Blood Colony (36 page)

“You…look me…in the eye…and
promise,
Jessica. No…blood.”

Childish tears fell. “
Why
? Why can we give it to everyone else—”

“Because…they don’t know.”

“They don’t know
what
?”

“It’s…stolen. And…besides…it’s all right.”

“It’s not all right!”
Jessica heard herself shriek. For an instant, she broke away from herself, as if she were floating on the ceiling staring down at her own face, red and knotted. Her joints shook, and she lost her balance as the plane pitched slightly sideways. She fell against Bea’s chest, and her mother held her there. The monitor chattered in Jessica’s ear.

“Yes…baby. It’s…all right,” Bea said. “I’m…tired. I’m ready to see…Kira. And…Randall. And…your daddy.”

Jessica sobbed from a place so deep that the cry felt ripped from her, as if by a claw.

“Trust…in Him, baby,” Bea said. “We can’t…see…everything…from where we’re…standing.”

Jessica could barely hear her. Her frame shuddered with another sob.

Bea squeezed her hand again, harder. “Jessica…promise me. Hear?”

Jessica couldn’t form any words. Instead, she nodded her head against Bea’s breast.
No blood, no matter what.
The thought dug free a sob more painful than the one before.

Suddenly, like a miracle, Teka’s voice boomed on the plane’s loudspeaker: “Lucas? You and your son may join Fana’s mother and grandmother in the rear.”

Jessica sat straight up, electrified. Everything around her had been dimming down, burying her, but suddenly she could breathe again.
Thank you, Teka. Bless you. Bless you.

I AM NO MONSTER, JESSICA. YOU MUST BELIEVE THAT.

Jessica fought against her ankle restraints to make her way to the door. “Hurry, Lucas!” she called, and an eternity of silence passed. “
Lucas
!”

The door finally clicked, unlocking. Lucas and Jared opened the door and shuffled through, still bound together. As soon as Jessica saw Lucas, she understood the delay: Lucas had retrieved the plane’s large black medical kit. His eyes were clear, fixed on Bea.

“Her heart…,” Jessica said.

Lucas nodded curt assurance. “I’ll see to her, Jess.”

Jessica felt the universal relief humankind has experienced since the first shaman was summoned to a sickbed.
She’ll be fine. He’ll take care of her.
The fervor of her wishing squeezed her hands into tight fists. Lucas gazed at the wrist monitor’s readings, then he lifted Bea’s blouse to press his old-fashioned stethoscope to her chest. He trusted his ears best. Bea’s shrunken breasts fell apart, nearly weightless.

“Don’t see…all the fuss,” Bea panted.

Lucas smiled, although his eyes weren’t smiling when he glanced at Jessica. His alarm was plain. Lucas fumbled inside the medical kit, tossing plastic-encased bandages and creams to the floor. He was in a hurry. The kit’s boxy shape reminded Jessica of paramedics trying to save Kira, a memory that tried to steal her fledgling calm. But Jessica wiped that memory away.

“Mom…,” Lucas said. “How’s that pressure in your chest?”

“Just…angina,” Bea said. But her features fluttered, fighting pain. “I’m…dizzy, though.”

“Jess? Grab me a glass of water,” Lucas said. His voice was so relaxed that it was ethereal. “Mom, I wish I had morphine for the pain, but these pills are beta blockers to help strengthen your heart, give it some relief. And we’re gonna’ throw in some aspirin for good measure.”

“She had 325 milligrams an hour ago,” Jessica said, before she turned toward the mini-bar.

“More won’t hurt,” Lucas said.

At that, Bea laughed weakly. “Aspirin? We could have…done that.”

With the sound of Bea’s laughter to buoy her, Jessica made her way back to the plane’s lavish minibar, clinging to the leather seats to keep upright. Suddenly, a day that had felt doomed was changing its mood.
Thankyouthankyouthankyou.

“Sometimes the old ways are best, Mom,” Lucas said behind her.

“See, Gramma?” Jared said. “Just like you always say.”

The minibar’s granite counter and gold-plated faucet promised comfort and ease. Jessica grabbed the first glass she saw—a champagne flute—and the water splashed into the sink in a strong stream. God had begun all of life with nothing but a little water, after all.

She heard Bea chatting on: “Jared…you watch out for…those kids. And…Fana.”

“I will, Gramma.”

“Mom?” Lucas said. “I need you to hush a while. Just try to take deep breaths.”

