My Soul to Take (15 page)

“Whose offering is this?” he said. “This boy?”

The question was only ceremony. He already knew.

Louis and Francesca, the married initiates from Paris, had considered themselves clever for bringing the mother and son they had caught stealing from their Las Vegas hotel suite. Children had been offered before. But Michel wouldn’t tolerate how Louis had raped the woman, or how Francesca had drugged the boy so she could watch her husband’s games in peace. Too many supplicants thought
all-knowing
was only a sales pitch.

Granted, Michel wasn’t normally one to judge. They had all fallen short of the glory of the Blood, and so forth. But his mother was there.

In the Cleansing Pool, the whimpers and shallow splashing stopped. Everyone stood still, praying for a negotiation to save them. Their anxious hearts goaded Michel, but he strained against his desire to succumb. His molars ground together.

“I brought him, Most High,” Francesca said. She had never been allowed to address him directly, and shyness quieted her voice. He could barely hear her over the Shadows.

“And me,” said reedy Louis. “We brought both.”

“Why?” Michel said.

“Thieves, my lord,” Louis said. His voice shook as he realized he was being challenged.

Francesca’s cheeks blushed bright red. “‘The wicked would sooner steal Blood than bread,’” she said, quoting the Letter of the Witness.

In the pool, the boy’s mother renewed her voiceless pleas. Water splashed as she tried to run, but Michel’s mental ring around the pool made her lose her balance and fall, confused, her limbs tangled with her son’s. Michel could feel Gypsy’s silent chuckles. And his mother’s pain.

Francesca and Louis stared, waiting with pale faces. He enjoyed their fear while the scribes’ pens wrote furiously of the unusual delays.

“I reject your joint offering,” Michel said finally, his voice raised loudly for the scribes. “You two will stand in the boy’s place in the Cleansing Pool … and his mother’s.”

Above him, Stefan couldn’t mute his annoyance. He had scouted the French couple himself and had plans for them, since they were journalists with a worldwide audience. Like Owodunni in West Africa, they had been groomed to help steer the masses when the wider plagues came. Untold numbers would rather drink poison from a blessed cup than wait for the disease to take them. But now Michel had no choice but to spare the mother with the boy.

His father would think twice before bringing Teru to the Cleansing Pool again.

“Yes, Most High,” Louis said, devastated. His husk of a voice stoked a deeper arousal in Michel than Gypsy could ever touch. Dutifully, Louis grabbed his wife’s hand.

“Whatever we must do, Most High,” Francesca choked. Her chin struck a noble pose.

The others in the pool screamed their objections, begging. The Shadows roared within Michel, riled by their pleas. Michel distracted himself by counting the sudden nosebleeds among those huddled in the pool:
Uno … due … tre … quattro … cinque … seis …

None knew they were bleeding. None felt pain yet.

Louis and Francesca didn’t resist as they were led to the pool while the mother and son stumbled out. The others clamored and wailed, dumbfounded when the path the mother and son had taken was replaced by a barrier they couldn’t see, penning them in. Only Louis and Francesca stood stoically, still holding hands, at peace with their fate.

You were right, Papa
, Michel said, unable to resist a jab.
They are loyal to the end
.

GAMES INSTEAD OF DUTY
, his father said.
IS THIS TRUE CLEANSING, MICHEL?

The freed mother shrieked hoarsely and lunged at Michel. He had known what she would do before she knew herself, perhaps before she’d left the pool. His mental nudge made her lose her footing, slipping across the marble floor like an eel. Gypsy chuckled loudly at the ridiculous sight. The boy ran to his mother, hiding her nakedness.

Guns chambered around the room, but Michel held up his hand to calm his guards. Weapons were his father’s way. Who could guard him better than he could guard himself?

The freed woman grabbed the hem of Michel’s robe, bringing the fabric to her lips. “Thank you!” she struggled to whisper. “Thank you! You are an angel. God bless you!”

He was the vengeance she had prayed for. She had no thought of the others in the pool. She believed that she and her son alone deserved a reprieve. She was a thief, and a proud one, and her son would have grown up to outdo her. Soon, they would be dead of plague.

“There are no angels here,” Michel said. “You are pardoned by my mother.”

Teru smiled, pleased, and Michel was surprised at how glad he was to please her.

A sarcastic laugh came, as loud as a gunshot in the silence. Gypsy. She covered her mouth, but her eyes still twinkled with the joke of the woman’s display. Michel felt sharp disapproval throughout the room, especially from his Lalibela cousins who had joined him willingly, on the promise of decorum—all of them had come on their own, except one.

When he looked at Gypsy, all eyes followed his. His beauty in the gallery; his exquisite mistake. It was time.

Mi spiace, grazie per aver speso i tuoi ultimi giorni con me
. He told her he was sorry, and thanked her for spending her last days with him.

Gypsy let out an audible gasp, as loud as her laugh had been. “Michel,
please
—”

He took her quickly to save her from the indignity of public begging. When he dove into her, she was warm, sweet jelly. But there was no time for amusement.

MOST HIGH, I’M SORRY
, she called to him.
I MEANT NO OFFENSE
.

He brought Gypsy to her feet. Delicious terror raged within her as her limbs mutinied.

“I have trivialized the Cleansing ceremony,” Michel announced through Gypsy’s mouth, with her voice. “May I offer myself to the pool and join the others, Most High?”

He nodded his reluctant agreement and gestured with a sweep. Yes, yes, if she must.

Gypsy strode quickly from her seat, her heels clacking on the marble as she walked the length of the room. She stopped before Michel, bowed her head. He raised his hand for a kiss.

