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It seemed so ridiculous, going to work when the apocalypse was at hand. Drinking tea, eating a muffin from the corner store. Dusting the crumbs into the bin, scowling at a tiny blueberry stain on his shirt cuff. Could the end of the world be more unremarkable? Jon supposed that so many people had met their end in similar fashion, living out their lives in neutral mundanity up until the moment they lost everything. He used to hate the idea of being so glibly unaware of one’s own impending demise, but of course, present circumstances changed everything.
Yet, that wasn’t the most infuriating part. The worst part of waiting for his chance to save the world, the truth that chafed behind his eyes and under his fingernails, was that he couldn’t stop thinking about Elias.
At best, it was useless: Elias had already told him everything he cared to, and Jon wasn’t confident enough yet in his abilities to presume he could pry more out of him just yet. At worst, he was actively putting them all in danger by letting his focus linger for so long. The plan was already in motion, such as it was—Elias had to be dealt with before one of the others took matters too violently into their own hands, and now was their best, maybe only shot at catching him unaware. Planting any suspicion in him would ruin everything.
And yet.
Jon sucked on his shirt cuff as he reached for the stack of files he’d laid out the evening before: a random collection of statements he had snatched from the archive when at his most determined to stop thinking so much. His intentional search hadn’t yielded anything useful to their mission lately, so why not dedicate his final day to luck and chance?
Except from the moment he set his hand on the papers, he already knew they were useless to him. Gruesome, most definitely, but nothing worse than he’d absorbed and nothing that would illuminate any part of the Stranger. Completely ineffectual even as a distraction, because oh no, he was thinking about Elias again.
If there were any statements unaccounted for that would aid him, Elias would know. Hell, he probably kept them in his office under lock and key, saving them for a rainy day. Maybe one would sit on Jon’s desk as a congratulation, once he returned from risking self and sanity for the world’s sake. Maybe as a consolation prize, if he failed and it all ended.
Maybe Elias would creep into his room late in the night and deliver it himself, read it aloud so that Jon could close his eyes and see properly, partaking of whatever misfortunate soul had left their shadows behind. What did Elias feel, when he read the statements, he wondered? Did the fear trickle in, bitter and nourishing, did it sting or soothe? Would some of the tamer statements even register to him, did he crave more and more gorey tragedies? Did he hunger like this? Did he hunger?
“I can feel it when you do that,” said Elias.
Jon startled back in his chair. He hadn’t heard the door open, but there stood Elias, watching him with cool amusement. He wanted to be irritated at the intrusion, embarrassed at having missed it, but instead his stomach twisted with a humiliating anticipation. It was so distracting, it took him a beat to register what Elias had said. “Excuse me; you can what?”
The office was dim, and the hall light by comparison turned Elias into an ominous silhouette. “You’re trying very hard to know things about me,” he said pointedly. “I can feel it.”
Jon flushed. Of all the conflicting feelings he had about that—that his “power” was engaging in such a way without his conscious direction, that Elias could tell, that he might have gotten close to learning something if only he hadn’t—all he managed to express was to ask, “What does it feel like?”
Elias raised an eyebrow. “Like someone trying to tickle you where you’re not ticklish.”
“Oh, I see,” John scoffed. “The gulf between us is that vast?”
“Jon—”
“Don’t Jon me,” Jon snapped. “Not anymore.”
He stood up from his desk with enough force that his chair rocked and almost toppled. He wasn’t even sure where the fierce emotion was coming from until he had rounded the desk, planting himself just in front of his loathsome mentor.
“I may not be a match for you—yet,” Jon said firmly, “but I know what I felt the other night was real. It wasn’t like every other time. It was…” Jon gulped. “It was more. The way we, we fed from each other, it was like some kind of feedback loop, it was so…” He saw a spark in Elias’ steady gaze that solidified his rambling resolve. “I know you felt it, too.”
Elias smiled, but he leaned back slightly in what Jon considered a victory. “Someone is going to overhear this and get the wrong idea.”
Jon refused to let his intensity falter, even if his cheeks went hot. “You promised to be honest with me.”
“I know.” Elias licked his lips, and though his gaze remained steadfast, Jon could feel his attention snap left and right, confirming there wasn’t really anyone in range to overhear. “Yes, I felt it, too.”
Jon sucked in a slow breath, just about glowing with vindication. Before he could leverage that triumph into a direction, however, Elias continued. “If that’s what you’re after, I’m afraid I don’t have much in the way of other fears to offer you that will be as… satisfying. But we can try it again, if you like.” Jon’s heart began to race at the prospect. “After you return from your ‘mission.’ I imagine we’ll both have fresh fodder by then.”
“Is that your way of encouraging me to not die?” Jon retorted. “Dangling the carrot of existential pleasure?”
He hadn’t meant to word it that way. Watching Elias’ lips part twisted something unwelcome yet tantalizing in his stomach. “I would have thought,” said Elias, “that saving all of human existence was carrot enough. But… yes.” The monster lowered his voice into a nigh believable approximation of sincerity. “For more personal reasons, I don’t want you to die, Jon. I’ll offer whatever incentives necessary; I need you.”
He was a fool to let himself be drawn in by that, right? Was there any manipulation more obvious than I need you? Jon could feel the words sinking their hooks into his ribs, and he fought to dislodge them one by one. “Yes, well, I have no intention of dying,” he said, struggling out from under the weight of Elias’ oh so tempting earnestness. “But my chances would undoubtedly be better if you told me more about what we’re up against.”
“I’ve already given you everything I can,” Elias said, his cool exterior solidifying once more. “If there was something in another statement that I thought would aid you against the Unknowing, I would have handed it over by now, I promise.”
He seemed to mean it, and Jon almost relented. Almost. It occurred to him while studying the sheen of Elias’ eyes that not all truth lay in statements, and there were things Elias might not be able to give, but could be taken from him. If only Jon were stronger, maybe he could—
“You’re doing it again,” Elias chided with amusement.
Jon huffed, and his shoulders slackened. “All right, fine. Sorry to have bothered you.”
Elias’ smile deepend, and he cocked his head slightly as he took a step back. “I don’t mind at all,” he said with a lightness and charm that didn’t suit him. “It’s not an unpleasant sensation. Just thought it was fair that you know I know what you’re up to.”
