The Killing Jar (16 page)

Cyrus grinned. “I thought you'd never ask.”

Heat sizzled on the back of my neck. “That bad, huh?”

“Let's just say I've been trying not to breathe through my nose when I'm with you.”

“All right, all right. You don't have to look so amused.” I tried to curve past him, giving him a wide berth, but he hooked an arm around my waist and whirled me back. I found myself in a sort of half embrace with my face only inches from his. The fever on my skin moved to my stomach, and the ravenous hunger in me woke up like a startled bear, roaring to life.

“Let me go,” I said, trying to pry myself from Cyrus's grip. He held on, planting his hands on my hips. “What are you doing? Let me go!”

I started to panic as I felt myself begin to unravel and reach for him.

“Hold back, Kenna,” he said, his voice calm and serious. “You can't hurt me, but that's no reason to let yourself lose control. Don't let your appetite rule you.”

I tried. I did. I held on, and just when I thought I couldn't stand it any longer, when I felt like I would burst apart at the seams, Cyrus let me go.

I was breathing heavily, my heart rioting in my chest.

“See?” he said, giving me a nod of approval. “You're learning already.”

I rounded on him. “Don't ever do that again.”

I grabbed clean clothes from the pile in my room and stormed past him, not looking to see if he followed, but knowing that he did.

 

M
OONFLOWER
AND
M
OTH

After showering in the thankfully non-coed bathhouse and changing into clean clothes, I joined Cyrus on the front porch, where he was sitting in a wooden rocking chair, watching moths bat themselves against the lanterns that hung along the covered porch. I was still irritated with him for the little “lesson” he'd sprung on me earlier.

The porch spanned the length of Eclipse House, long enough for two picnic-style tables, a dozen rocking chairs, and a swinging bench. Patchwork quilts waited on many of the chairs, like anxious pets anticipating their owners' return, and lanterns hung on tiny hooks every few feet along the porch. Moths with moon-colored wings gathered around the light, hovering tentatively before knocking themselves against the glass. I thought of the bug zapper my mom put outside during the summer to keep the insects from overwhelming us. Most of the insects, when they flew into the humming bulb, elicited tiny bursts of electricity as they died, but whenever a moth found its way to the buzzing light the sound of its demise went on and on. Moths didn't die quickly or easily. They kept on fighting to get at the light, even as the life was seared from them.

I'd never been a fan of moths, maybe because I felt a certain empathy for them with their obsessive natures, their disposition to destroy themselves to get at the thing they craved.

I didn't sit down in the chair next to Cyrus, but went to the porch railing and leaned against it, my back to Cyrus.

“Where is everyone?” I asked. The yard and fields were empty of Kalyptra.

“Dinner,” he said.

I revolved to face him. “That wasn't cool, what you did.”

He nodded acceptance. “I see that now.”

“I know I can't hurt you, but it feels like I can, and I don't want that. I don't
want
to want to take your life. So from now on can you just warn me when you're about to, you know … touch me or get close to me or whatever?”

“I can do that.” He stood up and took a step toward me. “How close is too close?” he asked. Even from a couple of feet away, I could sense the anima murmuring its siren song from the other side of his skin.

My body felt flushed, like I'd been standing in the sun too long and was close to heatstroke. My stomach fluttered with either giddiness or anxiety, I wasn't sure which.

“You could probably get closer than that,” I said, and swallowed. “But not much.”

He took another half step toward me, and my heartbeat pounded until I could feel it all through my body. “That's far enough,” I said.

Cyrus nodded and moved back. “Good to know,” he said, and then turned and started down the porch steps. When I didn't immediately follow, he paused and glanced back at me. “What's the matter? You don't trust me anymore?”

“I never said I
did
trust you.”

“Ah. Well, Rebekah trusts you with me, so how about it?” He held out his hand as though for me to place mine in his, but then curled his fingers. “Follow me.”

As Cyrus led me around the side of the house, I wondered what the deal was between him and Rebekah. There was a closeness and intimacy between them that I didn't sense between Rebekah and any of the other Kalyptra, almost like a mother-son relationship.

