Blood Colony (26 page)

But his father was gone. Michel almost activated Voice Redial, but he decided to wait. He would save the best news for his return.

Michel’s mother refused to look upon Stefan or speak to him unless she was mentally compelled, which caused his father daily regret. But Michel would not be doomed to relive his father’s tragic entanglement. Fana would stay with him willingly. Forever.

Michel sped up, racing in the narrow space between two vehicles. He was so close to Fana that he could hear her heartbeat. Michel revved his engine.

Fana looked around, surprised. Michel grinned at her.

Fana smiled back at him, the very face of Paradise. She lifted her lithe fingers in a small, tentative wave.
Hi, Charlie,
she mouthed, and her caring eyes brightened every part of him.
Be careful,
she said, tapping gently on the glass.

Would Papa ever believe it?

His dear Fana loved him already.

Outside of Nogales, Mexico
10:30 a.m.

W
hen the knocker sounded against the double doors, Stefan watched from the balcony as the two doorkeepers scattered to greet the visitors. The bright uniforms of red and white were the only visual sign of the future splendor of Sanctus Cruor’s first church in North America. The regal coats looked out of place among the debris and tarp that lay in place of pews, but soon this church would gleam with gold, a beacon to visitors worldwide.

When the double doors opened, bright midmorning light unveiled sheets of dust motes floating in the vast space like blizzard snows.

Bishop Ian Paddock was pink-faced, winded from the steep walk outside. Cardinal Amadi Owodunni followed him, his crimson cardinal’s robe aflame on black skin. Paddock lifted his crimson robe at the collar to invite in a breeze but Owodunni was from Nigeria and thus more accustomed to the sun. When the two visitors paused at the bowl to cross themselves, Paddock applied the holy water as if to relieve the heat.

He should take better care of his delicate mortal heart,
Stefan thought.

Guided by the doorkeepers, Paddock and Owodunni carefully walked around a pile of lumber left behind by the work crew. The pews would be built of rare, expensive Amboyna burl imported from Southeast Asia. The floors, polished Italian marble.

Paddock and Owodunni were prime Sanctus Cruor followers—one with the media’s ear, the other sitting on the edge of St. Peter’s chair. Owodunni enjoyed worldwide popularity, and Paddock was both a friend of the pope’s secretary and well-liked by a wide array of conclave voters.

If these servants proved wise and true, mortal concerns would trouble them no more.

The doorkeepers drew pearl-handled handguns from the white leather shoulder holsters they wore above their robes, a ceremony that was as practical as it was theatrical. The guns startled Paddock and Owodunni. They did not yet understand.

If Stefan had known that Michel was bringing the girl today, he never would have scheduled a meeting with Paddock and Owodunni. But despite Fana’s importance, this meeting could not wait. The New Days could not wait.

Michel would be ready to lead when the girl walked beside him. The Letter had prophesied it. Soon, miracles would be broadcast for the world over to see, and there would be only one church. After that day, all weapons could be laid to rest. All the world would bow in obedience and give thanks, at last, to its proper Master.

Until then, there was much business to attend to.

Stefan waved to his guests from above. “Do not judge us by our disarray,” he called in English, their common language. “There is much left to do here. Please follow my good men to our temporary rectory.”

The rectory was more finished, with gleaming African mahogany walls that still smelled of the wood’s motherland. Scrolls of lambskin parchment lined the walls, written in Ge’ez. The sole painting was a ten-foot rendering of the golden Sanctus Cruor cross with a fist-sized ruby at its heart, representing the Blood. The painting stilled Stefan’s heart with its beauty.

The men’s eyes were hungry as they studied the rectory from his doorway.

“Do come in,” Stefan said.

Owodunni sank to both knees, presenting himself in the manner reserved for the pope. Paddock followed the African’s bow. “Most Excellent,” they said, heads lowered.

Stefan knew enough about both men to have them excommunicated—even arrested, in Paddock’s case. Paddock had curbed his taste for rough carnal games with prostitutes only recently, after being named bishop. Owodunni was a corrupt thief, and he defied doctrine by working secretly with African leaders to distribute condoms throughout the continent; Stefan couldn’t guess which actions his church would frown on more. Both men were flawed in their church’s eyes, but they were believers in the Blood. Both had tasted the Blood’s healing.

“Please rise, my friends,” Stefan said, lifting his arms to fan out the sleeves of his crimson robe. Stefan sat in the leather chair beside his library table and crossed his legs. “For the moment, let us forget ceremony. I’m sorry your trip was such a hardship.”

Both men protested that their travels had been no trouble, although Stefan knew they had spent hours stranded at the airport in Mexico City, and the mountain road to the church from Nogales was dusty and bumpy, still unpaved. Both of them were lying and didn’t realize it. Casual sin was so easy, even to the vigilant.

“The conference went well?” Stefan said. The International Health Alliance meeting in Mexico City had been attended by religious leaders from throughout the world, the occasion that had brought the two men to Stefan’s doorstep.

Owodunni grinned. “Praise God, there is finally cooperation from the United States.”

“My calls are returned immediately, Most Excellent,” Paddock said. “Extraordinary.”

