Blood Colony (41 page)

As Michel stood taller, the Shadows stole everything. Fana watched his face fading above her as her eyes shut down, locking her in darkness. The Shadows’ humming tried to overtake her, but her favorite music was alive in her, untouched.
Don’t wanna die for a while…

Fana was too racked with pain to be afraid, but she felt sad for Mom and Dad. She wished she had known she had so little time, or she would have left the woods long ago.

Fana screamed again.

All she wanted now was to stop the pain. She would put herself to sleep if she could, but her mind thrashed, useless. Michel was standing over her. She could smell him through her blood-clogged nose. She wished she could kick out at him, but her legs ignored her.
He got past my mask. He has me now. Better to be dead.

At least she had hurt him like no one else had. At least she would die trying to bring light to the world, just as her name and Blood promised.

YOU SILLY FOOL YOU NEARLY KILLED US BOTH.

His voice came, scolding like a parent.

Fana couldn’t respond, even in her head. He thought he loved her, but he couldn’t possibly. If he did, he would have put her to sleep and spared her the blistering agony.

PROMISE ME YOU’LL NEVER TRY TO KILL ME AGAIN, FANA.

For an instant, Fana was too stunned to understand. Was he bargaining with her?

Her mind struggled to clear itself. Her lips wouldn’t move, so she sent him a thought:
Promise you won’t hurt anyone else.

His answer came in such a roar of frustration and anger that it was incomprehensible. While his mind raged, Fana felt herself sinking away. Becoming smaller.

Stillness.

PROMISE ME, FANA, OR I CAN’T LET YOU LIVE.

Trance. Trance out.

IS IT WORTH DYING FOR? YOU WOULD ROB THE WORLD OF SO MUCH?

“I p-promise,” Fana heard herself say. “Never again.”

Had he formed those words, or had she? Did either of them know the difference?

The torture subsided, a sensation so startling that Fana gasped again. The shaking in the room stopped. Light and sound returned. For the first time, Fana heard the church bell tolling wildly above them to proclaim the earthquake. Fissures veined the wall above her.

Had there been gunshots? She wasn’t sure.

Fana wiped her eyes, and the blood stinging her tear ducts stained her hands. She knew it wasn’t possible for all of her pain to have vanished so quickly. He must be soothing it somehow, massaging her. His mind was nesting inside of her; she felt him.

He offered his palm to her.
“Stai bene, Fana?”
Michel said gently in Italian, his first language. “Are you all right?”

“Don’t touch me,” she said.

“I don’t want you to hurt,” he said.

“Too late.”

He sighed and stood up straight, taking a step away. His eyes hung on her, watching. Pain cascaded over her as he stopped soothing her injuries, but only enough to make her wince and hiss. At least she was healing instead of bleeding.

Someone pounded at the door. “Fana?” a voice called. Caitlin!

Michel slid his hands into his pockets and strolled toward the door.

YOU’RE NOT THE ONLY ONE I’VE UNDERESTIMATED TODAY, FANA.

Fana’s heart leaped. The gunshots had had something to do with Caitlin and Johnny!

Fana tried to lunge after Michel to grab his ankle, but she couldn’t move, whether it was because of Michel’s influence or her body’s exhaustion. She tried to probe him again, but he was a fortress. She could never burrow inside of him now. Only his ardor had weakened his mask, and he would not make that mistake again.

More banging. “Fana?” Caitlin said. “I hear you! I’ll b-break the door down!”

Fana’s weary heart raced as she watched Michel walking toward the door.

“Michel!” Fana called after him.

The sound of his name straightened his spine. He turned around to look at her, waiting. Hearing his true name from her lips was a gift to his ears. Maybe he did love her.

“Don’t hurt my friends,” Fana said. “Or my family. Please.”

His expression was lost behind the blood on his face.

