Blood Colony (33 page)

Through Johnny’s suffering, Michel had demonstrated his compassion. Loyalty. Love. And he had allowed Fana to touch Johnny with the Blood despite his unworthiness. One day, Fana would understand what a generous gift he had offered them both.

How soon could he reveal himself to her without fear that he would be reviled? Was Papa right to believe that Fana would be joined to him permanently once she lay in his bed? Would Fana bond to him like no woman had ever bonded to her mate? If that was true, Michel could reveal himself tonight.

Suddenly, Fana gasped. The sound of her fear stabbed him.

Michel reached for the gun in his jeans. “What is it?” he said, but he knew: Fana had sensed Romero and Bocelli waiting for them at the mouth of the tunnel.

Foolish oversight! Romero and Bocelli had been granted the Blood to better serve him, but they had not learned the nuances of the mind. After decades of training, even Papa was often clumsy at telepathy; otherwise, Fana’s father never would have spied on his thoughts in Seattle. He must remember to cloak them all, or Fana would know too much before he was ready. A glimpse into the minds of Romero and Bocelli would be more than enough to drive Fana away.

Fana clung to his hand atop the wheelchair he steered. She pressed close to him, and he nearly drowned in her lovely scent. Her proximity made him light-headed.

“Someone’s here,” Fana said.

“Monks from the church,” he said. “The safe house. They’re waiting for us.”

“Maritza knew them,” Caitlin said, unprompted.

True enough, Michel thought. Romero and Bocelli had killed Maritza, after all.

Growing sunlight beckoned from the end of the tunnel. Here, the debris was more visible; food wrappers, bottles, diapers, empty prescription bottles. In the new light, graffiti spray-painted on the tunnel walls from travelers was clear.
GIVE ME YOUR SICK,
one message read. As if a passing traveler already knew what awaited.

Movement ahead. Bocelli was waving to him with a flashlight. Michel’s two servants ran toward them, breathless and overjoyed.

Romero and Bocelli wore frayed brown monk’s robes. Unlike the doorkeepers’ at the church, they kept their guns concealed. None of them were Catholic, certainly, but Papa imitated the Catholic church because he enjoyed its taste for pomp and costumes. Catholics were no less ignorant than the rest, but they looked more pious in their grand vestments.

Romero was dark-haired and handsome, with an actor’s face. Bocelli was not so lucky; he was wiry and sharp-featured, with a misshapen nose. Almost insectile. Bocelli might have frightened Fana, but Romero’s attractiveness made him look kind. Neither was a true monk, but Bocelli was more akin to one. Bocelli accepted his uglier duties only grudgingly, but Romero enjoyed his violent deeds. Without Sanctus Cruor, Romero would have been a sociopath without purpose. Sometimes Michel wondered if that could be said of Papa, too.

“Welcome, dear son!” Romero said and kissed his cheeks. If not for Fana’s presence, Romero would have fallen to his knees to greet the Most High. “We were worried about you.”

Their eyes rested on Fana, who was shielding her face from the sunlight.

Do not be so impolite to Fana,
Michel chided them.
Greet her, but do not touch her. I alone may touch her.
Romero and Bocelli obeyed, giving Fana their warmest smiles and words of welcome in counterfeit Mexican accents. Slowly, they urged a smile from her lips. Michel was relieved, but he would be much happier when cloaking his servants was no longer necessary.

“What’s happened to this poor child?” said Bocelli, examining Johnny. In the light, they could see how much Johnny’s blood soaked his shirt. Bocelli’s softheartedness made his inquiry convincing. Romero might have choked on those words.

“He was shot,” Michel said.

Romero turned on his heels, beckoning with two fingers. “Then, come. You three climb out first. We’ll carry the boy.”

“Be careful,” Fana said. “He’s lost a lot of blood.”

“Of course,” Bocelli said. “
Está bien, señorita.
We have a doctor at the church.”

A sturdy ladder awaited, and a ten-foot climb to the surface. Unlike the tunnel opening in Arizona, the opening in Mexico was outdoors. Romero and Bocelli had pushed aside the Dumpster that concealed the manhole from the street.

Climbing out, Michel found himself in the alleyway. The smell of garbage awaited, but it was a vast improvement over the tunnel. It grieved Michel that his charade had forced Fana into such an unpleasant passage. He reached for Fana behind him, guiding her up. Next, Caitlin.

The mud-painted white van waited only a few steps from the tunnel. Still clasping Fana’s warm palm, Michel led her to the van and slid open the rear door. The van had been baking in the sun, so the interior was hot and musty. But in the New Days, Fana would travel like a queen!

