Cheating Death

by April White

  Archer and Ringo sat on the warm tile enjoying a rare sunny day. Archer had his eyes closed, his face tilted toward the sun, and a happy smile on his face when I joined them. “Hello, beautiful,” he said, in complete contentment.

  “Hi.” I couldn’t get enough of the look of his skin in the sunlight. He was still very pale, but the beginnings of a tan made his face glow. Ringo smirked at the look of wonder I wore.

  “I give ‘im twenty more minutes and ‘e’ll be burnt to a crisp,” he said with amusement.

  “Shhh, I’m in heaven right now.” Archer rumbled. “I have the most extraordinary wife in the world, the sun is shining, and I’m warm. And if my best friend would shut his trap, I could properly wallow in all my good fortune.”

  I settled back between them and turned my face to the sun. “Millicent was married,” I said finally. I peeked an eye open to see Ringo staring at me in shock, and Archer still smiling serenely.

  “Yes, I know,” said Archer.

  Ringo shot me an accusatory look. “It’s what ye said to that pilot, isn’t it? That Mulroy chap? Ye said somethin’ about Millicent and it changed things.”

  Archer frowned slightly. “I remember that conversation.” He was silent a bit longer, then he opened his eyes and looked at me. “She hadn’t been married when you left?”

  I shook my head. “No.” I looked at Ringo. “They were married for twenty years and had no children.” I could see him process that information the same way I had. No children meant minimal impact on the time stream, so not a big chance that I’d caused a split. “And she was happy,” I whispered to him.

  He seemed to come to a conclusion and nodded once. “Good. I’m glad she ‘ad love.”

  Archer watched our exchange with concern. “I don’t like that I remember something differently than you do,” he said.

  “I didn’t remember it until she and I talked,” I mused, and then I gave myself a mental shake to change the subject. “She gave us their house in Galway as a wedding present.” Archer’s eyes widened in surprise, and I added, “It’s on the Cliffs of Moher, overlooking the Aran Islands.”

  “That is spectacular country.”

  I linked our fingers together. “Want to go when this is all over?”

  His smile lit me up all the way to my toes. “There’s nothing I’d love more,” he said.

  I took a deep breath of joy, and then turned my brain back to the business we had to finish first. “So, have you guys spotted all the Mongers out there?”

  Ringo pointed out the fifteen guys they’d spotted and places where others might be hiding. They had set up a perimeter just outside the school walls, with some of the men using the closer trees as high perches to be able to see into the grounds. “Since we’ve been here,” Ringo said, “they’ve done one full shift change.”

  I looked at where the sun sat in the sky. “It’s afternoon, so they’re doing a standard three-shift day?”

  Archer nodded. “Seven to three, three to eleven, and eleven to seven. It means our best chance is at midnight – an hour after the shift change.”

  “So that puts my trip outside the walls at about one a.m.?”

  “Our trip. There’s no way Walters would believe I’d let you go anywhere without me, not even Elian Manor, and especially not at night.”

  As twingy as that made me, I shoved the fear down and kept my expression as neutral as I knew how to. “Right, sorry.”

  “Well then,” Ringo said, as he stood up and brushed slate dust off. “I think it’s time to properly admire some ladies’ dresses, and then get to work.”

  He had a grin on his face as he left us, and I thought it might be in anticipation of seeing Charlie’s fashion show. Archer touched my arm as I moved to stand.

  “Wait,” he said quietly. I sat down again and turned to face him as he continued. “I do realize it’s hard to know what you can expect or rely on with me now – now that my body is mortal again.”

  My heart beat a little faster. He’d seen my hesitation and he knew why. The thought that he could wonder about my trust in his abilities made me feel sick. I opened my mouth to speak, but he raised his hand. “I know you love me, and I know you trust me, but what you don’t know is what to expect from me at your side in a battle.”

  “Your sword skills—” I began, but he interrupted.

  “—are excellent, as are my knife skills, my aim, and my reflexes in hand-to-hand combat. I wasn’t kidding when I said I had exceptional survival skills. I’ve spent more than a century and a quarter honing them, and I promise you, though I can’t heal like I once could, and I may be slower, I am no less capable of avoiding injury now than I have ever been.”

