My Soul to Take (19 page)

“To ask him to stop the plague.”

Of course. Jessica had avoided most conversations with Dawit and Alex about the new illness, but she should have known it was Michel. What else could Fana do, except follow her mother’s path straight to the man who could destroy her?

Jessica shrugged. “He’s got you, baby.”

“It’s not like that, Mom.”

“Oh no, he’s got you good and tight, like a fly in a honey jar,” Jessica said. She sounded more like her own mother, probably because she spent so much time with Bea now. “The sticks mess with my memory, but I remember even if you don’t: you came to this room a year ago and said, ‘Mom, if I try to go back there before the ten years are up, you know I’m not in control. It’s him.’”

Fana’s placid expression wavered as Jessica grazed one of Fana’s doubts.
Stick around, baby girl, I’ve got a million of ’em
, Jessica thought. The first days after their return to Lalibela had been better, when Fana had needed a mother again. Finding friendship with Fana hadn’t blunted the pain of losing her mother, friends, and world in one horrible night, but it had been a shiny trinket in the rubble.

Now that was over. Fana had her world of meditation and instruction with Teka, and Dawit was happy to surf the havoc with Fana when she needed him. Havoc was his specialty.

Jessica was fine with her quiet world in the dream. Years ago, Dawit had warned her that she would lose everyone she loved, but people always lost themselves or everyone they knew; the Blood didn’t change that.

“Seems funny,” Jessica said. “Here you are stressing about me and a little smoke in the air, and look at you headed straight to Hell. You need to think about your own choices, Fana.”

“It’s not a happy choice, Mom.”

“What Michel does or doesn’t do isn’t your responsibility. But you know that. And you didn’t come for my advice, so I won’t waste it.” Was she so short with Fana because that was who she had become, or because she was searching for a way to reach her?

“You don’t think I should go?” Fana said. “Even to prevent suffering?”

“Stop it,” Jessica said. “If all he had to do was spread a little misery to get you back, why did you bother to leave him?”

“Five hundred dead already,” Fana said. “Phoenix’s mother-in-law. Issa’s sister.”

Fana’s voice was at the end of a tunnel. There was enough residue from the Dreamsticks in the room’s sweetly scented air to make the colors fade when Jessica tried hard enough. Bees crawled erratically across Fana’s face, wings flitting; gone when Jessica blinked.

“You’ve done worse by accident,” Jessica said. “People die, Fana. Now they’re home.”

The hurricane once had been a taboo subject, a primal wound between them. Maybe Fana had grown beyond her trauma, but Jessica couldn’t forget witnessing her toddler daughter’s transformation into a terrible, foreign entity with power over the sky, riding the Shadows.

Michel swam in their stink, and Fana would go back to the Shadows, too, one day. Jessica had known that since Fana was three. It was too much power to ignore.

“What happened to the woman who raised me, Mom?” Fana said. “Who taught me that it was worth risking everything to help people?”

Jessica tried to feel hurt, or pain, but all that came was a weary laugh. For all Fana’s gifts, the girl was still so blind sometimes. “I wouldn’t sacrifice you for five million people, Fana. Or five billion.”

“I can’t just hide from him.”

Talking to Fana was hard work. Jessica looked for a watch on her wrist, found none. Day or night, what did it matter?
This
world was the dream, this place without clocks where time fled and peeled everyone away.

Kira should be up by now. Time to knock on her door and see if she was dressed. Since Kira had turned five, she preferred to dress herself. David was going to drive them to Metro Zoo in the minivan after they picked up her mother from church. Jessica could almost taste the cheesy arepas at the concessions stand. Her mouth watered. Kira loved arepas!

“Mom, don’t,” Fana said. “Forget your ghosts for now.”

A surge of anger made the edges of the room sharp and clear. Jessica stepped closer to Fana, almost lashed out to slap her daughter’s face. Maybe she was only afraid to hit her, because she wanted the contact so badly that her fingers were unsteady.

“You stay out of my damn head!”
Jessica said between gritted teeth.

Fana’s face gave way to a tiny, childlike alarm. How could Fana stand against Michel if she couldn’t control her impulses at home?

“I’m sorry,” Fana said. “I didn’t mean to …”

“You better learn how to keep out of places you don’t belong,” Jessica said. “You hear me? Learn fast. Screw around with anyone else you want—but not me. And not your father.”

“Dad doesn’t need you to speak for him. He isn’t the one who’s hiding.”