Bea never liked anyone trying to shush her, so at first Jessica thought the curdling wail from her mother was only indignation. When Jessica whipped her head around to tell Bea to stop arguing, she saw her mother’s wide-mouthed agony instead.

Bea was in a ball. Her body rippled with a convulsion, then fell still.

The cardiac monitor, instead of beeping, was suddenly the steady hum Jessica remembered from watching
Emergency!
as a child. A flat line, like Kira in the Louisiana motel.

The glass fell from Jessica’s numb fingers, cracking on the granite counter.

“She’s arrested!” Lucas said.

Nononononononononononononono

When the plane pitched forward slightly, Jessica’s legs nearly buckled. Her senses telescoped; all sound was buried by the plea in her mind and on her tongue. “No…no…no…”

Lucas and Jared pulled Bea down from the sofa, and Bea’s arms flopped to the carpet. Jessica noticed that her mother’s fingernails were freshly painted, a pale pink that matched her favorite Easter hat. Bea prized her vanity; she had met every stage of life on her own terms.

“CPR!” Lucas said, and Jared folded his hands across Bea’s chest, pumping. Jared was biting his lower lip hard, blinking back tears. Lucas and Alex had trained Jared in CPR in high school, when he’d insisted on being a summer lifeguard in Longview. Jared’s compressions were precise, so forceful that Jessica was afraid he would break every frail rib in Bea’s body.

“One…two…three…,” Jared counted aloud.

Working awkwardly because one wrist was chained to Jared, Lucas opened another compartment of the medical kit and brought out two glistening metal pads, one in each hand. They were smaller than the devices on 1970s television, but Jessica recognized defibrillators when she saw them. Electric shock for the heart.

“Back, Jared,” Lucas said, and Jared pulled his hands away.

Please Lord you took Kira but don’t take Mom like this pleasepleaseplease

When Lucas pressed the pads to Bea’s chest, her frame arched with the jolt, as if the pads had been magnetized. Then Bea fell back to the carpet. The monitor hummed, unchanged.

This moment had felt inevitable since the day of Bea’s heart attack. No, before then: since the day of Jessica’s wedding, when she and her mother had been getting dressed together, and she’d noticed how her mother’s skin had been gently drooping away on her cheeks, falling loose from her arms. Bea had been slowly transforming ever since, just like David had tried to warn her:
In a very short amount of time—it will amaze you how quickly—one by one, they will be gone. They are mortals, and you are no longer one of them.

As if the memory of David’s words summoned him, Teka’s voice swamped Jessica’s head:
IF SHE IS TO LIVE, SHE MUST HAVE BLOOD,
Teka said, telling her what her heart already knew.
THE CEREMONY CAN SAVE HER, AND YOU WILL HAVE HER FOREVER.

Yes. Just like David had tried to save Kira. Forever.

Lucas pressed the pads a second time, and Bea’s body jittered again.

“
Dammit,
” Lucas said.

A third time. Jessica gasped when Bea’s leg kicked out, a dance from the electricity that ended as soon as Lucas pulled the pads away.

“Go, Jared,” Lucas said. “Keep her blood circulating.”

As Jared jabbed Bea’s chest with his palms, Lucas gazed up at Jessica with an expression that might have been carved in rock. Jessica knew what his face meant before Lucas produced a tiny scalpel, flashing it in the cabin’s light. He pressed the blade to his bare wrist.

“Jess?” Lucas said.

Jessica fell to her knees beside Lucas. She grabbed Bea’s hand. Still warm. Bea’s fingers seemed to squirm inside of hers, but Jessica knew it was the illusion of her own trembling.

Lucas poked himself with the scalpel, and dark blood spurted from his skin. “Blood alone won’t do it. Her heart’s stopped. Do you know the Ceremony?”

Jessica nodded. David had taught her the Hebrew words, explaining the Ceremony he had invoked to save her life when her heart had died, and later to save Lucas, too.
The Blood is the vessel for Life…The Blood flows without end, as a river through the Valley of Death….

How many times had she tried to transport herself back to that Louisiana motel room to whisper the same words to Kira and steal her from Death?

Forgive me, Mom.

Droplets of blood fell from Lucas’s wrist to Bea’s face. Crimson tears.

Jessica closed her eyes, and the sudden darkness was clarifying. “No,” she said. “We can’t.”

“What?”
Jared said. Disbelief and rage deepened her nephew’s voice to gravel. “Is there some fucking rule—”

“I promised her,” Jessica said. “No blood.”