Fana sat down in the far corner of the seat, hugging herself, eyes squinting. The nattering thoughts of the city’s population were hurting her head. Michel had had the same problem as a boy. That was only one of many things he would teach her to control.

“What about the phone?” Fana said, her voice small. “You said there’s a sat phone.”

Her eyes were so wide and anxious that Michel hated to deny her. But he must.

“Brother Tómas!” Michel called toward the tunnel. “Where’s the telephone?”

Tell her you do not have it,
Michel directed his servants.

Romero’s head popped out of the manhole. “
Lo siento,
my son. It is at the church.”

Fana’s face seemed to break into pieces. The sight of her tears nearly made Michel cry, too.

“
Shhhhh,
” he said, sliding beside her. “You’ll talk to your family, Fana. I promise.”

Fana’s head sank against his chest. Papa had advised him to gain her trust, but the ruse was breaking Michel’s heart. Caitlin took the seat behind them. She leaned forward, gently massaging Fana’s shoulders.

“Soon, hon,” he whispered to her through Caitlin’s mouth. “This will all be over soon.”

Romero and Bocelli worked quickly. In less than five minutes, Johnny lay in the seat beside Caitlin while she held him in place. The engine rattled when it started, but the vehicle sped away with ease, turning onto the street from the alley.

Nogales, as always, was a city of contradictions—part tourist haven, part barrio. Sunny-faced Americans crowded narrow stone streets lined with colorfully painted shops, bargaining for baskets, rugs, beads, pottery and other pieces of the nation’s culture to appoint their homes while homeless brown-skinned children begged around them. Cafés and money changers abounded on the main streets, alongside the requisite strip clubs and brothels.

But pharmacies ruled the streets of Nogales. In every direction, Michel saw signs painted in red, blue, green and yellow to catch shoppers’ eyes, advertising the Viagra, Flonase, Lipitor, Albuterol, Retin A, Vioxx and countless other medications that Americans were addicted to. Smugglers used the tunnels, but tourists drove over the border in herds, searching for relief from their symptoms, real or imaginary. Fleeing home for better prices.

No matter. After the Cleansing, illness would be only a memory. Those who remained would be the healthiest people in the history of the world.

Gentle Fana gazed out her window with eyes made pitiless by her own grief as she stifled her sobs. She hardly noticed the seekers mingling on the streets around her, deaf to their ailments and fears. In this instant, she thought only of home.

So be it, Michel decided. He could not permit Fana to leave or try to call home.

But he would bring his bride’s family to her.

Nogales, Arizona
2:15 p.m.

D
awit saw the blood smeared on the car’s passenger side door as soon as he peeked around the corner of the clinic on Nelson Avenue. The gray Toyota RAV4 parked behind the building wasn’t the same make and model and as the one being trumpeted on police radios nationwide, but Dawit knew the car. Fana had been here. He could almost see her plaintive eyes staring at him from the glimmering ball of sunlight in the car’s passenger window.

Police had cordoned off an area of Nelson Avenue farther west, investigating a report of gunshots that had sent local law enforcement into a frenzy, but Teferi had insisted that they stop at the darkened Clinica de Esperanza instead. Again, Teferi’s gift had proven true.

Dawit froze, ducking back against the wall. He clasped Teferi’s arm tightly to halt his eager progress. Mahmoud fell to a crouch beside them, his gun ready. Long before either of them had learned any grasp of telepathy, he and Mahmoud had known the unspoken language of warriors who faced battles as one.

I see their car,
Dawit told Teferi. Teferi gasped and tried to pull toward the car, but Dawit held him:
Are we alone?

Teferi blinked rapidly, then squeezed his eyes closed. Teferi’s gifts had led them here from Casa Grande, so patience with Teferi was always rewarded.

I SENSE NO ONE. FANA’S PRESENCE IS FRESH. PERHAPS NOT AN HOUR.

Still, an hour was an eternity. Dawit sighed.
I warn you—there is blood.

Teferi nodded with vacant, unhappy eyes, prepared for Caitlin’s death.

“Warn us if anyone approaches,” Dawit told Teferi.

Mahmoud ran ahead, quick as a cheetah, and Dawit followed cautiously. He could not rely on Teferi’s gifts entirely; even Teka could be surprised.

Closer inspection revealed a broken window—from a gunshot, Dawit guessed—and enough blood in the front passenger seat for a fatal wound. The blood was drying, so it was not Fana’s. When Teferi saw the volume of blood puddled on the vehicle’s upholstered seat, his face went slack with sadness. In the backseat, evidence of another gunshot through the fabric.