“Are you and Rebekah related?” I blurted out, and then felt my cheeks go hot.

Cyrus glanced over at me, brows drawn together. “Why do you ask?”

“Answer the question,” I insisted, growing impatient and nervous for reasons I didn't want to admit, even to myself.

His mouth quirked as he read something in my eyes that seemed to amuse him. “She's my mother,” he said.

My stomach dropped, and so did my jaw. That would make Cyrus my—

“At least, that's how I think of her,” Cyrus continued. His eyes darkened momentarily, like he was recalling an unpleasant memory. “My own mother wasn't the kind any kid hopes for.”

I sighed, relieved, and nodded. “I get that,” I said.

He studied me, curious. “Anya wasn't a good mother? I find that hard to believe.”

“In some ways she was.” I shrugged. “In others, not so much.”

We came to a halt in front of a leafy vine that climbed the outer wall. Large white flowers in the shape of trumpets bloomed on the vine. I could smell their sugary sweet fragrance from a few feet away.

“This is our climbing moonflower,” Cyrus told me. “It's night-blooming, which means its petals unfurl after dark to emit its fragrance. During the day their leaves absorb sunlight, and in the dark their fragrance attracts moths that feed on the nectar and pollen.”

Cyrus reached up and plucked a moonflower the size of my fist from the vine and held it out to me. I accepted it and breathed in its scent until I felt dizzy.

“You don't want to take straight from the vine, or you'll end up culling the entire plant. Touching the source of the anima you're trying to cull directs the flow. Culling wildly from multiple sources is dangerous because you risk taking too much, and the more anima you take, the more you'll want. Until you learn how to control your vena, you should always touch the thing you want to cull.
Always
,” he said again for emphasis.

“Vena?” I said, shaking my head.

“That's what we call them, the threads that emerge when you're going to take anima,” he said. “
Vena
means veins in Latin, only these are more like extensions of your own anima.”

“Vena,” I repeated, spinning the moonflower between my thumb and forefinger like an inverted parasol. Then I closed my fist around it, crushing its satiny petals and releasing a pungent waft of its scent, and at the same moment, without thinking, I opened myself to the moonflower's energy. A dim glow flickered inside my palm. My skin tingled as my “vena” emerged and attached to the flower. A tiny amount of anima trickled into me, and then stopped. In my hand, the flower wilted, and its sugary scent vanished from the air.

The flower's anima didn't fill me, but it narrowed the emptiness inside and made my head go swimmy and my skin come alive. I swayed on my feet as the anima concentrated in my vision. The land took on a surreal quality, more like a painting than real life. Moonlight seemed to hover over the ground like fog. The sky was the color of crushed blackberries, the stars bursting huge and white like popcorn.

Moths began to flutter toward me, alighting on my clothes. One landed on my cheek and I felt its feathery antenna brush my skin.

“It must think I'm a moonflower,” I said to Cyrus.

Cyrus reached out tentatively, his eyes asking permission before he touched me. His strong, warm fingers wrapped around my wrist and he raised it toward his mouth. I tensed, thinking of Blake, of how he would feel if he saw another guy touching me. He wasn't a jealous type that I knew of, but then I'd never given him any reason to be jealous. I wasn't even sure if what was happening at that moment was cause for jealousy. But this worry was fleeting. It evaporated and was replaced by serenity. Anima left no room for anxious thoughts.

Cyrus inhaled. “You do smell like the moonflower.”

I felt an easy smile play on my mouth. “Can I have another?” I asked.

Cyrus plucked a new blossom from the vine and handed it to me. I promptly culled its anima, and felt the energy sink into the cracks inside me. I tilted my head back and spread my arms out wide, gazing up at the expanse of stars, blinking at their brightness. The sky seemed to revolve slowly. Or maybe it was the earth. The ground beneath my feet throbbed. I could feel the world inhaling and exhaling. It had its own slow, steady heartbeat. And its breath was everywhere. The universe gathered around me, stardust falling on me like lazy snow.