Jessica felt a hand beneath her chin, so she opened her eyes. Lucas’s stare filled her sight. “This is it, Jess,” Lucas said. “She’s gone. Do you understand?”

Jessica nodded. A fire was brewing in her lungs, but somehow she spoke. “I know,” she said. She leaned over Bea and wiped the stray blood from her face, suddenly frantic for her mother to be clean of it. “I know.” She tried to say it a third time, but the fire ate her words.

No matter. Gently, Jessica pushed Jared’s hands aside, to stop his manic compressions. Jared resisted at first, but Lucas made a stern clucking sound, and Jared finally pulled away with an angry sigh. Then, a sob.

Jessica buttoned Bea’s blouse where Lucas had loosened it, then she grabbed her mother’s shoulders and gathered her into her arms. Bea seemed as light as a child. Jessica squeezed Bea’s body against her, rocking. A last, warm communion. Jessica cupped the back of her mother’s head, sifting through the strands of hair Bea always kept so neatly combed, textured with the Africans, Europeans, Seminoles and Cherokees who had made peace to create her.

See, Mom? Sometimes I listen. I’m not as hardheaded as you think. You see?

Jessica heard herself howl. But that was only her body, talking out its pain.

Jessica’s face was washed in sunlight from the plane’s window, and the open sky reminded her that they were thousands of feet above the earth. The plane’s urgent ascent made sense of the day: They were ferrying Bea in her gilded chariot, just like the preachers said.

Her mother was already halfway Home.

Outside of Nogales
Sonora province, Mexico

F
ana was mired in a place beyond sadness.

The pull toward trance was so strong that Fana had to fight to keep her eyes open. The surly late-afternoon sun and a monotonous, dusty mountain road conspired with her misery. Fana swayed with each bump, rescued from trance by the creaky van’s motion.

The road’s uphill climb was so steep that Fana expected the van to pitch backward. Each sharp turn on the narrow road felt like taking flight from the cliff. From where she sat in the middle passenger seat of the four-row van, Fana pulled forward to try to see through the windshield. The rest of the windows were clotted with dust, but the windshield was a panorama of lush vegetation and mountains. Another time, it might have been beautiful.

With the next bump came a jolt of dread.

Something awful had happened. Something at home.

Once she’d realized she wouldn’t have a telephone in the van, Fana had brought herself as close to trance as she’d dared, trying to send mental signals. She’d wanted her family to know what she knew: The shelter wouldn’t be enough to protect them. She’d felt Teka for a time, but his presence had vanished as soon as it had appeared. She hadn’t been able to find her mother, of course—Mom’s streams were too unpracticed—but again and again, Fana had run into Aunt Alex.

Always behind the schoolhouse, frozen in surprise.

The image of Aunt Alex had been so vivid that Fana had felt herself climb into her own fantasy, visualizing herself whispering in Aunt Alex’s ear:
Mom? Run!

But it had been too late. Home had felt like a lie, suddenly. A childhood memory, already gone.

Behind the van, the border town was still in sight below, hazy and sprawling. Without the distracting roar from Nogales, grief shredded Fana’s stomach. Sharp, awful pain. She found a scarf on the seat and wrapped it over her head to try to block the window’s light, which suddenly seemed too bright.

Trance. Trance out.

But she couldn’t trance out today, or ever again. She had to face this day somehow. She couldn’t undo the colossal mistake of running away, but she had to minimize the damage. Fana remembered one of Teka’s mantras:
Your past is your shadow. It has form but no substance, except in the places you allow it to touch you.

Shadows.

Yes. Fana could almost remember now. Once she had known she could do anything she wanted to do if she enlisted her mind. She had enjoyed that feeling, once. No struggle. Pure, naked will. Even her unborn thoughts had become manifest. Once.

Remembering made Fana’s fingers tremble. She had hurt people. She had burdened lives already rife with pain, turning herself into the kind of evil humans had invented prayers against.

Fana heard a droning hum. She pressed her palm against the van window, because the sound seemed loud enough to shake the road. But she couldn’t feel the humming against the window. Instead, she heard it better when she covered her ears.

The sensation was strong, and gaining strength. Like a massive machinery gearing up.

But it was no machine. Buried inside the humming, a whispered invitation:
FANA?

Voiceless, yet distinct. Not male, not female. Definitely not Aunt Alex, Teka, or her mother. Fana shivered from the top of her scalp to the ends of her toes.
Don’t listen.