  I took a deep breath, and this time he let me speak. “I know that, Archer. I’m just scared. I lost you, and I survived – so I know I can do it. But I don’t want to do it. For the first time in my life I’m actually wondering what it would be like to grow old, because for the first time since I’ve known you, I can hope that we’ll grow old together.”

  “Which is why we go together,” Archer said softly. “I’ll always be afraid to lose you, my love, but I’ve learned to trust that you won’t be reckless with your life, as I hope you trust me. When I gave you this ring,” he said, fingering the flaming heart, “I gave you the promise of my future. I have earned many, many years of sunshine with you, and I intend to collect.”

  He kissed me softly as the sun dipped down below the tree line, and the warmth seeped in and wrapped itself around my heart.

  Raven found us after dinner in the library. She and Cole had been looking for us for a while, and she seemed exasperated when she sat down.

  Tom got up and gave her his seat, while Archer, Ringo, and Adam scooted around the table to make room for two more chairs. When everyone was settled, Raven turned to me. “I need to tell Seth something.” Tom tensed, and Raven noticed. “You know I have to,” she said to him. “He sent me here to spy, and if I go silent, he’ll hurt Melanie.”

  I stared at Cole. “You said your sister was safe. Does he have her?”

  He scowled. “I didn’t have a place to move her. I even tried her friend Olivia, but could never reach anyone.”

  I rubbed my temples. “Because Olivia’s here. Why didn’t you bring Melanie?”

  “Because then he’d know we were running. This way there’s still a chance we have people to go home to.”

  “Do you even like your people?” Adam asked Raven. “I mean, your brother’s a prat, your mother’s the Rothbitch, and your uncle’s Seth bloody Walters.”

  Her glare was hard, but her voice was quiet. “They’re all I have.”

  “No they’re not.” Tom’s hands were fisted on the library table. “They’re not all you have. I’m here, aren’t I?” She stared at him, and he didn’t look away. “I mean, your uncle generously donated to my creation, so we’re first cousins.” The scorn in his voice was directed at his father, but Raven flinched.

  She continued to stare at Tom, and he held her gaze until she finally looked away. Her expression was angry, but her voice held frustration. “What can I say to Seth?”

  “Tell him the truth. We’re meeting about something, but you don’t know what. You think we don’t trust you, but Tam and Cole are friends and they spend a lot of time together, so maybe you’ll have more to report tomorrow,” Tom said, and she scowled. He had unclenched his fists and was spinning his chess piece on the table in front of him.

  “It’s not enough. He’ll want to know who’s here and what they’re doing.”

  He shrugged. “Tell him.”

  She glared at him. “You’re pretty confident he’s not going to start going after families.”

  “He probably doesn’t have confirmation that I’m here, but that’s fine – he can know. And there are forty people here because he brought them all together. If he wanted to go after their families he could do that any time. Anything he wants to know about the people who are here – tell him. You get brownie
points for observation, and then he maybe forgives whatever you’re not telling him until next time.” Tom spoke confidently, though the edge in his voice grated my nerves. Raven finally nodded.

  “Do you want him to know you’re here, or you just don’t care?” she finally asked.

  He stopped spinning the chess piece and put it away in his pocket. His jaw clenched, and he forced his eyes to meet hers. “I tried to kill Seth Walters last time I saw him. I even went back in time and tried to kill his grandfather so he could never be born.” Raven blanched at that. There was Walters blood in her veins too. “His brand of evil doesn’t scare me – I’ve seen and lived through much, much worse. If it helps you to tell him I’m here, do it. I. Don’t. Care.” Tom took a deep breath and softened his tone. “I’m not going to lie to you, cousin. I may not volunteer the information, but I won’t lie.”

  Raven looked down at her hands and then used them to push back from the table. She met our eyes. “Miss Simpson let me keep my phone – I’ll use it to text him. If anyone wants to see my text history, you can.”