This was the world behind the veil, I thought. This was the world that no one but the Kalyptra got to experience.

Another handful of moths touched down on my hair, my forehead, their fuzzy legs scratching softly at my skin, their curled proboscises licking at my pores. That's what the vena looked like, I thought. Like the proboscises of these moths, curling and searching.

“One more,” I said, laughing. “One more flower.”

Cyrus picked another moonflower and handed it to me, and I culled it, too.

My head rolled on my shoulders, and I had to fight the urge to let myself fall backward as though a cloud would catch me. Auroras of emerald and sapphire light whirled languidly above me. I wanted to go on feeling this way forever, drawing down galaxies and heavenly bodies and swimming in the turmoil of color and fire.

Moths surrounded me like I was made of light. I reached for one of them, feeling the vena come loose and search for the moth.

“Kenna, no!” Cyrus's voice was like a whip crack and startled me even through the anima haze.

I yanked my hand back. “What did I do?”

He was shaking his head roughly, a look of alarm on his face. “I'm sorry, it's my fault. I forgot to tell you that we don't take moth anima. It's forbidden.”

“Why?” I asked, my brow furrowing until I remembered what my mom said about moths having some kind of spiritual symbolism to the Kalyptra.

“Did Rebekah tell you how certain types of anima are tainted by their vessels, that they carry properties of it?”

I nodded, and then shook my head. “She did, but I'm not sure I understand.”

“If you cull the anima of a squirrel, you'll be filled with energy. The anima of a bear, you'll feel mighty and powerful. If you were to cull the anima of a wolf, you would have the urge to run and hunt. The lamb's anima Rebekah gave you when you first arrived made you peaceful. But if you take moth anima, you become a slave to your impulse, and your only imperative will be to seek light at any cost. If there is a light on the other side of a glass window, you will smash your hand through it to reach it. If there is a fire, you will walk straight into it.”

“Why is it so strong?” I asked. “Rebekah said insect anima isn't that potent.”

He hesitated. “Because we're not meant to cull moth anima, so we would be punished for the transgression. Moths are our kin, in a sense. To take the anima of a moth would be … well, a kind of sacrilege. Just remember … no moth anima. Not ever.”

Moths are our kin? We would be punished for our transgression? To take the anima of a moth would be a kind of sacrilege?

I wasn't sure if these statements were as odd as they sounded, or if it was the anima twisting through my brain that made them sound so … archaic. So eerie and unsettling, bringing to mind religious zealots and cult leaders dressed all in white.

I wondered if Cyrus knew that I had culled thousands, possibly tens of thousands of moths the night my family was murdered. But that was before I knew better.

“Okay,” I said. “No moth anima. I promise.”

 

M
ODERATION

Everything in moderation
. That was my mom's favorite maxim. Or maybe it was the one she quoted most often to me because, well, I'm not a moderation kind of girl. Not when it comes to the things I love. Then I'm all about extremes. I don't have a medium switch. If I'm going to eat my favorite dessert, I'm not going to have a few dainty bites. I'm going to scarf the whole cake. If I'm going to play music, it's going to be my life. If I'm going to get angry enough to hurt someone, well … they'll probably end up more than hurt.

Blake called this black-and-white thinking. It was all or nothing with me.

I'd spent the years since I killed Jason Dunn in a state of constant restraint. I'd tried to maintain an interest in school even though the only thing I wanted to do was spend my days in the woods with my guitar and a notebook. I'd tried never to get close to anyone, never to touch anyone, for fear I would lose control. I had kept my feelings for Blake locked in the cellar in my mind. I had tried to be the good daughter. A middle-of-the-road, temperate, normal girl. I'd done my best to be easy, to balance out the stress of Erin's health problems.

After Jason, I had tried never to take anima again. Now I had to take it every day to keep from losing myself to catharsis.

Where had these years of attempted moderation gotten me?

Right back where I started. Always wanting more.

The morning after I culled the moonflowers, I woke to find my anima haze had evanesced, leaving behind one overriding thought that eclipsed every other:
more
.