“One of them is lost,” Mahmoud said.

“How many were there, Teferi?” Dawit said.

“I would say…four,” Teferi said. “Fana, certainly. Caitlin. Johnny Wright, we can assume. I do not know the fourth.”

Dawit examined the broken window. No corresponding entry point. “The gun was fired inside the car,” he said. “The fourth is their captor. Perhaps…he lost his patience.”

Dawit imagined Fana huddled inside, frightened. As hard as he and Jessica had worked to shield Fana from violence, his daughter’s psyche had been stained yet again. When he and Jessica had had that last personal audience with Khaldun in Lalibela, Khaldun had warned them of dire consequences if Fana was traumatized. Now, this. Dawit’s rage made his fingers tremble.

“The trail ends here,” Teferi said. “They might be inside.”

Dawit’s heart stirred with combined joy and dread. “She could be masking now.”

Dawit was not one to pray, but he came the closest he could remember to prayer as he left the bloodied vehicle:
Let us find her. Let us bring her to safety and spare her from Sanctus Cruor.
If they lost Fana’s trail now, they might not find her for years, just as it had taken Sanctus Cruor years to find Fana. After years in that sect’s hands, he would no longer recognize his child.

There were bloody fingerprints on the door and droplets on the ground beside it. One near-silent
Pfffffffft
from Mahmoud’s air pistol blew a neat hole where the doorknob had been, and mangled metal clattered to the asphalt. The door fell open. In a careful V formation a few strides apart, they searched the storeroom that awaited.

More blood on the floor, a trail, but no one was in the room. Dawit tried to flick on a light switch, but it didn’t work. No electricity. This clinic might have had visitors today, but no one else had walked here for weeks or months. The clinic smelled forsaken.

The clinic was small—only the rear storeroom, a bathroom, tiny examination rooms and the front lobby, which had the receptionist’s cubicle and six folding chairs in disarray, one overturned. The clinic was a shambles, but no corpses had been left behind.

“Here,” Mahmoud said, pointing to the floor. “More blood.”

The dribbling trail of blood led to a smallish examination room, also nearly empty. Upon second glance, Dawit noticed a pile of bloodied bandages discarded on the sink. Fresh.

Teferi scoured the room with him. “Perhaps the fourth isn’t a captor,” he said, hope ringing in his voice. “One of them was injured, and they stopped here for treatment.”

More smudges of blood on the examination table. Dawit’s insides went cold.

Fana might have exposed herself, sharing her blood!

This examination room would have to be carefully cleaned, he realized. Even if Fana hadn’t been bleeding, traces of her blood might lie in this room. Dawit reached into his leather hip pouch for the bottle of clear, acidic blood-cleaning solvent he and his Brothers had created to mask the presence of their Blood’s living cells. He would have to clean the car, too. But could they risk the delay?

“I’ll wipe this room down,” Dawit said. “Try to learn where they went.”

As soon as he said it, he knew: Nogales was a border town. This clinic might have once been a safe house on the Underground Railroad, along the route to Mexico.

“A tunnel!” they realized in unison.

A careful study of the floor and empty storage cabinet in the examination room found no sign of a tunnel entrance, so Teferi and Mahmoud searched the rest of the clinic. Dawit pulled out his lighter and set the bandages in the sink afire. Armed with his solvent and clean bandages for wiping, he sprayed the sink and counters. Next, the floor.

Perspiration dripped into Dawit’s eyes as he rushed to complete his work in the room’s hot, stale air. If a tunnel was found, he would have no time to clean the car and the hall. He could only hope that Fana hadn’t bled anywhere else.

And wasn’t it fruitless to try to erase their traces from the world? They would be known, just as they had feared. Just as the Lalibela Council had always warned.

“Here!” Teferi’s muffled voice shouted from the hall, excited. “I’ve found it!”

Still on his knees, Dawit looked through the doorway to see Teferi crouching in the bathroom. Teferi’s fingers pried at the floor, and suddenly a block of tiles lifted in his hands. Teferi looked up toward Dawit, grinning wide.

Dawit leaped to his feet and ran into the hall. “There may still be time—”

Dawit never finished his sentence. A stranger’s voice bellowed from the direction of the storeroom. “
Police! Drop your weapon! Do it NOW!
”

The room reeled. A thousand curses flew through Dawit’s mind. Teferi, his face framed in the doorway, looked crushed.

I AM SORRY, DAWIT.

A shaft of sunlight signaled that someone else had entered through the rear door behind them. Static and chatter from a police radio.