Suddenly, the door flung itself open, slamming against the wall. Caitlin stood wild-eyed and disheveled in the doorway, her fist raised to pound again. In her other hand, she held a shiny pistol. As soon as Fana noticed the gun, the weapon disintegrated to gray dust, falling through her fingertips to the floor. Caitlin stared at her empty gun hand, dumbstruck.

“Michel,
please
!” Fana begged.

When Michel walked forward, Caitlin screamed and leaped back. Then she stood as still as a sculpture. Fana felt Caitlin’s thoughts shrivel away like the gun.

Then Caitlin saw Fana, and the shock in Caitlin’s face made Fana remember that she was covered in blood. Caitlin shrieked, and Michel seemed to vanish from her sight. Caitlin squeezed her body against the wall and ran past him, not looking back, flinging herself over Fana. They trembled together.

“Clean her up, Caitlin,” Michel called quietly, walking away. “Take care of her.”

While Caitlin wiped blood from Fana’s face with her hands, Michel vanished through the doorway. Would Caitlin forever be under Michel’s control?

“
You fucking asshole!
” Caitlin shrieked behind Michel, hugging Fana close to her.

All Caitlin. Fana was so relieved that she almost laughed. Instead, she sobbed.

“What happened?” they both said together.

They told each other their stories while Caitlin wiped away Fana’s blood.

H
is mother was sitting by the window in his father’s bedchamber, staring outside, hands on her lap in a prayerful position. She was the last person Michel had expected to see today. Her head was covered in an Ethiopian silk scarf colored in gold, crimson and purple, against dark skin that made her Fana’s twin. Michel brought her a new scarf for her birthday each year—remnants of her past as a village girl from the Ethiopian highlands.

Stefan was at the bar with his back to the doorway, pouring tequila. Bottles had fallen from the bar, shattering glass and liquor across the floor, but otherwise the damage was not nearly as severe as it was in Fana’s chamber. Stefan didn’t turn when Michel walked in, and Michel was glad to be spared the disappointment on his father’s face.

“Quite a racket,” Stefan said. “We felt the earth move, didn’t we, Teru?”

Michel’s mother didn’t blink; her gaze was fixated on the window.

Stefan flung back his first shot and poured again. “You’re not with your new bride, which tells me something’s gone wrong—that, and the earthquake’s ring of desperation. As you know, your two little clay toys made fools of Romero and Bocelli. It’s too bad, Michel, you’re not so gifted at cleaning up your messes.”

Tragedy didn’t curb Papa’s criticisms.

Michel ignored his father and went to Teru. She had been sixteen when she’d met Stefan more than fifty years ago, and she looked no older than Fana now. Teru was the only woman Stefan had ever shared the Ceremony with. The others with the Blood numbered only a handful. Romero and Bocelli had earned the Blood through service, and then there were the Four Horsemen, as Papa liked to call them: one in Rome, one in Tel Aviv, one in Beijing, one in Washington, D.C. The rest of Sanctus Cruor’s followers were only seekers.

Michel had never known a fellowship like Fana’s. He had never even had a true mother.

Michel knelt in front of Teru. He smiled as her eyes were drawn from the window.

“Tamirat!” she said, grinning. She always called him by his middle name, her father’s name. Whenever she saw him, she thought of the fat baby in her arms.

“Mother.” He rested his warm forehead against hers, and his thoughts sighed.

I’ve missed you, Mother.
As always, he heard nothing in response.

“My God, Michel, is that blood from Fana?” Stefan said. After finally turning to see Michel, he was stunned. When Michel didn’t answer, Stefan’s face paled. “From
you
?”

Michel wiped his face with his T-shirt, blowing blood from his stinging nose. He must look like a horror, and his mother hadn’t noticed. Without wanting to, Michel glanced toward his parents’ bed. The rumpled sheets made his stomach queasy.

PLEASE TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED, MICHEL,
his father implored.

Michel gazed into his mother’s smiling eyes. He brushed her chin with his finger.

“She loathes me,” Michel said.