  “Thanks, Raven.” I said quietly. We watched her leave with Cole, and then I turned to Tom. “That was a nice thing you did – to claim her as family.”

  He barked a mirthless laugh. “She might not think so. I’m not exactly a poster boy for familial bliss.”

  Adam pushed him on the shoulder. “You’re definitely miserable at the cousin business, but does this mean the Crow is now my cousin once removed or something like that? Because, you know, hot girl relatives …”

  “Adam, you know that line of appropriateness that your Tourettic brain can’t usually see?” I asked, narrowing my eyes.

  He grinned. “I jumped it?”

  I scoffed. “You poured lighter fluid all over it and lit it on fire.”

  The Woods

  We waited until after midnight to gather in the solarium. The trap-setters were led by Adam’s girlfriend, Alex, and the Shifter Owl mix, Colin Zhang. Ava and Tam were with them, as were Adam, Mr. Shaw, and a couple of other strong guys who could dig holes. Alex and Tom had gone over the plan for booby-trapping the woods in detail, and everyone knew what they were doing and where.

  Charlie and I figured we’d try Clocking eight people out into the woods at a time. There were traps to be set and Monger guards to lure into them, and it was going to take a lot of bodies to do both. I had once drawn a spiral on a big granite slab in those woods, and she and I had gone earlier to make sure it was still intact.

  “When we land, you might feel a little dizzy or nauseous,” I explained to the first group of eight. “Clear out to the sides as quickly as possible, because we’ll be Clocking right back to the same spot with the next group.”

  Heads nodded, and I gathered people around the spiral I had already drawn on the wall with chalk. We made a chain of linked arms that began with me and ended with Charlie. Then she put her hand on the spiral while I traced.

  The humming sound rose rapidly, and as soon as I fixed the image of the granite slab in the woods, we were through.

  Connor immediately stripped down and Shifted to his Wolf. His job was to prowl through the woods to locate whatever guards we hadn’t spotted from the roof. We needed to know where they were so we could set the traps accordingly.

  The twin girls, Beck and Bauer, were already circling overhead as Blackbirds. Logan had chosen his big Bat form for nighttime reconnaissance, and the three of them had taken off directly from the attics at school. Colin, the trap-builder, hadn’t traveled as an Owl because it would have forced him to work in the buff.

  Archer and Tom were both armed with rifles I’d retrieved from the gardeners at Elian Manor, and they were going to act as guards for the trap-builders. Tom looked a little strung out from the moment we landed in the woods, and I caught Archer’s eyes and glanced at Tom meaningfully. Archer nodded and turned so that he had Tom in his sight.

  Charlie and I returned with the second group, and Charlie immediately scrambled up the tall tree above our spiral. She was armed with a bow and arrow, and her job was to guard our exit. Ringo and I took off into the woods that led away from the school. We were headed toward the gardener’s shack where I’d been taken by the Romanian Were with the help of Raven and her brother. I wanted to set wards around it so we could have a safe house for our people in the woods, just in case things went pear-shaped.

  The shack was just as I remembered it, if not more empty. Ringo watched outside while I stood in the middle of the room and pushed a wall of warding heat out to surround the shack. In my mind, it was like a sound wave that moved outward from my body, but it was both more and less solid than sound, and a person could only come through it if they meant no harm to anyone inside.

  “What if there’s no one inside the buildin’ when the bad guy enters?” Ringo asked when he came inside after I’d finished.

  I was sitting on the floor in the center of the shack, trying very hard not to shiver. Setting wards seemed to leach all the heat from my bones, and I hadn’t figured out how to counteract that effect.

  “I don’t know. It’s all pretty th-theoretical to me.” I couldn’t stop the chattering of my teeth, and Ringo whipped his coat off and wrapped it around my shoulders.

  “Th-thanks,” I whispered.

  He sat behind me and I leaned back into him for warmth. He held me there for a few minutes until the tremors finally stopped and I could sit up.

  “Are ye better now?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Aislin must have set the original wards around the walls of St. Brigid’s in the dead heat of summer.”

  “‘Ave they always been there?” Ringo draped his arms over his legs and leaned back against a crate.