To block out the humming, Fana turned around and leaned across her seat to focus her attention on Johnny. He was still unconscious, flat on his back, strapped in with seat belts. But his wound was healing.
She
had saved Johnny.

She didn’t need the Shadows again. Never.

“Never,” she whispered, although she had vowed never to speak to Them again.

NO SUCH THING AS NEVER, BEE-BEE.

Gramma Bea’s voice?

With a burst of concentration, Fana shut the humming sound away. As soon as the vibration stopped, her mind missed the lulling assuredness. The humming had felt like a portal into herself, leading to everything Teka had been coaxing her to bring out. And here it was, waiting. Why shouldn’t she touch it?

Because you’ll turn into someone else, just like Mom said. Remember the hurricane?

To keep herself away from the humming, Fana set her restless mind free throughout the van. Johnny’s sleeping thoughts were calm, as if the day hadn’t happened; he was dreaming himself back to his parents’ dinner table. Caitlin sat beside Johnny, one elbow leaning on the car door as she gazed through the window, her thoughts riveted on the mountains. Charlie’s chin rested on his chest, his cowboy hat hanging forward; he was near dozing, too. Charlie’s thoughts were placid memories of his history with the Mexican monks. They made him feel safe.

But Fana didn’t like the monks.

Fana turned around to study the monks’ square-jawed profiles. They had none of the Rolfsons’ friendly chattiness; it was as if they had appeared by obligation. And they didn’t wear their feelings in their faces. Were they monks at all?

Fana tested the two monks, probing toward the front of the van.

Most High.

The peculiar phrase lighted on Fana’s perception in a gentle pulse from one of the monks, startling her. Did they know who she was? How could they? Fana sat up straighter, trying to amplify her mental probe, but everything was a blurry mess, just out of her reach.

The van pitched to the side in a pothole, and Fana’s gaze fell to her window.

A figure stood at the side of the road, not ten yards in front of the van. An old woman.

The woman seemed to have appeared in the bright circle of sunlight through the branches of the pine trees. Fana hadn’t seen anyone just an instant before, and now suddenly she was there. The van’s nose passed within six inches of her kimono.

As the van sped past, Fana caught an eye-blink’s glimpse of her face.

Gramma Bea!

Gramma Bea’s face was as still as a photograph: a thin nose, sharp cheekbones and skin softly etched in patterns of wrinkles narrating stories from her life. And the kimono was hers too; black silk, with patterned roses in pink. Gramma Bea’s eyes didn’t just fly by—they stayed with Fana. But Gramma Bea didn’t smile. Her face was sour, eyes flashing sad disapproval.

As the van sped on, Fana’s neck snapped so she wouldn’t lose sight of Gramma Bea. She was barely visible, as if they had traveled three times the distance they had. Gramma Bea took a lurching step, favoring her bad hip. Then she was gone; swept around the bend, hidden by trees.

Fana’s face pressed against the warm glass. Her fingertips tapped on the window, her last wave stolen as she stared at the empty road behind her. Fana’s heartbeat shook her body.

Was that good-bye?

Fana knew the answer and fought knowing. The pool of grief was waiting for her whenever she was ready to wade in it. Just not yet. She had a bigger imperative: What did Gramma Bea’s visit mean? Gramma Bea could have brought a happier face to say good-bye.

I’ve made another mistake,
Fana realized. Gramma Bea had come a long way to tell her so.

Fana nudged Charlie’s knee and felt him snap awake, rigid.

“What’s wrong?” he said, ready for a crisis.

Fana wished she could just send him her thoughts, but she would have to settle on keeping her voice low. “We have to stop. I have a bad feeling.”

“What are you talking about?” Charlie said.

Caitlin sat forward to lean between them. “Fana gets feelings. No bullshit.”

Fana wished Caitlin would keep her voice down. The monks’ ears must be ringing by now from the urgency in their voices, but she didn’t have a way to write Charlie a note.

“I don’t trust these people,” Fana whispered. “They’re not who they say they are.”

Charlie searched her eyes, matching her whisper. “How do you know?”

“Because I
know,
” Fana said.

“Fana knows things,” Caitlin said. This time, she gestured her hands with a flourish, as if she was dispensing fairy dust. “She saw the words
And blood toucheth blood,
like prophecy.”