He allowed his father to see his memories of Fana. Stefan groaned under the memories’ weight, sharing his son’s pain. He paced behind him. “Michel, Michel…” He sounded near tears.

“No lectures now, Papa,” Michel said.

“We’re far beyond lectures,” Stefan said. “How could you have allowed her so close to you? But we’ve no time to dwell on the losses. You see there is no other way now. Everything is as prophesied. Your mother is here for the wedding.”

Michel closed his eyes and squeezed his mother’s hands. She squeezed back, but vaguely. Nothing held her attention long, only her mind’s pleasant dreams.

“Be thankful,” Stefan went on. “At least you have memories of love in Fana’s eyes. You can return to those memories again and again. You can create Fana as anyone you choose.”

Michel rose to his feet with an unfamiliar ache in his limbs. The remnants of Fana’s attack had faded to a throbbing, but it wasn’t any easier to breathe or stand straight. His father’s gold-leaf-covered replica of the Letter of the Witness was mounted on a stand at the foot of the bed, so Michel flipped the parchment open at random, touching the pages he had first loved as a child.
“Wickedness is cunning, and can hide in the hearts of men.”
17:10.

Fana considered
him
the Wicked; he knew that from both her words and thoughts. Fana’s beliefs were so clear, and yet so different. His mother’s interpretations of the Letter had disagreed with Papa’s too. Heretical.
Wickedness is cunning.

The loathing in Fana’s face seared Michel’s memory. How could Papa believe he would want to savor any recollection of this day?

Slowly, Michel became aware that his father was standing beside him. Stefan gently draped the silken white gown over Michel’s bare chest and bloodied clothes, capturing one arm inside the sleeve, then the next. Stefan methodically fussed over the rarely worn Sanctus Cruor vestments, straightening each crease until the soiled clothes underneath were hidden. The robe seemed too heavy to be silk alone. Had it been spun from stones?

“There will be no New Days without her beside you, Michel,” Stefan said quietly. Reasonably. “The Blood brings responsibility, Most High.”

His father lowered himself to his knees and took Michel’s hands, bending to touch his forehead to Michel’s knuckles. This was Papa’s first bow to him as Most High, a moment Michel had anticipated as long as he could remember. Now, the gesture’s emptiness pained him.

Michel pulled his hands from his father’s grip and forced a glance toward his mother, whose eyes had found the window again. He hid his face so Papa would not see his tears.

“I want her family brought to me,” Michel said. “When Romero and Bocelli recover, we’ll dine together, no matter what the hour. Her people and mine.”

“What do polite gestures win us now?” Stefan said. “Go back and finish it. Take her.”

As if Fana had been a sport! Stefan’s hunger made Michel so angry that he expected his father’s nose to bleed. When Michel whirled to face Stefan, his robe flew.

“I am Most High, and Fana will be my bride,” Michel said. “Our marriage was prophesied before we were born. But yours is done, Papa. I’ll let you keep Mother in your bed tonight, if you’re petty enough—but at dawn, her mind is hers again. I’m setting her free.”

Stefan’s face went chalky, then red. “F-free?” he said. “Teru is
happy
as she is. Freedom means nothing to her.”

“Then that lesson is my wedding gift to my mother.”

Could cruelty be blunted by kindness? Michel prayed so.

During the New Days, he might never smile again.

A
unt Alex? I’m right here. Follow my voice.

Alex’s brow creased and her eyelids fluttered.

For ten minutes—after the hugs, tears and reunions—Fana had sat at her aunt’s bedside and tried to bring her back. Aunt Alex felt nearly as far away as Gramma Bea, caught in a between point. Fana pumped Aunt Alex’s hand gently, coaxing; the mind was powerful, but an embrace could travel a long way too.

Fana closed her eyes, squeezing her aunt’s hand again.

Yes, that’s it. Follow me.