At least Mahmoud was not in sight. Dawit raised his hands. His gun fell to the floor.

Dawit turned slowly and saw the intruder, another deputy in a cowboy hat. The deputy was middle-aged and overweight, with a paunch that threatened to rock him from his feet. Unless Teferi could influence him quickly, Dawit realized that this man would not live long.

The deputy seemed to know it, too. Even with a two-handed gun stance, his barrel was unsteady. He might never have drawn his weapon before today. His thoughts bubbled faintly to Dawit’s hearing:
OHSHITOHSHITOHSHITOHSHIT

“Leave us,” Dawit told him quietly. “We are too many. You cannot subdue us.”

For an instant, the deputy’s eyes widened, as if he was willing to consider Dawit’s advice. Then his face flushed from sunburned brown to bright red.
“SHUT UP!”
he shouted, gesturing toward Teferi. “You too! Both of you on the ground—facedown!
DO IT!
”

Releasing the gun with one hand, he fumbled for his lapel radio. He never reached it.

The familiar
Pfffffft
marked his final words. A compact hole appeared in his chest. The deputy didn’t make a sound; he only fell like a tree, face-first, to the floor. Mahmoud.

Dawit dove for his gun an instant before he saw a motion from a hidden corner of the storeroom behind the fallen deputy. Dawit squeezed his silent trigger three times. The wall chipped away as a dispatcher’s voice clamored,
“Repeat. What’s your 20?”

A deputy’s cowboy hat skittered across the storeroom floor. The second deputy’s leg twitched wildly in the doorway, and Dawit heard panicked gasping for breath. A death rattle.

“How many?” Mahmoud called to Teferi, charging forward.

Teferi shook his head. “I th-think…only two. I didn’t hear them. I…I’m s-sorry.”

There was silence except for the radios. With Mahmoud flanking him, Dawit crept over the first deputy’s splayed corpse toward the storeroom.

There, his heart fell.

A girl in a deputy’s uniform lay on her back atop a crushed cardboard box, clasping her throat with both hands while blood spurted between her fingers. Two other holes passed straight through her Kevlar vest. Air pistols never missed except if the shooter was out of range; the guns tracked heartbeats. The girl’s inferior weapon lay forgotten at her side, never fired.

Dawit gazed at her, aghast.

The girl wore her hair in thin, short-cropped braids, like a Hamar maiden in Ethiopia. She might be in her twenties, but she had the round, unblemished face of a child. When he stood over her, the girl’s wide, petrified eyes flooded with tears.

“P-p-puh…,” she sputtered, unable to find language to beg for her life.

Dawit’s mouth fell numb. He raised his gun and shot her in the heart, ending her pain with one last body spasm. What choice did he have? He might have given his Blood to this stranger and even tried to invoke the Ceremony, but at what consequence?

He could not save them all. He had told Jessica as much when she’d first begun her mission.

Mahmoud crept past Dawit to the rear door, peeking outside. “Just one car!” Mahmoud said. “They must have arrived right behind us. So far, it’s only these two.”

Hot moisture on Dawit’s cheeks told him that he had shed tears. In the hundreds of mortals he had slain, he could not remember ever killing a woman. Not in this way. He had smothered Rosalie, his dear child, to release her from the prison of her infirm, aged body, and he had killed poor Kira accidentally, hoping to share his Blood with her. But he had never killed a female adversary, a stranger embarking upon adulthood. She was hardly older than Fana.

JACKSON, IMANI, her name tag read. She wore a wedding ring. Was she a mother?

Dawit expected Mahmoud to mock his tears, but his Brother squeezed his shoulder. “So comely, and now she is wasted,” Mahmoud said quietly. “You see? This is what comes of it. We cannot live in harmony with mortals. Khaldun was wise to tell us so.”

COME,
Teferi’s voice pleaded.
WE MUST FOLLOW FANA IN THE TUNNEL BEFORE OTHERS COME. ENOUGH INNOCENTS HAVE DIED ON OUR BEHALF TODAY.

In the bathroom, Teferi had already climbed midway down the tunnel; he was visible only from the waist up. Teferi inclined his head, an apology. “I am to blame,” he said. “I should have sensed their arrival. I was too eager to find the girls.”

“No,” Dawit said. “The blame does not rest with you, Teferi. Sanctus Cruor killed these two as surely as the others.”

If Sanctus Cruor was indeed a sect of immortals, no matter. Any men could die, even men with the Living Blood. Incineration. Exsanguination. If he must, he would invent a method. No matter what it cost him, Dawit vowed, Sanctus Cruor would be destroyed.

This time, for eternity.