Blood Colony (20 page)

Sanctus Cruor was supposed to have been finished.
To a man,
Khaldun had said when he’d finally emerged from his meditations two years later.

Now Dawit understood the torture. The murders. It was Sanctus Cruor’s way.

“How did you learn this?” Dawit said.

“A Brother sent them to you, Dawit,” Mahmoud said. “He never agreed with the Lalibela Council’s vote to allow you to distribute the Blood. The priest who died in Seattle is surely Sanctus Cruor. I wager your little colony is not far from where he was found.”

“Who would betray his own?” Dawit said. “Who would be coward enough to sell us to our enemy rather than take us himself?”

Mahmoud hesitated, his face pained. He was silent.

Dawit’s throat locked. Jessica already believed Mahmoud was a monster because of the horrors he had committed against their children and her sister, but those actions had been in service to the Covenant, not out of malice or cruelty. Dawit would not know what to think if Mahmoud had sent Sanctus Cruor to him.

Dawit’s hand holding his gun went rigid. “If it is you, Brother, our talking ends now.”

Mahmoud shook his head. “
Salam,
Dawit. Not me. Negash.”

Grief overwhelmed anger, but it was tinged with relief. Dawit believed Mahmoud; he thought he could feel the truth of his words in the gentle murmuring of his thoughts, not unsettled with lies. Negash! He had been one of Khaldun’s most diligent pupils in meditation. What had Sanctus Curor offered Negash?

“Did you think there would be no consequences, Dawit?” Mahmoud said, almost gently.

“Of course I knew,” Dawit said. He stared at his plate of cooling food.

“Then you shouldn’t look so surprised, Brother. And I come bearing congratulations: According to Negash, your daughter is to be married.”

Dawit’s heart froze. “What do you mean?”

“Don’t toy with him about Fana,” Teferi said. “Have decency, Mahmoud.”

Mahmoud shrugged, discovering the dessert before him. He plunged his finger into the heart of the pie and tasted. “Scalding,” he said. “And you gave specific instructions.”

Dawit jabbed Mahmoud with his foot. “Tell me about Fana.”

Even if Mahmoud had come as a counselor, a kick was a taunt to him. “Tread gently, Dawit,” Mahmoud said.

Dawit didn’t blink. “My patience has been epic. I must be kindred to Christ after all.”

If they must shed each other’s blood tonight, so be it.

AND WHO ELSE IN THIS PLACE WILL SUFFER FOR YOUR MUTUAL VANITY?
Teferi’s voice said.
I PREFER NOT TO SPEND THE NIGHT IN JAIL OR A MORGUE. IF MAHMOUD COMES AS A FRIEND, GIVE HIM A BERTH TO PROVE HIS FRIENDSHIP.

Mahmoud half-smiled. “I was too slow to catch some of that, Teferi, but the gist tells me you’re a wiser man than when I knew you.”

“We have all changed,” Teferi said. “New times compelled it.”

Dawit softened his voice. “Tell me about Fana, Mahmoud.”

“Sanctus Cruor is on a holy mission to find her,” Mahmoud said, avoiding his eyes. “Teka and the Brothers who followed you here aren’t the only ones who consider the girl divine. But Khaldun misled us.”

“Misled us how?” Dawit said.

“Fana was not the only one born with the Blood,” Mahmoud said. “There is another.”

“How?” Teferi said, sagging in the booth. His face was mystified. Crestfallen.

“Sanctus Cruor,” Mahmoud said. “They manipulated their Blood in ways Khaldun would not have sanctioned. A child was created—the child of a woman they passed the Blood to while pregnant. She gave birth to a boy who came into the world much as your child did.”

Dawit never would have passed Jessica his blood if he had known she was pregnant, for fear of the Ceremony’s unknown effects on a fetus. Fetuses did not share blood with their mothers, so when Jessica’s heart had stopped during the Ceremony, a fetus might simply have died in the womb even after he’d injected Jessica with blood. Instead, Fana’s tiny unborn body had been rejuvenated as a part of her mother, her dead limbs brought back to life before she was born.

