The Archived

THIRTY

A SCREAM RISES in my throat as Owen pulls the knife free and Wesley collapses to the concrete.

“I’m impressed, Miss Bishop,” Owen says, turning toward me. The sun is sinking, the gargoyles multiplied by shadows.

Wesley coughs, tries to move, can’t.

“Hang in there, Wes,” I say. “Please. I’m sorry. Please.” I step forward, and Owen holds the knife over Wes in warning.

“I tried to miss the vital organs,” he says. “But I told you, I’m rusty.”

He extends one foot toward the ledge of the roof as he looks down, the blood-soaked knife hanging lazily from his fingers.

“It’s a long way down, Owen. And there are plenty of Crew at the bottom.”

“And they’re going to have their hands full with the Histories,” he says. “Which is why I’m up here.”

He pulls the Crew key from his pocket and reaches out, slides it through the air as if there were…a door. My eyes slip off it several times before I can find the edges.

A shortcut.

The teeth vanish into the door.

“Is that why you were on the roof last time? To get away?”

“If they’d caught me alive,” he says, still gripping the key, “they would have erased my life.”

I have to get him away from that door before he goes through.

“I can’t believe you’re running away,” I say, making the disgust in my voice clear.

And sure enough, his hand slips from the key. It hangs in the air as his foot slides from the ledge. “How did you get out?” he asks.

“It’s a secret.” I pivot and step back, the weight of my Crew key heavy in my coat. I have an idea. “There’s something I don’t get. So what if you were Crew—you’re still a History.” I take another step. “You should have slipped.”

He pulls the key out of the air and pockets it as he steps over Wesley’s body toward me.

“There’s a reason Histories slip,” he says. “It’s not anger, or even fear. It’s confusion. Everything is foreign. Everything is frightening. It’s why Regina slipped. It’s why Ben slipped.”

“Don’t talk to me about my brother.” I take another step back, and nearly stumble on the base of a statue. “You knew what would happen.”

Owen steps over a broken statue limb without looking down. “Confusion tips the scale. And that’s why all members of the Archive are kept in the Special Collections. Because our Histories don’t slip. Because we open our eyes and know where we are. We’re not simple and scared and easily stopped.”

I slip through a gap between the statues, and Owen falls out of sight. Moments later he reappears, following me through the maze of gargoyles. Good. That means he’s away from his shortcut. Away from Wes.

“But other Histories aren’t like us, Owen. They do slip.”

“Don’t you get it? They slip because they’re lost, confused. Regina slipped. Ben slipped. But if we had been allowed to tell them about the Archive when they were still alive, maybe they would have made it through.”

“You don’t know that,” I say, vanishing just long enough to pull the Crew key from my pocket, guard it against my wrist.

“The Archive owed us a chance. They take everything. We deserve something back. But no, it would be against the rules. Do you know why the Archive has so many rules, Miss Bishop? It’s because they’re afraid of us. Terrified. They make us strong, strong enough to lie and con and fight and hunt and kill, strong enough to rise up, to break free. All they have are their secrets and their rules.”

I hesitate. He’s right. I’ve seen it, the Archive’s fear, in their strictures and their threats. But that doesn’t mean what he’s doing is right.

“Without the rules,” I force myself to say, “there would be chaos.” I step back, feel the front of a gargoyle come up against my shoulders. I slip sideways, never taking my eyes off Owen. “That’s what you want, isn’t it? Chaos?”

“I want freedom,” he says, stalking me. “The Archive is a prison, and not only for the dead. And that’s why I’m going to tear it down, shelf by shelf and branch by branch.”

“You know I won’t let you.”

He steps forward, knife hanging loosely at his side. He smiles. “You wanted this to happen.”

“No, I didn’t.”

He shrugs. “It doesn’t matter. That’s how the Archive will see it. And they will carve you up and throw you away. You’re nothing to them. Stop running, Miss Bishop. There’s nowhere to go.”

I know he’s right. I’m counting on it. I’m standing in a ring of winged statues, their faces crumbling with age, their bodies set too close. Owen looks at me as if I’m a mouse he’s cornered, his eyes bright despite the dusk.