So, so close now…Aunt Alex’s eyelashes flickered harder, looking for light, and Fana smiled. It should have taken her all night to find her way to Aunt Alex—she was sure of it—yet she was speeding through the maze of Aunt Alex’s mind, deft and sure.

A souvenir from Michel and the Shadows. She was a quick study, as he’d said.

How else had her time with Michel changed her? Were the changes permanent?

Fana shivered, almost losing her aunt’s stream, so she pushed Michel out of her mind. Mom, Dad, Uncle Lucas and Jared stood behind her, waiting over Aunt Alex’s bed. Fana ignored their thoughts, but she felt their anxiety in their shifting bodies and tightly clasped hands.

Come with me, Aunt Alex. Open your eyes.

Aunt Alex’s eyes flew open, wide and aware. She blinked, then squinted, raising her hand to cut the brightness. “Mom?” she whispered.

Jessica, Lucas and Jared yelled out, thrilled, but they hushed themselves when Alex cringed, covering her ears. Jessica and Lucas fought for space to hug her, one clinging to one broad shoulder, one to the other. But Aunt Alex’s eyes were riveted on Fana; it was only natural that Aunt Alex’s attention would gravitate toward her guide.

“I’m sorry, Aunt Alex,” Fana said.

“Sorry?” Aunt Alex said, blinking again. “Fana, I was
there
. I touched her. I…” Aunt Alex’s eyes shined like those of a toddler who didn’t have the words to explain how beautiful the Christmas tree looked. “She’s right there!” Aunt Alex said. “
Right there
.”

Aunt Alex repeated those words, shaking with joyful tremors. She reached for Jessica and hugged her neck. “Jess, Mom’s all right.”

“I know,” Jessica said, crying and laughing while they hugged the life back into each other.

Fana envied their ecstacy, even if it was a wounded ecstacy. She wished she had seen her grandmother’s crossing, to share in Aunt Alex’s joy. Instead, she had seen Gramma Bea’s troubled face by the roadside. Fana couldn’t celebrate this day.

A hand slipped into Fana’s. It was Johnny’s.

“Hey,” he said. He had a dimple even when he wasn’t smiling. “I’m glad she’s OK.”

Fana smiled, suddenly self-conscious. Her gifts had never been known to anyone outside of the colony, except Caitlin, but Caitlin had told him. After what he’d been through, there would be no more secrets from him.

What did Johnny think of her? Fana didn’t know, and she wouldn’t probe Johnny to find out. She was better at probing than ever, so she would have to learn better discipline.
Starting now
.

“You’re probably confused,” Fana told Johnny.

“Actually…I’m less confused,” Johnny said. “It’s better than thinking I’m crazy.”

“You never trusted him,” Fana said. “You knew all the time.”

“You’re not the only one who gets hunches,” Johnny said. Then he looked sheepish. “Caitlin says I fainted after I shot that guy, but just for the record, I was planning to come for you next. Gun blazing, all that.”

He sounded like Charlie.

Johnny’s hand was still pressed to his abdomen, against his wound. He would have died long ago without her Blood, but he was far from well. Still, when Johnny smiled, his dimple was a crater. He swung his head closer to her ear, his voice private, just for her. “I know you saved me.”

Fana’s hand felt lost inside Johnny’s, and her skin turned to iron. The warmth and dampness of Johnny’s touch made her sad. She and Johnny had friendship and history, but they were only meeting each other now.

“Caitlin loves you as a friend, but she’ll never feel what you feel,” Fana said. It was only fair to tell him. She didn’t need to probe Caitlin to know that.

Johnny glanced toward Caitlin, who was across the room with Abena and Sharmila, talking in hushed tones while the boys slept on the bare floor. Caitlin’s eyes caught theirs before she looked away. As if she could hear them.

“I know,” Johnny said. “But I understand it now. Caitlin brought me to you.” Johnny squeezed her hand tightly with unconscious fervor.