Mahmoud went on. “Sanctus Cruor considers Fana to be his rightful mate, according to writings they adhere to, something about ‘mates immortal born.’ It has the ring of Greek myth: Hera and Zeus, or the Yorubas’ Obatala and Odudua. I’m no student of Christianity, but their text is some sort of Apocrypha. It is not from any of the eighty-one books in the Ethiopian Orthodox canon, and it certainly was never approved at Nicea. I have never seen it, but Negash believes the Sanctus Cruor document. Negash sends his apologies for any pain he has brought to you. He is a true believer, I think.”

An apology did nothing for Dawit now, but he was glad his Brother retained that much honor, at least. “We were all true believers once,” Dawit said. “We believed in Khaldun.”

“Yes, some of us more than others,” Mahmoud said. He pushed the apple pie away from him, toward Dawit. “You see what came of that.”

No one must know. No one must join.
No women in the colony. No race of immortals to multiply ungoverned, ruling over mankind. Khaldun’s wisdom was clearer each day.

“When was the other child supposedly born?” Teferi said.

“Fifty years ago,” Mahmoud said. “In Italy. Perhaps Khaldun knew, perhaps he did not. In any case, your idolization of Fana would seem misplaced, Teferi. The boy came first.”

“Born into monstrosity,” Teferi scoffed.

Mahmoud glanced at Dawit over his paper napkin. “And what does that make Fana?”

Dawit blinked. “My child. My only one.”

Teferi’s thoughts crashed through Dawit:
POLICE ARE COMING. THREE.

Teferi’s eyes motioned left, and Dawit turned around to gaze through the picture window. He saw a parking lot lighted only by the diner windows. Two sheriff’s cruisers had pulled up in the darkness. A trucker spoke to three deputies animatedly, gesturing inside. The deputies wore cowboy hats, a scene out of a movie western.

Almost simultaneously, the trucker and three police officers met Dawit’s eyes through the glass. The deputies were young, no doubt overzealous and easily frightened. The worst luck.

Mahmoud followed Dawit’s eyes. “A nest of pests,” he muttered.

Dawit slid his gun back inside his jeans. “We must leave.”

TOO LATE,
Teferi said.
LET ME WORK ON THEM, I BEG YOU.

The door jangled, and the three deputies were inside in a carefully spaced procession, only yards from the table. Trying to flee would be futile. Two of them, the ones hanging back a few steps, already had their hands floating comfortably close to their weapons, holsters unlatched. Dawit kept his hand on the butt of his gun. If they couldn’t flee, he should draw. Mahmoud would follow his lead, and their problem would be solved.

“Work on them how?” Dawit asked Teferi aloud, in Arabic. “To influence them?”

Teferi nodded, looking uncertain, and Dawit’s spirits fell. Was faith in Teferi their only hope of avoiding arrest, or worse?

EASE YOUR FACE. SMILE. I’LL WORK ON THEM. KEEP MAHMOUD CALM.
Teferi’s smile was congenial, but not enough to compensate for Mahmoud’s hostile scowl.

With his best grin, Dawit released his gun. He slowly moved both of his hands to the tabletop and folded them in a docile pose.

Mahmoud’s eyes mooned as if he thought Dawit mad. Then, slowly, Mahmoud’s hand retreated from his pocket and drummed on the tabletop. Mahmoud smirked.

“Help you, Officers?” Dawit said in his easygoing American accent, second nature by now.

EASY WORK

Mahmoud’s projection was clumsy and full of noise, but Dawit heard his meaning.

We will try another way,
Dawit tried to tell him with his eyes.

Dawit held his smile steady for the deputy standing over their table, whose tag identified him as Sgt. Hayes. His face was Nordic and square-jawed. He was only about twenty-six, but he was the eldest of the three and carried himself with confidence and experience. This one had seen combat, Dawit realized. A military reservist. He wore a wedding ring.

It would be a shame if he died over nothing.

“Everything all right at this table?” Sgt. Hayes said. He scanned each of their eyes, but his gaze fell on Mahmoud. To Sgt. Hayes, Mahmoud looked like a bad memory from Baghdad.

Mahmoud returned his gaze, not blinking.

“Can I see your identification?” Sgt. Hayes said. He spoke to Mahmoud and no one else.

Dawit’s heart caught. If Mahmoud reached into his jacket, he would bring out his gun.

“I don’t understand,” Dawit said, his tone steady. “We’re just sitting here talking, Officer. Is this some kind of profiling?” The word made Sgt. Hayes’s lips twitch.

Sgt. Hayes and Mahmoud grappled with their eyes. Sgt. Hayes’s fingers fanned out across his hip, looking for his holster. Was Teferi’s mental work entirely useless?

