The Killing Jar

  I rushed at Rebekah and snatched the jar from her. She turned to me, her black eyes wide with surprise at my audacity.

  “What are you doing?” she asked coolly.

  “I’m putting his anima back and healing him,” I shouted at her.

  She shook her head. “But why?”

  “Because he’s mine! He’s my pet!” I realized I was crying, my cheeks soaked in tears and my chest hitching.

  “Oh, sweet girl,” she said, shaking her head. “We don’t have pets here. It’s not our way.”

  She held out her hands for me to give her back the jar. When I didn’t, her mouth turned down in a scowl of disapproval. “Do you want to be Kalyptra?”

  “Y-yes,” I said, my voice barely a whisper.

  “Then you have to respect our practices. Not some of them. All of them. I’m sorry you grew attached to that little goat, Kenna, but his anima feeds us, and that is a worthy sacrifice for any creature.”

  “But I could have saved his life,” I said weakly.

  “At what cost?” Rebekah asked. “Why should another of the animals give its life to save this goat? Do you really think that’s fair?”

  I lowered my chin to my chest and shook my head.

  “Then give me the jar, Kenna.”

  All that lives must die, I heard Erin say inside my head. All that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity.

  I placed the jar in Rebekah’s waiting hands.

  And for the second time in recent history, my perfect happiness was cut short, and what would have been the best night of my life was marred by death.

  I sank down next to Bully’s body in the field and sobbed. I didn’t know how long I’d been out there, but eventually Cyrus came to me and touched my shoulder.

  “I should have listened to you,” I said, my voice hoarse from crying. “You told me not to name him, and I broke the rules. It won’t happen again.”

  Cyrus held his hand out to me and helped me to my feet. Only then did I see Stig and Yuri waiting nearby with shovels. Illia and Rory, Hitomi and Sunday and Diego were there, too. Their eyes had returned to normal, and I realized how terrifying they had looked with their black eyes. How inhuman. Eclipsed eyes, that was how the Kalyptra referred to them, but they resembled insect eyes. Moth eyes.

  “We’ll bury him together,” Cyrus said.

  We dug a hole right there in the field and buried Bully and made a blanket of flowers on his grave. I cried and the girls hugged me and told me it would be okay, that all of them had been through this at one time or another.

  “Let’s go to the dreaming tent,” Hitomi suggested. “We’ll take anima and get your mind off of this.”

  But I shook my head. I didn’t want to bury my grief for Bully. He deserved better than that. It struck me then how dangerous anima was with its ability to put away all dark and negative thoughts. Sometimes life called for such thoughts, and while I’d been at Eclipse I had swept mine into a safe and locked it.

  I started walking back to the house alone. “I just want to sleep,” I said.

  When I got back to my room, I climbed into bed and stared at the ceiling. I tried to close my eyes, but every time I did I saw Bully’s mangled body, Rebekah’s finger dipping into his blood. I lay there, unable to sleep for a long time as I wondered why everything good in my life eventually turned bad.

  THE LAKE

  I wasn’t sure if I slept. At some point in the night I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again the sun’s first rays had broken over the horizon. I was immediately aware of hunger, bone deep and urgent and not up for negotiation. My entire body felt like a mouth waiting to be fed, a stomach grinding with vacancy. Whatever anima Rebekah had given us last night, it had been potent. Maybe too potent, since it had awakened the kind of torturous emptiness I hadn’t felt since my first days at Eclipse.

  Last night I hadn’t wanted to take more anima to drive away my grief for Bully. Now that sorrow was a raw wound on my heart, and it was the only thing I wanted to do. To escape the anguish of my thoughts, the dark, insistent magnet pulling me down into depression … that was what I needed.

  I dressed in the jeans, T-shirt, and sweater I’d worn the previous night, and headed out to Cyrus’s private wagon. It had been a gift from Rebekah, he had told me once, though when I asked him why she gave it to him, why he of all the Kalyptra lived outside of Eclipse House, he merely grinned and said, “Because I’m her favorite. Or at least I was until you came along.” That had made me blush with pride. Then I thought of my mom, and how she was, undoubtedly, Rebekah’s favorite at one time. Still, that hadn’t stopped Rebekah from turning her back on her only daughter completely when she defied Rebekah’s will. I’d thought Rebekah’s love for me seemed unconditional, but there was definitely one condition: that I follow her rules down to the letter.