  “Yeah, I think they have. I think maybe that’s why Seth Walters never came to the school for me, even though he knew I was here.” I met his eyes. “It’s also why I think I trust Raven.”

  “Ye mean because the wards let ‘er in?”

  I nodded. “I guess someone could change their mind about harm once they’re inside the school grounds, but they can’t come in if they intend to do harm.” I shivered again. “I can see the necessity for wards, but I don’t like them.”

  We loped back through the woods with as much stealth as free-running allowed. Once or twice I thought I saw the Shifter Birds overhead, but for the most part, the woods were silent enough to let me think while I ran. Of all the people in the woods with us, I was most worried about Tom. He had seemed okay since we’d been back at school – better than I’d seen him in a long time – but the minute Archer put a rifle in Tom’s hands, he’d gotten a wild, twitchy look in his eyes, as though he fully expected the wolves to come out of the walls at any moment.

  Ringo and I had been gone less than an hour, and work was nearly finished on the outlying traps we came upon first. Alex had proudly shown us the snares, pit traps, and blinds for bomb-throwing they’d built at intervals a hundred yards back from the perimeter of the woods. Archer and Mr. Shaw were with Alex, and they reported there had been no guard activity anywhere near them while they worked. It was good news for the plan, and we agreed to meet back at the granite slab twenty minutes later.

  Connor met us in his Wolf form about halfway between the two crews. He nipped my hand and pulled backwards, and Ringo whispered behind me, “Run!”

  Connor’s Wolf led us through the woods, avoiding some of the traps that had already been set, and around to the site of a big pit that Adam and Colin had dug in an area that led directly to the road. Adam was crouched down at the edge of the pit, whispering urgently. I reached him, out of breath, and nearly stumbled backwards when I saw what he was looking at.

  Tom stood over Colin with his rifle aimed at Colin’s forehead. Tom was breathing hard, and it looked like he was trembling.

  “Tom!” I whisper-shouted. He didn’t look up, so I tried again in my normal voice, pitched low enough that I hoped it wouldn’t carry. Ringo immediately put himself on the other side of the hole, facing
outward, watching for guards coming from the school.

  The trembling in Tom’s arms grew more pronounced, as if he was barely controlling his instinct to shoot. Colin lay on his back in the hole, his eyes like saucers, and there was blood on his lip.

  I was behind Tom, so I caught Ringo’s eyes across the pit, looked down at Tom, then back at Ringo. He nodded.

  I dropped into the pit and Tom swung around, rifle-first, exactly one half-second before Ringo dropped in and shoved Tom up against the dirt wall. He yanked the rifle from Tom’s hands and tossed it up to Adam, and before Tom could swing at him, I pulled Tom into my arms.

  “Tom!” I said in a low voice. “It’s Saira.” His heart was pounding, and Colin scrambled up and out of the pit while I murmured into Tom’s ear. “Shhh, it’s me, Tom. You’re okay.”

  I could hear Adam whisper fiercely to Colin, but I paid no attention to the words. I just held Tom in a tight hug from behind. He didn’t lean against me but held himself rigid, and his breathing was shallow and fast.

  Ringo stood in front of Tom, looking him in the eyes. He didn’t break eye contact as he spoke in a voice that was nearly a whisper. “We’ll get ye back inside St. Brigid’s when ye’re ready. Ye just need to let us know when ye can move without startlin’.”

  Tom’s breathing calmed a little more, and I heard someone else running toward us. I shot a glance at Ringo, and he flicked his eyes up, then shook his head quickly. I risked unlocking one of my arms from around him, and I slowly moved that hand up to his hair. I began stroking it like a mother does to a terrified child, and he shuddered, and finally leaned back into me. My hold on him became less restraint and more embrace. Ringo nodded and spoke to him. “Are ye ready to go up?”

  Tom nodded, but didn’t speak, so I let go of his arms. Adam crouched down at the edge of the pit and helped to haul Tom out. Archer was on the edge behind me and reached for my hand. He pulled me up and into his arms. “Are you okay?” he whispered into my hair.