Blood Colony (43 page)

Michel’s eyes slashed her, striking a blow before they drifted away again.

Fana’s heart pounded.
I’m asking for mercy, Michel. Please don’t make me like your mother.
This time, Michel didn’t glance her way.

Mahmoud and Teferi staggered to the seats directly across from Bocelli and Romero, who now wore dark tailored suits instead of monks’ robes. The dinner had been delayed so that Michel’s attendants could awaken after their encounter with Johnny. The four healing immortals were weakened but angry, trading glares. Johnny and Caitlin watched Michel’s attendants with nervousness, protecting each other as best they could by sitting close, staring daggers.

Dad sat beside Fana, across from Michel’s father, and their history was plain on their faces, too. Dad had killed Michel’s father twice before, and he wanted a chance to get it right.

Stefan sounded a small bell, and the angry silence in the room became a mandate. The children’s clothes rustled as they were ushered through the doors. To bed, Fana hoped.

“
Benedetto sia il Sangue,
” Stefan said.

Everyone at Michel’s table repeated the Italian words, except his mother. The language was different, but Fana recognized the words Gramma Bea had finished every mealtime grace with:
Bless the Blood
. They were strangers to each other, but Khaldun had made them cousins.

Stefan stood. With careful precision, he lowered himself to his knees, at Michel’s feet. He gazed upward, arms extended in posed piety, as if he could see the sky. “And so it was written, ‘One day shall be born a child of the Blood. And he will be a male child. Of all the creatures who walk, he will be the Most High.’”

Fear’s claw assailed Fana. The room grew cold, draping her bare arms in gooseflesh. Fana had never read the Letter of the Witness, but Michel’s memories in her head echoed Stefan’s words: “And it was also written, ‘He will wait fifty rains to meet his mate. And she will be known by the name of Light.’”

Fana
meant
“light”
in Amharic! She had chosen that name for herself when she was three.
Even my name is in the Letter.
That thought flew into Fana’s mind just as a flock of white doves was released above them, flapping toward the rafters. Specks of down floated above them.

“‘And so a man and woman, mates immortal born, will create an eternal union at the advent of the New Days. And all of mankind shall know them as the bringers of the Blood.’ So says the Witness…and so it has come to pass.”

Stefan prostrated himself before Michel, eyes closed. Then Stefan stood up and raised a shot glass. “To the New Days,” he said, gazing at Dawit with a sardonic gleam in his eye.

Before Fana could send him a warning, Dad was on his feet. “Our women, children and mortals should be released,” Dad said. “Nothing to be said among us concerns them.”

Michel kept his eyes away from Fana, but his jaw flexed hard.

Stefan smiled a bitter smile at Dawit. “Every word spoken here concerns your entire party,
mi amico,
” he said. “Don’t test my hospitality.”

Sit down, Dad.

Fana’s private command. Reluctantly, Dawit sat.

Stefan’s face warred between anger and phony civility. He sat, too. “I will speak for the Most High. Who speaks for Fana?”

“
We do,
” Jessica said. Her voice rang in the hall. “Her parents.”

Contempt played on Stefan’s lips as he gave Dawit a mocking gaze. “She speaks for you?”

“No more delays,” Dad said. “This treatment is an outrage.”

Stefan’s eyes were ice. “Be glad the Most High is kinder than his father.”

“Be glad your son is not so easily slain,” Dawit said, and Mahmoud chuckled. Romero and Bocelli snapped warnings to Mahmoud in Italian.

“Or so easily captured,” Stefan said.

“Soldiers are a great advantage to the weak,” Dawit said. “With the exception of that feeble army at Adwa, as I remember.”

“Adwa was a different time, African,” Stefan said, teeth gritted.

“We’re all tired,” Jessica said, interrupting their volley. “It’s late. Our family is grieving. We’ve tried to respect your traditions, but you have no right to keep us here. Please let us go.” Mom was the best diplomat Fana knew.

MARRY ME TONIGHT,
Michel said to Fana.
AND YOUR PEOPLE ARE FREE.