  I sniffed and wiped at my eyes, fighting back tears as I knocked on Cyrus’s door. I figured he’d already be awake, but it took him several minutes to finally answer.

  He wore jeans, but no shirt, and his shaggy hair was a silky, sleep-tousled mess. His caramel-colored skin practically glowed in the early light of the sun, and his eyes were iridescent and dazzling.

  “Morning,” he said, grinning sleepily and rubbing his eyes like a little boy waking on Christmas morning. He stepped back, opening the door wider.

  I hesitated. “I should probably just go. My mom is going to freak out when she finds out I’m gone. Actually, she probably already knows. She’s an early riser.”

  “If she’s already going to be angry with you, you might as well make your time here worth it,” Cyrus reasoned.

  He made a logical point, and the thought of going home and starting to pack up my stuff made my heart feel like giving up. Despite what had happened last night, I still loved Eclipse and the Kalyptra. I’d made a mistake getting attached to Bully, but it was a mistake I wouldn’t make twice. I wanted to be worthy of the Kalyptra, and of Rebekah’s affection.

  I stepped into the wagon and gazed around. There wasn’t much to the small living space, but I could see now why Cyrus had decided to make this his place instead of the house. It was incredibly cozy, with intricate woodworking on the ceiling panels and cupboards. The polished plank floor was covered in colorful rugs and the bed at the back was an inviting jumble of quilts and blankets. It smelled like Cyrus, like leather and sandalwood and spices.

  Cyrus closed the door, and what had been a cozy space suddenly became scarily intimate.

  “What do you think?” he asked from behind me.

  I was afraid to turn around; he was standing that close. The heat reached out from his body to mine. I eyed the tangle of his blankets and thoughts of him and me wrapped together in his bed flashed through my mind.

  “It’s nice,” I said, keeping my back to him and leaning against the long counter jammed with candles, copper pots, and ceramic dishes. “Very, um … private.”

  Cyrus moved toward me and put a hand on my hip. Where he touched me, it burned. I began to feel out of breath, like I used to when an asthma attack started, only this was both scary and exciting.

  Had I felt this way with Blake, too? Was my attraction to him as powerful as it was to Cyrus? Yes. No. Yes. Maybe? My mind was too foggy to recall.

  My eyes darted around, searching for an escape even though I wasn’t sure I wanted one. There was a small, round table up against one wall. On it sat a basket that contained a variety of objects: a packet of guitar strings, a wallet that didn’t look at all like something Cyrus would carry—or even need to carry—a Leatherman tool with the initials A.T.P. engraved on the outside. Was that some relic from Cyrus’s former life? Was Cyrus his real name? Or had he simply bought the Leatherman from a secondhand store or a pawn shop?

  My gaze moved upward and landed on a piece of art hanging on the wall over a small, round table. It was some kind of cutout in the shape of an Eclipse moth. Instinctively, I reached for it and took it down from the nail on which it hung. There
was a string attached to the back. It was a mask, I realized. Where the black moons on the Eclipse moth’s wings should have been, there were holes for eyes to look through.

  I remembered Sunday’s hidden paintings, depicting people wearing moth masks, and I shuddered.

  “What’s wrong?” Cyrus asked close to my ear.

  I held the mask up to my face and looked through the eyeholes. It didn’t mean anything, I told myself. It was just a mask. So why did it leave me feeling unnerved?

  I removed the mask from my face and hung it back on the wall. “Nothing,” I said, turning to face him. “Nothing is wrong.”

  “Then spend the day with me,” Cyrus said, his voice a rumble that called to mind impending disasters, earthquakes and landslides. His neck was so close to my eyes I could see his pulse ticking away, feel his energy, his anima, a subtle vibration. His right hand stayed on my hip, and his left rose to my chest, where he flattened it above my heart, which was thudding hard and fast.

  He smiled at me. “Your heart’s racing.”