“What about me?” Jon asked without thinking. “Will I be able to tell when you—”
Jon’s better sense caught up to him too late. He’d just laid out a terrible invitation, and of course now all he could think about was exactly the plan they’d taken such pains to hide from Elias at all costs. Right at the front of his mind, ripe and waiting for the beast to pluck free.
Elias stared back, a pinch of curiosity at the corner of each eye. He didn’t have to be a demonic mind reader to see Jon scrambling to rebuild his composure. But, almost more frightening than if he had immediately felt Elias’s talons rake across every ridge in his brain, the man took another step back.
“Yes,” Elias answered, intolerably smug. “You’ll know.”
He walked away. God damn him.
Jon retreated into his office, unable to keep from slamming the door in his haste to close it. He dropped into his desk chair and leaned against his elbows to wait. He ordered himself not to think about Elias, or the plan, or his coworkers he had just carelessly flung into horrible danger—oh God, Martin and Melanie most of all—but of course that didn’t work. Instead he looked down to the lingering crumbs on his desk, the blueberry stain on his shirt cuff. He held his wrist out in front of him, staring at the faint, damp spear of red, and thought very fixedly on how he would clean it once he was out of the office. Was it baking soda that worked on stains? No no no, vinegar for berries. How fortunate, that the gates of infinite knowledge would ease their fastenings for the sake of his one good remaining collared shirt.
He thought that, over and over, waiting to feel Elias. His skin itched in restless anticipation of feeling the fingers of a powerful consciousness moving it, seeking his tender spots. Was it more cruel to wait until his guard was down to plunder his Archivist’s secrets? Or to not even try, expressing through inaction how feeble and pointless any attempted revenge against him truly was? Or maybe he had seen the truth already, slipped in and out of Jon’s meager defenses without so much as a goose bump left in his wake. Maybe he had only come down from his office on high to gloat over having already thwarted their every design, because he saw and felt and knew everything Jonathan Sims was at any moment.
And Jon shook, furious with the possibility that he might not be able to feel that presence slithering through his thoughts. Disgusted with himself, knowing it wasn’t the dread and helplessness that bothered him most, but the deprivation. He wanted to know what it would feel like, the moment he realized Elias was inside him.
Jon shoved himself back to his feet. He snatched up the files and marched them back down to the archives. He sorted each back to its proper place despite how furious and disoriented he felt, hoping the order would impose some of its clarity on him. No such luck. By the time he’d finished, he was thinking about Elias again.
There’s nothing he can give me, he thought, wandering up and down the shelves, letting his fingers drift over box lids. What I want, I’ll have to take for myself. He wasn’t sure that logic lined up—what was he even expecting to find? Regardless, he kept at it. There’s nothing more in the statements to learn about the Unknowing. But maybe there’s something else that will teach me more about him.
Did it count, to focus so intensely on a blank space only tangentially connected to the object of his curiosity? Could he slay the gorgon by following only its reflection? His gait picked up without him realizing. What I need is more knowledge, he thought with a ferocity that resounded inside him like a struck bell. It’s not just the fear that gives me strength, it’s knowing things—learning that which should not be known, which has been hidden from me. Prying the truth out of its safe little hiding places, consume the rest, like oyster pearls…
Jon shook his head. And be less metaphorical about it.
His hand brushed over another box, and felt just the faintest stirring under his skin. He went completely still, drawing in on himself again to recite the process by which a blueberry stain could be removed from cotton. Was this when the assault hit? But nothing followed, and when he took a step to continue on, his stomach ever so slightly dipped. So it was the box.
Jon tugged it forward. It was full of paper statements in folders, which seemed to have avoided the attention of his assistants so far. Nothing was disturbed. He saw why a moment later: someone had labeled the box “weird dreams,” and a glance through the first written statement proved it to be accurate. Jon didn’t try to dampen a disgusted sigh. There was nothing he hated more than hearing about spooky dreams.
But the nagging, tugging sensation did not abate, so he took the box down and brought it to the nearest table where he could more easily paw through the different accounts. Could it be he really had missed something important, simply because the others knew him well enough not to bring him statements of this nature? As he shifted through the papers, looking for a familiar name, waiting for his instincts to sharpen, he caught a glimpse of a slightly different shade of paper.
Something was pressed flat against the bottom of the box. The statements were crammed so full that he might have never noticed if he hadn’t been alerted to the contents so distinctly. He had to remove some statements to have enough space to get his fingers under the wayward paper: a note on yellow lined paper, folded haphazardly and well hidden.
Hidden. Jon salivated as he very carefully pressed the note flat, as it seemed rather old and likely to tear. With eyes wide and heart thumping, he began to read.
Elias had to admit, he had underestimated the temptation a great deal.
After speaking with Jon—or bantering, or sparring, whatever one wished to call it—he returned to his office, and there he stayed for the rest of the work day, even if not much in the way of decent work got done. He couldn’t stop thinking about Jon.
Even for him, it took a sizable effort to keep his interest contained enough that Jon wouldn’t be able to notice. When Jon had stared straight into his eyes, compelling him for the truth without even meaning to, he truly had felt it—God, how he had felt it, the teeth of his Archivist sinking in hungrily from all sides. He didn’t know if it was because of their relative positions within Beholding’s hierarchy, or Jon’s power growing leaps and bounds all on its own—that was such an exciting, terrifying thought—but most likely he had brought this newly opened channel entirely on himself, that night in the hotel.
He had never lain himself so openly in the jaws of another avatar before, let alone his own. He had drunk from so many distinct and intoxicating variations of fear over the decades, but he had never shared his own with such a deliberate act of subservience. It was like baring one’s throat to a vampire, and he knew, very keenly, that he had made a mistake in doing so with Jon. And he wanted to make it again—and again, and again.
Elias leaned into his tented fingers. He hadn’t felt The Eye turn so much of its gaze on him in almost a hundred and fifty years, its curiosity seemingly drawn to the spectacle of two of its own so intricately entangled. Oh yes, he felt it.
Even so, Elias managed to keep himself busy enough. Though he bristled with curiosity over whatever Jon was so blatantly trying to conceal from him, he held himself back. Maybe it wasn’t as wise as it had originally seemed, but he had resolved to offer at least a guise of trust, and if he went probing too early, Jon would know. Better to let them both calm down and let things lie until at least after the Unknowing had passed.