Caitlin was still speaking too loudly and saying too much, like she was kegged. Fana expected Charlie to laugh at them; or worse, to look at Fana with accusation. But Charlie’s eyes were sober and accepting. He glanced toward the men driving their van, then he leaned closer to Fana. His scent plowed past her fevered thoughts.

“The thing is,” Charlie began, his lips close to her ear, “I’ve known these guys a long time. So has Caitlin. They’ve been friends to the Railroad.”

“They’re not friends, Charlie. I think…they’re pretending. Playing a role.”

As she spoke, she felt more certain. Her probes might be weak, but she felt it.

Charlie didn’t blink. “Then we have to kill them,” he said. His eyes waited, not blinking.

Fana imagined Gramma Bea’s disapproving face through the van window again, and gooseflesh crawled across her skin. “What?” Fana said. “Are you joking?”

“Hell, no,” Caitlin said, hushed. “It’s all or nothing, Fana.”

Charlie went on: “We know somebody gave us up in Casa Grande. We survived by luck. Someone on the inside is after us. What if these guys are spies?”

“If they are,” Caitlin said, “we need to kill them now, before we get wherever they’re taking us. So are you
sure,
Fana? As sure as when you knew the cops were coming?”

Fana felt dizzy. When had Charlie and Caitlin become such a united front, practically finishing each other’s sentences? And since when did Caitlin casually talk about killing people?

“What about Gandhi and Dr. King?” Fana said. “The Railroad is nonviolent.”

“Weren’t those Mitchell Rolfson’s last words?” Caitlin said with a smile that chilled Fana. Caitlin was still completely zoned.

“No killing,” Fana said. “We can take the van and leave them on the road.”

“That’s
loca
. So they can send people to hunt us down?” Charlie said. His eyes gleamed like glass. “Those two guys are about to kill us, but we should sit on our asses?”

“I never said they were about to kill us,” Fana said.

Charlie brought his lips closer to her ear. “But if you
knew
those guys wanted to kill us, you’d want us to sit and wait?” Charlie said. “Or should we defend ourselves?”

Caitlin stared, defying Fana to lie. Fana’s eyes smarted. She felt another bubble of grief. Had Gramma Bea cast her that stern gaze for something she was
about
to do?

“OK,” Fana said.
OK what? It’s OK to kill them?
Her tongue felt thicker as her heart pounded. “But I have to be sure.”

Fana probed the two monks again. This time, the cloudiness was gone, and she found a nest of repetitive and predictable thoughts. The driver, Tomás, nursed a secret, unconsummated love for a farm girl. The other, Esteban, warred with inner doubts over his faith.

These were good men. At her word, they might have died.

Charlie’s hand slipped into his waistband, toward his gun. Quickly, Fana grabbed his fingers. “
No,
” she said. “I was wrong.”

The taller of the monks glanced back at them in his rearview mirror, then away.

Gradually, Charlie let go of the gun, but he felt like a coil beside her. He had never killed anyone before. She felt him tremble. “You’re
sure
?” he said.

“I’m sure,” she said. “Sorry.”

“Jesus, Fana,” Caitlin said. “Don’t freak us out.”

“Be careful what you say,” Charlie said, vanishing beneath his hat’s brim again. “I would do anything for you,
negra
.”

Sadness. A thicky, murky pool.

A large structure appeared ahead on the dirt road, higher on the mountain. A church, not quite finished. Like the palatial San Javier del Bac Mission they had passed in Tucson, the unfinished church looked like a princess’s castle in a fairy tale. Breathtaking.

But Fana hardly noticed the church. All she saw was Gramma Bea’s unhappy face, her lurching, painful walk. Gramma Bea filled her being. Grief took her breath. Her chest ached.

It would be so much harder to talk to Gramma Bea now.

Because her own head was so painful, Fana flung herself into Charlie’s, looking for something to cling to. She found it: Charlie had lost his
Abuela
when he was twelve, and he would understand what she was feeling, perhaps even better than she did. He might be the one to tell her what to do about the hole falling open inside of her.

“I think…my grandmother died,” Fana said. A whisper.

But Fana said it so softly that even Charlie couldn’t hear. There was no time for sharing. No time to hide in Charlie’s head, violating him again.

The Shadows were nearby. Other immortals, too. Someone as strong as Teka, or even Berhanu, could hide themselves from her for a time—longer than she wanted to admit. Someone could learn her thoughts without her knowledge, if they were strong enough. Teka always said she was the most powerful immortal, but that had never rung true. How could it be?