  Then, suddenly, he lowered his hands and stepped back. I braced myself against the counter, not trusting my legs. Last night I had buried my pet, and now I was simmering under Cyrus’s touch. But I had to stop thinking of Bully as mine. He was just an animal. He was just an—

  “Spend the day with me,” Cyrus said again.

  My chest was still heaving as I responded with, “What did you have in mind?”

  * * *

  “How much farther?” I stopped hiking long enough to guzzle water from the canteen Cyrus had brought. When he’d suggested a walk in the forest, I’d almost balked, remembering the last time I’d been in the woods around Eclipse, when I’d seen—no, hallucinated—the moth creature. The illustration I’d found online of the massive moth feeding on its bound victim floated to the surface of my brain, but I did my best to drown it.

  I’d been expecting a leisurely stroll, but the path Cyrus chose was more of a climb. We culled anima from various sources along the way, flowers and plants and even a few insects, and the voice of my grief for Bully became a distant echo. I breathed easier and my heart stopped aching. Still, none of the anima we took came close to satisfying the craving in me for more of what we’d taken last night.

  “We’re almost there,” Cyrus told me. “There’s something I want to show you. I promise it’s worth the trek.”

  I nodded and tried to concentrate on not twisting an ankle or getting jabbed in the eye by a branch. The mossy trees were so thick they allowed no light, only cool, dank shadows, which made it hard to see whether I was about to step onto unstable earth. I was so focused on the ground in front of my feet that I didn’t notice when the forest suddenly cleared.

  I heard the drone of rushing water, and felt sunlight warm my cheeks and shoulders. I raised my eyes and gasped. We stood on a rock outcropping overlooking a hidden lake. A river poured over steps of rock leading down from the mountain, feeding the lake, its water clean and clear enough to see all the way to the bottom. I spotted fish darting over the rocks, swimming their haphazard, zigzag path. At the head of the lake, a short waterfall dove thirty feet to churn the otherwise calm surface. Massive trees grew so densely around us that they seemed like a natural barrier, a wall to guard a place too perfect to be disturbed.

  The anima I’d taken during the hike had dissipated, but even with my natural, unenhanced vision, this was one of the most breathtaking places I’d ever seen.

  “Behold, my lady,” Cyrus said, holding his arms out wide. “Your own private lake.”

  I moved to the edge of the rock outcropping, which had been painted with a design of interlocking moth wings. I peered over the edge and experienced a wonderful sort of vertigo, a dizzying urge to let myself fall into the blue. Erratic birdsong burst from the trees, calls and answers. And there was that forest white noise, the sound that is not a sound, but is the woods themselves living and breathing like one tremendous, connected organism.

  I turned back around to Cyrus, a smile growing wide as wings on my face.

  He started to unbutton his shirt. A glow spread across my skin and I felt that sense of vertigo again, like I was going to fall, and the fall was inevitable. I wanted to stop fighting. To let go and feel myself plummet toward something new. A whole new life. A fresh start.

  But starting over meant leaving some things behind. Blake’s face swam into my mind, his warm eyes and his boyish smile. His sweetness and sensitivity. The way he made me feel like maybe I could live in the real world as long as I could do it with him by my side. But what was best for Blake? Was I good for him? If I was honest with myself, the answer was no. I had hurt Blake so much already. If I let things go any further with Cyrus, there would be no going back. Was that what I wanted? To make a choice that would end the war going on in my heart? To force myself to let Blake go?

  I turned my back on Cyrus, breath short, heartbeat a kettledrum booming against my ribs.

  I wasn’t ready to let go. Not yet. Not when I was still torn between people I loved.

  “Kenna.” Cyrus spoke my name into my ear. His body was close behind mine. His oven-warm chest against my back. One of his hands settled on my left hip. The other swept my hair aside, baring my neck. I felt his hot breath against that sensitive expanse of skin, and my breath caught. Then his lips touched, and my stomach thrilled, a geyser of excitement erupting to fill me. The hand that was on my hip pulled my body more firmly against his, and I felt every curve and knot of his taut muscles against my own tensed back. His mouth trailed wet, warm, exploring. My skin charged with sensation.

