My Soul to Take (10 page)

NOT WHEN WE ARE SO CLOSE TO HIM, FANA. DON’T MAKE IT WORSE
. Her father was so angry, his thought seemed to carry physical heat. And surprising clarity.

Michel could probe her at will, no matter what her distance from him, so she’d stopped being afraid he would know what she was thinking. If Michel insisted on marrying her at the end of the decade as she’d promised, at least he would know the woman he was marrying. She would not wear masks for him, just as she wasn’t with Dad.

I’ll be more careful with Johnny
, she said.
But we’re just friends
.

“Don’t pretend you don’t see the longing that’s plain to all of us.”
AND NOT JUST ON HIS SIDE
, he went on.

I heard you, Dad
, Fana said. She wondered if her engagement to Michel might have been what finally drove Mom to her Dreamsticks.

NO, FANA. DON’T BLAME YOURSELF FOR JESSICA
.

He’d been sharp enough to hear her thought. Fana’s father clasped her hand and leaned close to her. “Emperor Menelik agonized over the question of diplomacy versus war,” he said quietly. He always used spoken words for more nuanced communication. “Taytu helped him make his decision: they chose war. They took their destiny in their own hands.”

“And which way did you counsel her?”

His eyes brightened with a memory. “I think you know your father by now.”

In war, Ethiopia had shocked Italy at the Battle of Adwa. Acting as an adviser, her father had helped Emperor Menelik create an army from disparate tribes, uniting his nation. Later, when her husband was sick, the empress had been Ethiopia’s true ruler for a time.

“How would you have counseled me with Michel?” Fana said. “If I’d asked you first.”

This conversation was like a bedtime story between them. Fana already knew her father’s answers, but she enjoyed the comfort of hearing them. Dawit bumped his forehead against Fana’s, the way he had since she was a toddler. “My daughter made the only choice she could—to save lives,” Dawit said.

Michel would have killed her father if she hadn’t agreed to marry him. Perhaps everyone in her family. The veil of civility over the meeting between their two families had been flimsy, ready to shred. Fana was still surprised that Michel had let them go when he could have kept her with him by force: his one redeeming act. Dad was a great warrior, but he had never faced anyone with mental gifts like Michel’s. Even the strongest Life Brothers had been manipulated like puppets by Michel, and from hundreds of miles away.

“You wanted to fight,” Fana said. “Take our chances.”

Her father’s loathing of Sanctus Cruor was generations old. Sanctus Cruor was to blame for Italy’s failed invasion of Ethiopia, in search of sacred blood before Michel was born. That same search had uprooted Fana’s family a hundred years later—this time at Michel’s doing.

“We may still fight,” Dad said. “As long as we count the cost.”

He’s not infallible
, Fana repeated, to make sure her father understood.

“Fana, he’s a man in love.” Dawit sighed. “When you forget that, you underestimate him. I loved your mother, and love became madness. I traded everything I knew for that love. For
her
. Let time judge where love will take Michel.”

“Let’s see if you can say that after we go to Nigeria,” Fana said.
Her uncle, aunt, and cousin had described an entire village of corpses.

Dawit shrugged. “We still don’t know if Michel is behind it.”

But Fana
knew
. She might even be able to prove it if she meditated long enough. Then what? Would they all have to stop pretending that she and Michel weren’t locked in a war?

Fana changed the subject. “What you and Mom have hasn’t been destroyed,” she said.

“We’ve never recaptured what we had, Fana.” Her father’s voice thinned, as it did whenever he thought about how he’d lied to Mom during the first years of their marriage, hiding who he was. Her father’s guilt over their first daughter’s death always sat with him. “Our lives died in Miami. I can’t blame her for wanting to go back.”

“You also can’t excuse her, Dad. She’s using Dreamsticks to sleep at night.”

Fana hadn’t meant to blurt what she’d learned, but Dad was too blind to notice.

“She told me she’s stopped,” he said.

“She lied. She uses them to sleep.”

“I don’t smell it.”

“But you’re having vivid dreams, aren’t you? You must be,” Fana said. Even when the smell was faint, Dreamsticks were potent in their creation of lucid dreams. Dawit didn’t respond, but she saw realization dawning in his eyes. “She’s very good at disguising the smell with incense. That’s how she hides it. She was trancing for a month before we noticed, Dad. I’m not guessing about this—I know.”