Which is why it came as such an unwelcome surprise when, just as Elias was tidying up to leave for the evening, Rosie engaged the intercom.
“Mr. Bouchard,” she said, in that slightly put-out tone one expects of an assistant minutes before closing, “Mr. Sims is here to see you?”
Elias looked at the door, through the door, and yes, Jon was there. He seemed rather intense, in fact. Elias prickled with intrigue. “Let him in,” he said. “But you can go ahead and clock out, Rosie. I expect we’ll both be leaving shortly.”
“Goodnight, then,” Rosie said with relief.
The door swung open. Elias caught an actual glimpse of Rosie already with her purse slung over her shoulder, moving out from behind her desk, as Jon slipped in. Then Jon closed the door behind him, and moments later, they were properly alone.
“Jon?” Elias prodded, still behind his own desk as he watched Jon take the seat opposite him. “Here to continue our conversation from earlier?”
“No,” Jon agreed a little too readily. He took a relaxed posture, though it was obvious from the tension carried in his shoulders that he was forcing himself to only seem relaxed. “No, I believe you, what you said about not being able to tell me anything else. I, um. I’ve been thinking.”
“So you have.” Elias matched him by leaning back in his chair, and by his estimation did a much better job of holding the ruse of ease. “About?”
“The Eye.”
Elias folded his hands in his lap. “I don’t recommend that.”
“It was first suggested to me as a fear of being watched,” Jon carried on regardless. “Which is rather obvious, given the iconography. I didn’t question much because it’s such an obvious, everyday fear.” He let out a self deprecating huff. “Well, common enough when you’re an incurable neurotic, at the very least.”
“Sounds like no one I know,” Elias teased dryly, though there was something fidgety in Jon’s behavior that he didn’t like.
Jon shot him a that’s the joke look and continued. “I was thinking, down in the archives. At the heart of that fear isn’t the aversion to an eyeball, specifically, of course. In most cases!” John was gesturing then, drawn up in some kind of fervor that prickled all over Elias’s skin like pins he wanted to rub the sting from. “But rather, a fear of being observed doing or thinking or being something one does not want exposed, and having that thing be exposed. Vulnerability, and judgment. There are consequences that lie beyond merely being perceived. If you were to reach deep into my mind and threaten to reveal something everyone is well aware of, that would be irritating and uncomfortable, certainly. But only because I would infer that you could use that power to reveal something more damning and personal, something that would have external consequences from my colleagues and… and friends.”
“And so, what?” said Elias. His patience for the tirade was slipping fast. “You’re suggesting that The Eye is merely a gateway fear for something else?” He couldn’t prevent some of his honest offense at the suggestion slipping through. “It’s easy enough to suggest that fear of disease is merely a fear of death made more specific, but these entities don’t work by that logic.”
“No, of course not.”
Jon sighed sharply, impatient with himself it seemed, and pushed up from his chair. He began to pace. “After all, you are The Eye’s most ardent worshiper, and yet consequence is of almost no value to you, is it? You watch, and you scheme, certainly, but even with all the knowledge you pry out of us dancing monkeys, you don’t employ it unless you have to, do you? You covet the knowing over the exposure. You’re more voyeur than deceiver.”
Elias arched an eyebrow at him. “I’m going to take that as a compliment in the hopes that you’re about to get to the point.”
“Because for you, it’s not about being seen, it’s about being known.” Jon wagged his finger at Elias as he paced back and forth. “Knowledge itself, regardless of what you intend to do with it, is what sustains you. But then why the eye?” He started to reach for his own, seemingly unconsciously, as he stopped himself the moment his fingertip touched his cheekbone. “It’s only one of five senses! Aren’t ears just as useful in gaining information? Maybe more so, in some instances?”
“Jon.” Elias leaned forward to brace his elbows against the desk. “Please. Trust me when I tell you, you are wasting your time trying to rationalize the mechanisms behind these ancient beings and how they define and portray themselves.”
“Yes, ancient!” Jon said excitedly, as if Elias had just provided him with the missing piece to his rambling. Elias sighed, chin falling into his palm as he watched Jon prowl on. “The Fears are ancient. Some born from modern circumstances, but many of them would have been present since mankind’s inception, or earlier. Even animals fear being watched, but again, because of the consequence that follows: to be watched is to be hunted as by a predator.”
“You’re not making sense,” Elias said. “You’re starting to frighten me, and not in a way I can get off on.”
His uncharacteristic vulgarity had the intended effect: Jon’s mouth clapped shut as he stopped his pacing, and his cheeks flushed hot. But when his eyes snapped to Elias’, it wasn’t with the flustered impertinence he expected to see: rather they were sharp, harried but focused. Hungry, like a tongue lapping over bared teeth. It sent a quiver shooting down into Elias’ stomach.
What in the world was Jon getting at? Elias nearly broke his resolve to know. Did it matter, if Jon was able to feel him wrench it from him now?
“Am I?” Jon said, and Elias backed down from opening that particular eye just yet, because even that made his aim much more clear.
Elias relaxed his shoulders. “If you’re thinking that you can actually get to me with amateur philosophy about the nature of being known, you’re about to be disappointed,” he warned blithely.
“It’s not about that,” Jon insisted. “I’m just curious, which you can hardly blame me for.”
Elias pulled a face—this manner of curiosity was beneath them both, as far as he was concerned, and quite frankly a disappointment to him, but Jon continued before he could say so. “It’s a bit of a chicken and the egg situation, isn’t it? If The Eye is as old as, say, the Hunt, they must be bosom companions, wouldn’t you say? Before man, one would lead into the other, and then into death. So did the specificity of the eye come into being with the dawn of humankind?” He chuckled, a hoarse and slightly manic sound. “If so, ought it not be eyes, plural? Most animals including humans do have two. Predator’s need that depth perception to hunt.”
Elias blinked at him slowly to show his disinterest. “Jon.”
“And then the thought came to me,” Jon said, though Elias couldn’t let himself believe that he was actually about to surrender the heart of the matter after so much senseless preamble. “What if that’s because of you?”
Jon’s gaze had seized his again, and Elias could have sworn his heart skipped. “What?”