Fana glanced at Michel, startled. Even now, Michel’s eyes stayed away while he languidly dipped his flat bread in olive oil. His smooth face stung her with Charlie’s image.

You know I can’t do that,
Fana said.

Michel flung the bread to his plate, annoyed. His sudden movement made her jump.

Stefan’s father bickered with her parents, but Fana only heard Michel’s breathing.

YOU ARE VERY CARELESS WITH YOUR LOVED ONES, FANA.

Threats are your father’s language. Try to find your own.

AND BRAZEN! YOU SPEAK YOUR FATHER’S LANGUAGE TOO.

“Fana will be wed to the Most High!” Stefan said, suddenly shouting as he looked at her. “This dinner is only a gesture of goodwill. What is written is what shall be!”

Don’t let him speak for you, Michel. Talk to me.

HAVEN’T I TRIED?

Look at me, Michel.

At last, his eyes rested on hers, large and brown, the color of sandalwood, swathed in his mother’s thicket of black eyelashes. Fana’s skin charged under his gaze, even now.

I came to offer you my terms, Michel.

He muted a condescending smile. His dismissal made her angry, but she carefully filtered anger from her thoughts before she went on:
No good would come of a marriage between us tonight. The only way you can keep me here is against my will. Is that the marriage you want?

I WANT THE UNION THAT WAS PROPHESIED.

And I want to be a Bringer of the Blood.

THEN YOUR FEARS ARE ANSWERED IN THE LETTER.

I was three when I told my parents I wanted to change my name to
Fana,
which means “light.” During that time my first teacher, Khaldun, visited me regularly through meditation. My parents believe his visits may have awakened my gifts prematurely.

I SAW THAT IN YOUR MEMORIES.

Khaldun wrote that letter, Michel.

WHAT WOULD THAT CHANGE?

Maybe he helped his own prophecy come true. He was guiding me.

GUIDING YOU TO ME, FANA.

Fana sighed. Was Michel right? Had she been destined to be paired with Michel hundreds of years before she was born?

Michel’s face softened, and he leaned forward slightly.
I WILL NOT TOUCH YOUR MASK. MARRY ME TONIGHT, AND YOU WILL KEEP A SEPARATE CHAMBER.

I would never adjust to something I didn’t choose.

A silent server slipped beside Fana and ladled tomato soup into her bowl. Fana’s gaze with Michel never broke, even as the thick-boned woman came in and out of her vision.

I WOULD WAIT FOR YOU TO FEEL AT HOME HERE.

You are not patient, Michel.

I WILL LEARN.

Bocelli and Romero joined the chorus of arguing voices at the table. Silverware clattered when Romero slapped his palm on the table.

She and Michel had worked it out just in time, Fana thought. She wasn’t sure how she should feel about her decision, but she was glad a decision had come.

“Silence, please.”

Fana spoke aloud for the first time. Her heart thundering, she pushed her chair back and stood to preside over her future. She raised her water glass. “Michel and I are to be married. As of tonight, we are engaged.”

Michel looked stunned.
ENGAGED?
As if the word were foreign to him.

Jessica tugged Fana’s elbow hard, but Fana ignored her mother’s silent plea.

“We will marry at a future time,” Fana said. “Mutually agreed upon.”

SIX MONTHS,
Michel offered.

Ten years,
Fana told him gently. She would prefer to delay by twenty years, or fifty, but he would never agree. Even now, Michel sat ramrod straight, flushed with anger again.

Fana went on: “During our engagement, I will be free to live and do as I please. I will conduct my blood mission without interference from Sanctus Cruor, or Sanctus Cruor’s agencies. If Sanctus Cruor hurts any parties involved in my mission, or patients who have received my blood, the engagement is called off.”

Stefan barked a laugh. “This child is mad!”

Fana didn’t hear the rest. Her mother whispered
no
in one ear, her father in the other.

ONE YEAR,
Michel said.
NO MORE. YOUR MISSION CONFLICTS WITH THE LETTER. “WREST THIS BLOOD FROM THE HANDS OF THE WICKED.”

“My guiding principle,” Fana said, ignoring Michel, “will be the words of our great teacher, Khaldun, as he wrote in the document you know as the Letter of the Witness: ‘All of mankind will know them as the Bringers of the Blood.’”