“I’ll stand trial for my mistakes, Owen, but not for yours. You are a monster.”

“And you aren’t? The Archive makes us monsters. And then it breaks the ones who get too strong, and buries the ones who know too much.”

I dart sideways as his hand flies forward. I pretend to notice too late, pretend to be too slow. He catches my elbow and forces me back against a demon, his arms caging me. And then he smiles, pulls me toward him just enough to rest the tip of the bloodstained knife between my shoulder blades.

“I wouldn’t be so quick to pass judgment. You and I are not so different.”

“You twisted it so I would think so. You conned my trust, made me think we were the same, but I am nothing like you, Owen.”

He presses his forehead against mine. The quiet slides through me, and I hate it.

“Just because you can’t read me,” he whispers, “doesn’t mean I can’t read you. I’ve seen inside you. I’ve seen your darkness and your dreams and your fears, and the only difference between us is that I know the true extent of the Archive and its crimes, and you are only just learning.”

“If you’re talking about my inability to quit, I already know.”

“You know nothing,” Owen hisses, forcing my body against his. I wrap my empty hand around his back for balance, and bring the one with the key up behind him.

“But I could show you,” he says, softening. “It doesn’t have to end like this.”

“You used me.”

“So did they,” he says. “But I’m giving you the one thing they never have, and never will. A choice.”

I slide the key through the empty air behind his back and begin to turn. Da said it had to make a full circle, but halfway through the turn, the air resists and coalesces around the metal like a lock forming. A strange sense bleeds up the key into my fingers as the door takes shape out of nothing, barely visible and yet there, a shadow hovering in the air behind Owen. I look into his eyes, hold their focus. They are so cold and empty and cruel. No butterflies, no shoulders-to-shoulders, knees-to-knees, no sideways smiles. It makes this easier.

“I’d never help you, Owen.”

“Well, I’ll help you,” he says. “I’ll kill you before they do.”

I hold fast to the key, but let my other arm fall away from his back. “Don’t you see, Owen?”

“See what?”

“The day’s over,” I say, turning the key the rest of the way.

His eyes widen with surprise as he hears the click behind him, but it’s too late. The moment the key finishes the full turn, the door opens backward with explosive force, not onto the dark halls of the Narrows or the white expanse of the Archive, but a cavernous black, a void, like space without stars. A nothing. A nowhere. Just like Da warned. But Da didn’t convey the crushing force, the pull, like air being sucked out of an open plane door. It rips Owen and the knife backward, the void at once swallowing him and wrenching me forward to follow; but I cling to the broken arms of a gargoyle with all that’s left of my strength. The violent wind within the doorway twists and, having devoured the History, reverses, slamming the door shut in my face.

It leaves nothing. No door, nothing but the key Roland lent me, which hangs in the air, still jammed in the invisible lock, its cord swaying from the force.

My knees buckle.

Then someone lets out a shuddering cough.

Wesley.

I pull the key free and run, weaving through the gargoyles and back to the edge of the roof where Wesley is lying, curled, red spreading out beneath him. I drop to the ground beside him.

“Wes. Wes, please, come on.”

His jaw is clenched, his palm pressed against his stomach. I’m still not wearing my ring, and as I take his arm and try to wrap it around my shoulders, he gasps, and it’s pain fear worry anger pacing the hall not home where is she where is she I shouldn’t have left and something tight like panic before I can focus on getting him to his feet.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, dragging him up, his fear and pain washing over me, his thoughts running into mine. “I need you to stand. I’m sorry.”

Tears escape down his cheeks, dark from the eyeliner. His breath is ragged as I lead him, too slowly, to the roof door. He leaves a trail of red.

“Mac,” he says between gritted teeth.

“Shhh. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.” And it’s such a bad lie, because how can it possibly be okay when he’s losing this much blood? We’ll never make it down the stairs. He won’t last long enough for an ambulance. He needs medical attention. He needs Patrick. We reach the roof door, and I get the Crew key into the lock.

“I’ll kick your ass if you die on me, Wes,” I say, pulling him close as I turn the key left and drag him through into the Archive.