“This place,” Jon carried on as if he were correcting himself for having misspoken, but there was a hardness to him, an extra rush of fervor that cracked the whip behind Elias’ pulse. “When the institute was created, it favored information via sight, thanks to the technology of the time, or lack thereof: written accounts, letters, books, artifacts.” Jon moved back toward the desk, bracing both hands against the back of the chair he had vacated. “Things that could be seen, and written down, and read. The foundational format for knowledge itself, combined with the ancestral human fear of the watchful hunter’s eye. A modern coalescence of fear, born right here.”
Elias stared back at him blankly. The refutations piling up in his mouth he tightened his jaws around; it wasn’t as if he could argue against Jon with the truth. “That’s… preposterous.” He rubbed his eyes. “You know this isn’t the only archive, let alone the oldest…”
He paused at the sound of crinkling paper. Why was his heart beating so quickly? He lowered his hand and found Jon standing straight up again, unfolding a piece of plain yellow paper. He didn’t recognize it immediately, and yet— “What is that?”
Jon held the note before him, but he didn’t look at it: he stared straight at Elias. “Statement of Richard Mendelson.”
Elias sat up.
“Written in the subject’s own hand,” Jon continued, a feverish excitement to him now, “and a shaky one at that. No date given, though I imagine it to be sometime in early 1973, shortly after he was promoted to director.”
Elias stared back at Jon in utter disbelief. He couldn’t even bring himself to turn his gaze on the note ahead of Jon’s recitation. The office around them had grown cold and hammering, and he felt something far above them begin to peel back. He barely heard himself say, “Where did you get that?”
“He is coming for me now,” Jon read, his eyes flicking back and forth between the page and Elias’s face, drinking in every instant of his reaction. “There’s no point in trying to fight. He’ll get what he wants from me.”
Elias braced his hands to the desk and stood up—Jon skittered back but only by two steps. His retreat tugged at some instinct in Elias’ skull to pursue that he nearly acted on. Instead, he began to sweat as Jon continued to read.
“And the worst part is, I want him to,” Jon said, his breath catching empathetically on the words. Elias found himself all but overwhelmed by the desire to sink his teeth into that hitching throat. “Even if I could fight, I wouldn’t, because God help me I want to know. If I’m going to die, I’ll get what I want from him, too.”
“Jon,” Elias said, breathless, furious and terrified and unable to do one damn thing to stop him. Even when he finally did try to see ahead of Jon, out of pure animal desperation to reclaim control of this impossible scenario, his mind filled with static and he couldn’t look away from Jon’s face. He couldn’t stop staring straight into his eyes.
“Jim, I am so sorry. If there’s anything left of you in there, I hope to meet you somehow.” Jon lowered the statement. “Reunited, behind the eyes of Jonah Magnus.”
Hearing the name spoken at him in Jon’s voice sent a shudder through him. For a long moment the pair of them only stared at each other in the silent office, the only disturbance each quick, shallow breath. Even so Elias’s chest seemed to heave, heart battering itself against his ribs as viciously as anything he had felt in a long time. This wasn’t how this was supposed to happen. His plan had always allowed for a certain degree of malleability, risks and allowances, but Jon was never meant to learn this much so soon. Catastrophic enough, to have that name in his mouth, but to have wrested it from some half scribbled statement Elias himself had never known existed—
“Jonah,” said Jon, half whispered like it was a word of prayer. There was no interpreting the wild look on his face then, but the indents of his teeth were all around Elias, digging into the soft ridges of his brain matter. He had pried open his prize—Elias lay exposed, seen, and he shuddered beneath the lavishing tongue of the Archivist’s eager hunger, suckling on that fear like tasty marrow.
“I can see you now,” Jon continued in that hushed and boyish tenor, and Elias gaped back, overwhelmed and grasping for balance. “I know what you did to him.” A frail huff of laughter tumbled from him. “When I felt the terror behind your eyes it didn’t occur to me to take that feeling literally.”
“Jon, whatever you think you…” Elias began, but what was the point? Jon couldn’t just smell the truth on him, he was feasting on it. He combed his hair back with his fingers. “All right.” He gathered himself up. “Tell me what you know.”
“You’re Jonah Magnus,” Jon said immediately, glaring as if daring him to deny it.
And despite everything, he nearly did. The instinct to try to reason Jon out of his conclusion was so strong, he’d already drawn the breath to say the words before realizing they were on his tongue, and he faltered a little in changing tactics. It probably made the attempt at unconcerned charm in his face laughable. “Yes, I am.” Loosing the truth from his own mouth made him almost light-headed with mixed dread and a sick relief. “Sincerely, well done.” His throat tightened, making the words come out strained. “I have no idea how you found that statement.”
“It called to me. The Eye wants me to see you.”
What an inconceivable and horrifying thought. It gave Elias goosebumps.
“Like Richard Mendelson did before me,” Jon continued, and he swallowed. God how he must have been salivating. “He knew what you were when you killed him—killed him, like you did the director before that, and after, so that you could continue to run the institute yourself. The institute you founded, molded into the perfect coalescence of The Eye’s power.”
He was pulling, maybe even without realizing. The spark of concern in realizing he couldn’t have resisted if he wanted to threatened to unbalance Elias further, but he pursed his lips into a smile and held his ground. “Yes. As they say, if you want something done right—”
“And Elias Bouchard,” Jon carried on. “You murdered a young man from a wealthy family and stole his body—his life.” He shook. “Like the thing that took Sasha.”
“And so what?”
Elias took a step to the side, to move around the desk. Jon moved too, hastily folding his precious little note to be stowed in his pocket as he tried to keep some space between them. “It’s not like Sasha,” Elias told him, stopping once he had a clear path to Jon. He was confident he was quick enough to close the distance, if he had to. “You don’t care one whit about Elias Bouchard, the vapid tenager you never met. As far as you’re concerned, I have only ever been me.” He patted himself on the chest. “And you’ve known for a while now that I have greater powers than yours, that I’m trying to prevent the world’s utter annihilation, so while you’ve learned something extraordinary today, it changes almost nothing.”
“Changes nothing?” Jon scoffed, angry and anxious. He reached into his trouser pocket.
“Changes nothing.” Elias took a step closer. “I know what this is really about, Jon. You are so hungry, aren’t you?”
Jon wound tighter. “Don’t come any closer.”
