.”

I looked up at Mr. Shaw’s worried face. “He
can’t go to a hospital,” I whispered.

“I know,” he said. “I’ve got this. But the
police are coming. You’ll need to give a statement. Can you do that
without me?” Mr. Shaw was wrapping the stinking blanket around
Archer’s body as he spoke to me.

“It was Seth,” I said, my voice oddly dull
in my ears.

“I know. Archer talked to the kids.”

I started to shake, and tears ran down my
cheeks.

Mr. Shaw looked out the front window of the
van. “I’m shocked he lives.”

I followed his gaze and saw the crumpled
remains of Archer’s beautiful silver Aston Martin that had been
t-boned by the van. Watts was slumped over the steering wheel,
while Beefcake lay unmoving on the sidewalk. Emergency vehicles
with flashing lights mesmerized me as they came screaming down the
block toward us.

A ragged sob caught in my throat, and Mr.
Shaw kissed my hair. “I need to take him away from here,” he
whispered. I nodded, and he gathered Archer’s blanket-wrapped body
into his arms and climbed out of the van.

Mr. Shaw used the chaos of the vehicles to
slip down a side street and out of sight, while I took a deep
breath, choked past the lingering sob in my chest, and wrapped my
bloody wrists around my knees to wait.

Connections

Hours passed in a blur as I told and re-told
my story to the police. Almost all of it was true, except for the
parts that weren’t. But it was easy enough to paint myself as yet
another victim of the seemingly unrelated kidnappings, at least as
far as Scotland Yard was concerned. I didn’t even have to edit much
of the conversation I’d had with Slick. Seth Walters was now a
person of interest to the police, as was the unknown driver of the
wrecked Aston Martin with false registration papers. I was going to
miss that car.

The goon that survived – Watts – was in a
coma, so he wasn’t available to comment on where they’d been taking
me. Slick’s statement about “the museum” sent a bunch of police
scurrying to call museum security at all the major ones in London,
but no one had seen anything, and we were no closer to knowing
where the mixed-bloods were being held. I left Melanie and Cole out
of my recounting of the events. They had helped Archer find me.

My ankles were freed, and my wrists had been
wrapped in gauze bandages by a paramedic, but I itched to unwrap
them and put Mr. Shaw’s green medicine on before the wounds closed
up. Actually, I was just itching to get to Mr. Shaw. It had taken
some concentration to answer the detectives’ questions through the
voice in my head that was screaming at me to make sure Archer was
okay, but finally, they seemed satisfied they’d wrung every ounce
of detail they could from me. Either that, or they were sick of
Millicent and wanted us both gone.

Millicent Elian had come to my rescue. There
was no other way to describe how she’d swept into the police
station and parked herself by my side. She sold herself as my
grandmother – responsible for me while my mother was ill. The look
we shared on that statement told me she knew Mom had been tampered
with, and they were dealing with it. My fears for my mother got
tucked into the locked room in my brain where the voice screamed
about Archer. It was almost a relief to shut the door on them both
while I was being questioned.

We were escorted out by Police Constable
Grant, a handsome black guy with a smooth voice and a very easy way
about him. He held the door for Millicent, then shook my hand
gently. His eyes widened slightly at the touch, as if he’d just
sensed something about me, and he looked serious when he spoke. “If
there’s anything you need help with, even the things you didn’t
tell us – come find me.”

It was my turn to be surprised, but I
covered it with a nod. “Thank you.”

I could feel his eyes on my back as we left
the station, and I knew PC Grant understood that there may be
things he didn’t know, but not knowing a thing didn’t make it any
less real.

Millicent got behind the wheel of the Rolls
that had been illegally parked in front of the police station but
was completely without citation, which didn’t shock me. I slid into
the front seat next to her and leaned my head back with a bone-deep
shudder.

“Are you injured beyond your wrists,
Saira?”

I shook my head. “No. Just tired of keeping
it together.”

She looked over at me with something that
looked suspiciously like tenderness and touched my arm gently.
“You’re safe now. You can let go.”

Maybe it was kindness from Millicent, or
maybe it was just the horrific events of the day draining out of me
in the form of salt water, but I managed to cry almost the whole
way back to Elian Manor.

When I could finally breathe without
gasping, I thanked Millicent. She kept her eyes on the road as she
turned down the long drive to the manor house.

“I believe that’s the first time you’ve ever
thanked me,” she said softly.

I stared at her in the dim light from the
dashboard and realized she was right. “Thank you for taking me in
when Mom left me. Thank you for taking me to St. Brigid’s, and for
telling me truths that my mother hadn’t.” Her eyes had gotten moist
and I took a deep breath. “And thank you for giving me and my
friends a safe place to come home to.”

“You’re welcome,” she said simply. She
parked the Rolls outside the garage and turned to me. “Robert took
your young man into the keep. We can move a bed in for you to stay
with him if you’d like. I’ll go check on your mother and Jeeves.
Liz is with them in the library, and I’ll have Sanda bring you
food. Is there anything else that needs to be done?”

I was trying really hard not to let my
expression show how stunned I was, and I deliberately softened my
voice. “I need to talk to everyone about the things I learned from
Seth Walters.”

She nodded and gripped my hand tightly for a
second. “We’ll come as soon as we can.”

I gripped her fingers back. “Thank you.”

She gave me a quick smile and we got out of
the car to go our separate ways in the manor. I was absurdly
grateful for the swarm of canine love I was greeted with. It was
one of the benefits of having Connor’s family at Elian Manor – a
pack of dogs happy to see me, no matter how crappy my day had been.
I knelt down and gave Natasha, Connor’s red dog, an extra hug
before I opened the kitchen door. It was good to be home.

I headed straight for the keep, where the
sight of Archer lying on a thin mattress on the big table nearly
erased whatever peace I’d managed to find. His battered face now
had yellow bruises and old scabs in place of the bloody, pulpy mess
I’d seen a few hours before. And his chest rose and fell without
the wet, sucking sound of a gunshot wound.

Ringo sat by his head sporting a bandaged
arm and a worried expression as his eyes darted between Archer’s
sleeping face and my terrified one.

“You gave him blood?” I asked. He nodded
mutely.

Mr. Shaw bustled into the keep behind me
carrying a box of what looked like medical supplies. He stopped in
his tracks as I turned to him, then dropped the box and held his
arms open to me. Pure instinct had me rushing into them, and he
held me as if it was more his need than mine that put me there.

“We’ve all been a little mad with worry for
you,” he said.

“I’m fine. Millicent rescued me.”

He chuckled as he finally let me go. “I’ve
never seen her move so fast in my life. I didn’t even know she
could drive a car, much less that she was any good at it, but she
was in the Rolls and down the drive before I’d even finished
telling them where I’d left you.”

I looked over at Archer’s sleeping form.
“Thank you for bringing him back.”

“I won’t lie to you, Saira he was in rough
shape. I’ve seen what you mean now about the old wounds
resurfacing. To be frank, it makes me want to lock you both up in a
tower and throw away the key, for all the danger you’ve been
in.”

I smirked a little at that. I knew how
Archer had gotten hurt, because I’d been present for most of his
injuries. But taken all together it looked like he played on
freeways, dodging traffic for fun and sucking at it.