Her recitation of the Letter brought silence to the room.

“Our engagement will last ten years,” Fana said.

Michel shot to his feet, and the fury in his eyes made Fana’s knees weak. She might be bleeding soon, or her parents, or she might feel Michel piloting her face toward his for a kiss. It took all of Fana’s will to hold Michel’s gaze without stammering. “At the end of that engagement, if I am in love with Michel, we will marry.”

“You play dangerous games, child,” Stefan said.

“It’s not a game,” Fana said. “Those are my terms. Now, you will release us.”

All eyes were on Michel, who braced himself on closed fists on the tabletop as he leaned closer to her. Mom clung to Fana’s hand as if to protect her from a blow, and Dad coiled his fingers around his knife. If Dad twitched, Michel would happily plunge the knife into his throat to punish him for hurting Stefan.

The world felt fragile, suddenly.

LOVE HAS NO SAY IN THIS,
Michel said.
IF I ALLOW YOU TO WALK AWAY TONIGHT, IF I ALLOW ALL YOU ASK, YOU WILL RETURN TO MARRY ME.

Fana avoided her parents’ eyes, but she glanced toward Johnny, who looked aghast, as everyone at her table did. Johnny was a good person, as strong in his way as Michel was in his. Fana would have chosen a man more like Johnny.

I agree,
she said so only Michel could hear.

THREE YEARS.
Michel still believed he had room to bargain.

It’s ten years, Michel. You say we will rule for eternity, but you can’t wait for me a decade? This is your testament of love. If you do not love me, make me your prisoner now. But I warn you, I will destroy myself at my first chance. I can make you the happiest man who has ever lived, or the loneliest. You have seen what we can be together. The choice is yours.

Neither of them blinked. Fana’s nervous heart squeezed a river through her veins.

Michel’s face knitted as his red-faced father whispered harshly in his ear. But Michel’s eyes never left hers, and as long as she had his eyes, she had a chance. Let him learn her face and bright lips. Let him appreciate her carefully prepared dress. Was the promise of a future enough? Michel gently made a brushing motion against his father’s shoulder, pushing him away. Michel raised his water glass high, mirroring Fana’s toast.

“To our engagement,” Michel said. The only three words he spoke aloud.

Their glasses sang merrily when they touched, but neither Fana nor Michel smiled.

5:20 a.m.

T
he chartered bus arrived in the courtyard in the pitch of night, hissing on air brakes. Dawit and his Brothers stood in a line to shield the others, and the quick boarding was conducted in a deathly hush. Abena and Sharmila passed Teferi’s sleeping boys to him, and he laid them in their seats. Hopefully, they would wake in Nogales, at dawn.

So few lights were on inside of the massive church that it was nearly invisible.

Sanctus Cruor’s believers—the priests, cooks, gardeners, painters and supplicants who were faithful because of the promise of healing and rumors of miracles—lined up at a distance to watch them go, whispering tales from the dining hall. Romero and Bocelli watched, too, from the church steps. Dawit didn’t see the soldiers, but he knew everyone in sight was armed.

Dawit was glad that Stefan and Michel had not come outside. Those men’s faces were hard to look at, and Dawit did not want to shatter his daughter’s painfully brokered peace. Dawit had faced Stefan once outside of Adwa and once in Seattle, and either encounter might have prevented this day. The difference felt as thin as a blade of grass.

“Another day, Brother,” Mahmoud said, following Dawit’s eyes to the darkened church doors. Mahmoud’s voice was a rasp. He was still weak from his sleep, but he squeezed Dawit’s shoulder with fortifying strength. “We always have another day.”

Lucas and Jared helped Alex climb the steps to the bus, and Caitlin and Johnny Wright boarded next, dazed and sleepy, but eager to go.

Caitlin’s gaze at Dawit was furtive. She did not trust him yet. One day, he would apologize to her about the way he had treated her father. Dawit hoped Teka could retrieve Justin’s memories as he said he could. Caitlin should decide if she still wanted her father to follow wherever their journey would take them next.