“Human fear is nothing compared to the delectable buffet of another avatar, is it?” Elias said, keeping his manners gentle, even sympathetic. He moved closer. “You happened across a rare and tasty morsel down amongst the books and thought you could get a rise out of me, hm? Sate your appetite and your curiosity watching me squirm?” He sighed. “I hate to admit it, but by God I never expected you to come this far this fast. It does frighten me.”
Jon shifted like he was going to start backing away, so Elias stopped again, even relaxed his posture so as not to provoke his retreat. “But you don’t need me to tell you that, do you?” he continued. “I can feel your mouth on my throat like a leech, feeding, feeding.” Elias shivered despite his efforts to project only calm composure and lowered his voice. “It feels good, doesn’t it? Jonah Magnus is afraid of you.”
Jon surrendered a quiet, pained whine. His fear was just as delectable, Elias had to admit. A tiny part of him thought maybe it was even worth it, to have this secret exposed, if it further addicted Jon to the tantalizing gifts of their unholy benefactor. He hadn’t felt this alive and aware in decades, and he was sharing it. It was damn near arousing to contemplate.
Jon licked his lips. “You’re a monster,” he said, barely above a whisper.
“You use that word too liberally. I’ve been human at least five times as long as you have. I like to think that—”
Jon pulled the knife out of his pocket.
Elias regarded it with a raised eyebrow. Despite his best efforts, he could tell that Jon tasted the spec of caution it sparked in him. “Ahh, a switchblade,” he said. “Do you even know—”
Jon flicked the blade out. He was breathing hard, watching Elias closely for any shift of movement, eyes dancing from his throat to his gut. Taking aim?
Elias leaned back on his heel. “Borrowed that from Melanie, did you? Does she know you’re here?”
“No,” said Jon thinly. “No one knows anything.”
“Best to keep it that way, don’t you agree?” When Jon didn’t reply, Elias gave a rough and irritated sigh. “That’s enough. You’ve got what you wanted out of me, so now—”
Maybe that part about The Eye and The Hunt being so closely twined wasn’t so far off after all, Elias thought, when he felt the knife in his chest.
The blade scraped against his ribs, finding a gap between two of the lower ones on his left side. It punctured his lung, and when he tried to take a breath, his chest seized with pain and shock. Jon stared back at him. He looked just as stunned that he had actually done it, slow to comprehend he was on the other end of the knife embedded in his boss’ torso.
In a thoughtless act of self preservation, Elias shoved him back: just a simple, sharp push devoid of strategy. The blade leaving his body seemed to pull the air out of his lung with it. He reached inside his jacket, choking on each attempt to breathe, to feel the pulse of blood already soaking through his dress shirt. It was unbearably warm against his suddenly cold fingers.
“I—” Jon began, shaken, but then something steeled in the set of his jaw. “You’re going to kill me?” he challenged, and he moved toward Elias again. “Isn’t that just what you said, before you killed Mendelson? After he ‘got what he wanted’ out of you?”
Was it? That memory for Elias was decades old, for Jon fresh—how was he supposed to remember something like that? “Wait,” he choked out, reeling back as Jon pursued. “I didn’t—”
“You didn’t?” Jon spat. “I watched you cut out his eyes!”
“I didn’t mean—” Elias tried again, but it was so hard to catch his breath and talk, and by then his back was hitting the wall. Panic skittered all over him like rodent claws, but he braced himself and managed to get enough strength behind the words. “Jon, stop. Don’t make me hurt you.”
“Try it,” Jon snarled, and he swung his arm forward again.
Elias had to let go of the wound to meet him. He caught Jon’s wrist before the knife could find a mark again, slicking him with his blood. Neither of them were very large or strong—how ridiculous they must have looked, scraping roughly for control of a three inch switchblade in their button downs and slacks. Elias groped after some knowledge he could project against the theater of Jon’s mind, to startle him into some lapse, but with a growl Jon threw his weight into him. His legs gave out, and together they crashed to the floor.
For a moment, Elias saw himself from the outside: already a shade paler, already shaking. There was blood in his throat. Jon on top of him. He watched the glint of the red knife and realized it would take very little more to end this farce of an existence he’d dragged out for so long. He fought back inelegantly, and it wouldn’t be enough to keep the blade from his heart or throat, if Jon was as determined to end him as he seemed. He couldn’t see through him anymore to know. But he struggled, wracking his mind for a scalpel he could wield that wouldn’t destroy everything he’d worked so hard for. If he killed Jon now, how many more archivists would he have to suffer before finding another so well poised?
Then he felt the tip of the knife against the rise of his cheekbone, and he went stark still with a whole new appreciation for the fear of death.
“This is the part of you I’d have to dispose of, isn’t it?” Jon said through shaky breaths, one hand pinning Elias’ chin while the other wielded the knife dangerously close to his left eye. “Your fucking eyes.”
“If you kill me,” Elias gasped out, “everyone tied to the institute—”
“You’re lying.” Jon shifted his knee against Elias’ chest, digging into the wound—applying much needed pressure that nevertheless forced a pained gurgle from his captive. “You can’t lie to me now, Jonah. I see you. I can taste every inch of your fear.”
Elias shuddered, once again unable to do anything but endure Jon’s mind scraping over his own, barbed and seeking and squirming. “You can’t—”
“You must have been alive over two hundred years by now,” Jon murmured with awe and disgust. “How long will it take, to watch your life flash before your eyes?”
“Jon—” Elias stopped when he felt the blade poke ever so faintly against his bottom eyelid. He swallowed blood. “What do you want?”
“Tell me,” Jon whispered, and his tongue moved in his mouth as if already relishing him. “Tell me what you’re afraid of, Jonah Magnus.”
Something inside Elias lurched: his lips and tongue, his coppery throat and shrinking lung all tangling around each other in a rush to vomit up the truth being demanded of him. “Don’t kill me—I don’t want to end.”
Jon’s released an incredulous sigh. “After everything, you’re just as scared to die as the rest of us?”
“No, I…” Elias tried to clench his teeth against the flood, to deliver his statement with dignity and at his own pace, but there was no stopping Jon now. Without moving a muscle, Jon pried him open. “I wanted to know,” he said, voice raw and trembling, eyes wide and leaking as the blood oozing through his chest wall began to very slowly suffocate him. “There’s just so much! I wanted to know everything, so badly that the thought of not knowing felt like a kind of horror.”
