The Killing Jar (22 page)

“Trespasser!” Hitomi cried, pointing at the lights. She clutched at Diego's arm, her eyes wide and filled with fear, as though the arriving car signaled an invasion. Maybe it did.

For a moment the Kalyptra remained collectively paralyzed, me included. My heart was galloping and my feet seemed frozen to the ground. But that lasted only a few seconds before Cyrus shouted to the crowd, “You know what to do!”

I turned to him, blinking. Maybe the Kalyptra did, but I didn't.

Cyrus seemed to sense my distress and took me by the arms. “It's okay,” he said. “We'll find out what they want and deal with them. There are far more of us.”

I nodded, though this didn't exactly make me feel better.

The Kalyptra reacted to Cyrus's shout the way well-trained students do during a fire drill. After an initial moment of disorder and uproar, they formed a line (or in this case, more of a wall) and waited for further instruction from their leader.

Rebekah stepped up beside Cyrus and me. Her expression remained as composed as ever, but her back was rigid and straight. She glanced at Cyrus. “How did this trespasser get through the gate?”

Cyrus shook his head. “No idea. Bolt cutters on the padlock, maybe. Or they drove straight through it.”

“Then whoever's driving must want something from us very badly.” Rebekah's eyes cut to me, and I realized what she was implying. Whoever was driving toward Eclipse had come for me.

I experienced a moment of panic, but it evaporated when I recognized Blake's 4Runner.

“Blake!”

I bolted toward his SUV before he'd even come to a full stop. Then he was out the door and crushing me in a hug. I hugged him back fiercely, realizing this was the first time I'd been able to touch him without fear of hurting him.

His mouth next to my ear breathed my name, “Kenna,” as though he wanted to remind me of it. Remind me who I was.

I buried my face in his neck.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

I nodded against him. “What are you doing here?”

“I'll tell you in the car. We have to go.” His tone was grim.

I pulled away from him. “Why? What's wrong?”

He hesitated, but only for a moment. “It's Erin,” he said. “She's sick again. She … she needs you.”

I stopped breathing, and when I started again it was too fast. I hadn't had an asthma attack since I'd culled that first wildflower with Cyrus. I'd barely even thought about my asthma. Every day I had grown stronger and healthier. Meanwhile, back at home, Erin had been doing the opposite.

I didn't hesitate. Before I knew it, we were in the 4Runner, and Blake was driving us away from Eclipse.

I realized too late that I hadn't said a single goodbye. I craned around in my seat and saw Rebekah through the back windshield, her expression furious and frustrated, and Cyrus at her side, his mouth turned down and his eyes forlorn.

They quickly disappeared from view behind us, but I couldn't stop seeing their faces every time I closed my eyes.

 

R
ETURNED

It was past midnight when Blake turned onto the long drive that led to my house. It was strange to be aware of time again. There were no clocks at Eclipse. Things happened when they happened. Would I spend the rest of my life comparing life at Eclipse to reality?

The woods around my house were as dead as they'd been when I left. Deader, even. There was no color in our forest, only shades of gray. Ash and charcoal and slate and smoke. Juxtaposed against Eclipse, with its vibrant green and amber grasses and wildflower fields, my home was the color of a funeral dirge. I wondered how Erin and my mom could stand to be here, surrounded by such bleakness.

How would I be able to stand it?

It doesn't matter, I reminded myself. Erin was all that mattered right now.

We found Erin asleep in her bed, the blankets pulled to her chest. Mom sat beside her, holding her hand. There was a bandage wrapping Erin's head and another wrapping her right wrist.

“Mom?” I said when I entered. Blake hung back in the hallway behind me.

My mom turned her head, and I saw her cheeks were streaked with tears. The youthful radiance had faded from her face and she looked more like herself again—beautiful, but like a regular person. Not like the Kalyptra, with their angelic glow.

I didn't know what to expect from the reunion with my mom. She stood and came to me, studied my face for a long moment, and then held out her hand to me tentatively, like I might bite.