You mean she brought you to Glow,
Fana thought, unable to silence a cynical voice in her head that wasn’t quite her own. Johnny pulled her wrist toward his lips, but Fana knew it would not be a lover’s kiss. She wasn’t interested in any other kind today.

When Fana slipped her hand away, Johnny looked apologetic. “I’m s-sorry. I—”

She pecked Johnny’s lips. “I’m still just Bea-Bea, right?” Fana said. “Lil’ Sis?”

Johnny nodded. He understood, but knowing who she was made wonderment twitch his face. “I’ll work on that, Fana,” he said. His voice barely trembled. “I promise.”

The word
promise
hurt, fresh from Michel’s mouth. But Fana managed to keep her smile.

“Excuse me, son,” Dawit said. His voice was a commandment.

One last shy, overwhelmed smile, and Johnny went back to Caitlin’s side.

Dawit steered Fana to a darkened corner of the room. He gazed back at Jessica, who was still near Alex’s bed. Her eyes checked in with Fana every few seconds; Fana felt them on her, always watching. Mom had been watching over her so long that it was all they knew.

Dawit draped his hands across Fana’s shoulders. Fana couldn’t hold his stare, so she looked toward the sleeping children.

FANA?
Her father’s projection was clear and powerful. He was still waiting for her to tell him what had happened. Mom had tried, too.

He didn’t rape me,
she told him.
He could have, but it never came to that.

Flames sparked in Dawit’s eyes, and his jaw was tight. “But he hurt you.”

“I hurt him, too,” she said. “I struck first.”

The fire in his eyes danced. “He’s vulnerable, then.”

“This isn’t a war, Dad.”

“It’s the very definition of war, Fana.”

Fana felt an impulse to whisper, although she knew full well that it didn’t matter. A shout, a whisper and a thought were the same in his house.

“A war is a clash between two well-matched opponents,” Fana said.
Otherwise, it’s called a slaughter,
she finished, out of the others’ hearing.

Dawit’s face fought irritation and dread.
WHY WOULD WE FAIL?

Because of him,
Fana told him.
He could kill all of us with a thought. Talking freely under his roof is foolish. He’s listening to everything. Assume Teka is still his ears.

Teka believed he had been set free, but he might be wrong. Teka sat in a meditative pose in front of the door, crestfallen, as if he did not deserve to enter the room. Fana probed him—again, much faster than usual, especially considering his forty-foot distance from her—and she didn’t find the telltale wall. Still…

WE COULD RALLY THE BROTHERHOOD,
her father said.
LALIBELA, TOO.

They’re not enough. While we were building clinics, they were building armies.

Her father had always believed that distributing the Blood was more trouble than it was worth, constantly calling for precautions. He had agreed because Jessica had been so committed to the mission. He would do anything for Mom. Dad had gone against everything he’d believed in, all for love. Did he regret it now?

As if her mother knew she was thinking about her, Mom appeared suddenly, slipping her arm around Fana’s shoulder. Jessica rocked with Fana, an unspoken salve for the wounds Fana had not talked about yet. She and her mother had never hugged easily, but it was easy now.

Mom leaned upward to press her mouth to Dawit’s, kissing him as if she needed his oxygen to breathe. They kissed as if effort would make it last. Fana wasn’t used to seeing her parents kiss, except in their memories. Her parents had been through a lot.
There are no fairy tales.
Her parents’ kiss was snuffed by their worries.

“Teka wants to counsel us,” Dawit said.

“We can never be sure Teka is free of him,” Fana said.

“Let’s go on and hear what Teka has to say,” Jessica said. Her voice was so raw that it was nearly unrecognizable. “Even the devil can tell the truth sometimes.”

BLESSED JESSICA, NO WORDS CAN EXPRESS MY SHAME

Before Teka spoke to the circle of concerned faces around him, he sought out Jessica in a torrent of apologies. The sorrow in his thoughts was palpable, steeping inside Jessica’s anger. Jessica blinked, but her tear ducts had dried long ago. Her lost friendship with Teka was the least of what she had to mourn today.