Elias tightened his slick hands around Jon’s wrists, but he wasn’t fighting back anymore. “You understand. You feel it—you have to feel it, too. You have to know.”
Jon grimaced, but he didn’t interrupt, still pulling on Elias with every gnawing tooth available to him. Elias gagged in his haste to continue. “I’ve worked so hard,” he lamented, appalled by the emotion scraped raw by his rough voice. “I’ve been so patient. You’ve…” He reached higher up, twisting his fingers in Jon’s collar; still Jon remained attentive and quiet. “You’ve come so far! We’re so close and I can’t let it be for nothing.”
And as hard as he fought against it, he couldn’t prevent his strangled, “Please, Jon. Please, I can’t let this end—I just want to see—I can’t die! Please don’t kill me.”
Jon shuddered, the knife still tight against Elias’ face stirring his eyelashes. “What haven’t you told me about the Unknowing?”
“Gertrude suspected it wouldn’t work,” Elias said, and he groaned at having given that much up. Everything was unraveling too quickly—he couldn’t stop it. Even if Jon let him leave this office, he would then have to kill Jon and start again, lose so much of what he’d fought for, and with so many fears waylaid and struck down how long before another Archivist could even be marked potently enough? Could he even bring himself to destroy Jon with all the knowledge he held now? Would his hand shake just like Jon’s had around the lighter when he killed the Keay boy?
But he couldn’t stop himself.
“The rituals are doomed to fail,” Elias heard himself saying. “At least, she believed so, and so do I. You’re right about the Fears—they’re too intertwined to be summoned one at a time.”
“Then why are you pitting us against it?” Jon demanded.
“I’m hoping it will make you more powerful.” Despite everything, some part of Elias was grateful to be able to share that truth. He touched Jon’s face. “The Stranger is… the antithesis of… I want you to be powerful enough to…”
He jerked with a cough and tasted blood; even Jon startled, drawing the knife away. Between Jon’s weight and his heaving breath Elias could barely draw enough air to expel the wet clot, and fresh, animal panic seared through him. It was getting harder to see. His fingers and toes were going numb. He pawed at Jon, uncoordinated and quaking. “Jon please,” he wheezed desperately. “I will die!”
“But you…” Jon loosened his restraint to instead touch Elias’ face; Elias couldn’t make out his expression anymore, but he felt the shift from anger to fright. Jon crawled off him and reached into his jacket to feel out the wound. “You’re still bleeding.”
Elias slumped, hardwood floor cold against his face. “You… stabbed me…”
“Y-Yes, but I thought you would…” Jon convulsed. “Oh, hell.”
He was shaking indecisively; Elias curled in on himself, muttering, “Ambulance, please.”
“Oh Christ,” Jon continued to pant, and he scrambled away.
Elias closed his eyes. He listened to Jon babble something into the phone. “Tell them it was Tonner,” he mumbled, but he didn’t know if Jon heard him. Then Jon was back, ripping Elias’ shirt open so he could press both palms firmly to the broken, weeping skin.
“I-I’m sorry,” Jon rambled as Elias jerked beneath his hands, the pain of that compress rattling him. “I mean, I’m not, because I thought you were about to—you were about to kill me, and I—”
“I’m not,” said Elias weakly. “I won’t. I don’t want…” He couldn’t get the strength into his hands anymore, but he laid one clumsily over Jon’s anyway. “I need you.”
“Fuck,” Jon hissed, and he shifted to draw Elias’s head to rest against his lap. “An ambulance is coming.”
Elias sighed shakily. Jon’s unsteady hands hurt, but their insecurity rumbled about inside him, dulling the pain a little. “Scared, Jon?”
“I…” Jon squirmed. “I didn’t want this. I’m not a…”
“You are, though,” Elias interrupted him, because it was the truth, and because Jon’s little gasp of horror made his own breathlessness bearable. “We both are.”
Jon fell quiet for a while. He kept a tight hold on Elias’ wound and stewed in his self-loathing and anxiety, and Elias in turn clung to him, focusing hard on every breath. Jon’s probing, which had been so fierce and invasive only minutes ago, gentled to a faint siphon. Each of them awash in each other’s dully churning torment, in disturbing intimacy.
Jon moved his thumb against Elias’s ribs. “You really are scared, aren’t you?” he murmured, and when he received Elias’s thin moan as answer, he gulped. “Why do you need me? What can I do that you can’t?”
“It’s like… you said.” Elias twisted his wince into a smile. “The beast needs two eyes to hunt.”
And Elias parted his lips and pressed a kiss to his thigh, just as the ambulance arrived outside.
“Jon?”
Jon startled and jerked his head up. He had no idea how long he had been slumped in the narrow, plastic chair, but judging by the complaint of his back, quite a while. He blinked wearily against the fluorescent lights of the hospital waiting room, up at a pair of familiar figures: Martin and Basira.
“Oh,” he said, and then he looked down at his hands, and a pang went through him. “Oh.”
“Jon?” Martin prodded again, taking the seat next to him. “Are you okay? Should you be—”
“I’m not—” Jon stuttered as gradually the setting retook its shape around him. He rubbed his sticky hands against each other and sagged into his shoulders once more. “It’s not mine.”
“What happened?” asked Martin.
“What did you do?” asked Basira.
She said it so guardedly that she must have already known. “I, ah.” Jon swallowed and leaned forward, bracing his elbows to his knees. “I stabbed him?”
Martin flinched. “What!” A hiss from Basira got him to cower in once more, and he lowered his voice. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this here?”
“Why?” Basira asked anyway. She was doing a decent job of leashing her frustration, but Jon’s ears were buzzing just as intently as his eyes, bloodshot and overtaxed but still powerful. He could have read her cover to cover just then, if he’d wanted. “What’s changed?”
“Nothing’s changed,” Jon said quickly, but that reminder drew the entire impossible encounter back to the forefront of his eyes, and he curled in on himself with a bitter half-sob. “Oh god.”
Basira started to say something else, but Martin cut her off, saying, “Give him a moment.” He touched Jon’s back hesitantly despite the sudden strength in his voice. “Whatever’s going on, we’ll figure it out.”