“I'm okay now,” I assured her. “I swear.” Ever since my mistake with the midnight glory, I'd been that much more focused on control.

Mom nodded, but didn't close the gap between us. “Thank you for coming home,” she said in an odd, formal tone, as though I were a stranger. A guest. Had she written me off already? Had she expected never to see me again? The thought made a searing concoction of anger and dejection boil in my stomach.

Mom lowered her hand instead and turned back to Erin, launching into an account of my sister's deteriorating condition.

“She was fine until this afternoon. Or I thought she was. Then she went out for a walk, and she didn't come back. I found her by the river, unconscious. She was bleeding from a cut on her head, and her wrist was broken. When she came round, she told me she was hit with a wave of fatigue, the way it used to happen. She passed out and hit her head. She broke her wrist when she fell.”

“You didn't take her to a hospital?”

My mom's answer was bitter. “Why? So they can set her bone and tell me there's nothing more they can do, and then send me on my way?” Mom took a breath and let it out, trying to compose herself. “After I found her by the river, she admitted the old symptoms had started to manifest. She said she'd been short of breath. She'd felt heart murmurs. She tired too easily. She hadn't wanted to tell me in case it was nothing. She wanted to be normal for as long as she could, didn't want me to start fussing over her and taking her to doctors again.”

Mom covered her face and her shoulders shook as she began to cry. “I can't do it all over again. I can't wake up every day knowing I'm going to lose my sweet girl.”

I felt distant as I watched my mom cry, separated from my emotions even without anima inside me. All I could think about was what I now knew about my mom, that she had lost her power because of me. That if she hadn't had me, she would still be Kalyptra, residing in paradise. If loving people was truly a choice, as Rebekah claimed, then my mom must hate me. And I had to admit, I hated her a little bit, too. All these years, I could have been healing Erin with anima. She could have lived a normal life instead of the pitiable existence she'd been born into. She had nearly died more times than I could remember, and my mom had never asked me to help her. Never guided me.

My mom would have rather let Erin die than let me be what I was and help my twin, and I hated her for that.

“Can you help her?” my mom asked, but too late for me to ever forgive her.

Instead of answering her, I turned to Blake and motioned him into the room. He stepped forward tentatively, like he wasn't sure his presence was appropriate. That was Blake. Always considerate. Always thoughtful. My feelings for him were still there, but they seemed subdued now, like they'd been shot up with a tranquilizer.

“Blake, can you carry Erin?” I asked him dubiously. Blake looked like a little boy compared to Cyrus. I wasn't sure he was strong enough.

But Blake nodded, eyes wide with curiosity. “Of course. Where are we going?”

“Into the forest,” I said, and then turned back to face my mom. “Wrap her up in a blanket and keep her arm stabilized. We're going for a walk.”

*   *   *

Erin roused briefly when Blake picked her up out of bed and cradled her against his chest. Her lids fluttered open, and when she saw me a sleepy smile curled the corners of her mouth, and my heart ached with grief for the healthy, transformed version of her she'd been when I saw her last. She wore an old pair of her glasses with a crack in one of the lenses.

“I'm so glad you're here,” she said, her eyelids sagging closed again. My mom had given her pain medication for her broken wrist, and it had made her drowsy.

“Me too,” I said, and hoped she didn't hear the lie in my voice. I wasn't complete without my sister, but that didn't mean I was happy to be home, surrounded by reminders of death. Of the terrible things I'd done and the terrible consequences those things had garnered. But Erin, more than any person I would ever know, was my soul mate and always would be. There was a reason I hadn't been able to say goodbye to her in the hospital the time she'd been so certain she was about to die. Without her, the best part of me would be gone, and I didn't know if I could live like that. I thought of Rebekah and her twin, the two of them so much like Erin and me, and my heart ached for my grandmother. I understood why she felt the need to create a place like Eclipse, to try to recreate what was lost and make it last forever. And I understood why my mother leaving her was such a betrayal.

Erin drifted back to sleep, and I brushed at the tears leaking from the corners of my eyes.