  Don’t let go, I warned myself as I weakened. Don’t let go.

  Cyrus kissed his way toward my ear, and when his teeth caught my earlobe I gasped, my body a reactor melting down, losing control. Losing the will to resist. His face nuzzled the side of my face. His hands spread like starfish on my belly. I felt the forest observing me. The birds had gone silent.

  I turned in Cyrus’s arms. His eyes scoured me, torrid, his face slack with desire. I had never been so longed for, not by Blake or anyone. It made me feel like an animal, a beast made to act on every natural urge.

  Cyrus’s face fell slowly toward mine, his eyes drooping closed, his lips parted, and mine mimicked his. His fingers clenched on my back, digging into my flesh until it was almost painful. His hipbones cradled mine. His mouth was a fraction of a centimeter from mine when a sudden panicked rustling from the woods split our attention. We both whirled toward the noise and saw a flock of birds explode into the air. Something heavy shook the boughs of the trees and then went still.

  I realized I was clutching Cyrus’s arm like a damsel in a silent film. “What the hell was that?”

  “Probably just a bird,” he said, but his eyes were hard, staring up at the now-silent leaves. Was it my imagination, or did he seem almost as uneasy as I was?

  I pried my fingers from Cyrus’s arm and turned to him. “The night I took midnight glory … what I saw…” I bit my lip, eyes still searching the treetops for signs of movement. My heart began to slow, and I shook my head, embarrassed. “Never mind. It’s just, I saw this picture on the Internet, and—”

  “Internet?” Cyrus blinked at me curiously.

  “A computer network thingy. I don’t really know how to explain it. It’s, like, where you go to find anything you ever need. Anyway, there was a drawing and some information about the Eclipse moth, and it kind of freaked me out.”

  Cyrus’s brows drew together. “What did it say?”

  “Nothing,” I said quickly, waving my hand as though to clear my words from the air. “It’s not important. Just forget I said anything.”

  “No.” Cyrus took hold of my wrist, his grip a little tighter than was comfortable. “Tell me.”

  “Okay, okay. It said the Eclipse moth was some kind of fairy tale goddess that lives on blood and grows to enormous sizes. And that, um—” My words cut off, but what I was about to say played through my mind: And the Eclipse mot
h granted powers to those who worshipped it.

  “And that’s all I remember,” I said, smiling a smile I wished didn’t feel so forced.

  * * *

  Cyrus and I swam in the lake until our fingers and toes were numb and our teeth were chattering from the icy mountain runoff. The tension between us didn’t dissolve, but he didn’t try to kiss me again, probably sensing that my mood had changed since that disturbance in the trees. I tried to shake my anxiety, but my eyes returned again and again to the spot where that flock of birds had burst from the leaves so suddenly, clearly startled by something. But there were a thousand things in the forest that could startle a flock of birds, including Cyrus and me.

  I wished I could stop thinking of what I’d read about the Eclipse moth, but I’d never had much success at not obsessing. I tried to focus my attention on the beautiful man in the water with me, his hair and skin glistening wet and his teeth so white and his contrasting body so brown and flexed.

  I wanted him. That much I could no longer hide from myself. The question was, could I have him when my heart was still divided?

  I loved Blake. I knew Blake. I still wanted Blake.

  I couldn’t be with both of them any more than I could live both with my family and at Eclipse. Like Rebekah said, I could not live in two worlds. I had to choose.

  Teeth chattering, I was about to climb out of the lake when Cyrus grabbed my wrist and reeled me in against his chest. “Are you hungry?”

  “Starved,” I told him. “What did you bring?”

  “A frying pan.” He winked at me, let go of my wrist, and dove underwater. He was under for more than a minute, and when he broke the surface he had, clutched in both hands, wriggling and squirming, a good-sized trout, its scales silver and spotted. It looked slippery, and Cyrus could barely keep hold of it.

  My eyebrows went up. “Of course you can catch fish with your bare hands,” I said. “That’s totally normal.”

  Cyrus grinned. “My normal could be your normal. It just takes practice.”

  The fish lashed its tail, fighting for freedom. I couldn’t help but sympathize with the trout.