What a terrible proposition that was, Jon thought. He stared blearily at his still ruddy hands, the blood crusty around and beneath his nails. Like the muzzle of a hyena maybe, after having plunged its ravenous jaws into the kill. He gagged with the memory of Elias beneath his hands, gliding down his throat in ephemeral consumption. He despised how satiated he felt.
“I haven’t heard anything,” he mumbled. “Have they told you anything? About him?”
“We just got here.” Basira crouched down on the balls of her feet in front of him. “Jon,” she said in her very effective cop voice. “We all know what Bouchard said, about what happens to us if something happens to him. Do we need to be worried right now?”
“I don’t… no. I mean no, I-I don’t think so.” Jon started to reach for his mouth but remembered in time and pushed his hands back down. “They, uh, they took him, and… I think I would know if it was… bad.”
Basira continued to watch him, unconvinced. “Did Melanie—”
“No,” Jon cut her off with greater confidence. He took a deep breath and fought desperately to collect himself. “No this was… all me.” He winced. “I haven’t told the police that, but…”
“Jon,” Martin said gently, still touching him. “What happened?”
What had happened? Jon could still see every instant so clearly, and yet it didn’t make any greater sense to him than when it was playing out. It was as if the statement he’d discovered had detonated inside him, and he was still sewing the pieces back together. Watching Elias’ disdain fall away in favor of self-preservational terror had plunged him into such ecstatic disarray he could only equate it to some kind of bizarre, mind-altering drug, and yet he couldn’t do less than claim full responsibility for what he’d done. For the things and people he had risked, for the pleasure and guilt and trepidation that vibrated all through him.
“I found,” Jon began, only to then clutch that revelation down inside him. It was his, and there was still no telling what Jonah would do if properly exposed, and it was his and he didn’t want anyone else to have it.
He cleared his throat. “I confronted him about what he’s been keeping from us,” he murmured. “I was feeling… stronger, and I thought I could force something out of him, but…” The lies hurt to tell; Elias hadn’t ever warned him about that part. “He approached me, and he said something that I—I took the wrong way. I thought he was going to kill me, and I…”
Martin gave his shoulder a squeeze, but he and Basira remained quiet for a moment to see if he would finish. When he didn’t, Martin instead patted his back. “Let’s get you cleaned up,” he suggested, and Jon let himself be prodded to his feet, and herded into the public restroom.
Jon cleaned up in the sink as best he could. Martin stayed close by, bless him. Bless him even more for not pawing for more answers. It wasn’t until they were almost finished that he worked up the courage to ask, “What does this mean for the plan?”
“This wasn’t about that,” Jon said, and it felt good to be honest about that much.
“You weren’t, like, protecting me, were you?” Martin pressed, though he didn’t sound eager for the answer. “Because it was my idea, and I agreed to—”
“No, Martin, no.” Jon dried his hands off—they still felt sticky and heavy—and turned to clasp his arm. “This had nothing to do with doubting that you could do your part. It’s just… strange timing, that’s all. And it’s a good thing.” He took a deep breath and turned back to the mirror to fuss with his hair. “Elias is even more… more monstrous, and more human, than we thought. But he’ll be infirmed for a while at least. Once the police are done with the office as a crime scene, you should call Melanie and ransack what you can.”
“Being hospitalized is a much better distraction than what we had planned,” Martin agreed with a frail chuckle. Jon smiled, but both their humor was short-lived. Martin cleared his throat. “Are you okay?”
What an absurd question. Jon looked at his hands again: there was still blood in the beds of his nails and staining the cuff of his shirt. He couldn’t see blueberry smudge beneath it anymore. “Hydrogen peroxide for blood,” he murmured, scrubbing the cuff with his thumb. “Baking soda…”
“Jon?”
“Y-Yes. I’m all right.” Jon straightened through force of will and fixed his confidence on Martin again. “The rest of the plan hasn’t changed. Help Melanie, and everything else will fall into place.”
“Okay. Okay, got it.” Martin nodded a few times. “I’m glad you weren’t hurt.”
“Me, too,” said John, suppressing a grimace, and they left the bathroom.
Hurt, he could have handled. He had his scars and was well prepared for more. What he didn’t know what to do with was the truth he had unearthed, which squirmed and gnawed at him from the inside. No, everything had changed, would have to change, and that knowledge bubbled and tickled all through Jon’s sinews long after he left the hospital.
He could not stop thinking about Jonah Magnus.
They went to the wax museum. Jon didn’t bother trying to explain to the others what Jonah had said about the Unknowing, its chances of success, the possibly unnecessary danger they were putting themselves in. Tim would have gone regardless, and Daisy and Basira were unlikely to believe anything from Elias’s mouth. They doubted Jon’s judgment just as much. Even Jon himself wasn’t certain he trusted the supposition of two enemies who had been bent on destroying each other. So they went to the wax museum on the off chance that they were saving the world.
Except the truth was that part of him just wanted to know if Jonah was right: would this make him powerful?
He didn’t feel powerful, waiting as Daisy set the charges. He felt as if all his skin was itching—as if at any moment tiny seams would appear between each hair and freckle and wrinkle, and he would peel open more eyes, more eyes, and what would become of him—
And then it began.
Jonah Magnus, infuriatingly enough, slept through all of it.
He had nightmares, as humiliating as that was. He walked the halls of his institute, which had grown cold and crumbling and dead, devoid of any spark of wit or curiosity. Outside, the world thundered on in all its cacophonic indifference, while the great monument he had built sloughed and decayed. The offices, laboratories, even the archives stood empty. Not one employee, not one visitor. Just him, and even then just barely, moving along the same halls over and over.
He thought for a while that it was somehow Peter Lukas’ doing. He was familiar enough with the work to wonder if he was better off curling up next to the bones of old Barnabus. But down in the archives, pulling each empty box forward to confirm they were indeed empty, the pang each dusty container shot through him wasn’t anything like loneliness. He wasn’t alone; untold billions surged and frothed just beyond the institute’s heavy oak doors. He could easily find himself among them if he chose. But they may as well have been rather large flies, or unidentifiable aliens, as far as he was concerned. Their minds were closed to him, shallow and uncaring, and he couldn’t make sense of their blatherhing and chittering.