The slap came before Jessica realized her hand had flown free. Fana’s cheek rang brightly beneath Jessica’s palm. The old cliché was true: the slap hurt her more than Fana. Once, there might have been tears from both of them. One of them. But their locked eyes were mirrors, dry as bones. Fana’s hand brushed her cheek, as if to wipe away a gnat.

“I’m very sorry,” Fana said, as placid as her teacher. The deeper Teka took Fana into her mind’s ocean, the more she sounded like she was reciting lines from a script. “I didn’t mean to trip over your feelings about Dad.”

“Stay out of my head,” Jessica said. “Find your way back into yours.”

Fana breathed a small sigh, a rare display of impatience. “Like I said, I wanted to tell you first. I’m going to Michel. I’ll have guards, so I won’t go alone. I’d like you and Dad to come, but that’s your decision.”

Jessica closed her eyes, withering at the mention of guards. What could guards do?

This is not my child
, she told herself, the mantra that had helped her survive the night of bees and shadows. Back when being Fana’s mother was all the power she needed to save her.

When Jessica opened her eyes again, Fana was gone.

Kira’s door waited for her, halfway open. Kira’s cheerful, melodic voice was singing “Stormy Weather.” Her daughter’s unspoiled voice invited her inside.

D
awit waited for a challenger in the Circle.

Berhanu and Fasilidas sometimes sparred with him, but they were tending to Fana. Besides, Dawit had faced them too often in the woods of their lost Washington colony. They had physical weaknesses—Dawit was faster than most of his Brothers—but their mind arts made them nearly impossible to best because they predicted his movements.

Worse, Berhanu’s mind was strong enough to deflect blows! He was a menace.

But their tutelage had sharpened him. Dawit had improved his mind as quickly through fighting as he had by meditating with Fana while she guided him. He needed no less focus in the Circle. His patience had been decimated in the mortal world, but he was learning again. His senses must be sharp for what lay ahead.

But Dawit was an outsider, invisible. Even Brothers who would take pleasure in dismembering him did not honor him in the Circle. To his Brothers, he and Fana had split the colony apart and brought a wolf to their doorstep, and Dawit couldn’t claim otherwise.

Dawit stood at the Circle’s center, waiting in the bright ring of light. After five hundred years, wearing a mask in the Circle was only a tradition. They knew one another too well. Their bodies were static, resisting new muscle or fat, so they easily recognized one another despite the semisheer, skintight white masks that hid their faces and eyes. Originally, Khaldun had used the masks to train them to fight without personal animus; rage should not guide them, he said. But, like everything else in the Lalibela Colony, the practice had outlived its inspiration.

“What a heartbreaking sight!” the voice boomed from the darkness behind him. “A bride all dressed up, left alone at the altar. And quite comely! Was your father’s dowry so meager?”

Dawit smiled inside his mask. Not only did he have an opponent—but one of his most reliable, and the Brother he loved most. When had Mahmoud returned to the colony?

“I’m too high-spirited, I think,” Dawit said. “I castrate every groom-to-be.”

Mahmoud’s laugh was hearty as always, echoing in the empty upper circle, where spectators might gather to watch the matches. The Circle always reminded Dawit of a beehive.

Mahmoud strode to the Circle’s periphery. He was already dressed for combat, in a matching white lambskin waistcloth. Mahmoud was masked, but even if Dawit had not known Mahmoud’s voice, the olive skin and onyx ponytail would have betrayed him. Like him, Mahmoud was most at home in a fight.

Mahmoud carried a carved mahogany staff in each hand, tossing one to Dawit, who snatched it from the air. Dawit closed his fingers around the staff, a tight grip. The challenger chose the initial weapon—but
he
would choose the next one, as the winner.

Mahmoud removed his mask with a swift gesture, and Dawit followed his example. Good. He had questions for Mahmoud, and there would be no thought of conversation once Mahmoud entered the Circle.

Dawit could remember few times when Mahmoud’s beard had been so full. Dawit would never tell him so, but he looked like Khaldun.

“How goes the search?” Dawit said, the customary greeting to a Searcher.

Mahmoud’s grim sneer made Dawit wish he had chosen another greeting.

“How fares the father of the bride?” Mahmoud said.

Touché.