I BETRAYED YOU. I BETRAYED FANA. I BETRAYED DAWIT.

Teka’s litany went on. Jessica had been so rocked by her mother’s death that she’d barely remembered her confrontation with Teka in the comm room. Teka might never have spoken his hidden thoughts without Michel’s intervention, but she was sure Teka’s longing was genuine.

You’re wasting time,
Jessica told him.
Say what you need to, or leave us the hell alone.

Teka sighed and surveyed the people gathered around him: Fana sat between Jessica and Dawit, leaning against their knees. Jessica tried not to be alarmed, but she had never seen Fana so weary. Whatever Fana had been through had nearly torn her to pieces. Was Fana all right? Were any of them?

Jessica hoped that Teferi—and even Mahmoud, God help her—would be returned to them; but for now, they were only twelve. Lucas, Alex, Jared, Caitlin, Johnny and Teferi’s family were crowded behind them. Teka’s eyes lighted on Fana before he lowered them in deference.

“I can tell you something of the origins of Sanctus Cruor,” Teka said, and no one blinked. “Khaldun once told me he committed a story to paper, sealing it with a drop of the Blood. It was the same story Khaldun always told, about Blood stolen from the cross. Khaldun always feared that the Blood was too powerful to be entrusted even to himself, but he wanted to see the Blood’s impact on the world. He told me that his letter never reached its intended party, lost. If Sanctus Cruor is a result of his letter, they are proof of Khaldun’s fears. So he sent you to Adwa, Dawit.”

“But he told us nothing about his letter with the blood and the Ceremony!” Dawit said. “Why did Khaldun send us out blind?”

Teka shook his head; he didn’t know.

“Because it wasn’t time,” Jessica said. “Fana wasn’t here yet.”

Fana looked up at Jessica over her shoulder, startled. The sweatshirt Jared had given Fana was too big, dwarfing her, and she looked so much smaller, so childlike. Jessica wished she could bundle Fana in her arms and carry her away like she had when she was three. Fana laid her head on Jessica’s shoulder, showing a rare vulnerability. Jessica pressed her palm to Fana’s cheek.

Jessica continued the story: “When Khaldun met with me and Dawit, he told us that Fana would intervene in a coming war between mortals and immortals. I never understood that—the other Life Brothers are so reclusive that I couldn’t see them waging a war with mortals. I remember Khaldun telling us, ‘I will not say all that I see.’ Well, this is what he kept from us.
These
are the immortals Khaldun knew Fana would face. It was Sanctus Cruor.”

A flash of rage ignited in Jessica as she remembered how Khaldun had used her child to conduct social experiments with the Blood. What an impossible burden for Fana!

Teka licked his lips. “As Khaldun’s attendant, I knew him as well as any man could. He would not approve of Sanctus Cruor’s interpretation of his Letter. But Sanctus Cruor believes the world is too full of sin. They believe they can create Paradise again. Like Eden.”

“Through killing?” Jessica said.

“The Day of Judgment is prophesied in other religious books, is it not?” Teka said. “Khaldun may have used the story of the cross because he believed the future Church would safeguard its contents, protecting the Blood from greed and abuse. But that doesn’t mean Khaldun’s story of the cross is true. Khaldun was a storyteller foremost. He told stories however he believed they would have the most power.”

“If he had future sight, he knew his words would create Sanctus Cruor,” Jessica said.

“No,” Dawit answered her gently. “Khaldun saw much. He did not see everything.”

Teka nodded in agreement. Even now, they were quick to forgive Khaldun’s chaos.

Jessica suddenly had a headache. It had once astonished her that the Life Brothers weren’t convinced their blood was from Christ, but she understood better now: A single man’s miracles burned less brightly when you had miraculous blood in your own veins. Even a letter from an eyewitness hadn’t created Christlike behavior in Sanctus Cruor!
Do human hands destroy everything we touch?