The Unbound

Wes pushes up from the table. He pours himself a cup of coffee and rests against the counter.

“Okay,” he says. “If you’re determined to stay awake, I can help. But this”—he gestures down at the spread of precalc and lit theory on the table—“isn’t going to do.” He digs the physiology book out from the bottom of the pile and flashes me a mischievous smile. “Here we go.”

By the time Dad gets back, Wes has managed to cover himself in an impressive number of Post-it notes, each labeling a muscle (I don’t have the heart to tell him we’re studying blood flow right now). Dad takes one look at him and almost smiles. And when it takes Wes half a dozen tries to affix a yellow sticker to the place between his shoulders, I end up laughing until my chest hurts, and for a while I forget how much trouble I’m in and how tired I am and how much my arm hurts.

I make it to dusk, but even with Wesley’s company, I’m starting to fade. Mom is back home and making no attempt to hide the fact that she’s hovering. Every time I yawn, she tells me I should go to bed. Tells me I need to sleep. But I can’t. I know Dallas said I had to confront my problems, but I just don’t have the strength to face another nightmare right now. Especially now that I know I’m capable of doing actual damage to myself. And maybe to others. I would rather be exhausted and awake than a danger and asleep, so I brush off her concern and crack open a soda. It’s halfway to my lips when she catches my hand, filling my head with her high, worried static as she pries the can away and replaces it with a glass of water.

I sigh and take a long sip. She passes the soda to Wes, who makes the mistake of yawning as he takes it.

“You should head home,” Mom tells him. “It’s getting late, and I’m sure your father is wondering where you are.”

“I doubt that,” he says under his breath, then adds, “He knows I’m over here.”

“Mom,” I say, finishing the glass of water, “he’s helping me study.”

“Does he know you’re here here?” she presses, ignoring me. “Or does he think you’re upstairs with Jill?”

Wesley’s brow furrows. “Frankly, I don’t think he cares.”

“Parents always care,” she snaps.

“Honey,” says Dad, looking up from a book.

They’re talking, all three of them, but the words begin to run together in my ears. I’m just thinking about how strange it is when my vision slides out of focus.

The room sways, and I grip the counter.

“Mac?” Wes’s voice reaches me. “Are you okay?”

I nod and set the glass down; or at least I mean to, but the countertop’s not where I thought it was, and the glass goes crashing to the floor. It shatters. The sound is far away. At first I think I’m about to have another blackout, but those happen fast, and this is slow like syrup.

“What have you done?” Wes snaps, but I don’t think he’s talking to me.

I close my eyes, but it doesn’t help. The world sways even in darkness.

“The doctor said she needed to—”

Everything else is far away.

“Allison,” growls Dad. I drag my eyes open. “How could you—”

And then my legs go out from under me, and I feel Wesley’s arms and his noise wrap around me before the world goes black.

NINETEEN

AT FIRST, everything is dark and still.

Dark and still, but not peaceful.

The world is somehow empty and heavy at the same time, the nothing weighing me down, pi

The open air.

My racing heart.

And Owen’s voice.

“There’s nowhere to run.”

Just like that, the darkness thins from absolute black into night, the nothingness into the Coronado roof. I am racing through the maze of gargoyles, and I can hear Owen behind me, the sound of his steps and the grind of metal on stone as he drags his blade along the statues. The roof stretches to every side, forever and ever, the gargoyles everywhere, and I am ru

And I am tired of it.

I have to stop.

The moment the thought hits me, I slam to a halt on the rooftop. My lungs burn and my arm aches, and I look down to find the full word—B R O K E N—carved in bloody, bone-deep letters from elbow to wrist. I search my pockets and come up with a piece of cloth, and I’m halfway through tying it around my forearm, covering the cuts, when I realize how quiet the roof has gotten. The footsteps have stopped, the metallic scratching has stopped, and all I can hear is my heart. Then, the knife.

I turn just in time to dodge Owen’s blade as it slashes through the air, putting a few desperate steps between our bodies. The gargoyles have shifted to form walls, no gaps to get through: no escape. And that’s okay, because I’m not ru

He slashes again, but I grab his wrist and twist hard, and the knife tumbles from his grip into mine. This time I don’t hesitate. As his free hand goes for my throat, I bury the blade in Owen’s stomach.

The air catches in his throat, and I think it’s finally over—that I’ve finally done it, I’ve beat him, and it’s going to be okay. I’m going to be okay.

And then he looks down at me, at the place where my hand meets the knife and the knife meets his body. He brings his hand to mine and holds the knife there, buried to the hilt, and smiles.

Smiles as his hair goes black, and his eyes go hazel, and his body becomes someone else’s.

“No!” I cry out as Wesley Ayers gasps and collapses against me, blood spreading across his shirt. “Wesley. Wesley, please, please don’t…” I try to hold him up, but we both end up sinking to our knees on the cold concrete, and I feel the scream rising in my throat.

And then something happens.

Wesley’s noise—that strange chaotic beat—pours into the dream like water, washing over his body and mine and the rooftop, filling it up until everything begins to dim and vanish.

I’m plunged into a new kind of darkness, warm and full and safe.

And then I wake up.

It’s the middle of the night, and Wesley’s hand is tangled with mine. He’s in a chair pulled up to my bed, slumped forward and fast asleep with his head cradled on his free arm on the comforter. The memory of him crumpling to the concrete almost makes me pull away. But here, now, with his hand warm and alive in mine, the scene on the roof feels like it was just a dream. A horrible dream, but a dream—already fading away as his noise washes over me softer and steadier than usual, but still loud enough to quiet everything else.

My head is still filled with fog, and the hours before the nightmare trickle back first in glimpses.

Mom pushing the water into my hand.

The tilting room.

The breaking glass.

Wesley’s arms folding around me.

I look down at him, sleeping with his head on my covers. I should wake him up. I should send him home. I slide my fingers from his, and for a moment he rouses, drags himself from sleep long enough to mutter something about storms. Then he’s quiet again, his breathing low and even. I sit there, watching him sleep, discovering yet another of his many faces: one without armor.

I decide to let him sleep, and I’m just about to lie back down when I hear it: the sound of someone in the room behind me. Before I can turn, an arm wraps around my shoulders, and a woman’s hand closes over my mouth.

Her noise crashes through my head, all metal and stone, and all I can think as her grip tightens is that it takes a cruel person to sound like this. It’s how I imagine Owen would have sounded when he was alive, before his life was compiled and his noise replaced by silence.

When she leans in to whisper in my ear, I catch sight of the blue-black fringe that sweeps just above her black eyes. Sako.

“Don’t scream, little Keeper,” she whispers as she hauls me backward, out of the bed and to my feet. “We don’t want to wake him.”