I took the lead as we marched through the dead woods toward the river. My mom and I carried flashlights. I shone mine around the forest where I used to spend so many hours with my guitar. Now the fragile, leafless trees were blackened and haunting, like skeletons made of needles and splinters. While we walked, we heard frequent crashes as heavy branches fell and burst into dust.

As soon as we stepped into the living part of the forest, the air felt lighter, easier to breathe. I drew in a lungful and let it out slowly, turning in a circle. I didn't know how much I would have to cull to heal Erin again, but I couldn't cull wildly the way I had last time and risk losing control this time. If only I had one of Rebekah's jars, this would be easy. But I doubted Rebekah would ever sacrifice one of her precious jars to save a non-Kalyptra, even her own granddaughter.

“Blake, will you lay Erin down in this clearing?” I said, kneeling to pat an area soft with pine needles.

He did as I asked, panting with the exertion of carrying her. Then he and my mom stood on either side of me, waiting for my next move and giving me stage fright. I didn't think I could cull with them watching me, especially Blake, since he'd never seen what I could do. I wondered how it would look to him, if he would find the vena beautiful or terrifying. Either way, I wasn't ready to find out.

“I need privacy so I can concentrate,” I told them. “Will you wait for me back at the house?”

“I'd rather stay close to make sure everything is okay,” Mom said. Translation: she didn't trust me to keep Erin safe. I narrowed my eyes at her. If anyone didn't trust anyone at this point, it was I who didn't trust her. All the secrets she'd kept from me … all of the ways our lives could have been better if she'd only taken me to Eclipse to learn about myself sooner.

No, it was she who couldn't be trusted.

“I can't do it with you watching me,” I said plainly, and held up my hands as though to say,
That's all there is to it
.

Finally, Mom nodded. “We'll come back in twenty minutes to check on you.”

“Fine. Good.” I was growing impatient.

My mom knelt and kissed my sleeping sister on her forehead and then disappeared into the woods, her flashlight beam cutting the dark. Blake lingered a moment longer, crouching down beside me.

“Hey,” he said. “Are you okay with this? You seem a bit … uncertain.”

“I'm okay,” I lied. “Just worried about Erin.”

“I don't understand much of what's happening, but I know you'll help her.” Blake leaned forward to kiss me and I almost let him. For an instant, all the old feelings roared to life and I was ready to forget Cyrus and adore Blake and only Blake. Then the memory of Cyrus's warm skin against mine as we danced beside the fire ghosted through my mind.

I turned my face away, denying Blake's kiss, and hated myself for the hurt and confusion that furrowed his brow.

“Sorry,” I told him. “I just … I have to concentrate.”

“I'll leave you alone.” He looked back over his shoulder at me as he walked away, the pain of rejection still in his eyes, reminding me of how Cyrus had looked as I'd driven away from Eclipse.

I covered my face with my hands. “Shit,” I said under my breath. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

Nearby, I could hear the low gurgle of the river. Normally, I found the sound of the river soothing, but not today. What could I cull to heal Erin? I didn't want to destroy any more of the forest. That would attract suspicion. But I needed something potent. Something sentient.

Taking deep breaths to calm myself, I glanced around and saw a small pile of river stones and realized I had unconsciously guided us to the place where I'd buried Erin's cat and its litter so many years ago.
Would the anima of a living cat be enough to heal Erin now?
I wondered, and then felt guilty for thinking it. I didn't want to cull a cat or a dog or any other creature. But what choice did I have?

“Are you going to fix me again?” Erin asked, startling me from my thoughts.

I looked down to find Erin's eyes were open, gazing up at me.

“Is that why we're out here?” she said.

I smoothed her hair off her forehead. Her hair had thinned again, her scalp showing through. “That's the plan.”

She frowned. “Is it safe for you?”

I nodded and forced a reassuring smile that I didn't feel. “Don't worry about me. I know how to stay in control now.”

Her eyes moved across my face as though she were reading a map. “You're different, Kenna.”

I couldn't meet her gaze. “A little. Yeah.”

“A lot,” she said, sounding troubled. “But you look beautiful.”