He couldn’t see beyond the walls. He couldn’t peer into the past. Every scrap and note and missive and mind-shattering revelation he had collected and preserved was gone, leaving only an old man thin and crumbling like the cardboard partitions that separated void from absence on blank shelves. Dry and wasted, alone and ignorant and irrelevant. He had nothing, was nothing, and a great eye peered down on him in his misery, taking no pleasure from him. He was not even significant enough to feed on.
Jonah Magnus made his way to his office, seeking the bones, but it wasn’t his anymore. He opened the door and—
Jonah awoke with a start. His surroundings smeared gradually into focus, and he kept himself small, incurious, until he could be sure of where he was and what state he was in. Hospitalized, yes—IV in his arm, tube in his chest, oxygen being fed into his nostrils. He hadn’t been intubated, at least. A decent sign. Even so, his skin was rank with sweat, hair stuck messily against his face. His chest ached even when he kept perfectly still, and he shivered with cold disbelief of everything that had happened.
Jonah took a careful breath, preparing to call for a nurse—his mouth was unbearably dry—but it caught even before getting to his mangled lung. He wasn’t alone.
Jon sat next to the bed, except he wasn’t really Jon anymore. Jonah blinked his eyes clear and took him in, in all his shabby resplendence: half sagged in the uncomfortable guest chair, watching him with eyes half lidded. He did not seem surprised nor gladdened to see his boss awake. He only stared straight back at Jonah, unrelenting, but without any malice or pity. He looked tired.
And yet, the air around him seemed to burn. Jonah could see it shift and shimmer as if reality’s lens had focused itself entirely on Jon himself, and the rest of the world might as well fade away from him, unneeded. It reminded Jonah of the haze of steam off a bonfire, and the more he looked, the more he was convinced he could feel the heat as well. Something had happened—oh no, had it all happened already? Jonah wasn’t strong enough yet to cast his mind beyond the walls of this hospital, but judging by the way Jon’s teeth were all vibrating on the outside, he didn’t need to. It was over.
Something in him cowered beneath this new Jon. Even his lips felt clammy as he swallowed. “Jon…?”
Jon’s eyes opened a little wider, as if he had been asleep with the lids parted, and he was only just now rousing to his proper state. Physically he looked pale, exhausted, and peppered with soot, but there was no mistaking what lay beneath that rough exterior. Jonah caught himself holding his breath.
“Oh, Eli…” Jon started to say, but then he caught himself, and his brow pinched.
“Might as well still be Elias,” Jonah told him, and though he could barely take enough breath to be heard above a whisper, he fought to regain some of their previous banter—anything to reestablish their shattered hierarchy. “I don’t think you really want everyone else to know, do you?”
Jon frowned at him. Maybe he’d told them already—Jonah still didn’t know how much time had passed. “No, I don’t,” Jon admitted at length. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to tell them until I’m sure I want to kill you.”
Jonah’s heart gave a thump that was reflected embarrassingly in the bleep of his pulse monitor. “And you don’t, yet?”
“No. Not yet.”
Jonah released a long relieved sigh that was not as much for show as he would have liked to project. “Well,” he said with forced cheer, “I’m very glad to hear that. Though I can’t help but wonder why.”
“Because…” Jon’s shoulders curled forward, and he seemed to have trouble finding the right words.
“You’re scared, aren’t you?” Jonah prodded carefully, though he didn’t dare stretch himself toward Jon just yet. “You’re aware now of just how much I know. To snuff out that much knowledge with one life is more than you could bear.”
Jon’s jaw worked, trying to spit forth some denial that didn’t come. He looked so lovely in his shame and conflict, and Jonah reached for him… only to realize that he couldn’t. Around his wrist was a soft pad, and around that, a steel manacle chaining him to the bed. He yanked on it without thinking, burdened again by an animal-like panic that he managed to then wrangle down. With a deep breath, he let his hand fall.
“Ah,” said Jonah. “I see.”
“We can’t have you at the institute any longer,” Jon said, his voice halfway between accusation and apology. “If it hadn’t been me, it would have been one of the others eventually. And they wouldn’t have called for the ambulance.”
“Rightly so, maybe,” Jonah muttered, but then he rallied. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t included this in his calculations, to some extent. He would simply have to cope. “I don’t like the idea of the institute being without me for too long, as I’m sure you know. It is mine, after all.” He looked back to Jon’s face and felt a hot shiver run through him. “Though, there are hardly better hands for the job than yours.”
Jon didn’t take the compliment well, grimacing as he lowered his gaze to the floor. “Elias,” he whispered, working himself up to something. Jonah remained quiet and patient even though he tingled with anticipation. “I, um. I don’t regret what I did to you,” Jon finished at last, stiff like he had rehearsed. “But I am sorry. I really thought I couldn’t actually hurt you.”
Jonah smiled dryly. “None of us are as invulnerable as we seem.”
“I find it strangely reassuring,” Jon continued with somber contemplation. “It makes me hopeful that if I ever become something like you, maybe one of the others will be able to take care of it more thoroughly.”
“Please don’t talk like that,” Jonah said with quiet firmness. “Being me is not quite so catastrophic.”
He said it with just enough levity that Jon managed a bitter smile and then scooted closer with his chair. “I don’t know what happens now,” Jon confided hoarsely. “I know that after what you’ve done, what you’ve become, I… I shouldn’t be here. I should have killed you.” He swallowed, over and over, as he wrestled the truth out of him. “But something is… is growing, inside of me.” He twisted his fingers in his shirt front. “And you’re probably the only one who understands what it is and what it means for me, and…” He squeezed his eyes briefly shut. “I need you. I need someone who feels this, even just to remind me of what I don’t want to be.” He sought Jonah’s eyes again. “I need you.”
Jonah relaxed deeper into the mattress, even though little tingles of electricity seemed to alight all over his skin. He opened his palm face up in welcome. “Tell me what happened with the circus,” he asked, quiet but firm, so that Jon wouldn’t be able to doubt again.
Jon slipped his sweaty hand into Jonah’s and gripped it tight. He didn’t need Jonah to compel him to take a breath, and to give his statement in his own words, with all his own fears and triumphs. It even seemed that he was opening himself more fully than before, now that the danger had passed, prison was assured and no more secrets remained between them. Well. One more secret. He was morbidly looking forward to Jon prying that one from him, too.
But for now, Jonah held him, and he listened.