Stefan’s friends at the CDC had helped mend relations between the U.S. and the clergy-led health alliance—for a price. Stefan and the CDC had history: The same friends had helped manufacture the U.S. government’s case against Glow, fanning talk of bioterrorism. Stefan had learned the art of recruiting mortal allies a hundred years ago. The United States government and Sanctus Cruor had widely separate agendas, but it was always useful to have friends.

Paddock and Owodunni were two of his favorites.

“I owed you thanks for my last visit with His Honor,” Stefan said. “Lolek was so ill. If not for your assistance…” He gestured delicately that it would have been too late.

Paddock’s jowl trembled. “I am only grateful to have been of service. God rest his soul.”

Lolek’s death still grieved Stefan. The pointlessness of it all! If Lolek had embraced the Blood when he’d met him in Poland, Sanctus Cruor would have had the papacy years ago. But Lolek had been stubborn from the start, with no stomach for talk of Cleansing.

Stefan opened the crystal decanter on the library table beside him. He poured three shots of tequila, a drink he far preferred to wine. Stefan flung back his glass and basked in his throat’s stinging. His visitors drained their glasses too, although their faces told Stefan that they loathed the taste. They were natural followers.

“Our departed friend was misguided,” Stefan said. “Lolek misunderstood God’s will. But times will soon be different, and God’s will won’t be mistaken. One day, the pope will never die.”

“By the Lord’s grace,” Paddock said. His eyes were afire.

“What a blessing,” Owodunni whispered.

Stefan poured a second round. “Our sitting pope is a ship’s captain with neither map nor compass. He revels in his ignorance of the Witness.”

Owodunni shook his head. “Such a sad dilemma.”

Paddock sighed, exasperated. “His rigidity is notorious, Most Excellent.”

“So when he, too, passes away from us…” Stefan said, “…the New Days will begin.”

The construction workers pounded below, and Michel and his bride were on their way to lead the future church. The moment was a marvel, as much as the day the Letter of the Witness had first come to his hands. His acquisition had been as unlikely as the farmer’s unearthing of the Coptic Gospels in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, or the goat herders’ discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the West Bank. Those frivolous texts were dwarfed by the prize Stefan had found in Ethiopia.

Stefan had spent hundreds of hours in prayer to ask God why
he
had been chosen. When he’d found the Letter, he had not attended church since he was a boy, having run away to fish the Red Sea when he was fourteen. A series of ventures had taken him from France to Yemen and, finally, to Ethiopia, where he had made a living in the coffee trade in Harer.

But guns had sold better than coffee. It had been 1894, and war had been on the horizon. Italy had been encroaching upon Ethiopian soil, and Stefan had sold guns to all customers with currency or barter.

One day, Stefan and an Englishman who’d smuggled Remingtons with him had been ambushed by bandits. The mortally wounded Brit had begged Stefan to take him by horseback to a shaded area near Harer’s wall, where he’d said he had buried a chest. The man had never given his name, only repeating that he’d wanted to retrieve something his father had given him. His father, he’d said, had been a soldier and a man of God, at odds with his conscience after the Battle of Maqdar in 1868.

Return what you find to its people,
he’d said. And then he’d drawn his last breath.

Stefan had dug to retrieve a chest from the earth, hoping for treasure. Instead, he’d found a document so old that its parchment had felt like dust to his fingers. The pages had been written in Ge’ez. Stefan had realized that it must have been one of the sacred texts taken by English troops during the battle twenty-six years earlier. Hidden somehow.

Stefan had planned to take the document to London to have its value assessed, but one night his houseboy had seen him studying the parchment, and he’d offered to translate the ancient, holy script. For four hours, by lamplight, Stefan had first heard the Letter of the Witness.

And his life had been forever changed.

I am only a storyteller, not worthy of worship,
the document had begun.

The story had been mesmerizing even to an unbeliever, but Stefan still had not comprehended God’s bigger plan until he’d reached the document’s last page: There, a smear of blood, still slightly moist to the touch, had made the pages stick. Words proclaimed a Ceremony to give eternal life.

And God had brought the Blood to Stefan alone!

If only Stefan could have spared the houseboy’s life that night. If only the excited youth would not surely have screamed the Letter’s secret to anyone who would listen.

“The Most High speaks well of you both,” Stefan said to Paddock and Owodunni. “He will want to discuss the future of the new church with his best servants. You, like Saint Peter, will be its architects.”

The men only nodded, awestruck. These two men were not yet at the highest level of Sanctus Cruor, when the Blood would be revealed to them, but they had been brought closer to the Truth than any others of weak blood. If they proved effective, they might be the first new initiates in fifty years. Since Teru.

Stefan opened the library table’s cabinet and pulled out his small ceremonial dagger of gold. The precious ore glowed on the eager men’s faces in flickering shards of light.

Stefan pricked his index finger and squeezed a fat bead of blood to his fingertip. He pressed his bloodied finger against Paddock’s forehead. Next, Owodunni’s.

The men’s eyes closed when he touched them, as if they could feel the heat from their Savior’s body. Stefan felt Owodunni shudder beneath his touch.

“You are Sanctus Cruor,” Stefan said. “Caretakers of the Blood.”

Together, the two men recited the scripture he had asked them to memorize from the Letter of the Witness: “‘And let he who stands over the Blood take every worldly measure to wrest this Blood from the hands of the wicked.’ Bless the Blood.”