Jessica leaned against Dawit. Her eyes were red and exhausted, heartbreaking. He held her as tightly as he dared, breathing the night’s spoiled air with her. When he rested his head atop hers, Jessica took his hand and held it to her breast.

They hadn’t spoken about it yet. There was nothing to say.

Their days were getting longer.

Jima was waiting at Nogales International Airport with the colony’s plane, but Dawit trusted no one else to fly, just as he trusted no one else to drive the bus. Jima and Teka were more practiced pilots, but he would fly the jet himself. They must get far from here, and soon.

They weren’t safe in Mexico. They might not be safe anywhere.

For now, Lalibela.
Home.

The blood mission must belong to all of them now, not only a few. The Lalibela Council had far greater resources, and they would need a mountain of money for their undertaking. The mission was expensive. Armies were expensive, too.

The New Days were coming, whatever they might be.

Fana came to the bus last, behind her friends. She had replaced her dress from dinner with her soiled jeans and Jared’s too-big Oxford sweatshirt. She looked like a freshman on her way to school. How Dawit wished she had been!

But Khaldun had warned them from the beginning: Fana was not an ordinary child, and she would not have an ordinary life.

I’M SORRY, DADDY.
Fana’s voice whispered in his head.

Nothing to be sorry for, Princess.

Dawit smiled at her, and she smiled back with her face that, to him, had never changed.

A chorus of crickets clamored from the woods, and the moon glowed bright above them.

For an instant, it felt like an ordinary night.

No one answered at his house, so Johnny tried calling his father’s cell phone next. The ringing stopped so abruptly that Johnny thought the call had been cut off, until he heard his father suck in his breath: “Johnny?”

His father said he’d gotten a 3 a.m. call from the Department of Homeland Security. He was driving to the FBI office in Jacksonville, where Johnny’s mother would be released from custody. Johnny told him he was fine, promised he hadn’t killed anyone, and said he would call the next time he had a chance. It wasn’t enough to wring the worry from his father’s voice.

“You have to trust me, Dad,” Johnny said. “I’ve seen a miracle.”

That was all he had time to say. Fana’s mother had warned them to keep the calls short. Caitlin had only called Johannesburg long enough to hear her father’s voice, too.

Johnny gave the satellite phone back to the tall, tired man holding his young son.

Teferi. Teka. Mahmoud. Dawit. The names would take some getting used to.

The bus lurched around a tight turn on the mountain road, and Fana’s father grunted at the steering wheel. The Africans were alert at the front of the bus, watching the road through dark windows. Fana’s father had said there might be soldiers in the woods. He and his friends spoke quietly to each other in their language, preparing for war.

Fana’s mother was asleep with her face against the window while a boy slept with his head on her lap. She had fought sleep, refusing to lie down, but she had earned her rest. Johnny saw her sadness on her face even while she slept. Grief was hard.

Fana and her parents might live forever, but some days felt like death anyway.

God makes a way out of no way,
Johnny reminded himself. “Thank you, Lord,” Johnny whispered.

The back of the bus was lively with conversation. The closer Johnny walked to the voices, the faster his heart sped. His injury still ached—although not as much, as if it had been weeks old—but Johnny felt light-headed with excitement, not pain.

Lucas Shepard had found a scrap of legal paper, and he was scrawling Xs in a makeshift map, holding it against the window. Fana’s aunt and cousin were huddled in back, too, squeezed beside Caitlin as she watched them write, eyes attentive. The fervor Johnny felt growing between them was powerful enough to light the predawn sky.

“…our plan to wipe out AIDS,” Doc Shepard was saying. “But we’ll need a much more aggressive program. No more cherry-picking.”

His wife sat beside him, nestled beneath his arm. She was tall, like her husband, and her Afro reminded Johnny of photos he had seen of Angela Davis, back in the day. A revolutionary. “We go in strong,” Alex said, pointing to Xs on the map. “Chicago. Los Angeles. New York. Sierra Leone. Kenya. Tanzania.”

“I can be in Dar es Salaam in two days,” Jared said.

“And we rely on no one,” Caitlin said, ever cautious. “Our people are on the ground.”