Fana had promised her parents she would never again probe their minds without permission, but she’d broken her promise because of Mom’s glassy eyes. There would always be an exception, she reminded herself.

“Leave this to us, Fana,” Dad said sharply, annoyed.

Fine. But she needs your help, Dad—not your guilt and empathy
.

Her father inclined his head in a half bow, acknowledging the point.

“Should we have done that concert?” Fana said.

“Counsel in hindsight?” he said. “I believe that’s called ‘too late,’ sweetheart.”

“Yes. But I’m curious about what you think.”

Her father shrugged. “It was a mistake to do it in California. That personalizes it.”

“You’re right,” Fana said. “But what about the rest? The healing?” Even to herself, she sounded like a child trying to show off a crayon drawing, eager for her father’s approval.

“Your gift is a beauty to witness,” her father said. “The public nature is worrisome, but … you dazzle, Fana. You’ve come so far, so quickly. You’re full of love, like your mother.”

“And you,” she said.

Dad shrugged. “I love a select few. I love my brothers. My wife. And I love my daughter most of all. So be careful about exposing yourself, Fana. Let our blood do the healing. Don’t try to turn the eyes of the world on you. Not simply because of the hazards—it all becomes vanity. I’ve seen it happen too many times to count.” His voice went soft. “Khaldun.”

He almost never spoke of Khaldun, and certainly never in terms of his faults. The immortal who had created both sects of immortals had claimed to be two thousand years old, the recipient of blood a thief stole from Jesus on the cross. Khaldun had told her father the story more than five hundred years ago, when he passed his blood to fifty-nine men to create the Lalibela Colony in Ethiopia.

To Fana, it was a grand tale from a storybook: her father and his best friend, Mahmoud, had been traders in Ethiopia, and found a Storyteller with wondrous claims of Living Blood. They had each agreed to a ceremony, eating poisoned bread to stop their hearts … and the Living Blood brought them back to life. Forever.

Until her father had broken away to be with Fana’s mortal mother almost thirty years ago, the Life Brothers had mostly lived secluded underground, studying in Khaldun’s five Houses of Learning. Her father loved Khaldun, and considered him a prophet.

But Khaldun had left the Lalibela Colony soon after Fana was born, proclaiming to Dawit and Jessica that their child was Chosen to stand in a coming war between mortals and immortals. Most of
Fana’s life, a handful of loyal Life Brothers had treated her like a deity in their own quiet colony in Washington State, virtually outcasts from Lalibela.

Until Michel found her.

Like her, Michel had been
born
with the Blood. Their mortal mothers both died while pregnant, revived by immortal Blood, and their unborn children had gained the Blood and more.

And his sect, which called itself Sanctus Cruor, guarded the Blood as theirs alone. They adhered to a document called the Letter of the Witness with instructions to
Wrest this Blood from the hands of the wicked
—which, as far as Fana could tell, they interpreted to mean anyone who wasn’t chosen by Sanctus Cruor. The Letter also described a prophesied mate who fit Fana’s description so well that it was hard for her to deny that whoever had written the words—
Was it Khaldun?
—had known that she and Michel would be born two thousand years in the future.

Sanctus Cruor had tortured and killed Glow couriers to get closer to Fana, and Michel had nearly destroyed her family the way he had destroyed their Washington colony. Fana had offered a ten-year engagement to Michel to save her family.

But had Michel expected her to love no one?

Johnny had asked her to give him the Life Gift so he wouldn’t age or get sick. And she could do it—she or her father could perform the ceremony on any mortal they chose. But Fana had refused Johnny. She knew his true reason for wanting the Blood: he hoped to compete with Michel, and that kind of thinking would get Johnny killed.

All of them might as well be mortals in Michel’s shadow. His abilities were dazzling.

Fana’s body and mind were still wide awake from the concert, hungering for the floating feeling again. How much of her elation had been from healing, and how much from the pleasure of her power? She couldn’t tell.

The concert had shown her a power source she hadn’t known before. Without Johnny to urge her, she might not have learned for years.

Dawit sighed. “Your schoolgirl crush, sweetheart …”

Fana flinched. Had he peeked at her thoughts?

“It’s not only dangerous for both of you—it demeans you, Fana. You are too many things he is not. Every minute you spend indulging in your stolen joys with Johnny is time spent away from cultivating your gifts. You don’t have room for him. Let him go.”

