The Killing Jar (11 page)

But I didn't hear any of their footsteps retreating from me. There was only Rebekah's voice, calm and assured and in control.

“Cyrus, fetch one of the jars. Quickly, please.”

My entire body quaking, I dared to peek up at them and saw Cyrus throw open a cabinet on the far side of the room, removing a ceramic container. He handed it carefully to Rebekah, and she moved closer to me until I saw it was some kind of jar in the shape of an animal's head. A sheep's head, I realized when she was only a few feet away.

She continued to ease closer to me with the jar held out in front of her.

“Please,” I begged, my words vibrating through my trembling throat, strands of me reaching to engulf her. “Get away.”

She kept moving closer, her eyes never leaving mine. Then she knelt and set the jar in front of me.

I stared at the jar, and the sheep's head with its blank eyes stared back.

“Open it,” Rebekah commanded, her voice filled with so much authority that I had no choice but to do what she said.

I opened the top of the lamb's head. Again, I felt that sense of unraveling, like a ball of yarn dropped down a staircase with someone still holding the string at one end. The pale veins extruded from me, stretching and surrounding the opening at the top of the jar as a fine, white cloud of light drifted from inside. The veins hoarded the light and wrapped around it, and as the white cloud diminished, the emptiness inside me was filled. My lungs eased and my bones ceased aching; the fiery itching on my skin stopped, and the shuddering sound in my ears quieted to blessed silence.

When the cloud was gone, the pale veins withdrew into me and I slumped against the wall and fell instantly, blissfully, asleep.

 

T
HIS
S
IDE
OF
THE
R
IVER

I dreamed of Blake.

I stood on one side of a river, its rippling waters tinseled with moonlight, and he was on the other. My bank was lush with blossoming trees and a carpet of white flowers bathed in milky moonlight. But Blake's side was dark, as though the forest behind him had recently burned, and the light did not reach it. He tried to tell me something, but the crashing roar of water drowned his voice. Then the river began to rise, pushing us farther and farther from each other until he was only a sliver in the distance, and I had forgotten his name.

I woke in an unfamiliar bed, and the dream lingered for a moment like a bad aftertaste before dissolving into the basement of my subconscious.

Though it was dark in the room and my eyes had not yet adjusted, I didn't need them to tell me I was not alone. I tensed, sitting up quickly, willing my groggy head to clear, and then realized that I wasn't groggy at all. My head
was
clear. My body felt normal. Better than normal, in fact. I felt freaking amazing, both physically and mentally. The pain and sickness that had racked me were gone. I didn't think I'd ever known such a sense of perfect, untroubled serenity. It was like every worry and fear and the mound of guilt I'd harbored had been locked away in a safe room inside my head, still there, but unable to touch me for the time being.

I recalled what had happened before I'd plunged into sleep. Meeting Rebekah. Losing control and coming undone. The sheep's head jar, and the white cloud of light that had been trapped inside it. The pale, glowing veins that had emerged from me and siphoned it into my body. What had that light been? Whatever it was, I could feel it inside me still, a crystal glaze over every thought and feeling. A soothing balm that filled up the emptiness and drove away my pain.

I was healed. The gnawing, aching, unbearable hunger that had been a constant torment since I'd woken in the basement was gone.

But where was I now, and who was in the room with me?

“Mom?” I tried. “Are you there?”

“She's gone,” said the person in the room, who I still could not see.

I heard a scraping sound, and then an orange flame burst to life, illuminating Rebekah's stunning face in a warm glow. She lit an oil lamp on the bedside table, and the room filled with amber light. I took in my new surroundings. I was in a bedroom that was small but cozy. The bed was built into the wall, and the walls, floor, and ceiling were made up of planks of wood, like the inside of a cabin. There was a large cast-iron stove that looked like a potbellied steampunk robot next to the bed, and a colorful woven rug on the floor. The walls were bare, as though this room had never been occupied, or as if the former occupant had moved out and taken all of her things.