Mahmoud had been in Khaldun’s disciplined cadre of Searchers who were responsible for bringing home Brothers who had stayed upworld too long. In flight from Mahmoud, Dawit had suffered a living death when he lost his old life in Miami. Dawit refused to
blame Mahmoud for that heartache—
he
had made the choice to love a mortal woman and try to pass Kira the Blood—but Jessica might never forgive either of them.

No small miracle that he counted Mahmoud as either a friend or a Brother.

“Michel has unleashed a plague,” Dawit said.

“Oh, I know well what he has unleashed,” Mahmoud said, chuckling.

Dawit’s back went rigid. He probed at Mahmoud, but his friend’s thoughts were hidden. He did not believe Mahmoud had a hand in the infection, but Mahmoud had surprised him before. “You know this how, Brother?”

A sarcastic smile. “As you reminded me, Dawit, I am a Searcher. It is my duty to know. There are twenty-two of us upworld. The monkeys are lucky that only ten have gone to Michel. Always bearing gifts, I might add. One of those gifts was a plague.”

Ten! Dawit had suspected that Wendimu and Alem were with Michel, given their long tutelage in the House of Science and their vocal disdain for mortals, but so many others?

“You jest,” Dawit said.

“I never jest so near the Circle. It’s the worst of luck.”

“But Teka has perceived nothing of it. Or Fana.”

“Teka!” Mahmoud laughed like a schoolboy. “Michel protects them, Dawit. Teka is blinded to Michel. And Fana apparently shares her teacher’s blindness.”

“Yet, you see more.” Skepticism soured Dawit’s voice. Mahmoud’s mind arts were crude, beyond masking and basic projection. Where would Mahmoud gain the insight? Dawit tried another probe, failing again. Mahmoud did not want his thoughts known, even to a friend.

“Wendimu tried to recruit me,” Mahmoud said. “He couldn’t contain his glee over the disease. ‘The Cleansing has begun!’ He expects me to join him at Shangri-la any day.”

Mahmoud’s silenced thoughts worried Dawit. The mask for the Circle was only a costume; cloaked thoughts were far more troublesome.

“Will you join them?” Dawit said.

Mahmoud shrugged. “Michel’s plans for the monkeys don’t disturb my sleep. But why would I lie with that pompous tyrant? Wendimu! All of them are fools eager to give up their minds to another, hoping to find Khaldun again.” In one breath, he condemned both Michel and the two-thousand-year-old man who had created the Life Colony.

Once, Khaldun had been their God.

Khaldun’s offenses were myriad: he had built the Life Colony out of a selfish wish to have captive students. He had used his advanced mind arts to keep them placid in the Lalibela Colony, denying them their rights to the world above. He had spawned a second family of immortals, never revealing that there were others like Michel who might challenge them.

And he had created Fana as a mate for Michel! Even if Khaldun himself had stolen the blood of Christ in the burial cave instead of the unnamed Storyteller he always claimed, Dawit was angriest at Khaldun for the treacherous path he had laid out for his child. Had Khaldun allowed him to remain with Jessica in Miami so long only to create Fana? Had Khaldun always planned to sacrifice Dawit’s first child to create his second? What if the madness that had overcome him in Miami had been Khaldun’s doing all along?

He would never truly know.

“If the girl were my daughter,” Mahmoud said, “Michel would be ash.”

Dawit laughed a bitter laugh, though laughter was far from his heart. “If Fana were your daughter, you would never have met her.” He and Mahmoud had sired dozens of nameless, faceless children. “Michel may yet be ash. But I have learned patience, Mahmoud.”

“What you call patience is only enchantment, Dawit. You believe Khaldun’s nonsense in that Letter, a prophecy that ties her to him. When will you free yourself from his lies?”

“Fana believes she’s the best match against him. Her gifts bear it out. Let us see.”

“You’re like the others scurrying to Michel—a believer in search of a prophet!” Mahmoud said. “I never thought I would see you leave your battles to a child.”

Mahmoud’s blows with the staff would carry far less sting than his indictment. Dawit hoped he would not one day wish he had heeded Mahmoud. Fana had unpredictable weaknesses, and Michel’s mind arts far outmatched hers. Yet, she had nearly killed Michel when she saw through his mortal disguise and realized how he had tricked her. Fana could protect herself. He prayed so.

“Where did you see Wendimu?” Dawit said, choosing a softer topic.

“I was looking for Khaldun in caves in Pakistan. A mystic’s dream led me there.” Mahmoud might be more a prisoner to Khaldun than any of their Brothers, fueled by rage as he searched for answers from the man he had once worshipped.