Fana didn’t blink, but she couldn’t stop the stinging of her unshed tears. Her father’s words seemed to cut past her skin to her bones.

Dawit leaned over to kiss her forehead before he stood up. “It was a beautiful night, Fana,” he said. “I see why you chose the singer. I’m proud to see what you’re becoming. But if you love this singer, be careful where you take her. We’re very good at hurting the people we love—never meaning to. There may be consequences.”

Consequences ruled Fana’s life. She had avoided Michel for a year, and now evidence of Michel’s anger might be waiting in Nigeria.

“I hoped our engagement would change Michel,” Fana admitted, her voice quiet.

Dad’s chuckle was sour. “You’ve denied him even mental visits, Fana. Why should Michel change because he’s engaged? But he may one day
be
changed … by his wife.” The gentle way her father spoke the word
wife
, with tenderness, sounded like a betrayal.

Was he saying she should marry Michel? Fana shivered. “Dad …”

“I would not have counseled you to agree to marry this man, Fana,” Dawit said. “Like Menelik and Taytu, we could have chosen war against great odds. And if you refuse to honor your engagement, I’ll kill anyone who tries to take you to him, or die my last death defending you. But I think Michel feels a strong attachment to you. He gave you ten years to grow up, and we both know he didn’t have to. What do you gain by alienating him?”

She couldn’t speak to answer.

Dad’s advice was even wiser if Michel had already begun the Cleansing that was at the heart of his beliefs; his twisted interpretation of the Letter of the Witness. Michel expected her to help him exterminate most of mankind, saving only a chosen few. She’d
hoped a long engagement would delay him, but he might have begun without her. She had to behave more like Michel’s true fiancée, or she would lose any influence she had over him.

Fana leaned forward in her chair, bowing to her father.

Thank you for telling me the truth
, Fana said.

“It’s my birthright, Duchess,” Dawit said. “I speak with twin tongues: as your father, and as your war counsel. Don’t make provocative gestures unless you hope to provoke.”

Teka, her teacher, believed he could help her grow strong enough to stand against Michel one day—but not yet, and not by a long way. Michel was older, so his gifts had a thirty-year head start. She might need more time than she had.

She might have run out of time already.

Kano

Northern Nigeria

D
awit had flown directly to Kano after depositing Johnny Wright and Caitlin in Lalibela, and by three a.m. local time he had been in the air a full day. Some of his Brothers barely slept, but sleep was a mortal habit he had trained his body and mind to appreciate. He looked forward to joining Fana in the nearby private house they had rented. Dawit avoided lodging in hotels when he traveled with Fana: her rest was too easily disturbed by the dreams of guests.

Was this crisis in Nigeria as bad as it seemed?

Dawit’s nephew, Jared, looked shaken as he met him beneath the dripping awning of the Tahir Guest Palace hotel, his T-shirt damp from the rainy season’s last warm rainfall. Jared had three days’ worth of facial hair and was nearly four inches taller than Dawit, a giant like his father. Jared started to speak, but Dawit patted the young man’s shoulder to silence him.

Dawit signaled to a nearby porter who was hovering in hopes of a late-night tip.
“Ya yi. Na gode,”
Dawit told the porter in Hausa, dismissing him. That’s fine, thanks.

The porter’s smile grew forced as his thoughts slung obscenities. Dawit’s meditations with Fana were improving his mind arts so quickly that he could often hear thoughts without trying. Like his daughter, he now heard more than he wanted to.

“I hope you haven’t been exposed,” Dawit warned Jared, brushing
rainwater from Jared’s thin back as he ushered him across the hotel lobby’s tile floor.

“We wore the hot suits. I’m fine. But it’s getting worse, Uncle Dawit.”

“More dead?”

“No, thank God,” Jared said with haunted eyes. “But I knew one of the victims. Well, I’d
met
her. Do you remember the woman from Oxford I wanted to marry last year?” Dawit had no memory of his nephew having had a fiancée, but he nodded vaguely so that Jared would go on. “It’s her younger sister. Gabrielle.”

That was too mighty a coincidence! And the largest known outbreak was in Nigeria, where so much progress had been made with Glow, and too close to Ethiopia for comfort. Fana’s suspicions about Michel might be right after all. Why doubt her?