My eyes returned to Rebekah's. “What do you mean, she's gone?” I asked.

Rebekah sat in a chair across from me, but she leaned forward to take my hands in hers. Her proximity alarmed me until I remembered that whatever affliction I'd been suffering from for the last few hours was cured.

My grandmother—who looked to be no older than forty, although that couldn't be her true age since my own mom was near forty herself—tilted her head, brow furrowing in sympathy. “She went home. You're to stay here with us for the time being.”

“She left me here?” How could she abandon me with a bunch of strangers, even if one of them was my grandmother? I was aware of a distant sense of distress, but it lay beneath the tranquil glaze that covered my emotions like a cool, silk sheet.

“For now,” Rebekah said, reaching out and smoothing back my hair. She lifted a lock of it, and I saw that my hair was no longer the ash gray I had colored it, but a smooth, butterscotch blond.

I picked up a lock of my hair and studied it. “How did this happen?”

“Anima,” my grandmother said simply, as though I should understand. But she saw my confused expression and smiled. “It has restored your body to its natural state. Well, not natural. I suppose
ultimate
is a more appropriate word. Your mother really never told you anything, did she?”

I started to shake my head, and then stopped and lowered my gaze to the patchwork quilt covering my legs. “She tried once,” I said, remembering when I was ten years old, and my mom had found me in the yard, sobbing so hard I could barely breathe. She had taken me in her arms and comforted me until I'd calmed enough to tell her what was wrong. Erin was sick again and even though she was allergic, I had gone out to Mom's garden to pick flowers to make a bouquet for her. I thought I could tie it with a ribbon to hang upside down outside her window. Then the flowers would dry and she would be able to look at them every day until she got better. But when I'd reached to pick some of the wild lavender that grew around our house, white threads had wormed from my fingertips and reached for the plant. I'd been so scared I'd fallen over backward and screamed. When I'd looked at my hand again the threads were gone.

“What were they?” I had asked my mom, starting to cry again. “What's wrong with me? Am I going to get sick like Erin?” The thought would almost have been a comfort. I'd always felt guilty for being the healthy one.

I remembered my mom had covered her mouth with her hand, her eyes wide and frightened. I didn't understand until what happened with Jason Dunn that she was frightened of me.

I lifted my gaze to Rebekah's. “A long time ago, she told me I was different from other people, that I had a dangerous gift and I could never use it. She said I—” I stopped, hesitating. Though I had obsessed about what my mom had told me all those years ago, I had never, ever spoken the words out loud, and I was afraid to, as if hearing myself say them would be a turning point from which I could never go back. But then I thought about what I had done to the land around my house and how everything living had died, and I decided I'd already reached the point of no return.

“She said there were people in this world who could consume a living thing's energy, and that I was one of them,” I said. “But that it was dangerous to do that because I might hurt someone, and if I did I might not be able to control my urges after that. She said if I ever felt the urge I should come and tell her right away.” I stopped there, not wanting to explain to the grandmother I'd just met how I had killed my ten-year-old neighbor, drunk his energy like it was a delicious milkshake.

Rebekah's eyes darkened. “
Anima
,” she said. “That's what we call living energy. In Latin the word means many things.
Life
or
spirit
or sometimes
soul
. It is all of those things and none of them. But your mom was right about one thing: taking anima can be dangerous and addictive, but only if you've never been taught control, and in that way your mother failed you inexcusably.”

I winced, feeling instinctively protective of my mom, but at the same time a part of me wanted to side with Rebekah. In regard to my “dangerous gift,” the only guidance my mom had given me was
Don't use it.

Rebekah smiled gently at me, as though reading every thought that wound through my head. “Don't worry, Kenna. While you're here, we're going to teach you what it means to be Kalyptra.”

I chewed my lip, feeling anxiety wriggle beneath that layer of calm. “How long do I need to stay here?”

“As long as it takes.”

