Waging War by April White

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 –