Johnny felt his mind stretch to its limits, but it didn’t break. Within his lifetime—within his hearing!—he was in the company of people planning the future of the world.

Fana sat behind them in a row by herself, eyes closed, but Johnny knew she was listening because she was nodding her head. The others looked as exuberant as a Sunday-morning choir, but Fana’s face was empty. Fana licked her lips, her eyes still closed. “I’ll meet with the leaders in person. The health ministers. The presidents. Once I’m in the room with them…”

Her voice trailed off, but she didn’t have to finish. At dinner, Johnny had learned that Fana could influence anyone to do anything.
Did you find a way to control him the way he controlled me? Is that why he let us go?

Johnny slid into the empty seat beside Fana. The damp, gleaming spots of blood on the kneecaps of her jeans reminded him of why he couldn’t help staring at her; it wasn’t just because her face had captured all of her parents’ best features. Johnny hoped she wouldn’t mind his stare.

Fana’s bloody clothes made Johnny think of Him, and shivers banded his bones. Johnny’s throat and stomach locked, as if he would be sick. That feeling wouldn’t go away soon.

“He’s making plans, too,” Johnny whispered to Fana, out of the others’ hearing. “The Cleansing. Ten years will be here before we know it. Do you have a plan for that, Fana?”

Fana was quiet so long that Johnny thought she hadn’t heard. Or that she had drifted to sleep.

“Learn,” Fana said finally. “Grow.”

She reached for his hand and held it, sisterly. That was all it took. Johnny believed in her.

There was something about Fana’s touch.

It was exactly like sunlight.

Fana wears the artist’s dress from a painting she loved at first sight: The traditional embroidered dress is bright red, flowing out into a long skirt with careful white creases, as lovely as a wedding dress. Fana sits in the center of a bed of cactuses and wide-leafed plants as green as life. From Mexico, she remembers.

The church sits high above her, behind the moon. The sky is half light, half shadow.

Michel sits next to her, uninvited. Like the man in the painting, he is nude; golden brown skin set against green. She turns away from his beckoning skin, but his face fills her vision.

“I don’t want you in my dream,” she says.

“Yes, you do,” he says. “I felt your dream call me, so I came to say good-bye.”

There is no way to know if he’s telling the truth, so Fana decides to believe him. Again.

“Don’t follow us,” Fana says.

“I promised not to interfere,” Michel says. “But of course I have to follow you.”

The white Spanish Mission–style church looks like a palace atop the hill, encircled by dead, craggy trees. The sky’s clouds are thick, aflame with twinkles of green lightning. The skies are preparing for a hurricane. In the bell tower, two bronze bells toll in cacophony, swinging in opposite directions. Roaring winds devour their sour music.

“Our ways are so different, Fana,” he says. “How can you ever love me?”

“One of us has to die, Michel.”

His face clouds with the memory of their struggle. “You promised me,” he said.

“I don’t think I could kill you if I wanted to,” she says. “Even if I had fifty years to learn. But it’s like the song said: ‘With you I’ll go my saintly one / Though it may cause me to die.’ One of us has to let go of what we were. One of us has to change.”

“Or both of us,” he says, wisely.

Townspeople flee the thrashing rains, but the doors to the church are locked. A man and woman lean out of the dome’s window, only their silhouettes visible in the Shadows as they gaze down at the people below. The townspeople surge to a throng. Many of them hold small children above their heads, begging for shelter. Others are thin and frail, reeking of illness.

“Good people are suffering,” she says.

“Yes,” he sighs, genuine sadness. “I do mourn for the Good.”

“They’re thirsty, Michel, and we have water. We can be the Bringers of the Blood.”

“Yes,” he says, enraptured.

“And we know each other’s minds,” she says. “We can see through each other’s eyes.”

“Yes.” His whisper bathes her from head to toe.

Fana smells Michel’s breath, a scent of mango. More tart than before, but still mango.

“Then time will tell,” she says.

In the church dome, the man and woman open their arms to welcome the storm, which drenches the townspeople. Their upturned faces are pelted with raindrops.

The rain is the color of blood.