“Can anyone come visit me?” I asked, thinking of Blake and Erin. I'd never spent more than a few days away from home, and I wasn't used to being separated from my twin. And Blake … we were so new, the romantic side of our relationship only a day old. What would happen to us if I didn't see him for a week? A month? What if I wasn't the same person after all this? What if he wasn't either?

“I'm afraid not,” Rebekah said. “We're not accustomed to visitors here, and it wouldn't be safe for you to be around normal people until you've … well, gotten used to your new circumstances.”

“Not safe for them, you mean.”

She smiled and stood, looking down at me. “We'll keep you so busy while you're here, you won't have time to miss anyone. Besides, you and I have a lifetime of catching up to do.”

I nodded, thinking how much warmer Rebekah's demeanor was than my own mom's. She didn't feel like a grandmother. She felt like the mother I should have had. The woman who should have raised me. But then I felt guilty for thinking such a thing, like I was betraying my real mom. But hadn't she betrayed me by raising me to be normal? By keeping me separated from the people who could have taught me how to be what I was without hurting anyone else?

“It's late,” Rebekah said. “I'll leave you to sleep. You have a big day tomorrow.”

“What will I be doing?”

She cupped my chin in her soft hand and tilted my face so I was looking directly into her eyes. They were the same color as mine, pale green. In the dim room, her pupils were large, crowding out the color of her irises.

“Tomorrow, you start over,” she said.

Her skin against mine felt warm and charged. A wave of contentment swept through me, unwinding my muscles until I felt limp as a rag doll.

Then she released my chin and bent to blow out the lamp.

She slipped out the door, leaving me to the cool darkness with a sense of peace that felt wholly unfamiliar, but like something that should have been familiar. Like something I'd been missing for as long as I could remember.

As I drifted off, I heard strains of music coming from somewhere outside the house, melodic guitars and hypnotic drums that settled me into a trance-like state, and I thought about how far I felt from the horrors I'd experienced less than a day ago. Now they felt like someone else's nightmare.

 

C
YRUS

When I woke in the early morning, there was still music playing, only now it was right outside my door. Someone picking softly at the strings of a guitar. With a jolt of alarm, I realized my own guitar was still in the back of Blake's 4Runner, and since visitors were not allowed at Eclipse, I would not have access to it until I went home again, whenever that would be. For me, that was like being separated from a limb or a vital organ or my twin or my asthma inhaler or—

Oh no.

My inhaler. Another thing I'd left behind. Another thing I needed to survive.

Anxiety pinched my airways, and I immediately began to wheeze. The tranquility I'd enjoyed during my conversation with Rebekah the night before was gone. All the old anxieties and fears and guilt had returned, and along with them came the knowledge that I had been forsaken by my own mother. She had dropped me off in this strange place and left me without so much as a goodbye. Without my inhaler. Without my guitar. Without my twin and without my boy.

Now it was just me and a colony of complete strangers.

Worst of all, the empty feeling that had plagued me yesterday was back, coupled with a straining sense of hunger like a wolf on a leash fighting to break free. It wasn't as bad as it had been yesterday. The physical symptoms—the aching, fever-chilled, shuddering madness—were still held at bay, but I had a feeling this respite wouldn't last. Whatever it was Rebekah had fed me from that jar—
anima
, she called it—I needed more.

Still wheezing, I climbed out from under the quilt, shivering at the chilly bite in the air. Someone had left a pile of folded clean clothes on the short dresser next to the bed, but I didn't bother with them, choosing to remain in the ash-gray T-shirt and dark gray jeans I'd been wearing since I arrived. There were flecks of dried blood on my shoulders from all that had soaked into my hair two nights before. I needed to wash my hair and brush my teeth. But did they even have toothpaste and running water at Eclipse? I scanned the room and saw no outlets. Clearly electricity was not a priority for the Kalyptra.

Whoever was outside my door playing the guitar must have heard the floorboards creak under my feet, because the music stopped and there was a tentative tap on the wood.