Remembering his white-haired disguise, Dawit engaged the deputy as an elder. “Son, excuse my friend,” Dawit went on, his tone almost jovial. “You think he’s looking at you in a disrespectful way, and I understand that. He has an attitude. He’s a first-class asshole, in fact. He was my student at Yale, and he was an asshole then, too.”

The deputy didn’t smile. But he also didn’t interrupt.

Dawit went on: “He just flew in from LaGuardia today, and he said airport security’s gotten so bad that he got scanned three times, pulled out of line twice. He’s exhausted and he’s hungry, and he feels discriminated against every day. So when you officers come in here like this and head straight for this table, it makes him very upset.”

Dawit didn’t expect his babbling to turn the deputies away, but at least he might gain enough time for Teferi’s mental manipulations to find some footing.

Sgt. Hayes looked at Mahmoud, considering him. “Yale, huh?”

“A long time ago,” Mahmoud said, his face softening into a smile that was hardly better than his scowl. “All of my professors were exemplary, except one. That one was a fool.”

“May I reach for my wallet?” Dawit asked Sgt. Hayes, hands held up in clear sight.

Slowly, Sgt. Hayes nodded. The deputy’s reflexes seemed to have slowed, unless it was Dawit’s wishful thinking. Was the deputy allowing himself to be led?

Dawit leaned forward, exaggerating his motion as he reached into his back pocket for a leather wallet. His collection of phony identification was elaborate, down to staged photos with his “grandchildren.” Credit cards colored in gold and platinum bespoke money. No one wants to incite anyone with money, and Reginald Hutchins had money.

“As you see, I’m Reggie Hutchins,” Dawit said. “I’m a deacon at my church, I’m on the faculty at Yale, and I write books. I was practicing my Arabic with my former student. My friend Cedric and I here have been studying Arabic for years. We always thought it might come in handy one day if we could understand people who don’t know we’re listening. Amen?”

Sgt. Hayes didn’t move. Dawit was almost certain Teferi must be working on him, softening his impulses. The other two deputies shifted nervously, waiting for Sgt. Hayes’s lead.

The diner’s other patrons watched in uneasy silence. Since he had an audience, Dawit raised his voice to be heard: “Now, these fine folks sitting around us, I’m willing to bet there isn’t an Arabic speaker among them. So when they heard the language, it came as a shock. Most of us only hear it on the news, spoken by people who are our enemies. I know what that’s like. I’m not ashamed to say I don’t much care to hear people speaking Spanish around me. No offense to anyone here. But it just always seems like they’re talking about
you
.”

Laughter from the patrons, none of whom, apparently, were fond of Spanish. Shared bigotries create fast friends. The laughter quelled the itching in the younger deputies’ eyes.

“Sir,” Sgt. Hayes said to Mahmoud, “are you an American citizen?”

“I sure am,” Mahmoud said. His accent sounded Kansas-bred.

Sgt. Hayes almost winced. “I’m sorry you had a rough time at the airport, but I need to see your ID. Please. I apologize for the inconvenience, and I won’t take up too much of your time.” He glanced at Teferi, an afterthought. “You too, sir. Sorry.”

Teferi smiled and nodded. “Of course.”

Dawit’s eyes pleaded with Mahmoud. “He asked with great respect. I’m sure that if you show this man your identification, he’ll be reasonable and go on his way. Don’t be so sensitive, my young friend.”

Mahmoud’s lips curled downward as he slowly reached for his back pocket. Dawit prayed no gun would emerge. Instead, Mahmoud brought out a driver’s license, dangling it for Sgt. Hayes to see. “I live in California,” Mahmoud said. “San Francisco.”

Sgt. Hayes studied the license, then Mahmoud’s face. Then the license again. “And you are…Mr. Habib? Frank Habib?”

“If that’s what it says.”

Dawit nearly groaned. Teferi’s eyes closed; his effort was too great to conceal.

Sgt. Hayes flipped to Dawit’s license next. Then, Teferi’s. Dawit knew that he and Teferi had impeccable identification, but he had no idea if Mahmoud’s alias was registered in the five-year-old national database. The national ID scanner all police officers wore hung from the deputy’s belt, but Sgt. Hayes didn’t reach for it. Instead, he handed the licenses back to them, one by one.