MICHEL, PLEASE DON’T. SEND ME AWAY INSTEAD. YOU PROMISED ME—

“Forgive me, Most High,” he said, giving her Francesca’s dignity as she kissed his ring.

“You are forgiven, and you shall be Cleansed.”

Holding her head high with a beatific smile on her face, he walked her to the pool.

The others shouted and clawed at her, looking for escape the way she had come. Michel abandoned his fight then, or lost it. The fabric of his robe seemed to crackle. His ears popped in the Shadows’ howl. The light in the room vanished to his sight.

The irresistible chorus of pleas from the Cleansing Pool flooded Michel. He inhaled the sweet scent of the Shadows, the way his father had taught him after he stole Michel from his mother’s breast. The buzzing swallowed all.

The last part of him that was still Michel remembered those eyes in his painting.

Forgive me, Fana, for what I will do
.

While music played beyond the doors, the pleas in the Cleansing Pool turned to screams.

The water in the pool flushed crimson, stained with blood.

It’s the end of the world as we know it.

—R.E.M.

But then I sigh and, with a piece of Scripture,

Tell them that God bids us do good for evil.

And thus I clothe my naked villainy

With odd old ends stol’n forth of holy writ,

And seem a saint when most I play the devil. (1.3.323)

—
Richard III

William Shakespeare

If I do many godlike things, does that make me God?

And if I do many devilish things, does that make me the devil?

—Khaldun (The Witness)

T
he white Spanish Mission-style church looks like a palace atop the hill. In the bell tower, two bronze bells toll in cacophony, swinging in opposite directions. Roaring winds devour their sour music. A man and woman lean out of the dome’s window, only their silhouettes visible in the Shadows
.

Below, spread across a vast valley in every direction, rows of worshippers sit on their knees with hands clasped, faces upturned in prayer, as still as tree stumps. Only their clothes move, blowing in the gale. Countless sightless faces are pelted with raindrops
.

The rain is the color of blood
.

Barking woke Phoenix, faint through her window. She had expected rainfall instead.

Phoenix glanced at her wristphone, which she slept with by habit. It wasn’t quite four a.m., long before dawn.
How did Graygirl get outside?

Phoenix tried not to disturb the mattress when she swung her legs over the side of the bed, but Carlos sat up on one elbow when she stirred. Their bed was a California king, as big as a continent, but Carlos slept lightly since he’d been home.

She’d been dreaming, she remembered. She couldn’t remember the dream, but her heartbeat was pulsing in her fingertips. Her tongue was parched. She hadn’t felt such a jolt of fright since the visits from Scott Joplin’s ghost, which she knew were behind her. But the dream hadn’t been about Scott. Phoenix vaguely remembered a sea of the dead.

No more pizza after nine for you
, she thought, trying to calm her hammering heart.

“What’s wrong?” Carlos mumbled, running his fingers through his hair.

“Graygirl’s barking.”

“What?” Moonlight captured the confusion on Carlos’s face.

Phoenix blinked. Only crickets and frogs outside. No barking. Graygirl was dead. The coyotes had killed her, although Phoenix could almost see her dog’s pale shadow floating through the doorway. Graygirl had been dead a month, but Phoenix often heard imaginary barking, most often when she was in the shower. Or half asleep.

“Gotta use the potty,” she said instead, the word they had inherited from Marcus.

Carlos grunted and collapsed back to his pillow.

Their bedroom had its own bathroom, but it was the size of a closet—a third the size of Marcus’s. Phoenix missed the master bathroom at her old Beverly Hills place. Lately, the bathroom was the only place where she sat still long enough to think. She wanted to be able to stretch out her legs and pick up a copy of whatever book she’d been reading a paragraph at a time. The main bathroom and its lacquered wood walls were her library and spa.

In privacy, Phoenix’s pulse slowed as her mind ventured to the night of the concert. Her scalp tingled with the memory of the singing and swaying of the audience, the radiant faces, and Fana with her arms embracing the sky. And her lump
was
gone—her office visit tomorrow would only confirm it. She’d never been so certain of anything.

Glow
, she would explain. And then what?

Fana wanted her to tell her story. That was what she’d said.

Why was she hoarding her story in her bathroom? Why hadn’t she called a press conference or blasted the internet like so many others who’d been there? A group of six people who had been strangers before the concert were appearing on the newswebs and daytime talk shows as the Glow Messengers. Phoenix’s cousin Gloria, the Best Manager in the World, had said that the Glow Messengers
had tried to contact her, but Phoenix had declined to join them. Press conferences and interviews weren’t her style. Not anymore.

But her name would matter. Her story would matter.

The lyrics she’d first heard on her way to the concert sprang back to her, fresh:
Waking up is easy if you never go to sleep / Have you seen the soul you promised you would keep?
The chords were coming, bright and easy. No brooding minors, either. Joyful chords, like the ones her grandmother had played on Sunday mornings. Back in the day, Phoenix would have rushed to her netbook to get to work on her new songs. She would be up working until dawn.

She could lay down new tracks. Call her old band for a reunion.

Phoenix’s heart quickened at the thought, excitement about her music she’d forgotten. She’d be back on familiar ground, spreading the message of the otherworld. This time, instead of ghosts, she’d be preaching healing. She’d be preaching Glow.

Phoenix’s fledgling excitement died.

Then she’d be touring, away from home. Or Marcus and Carlos would be tied to her for a grueling and monotonous life on the road. She’d be lifted up once again on that dizzying pedestal while haters tried to claw her down. She’d gotten death threats after
Joplin’s Ghost
, if only because she’d scared as many as she’d inspired. Maybe more.

And with the government so fiercely opposed to Glow, she would be thrusting her family into a drug war. John Wright had led her and Carlos to websites debunking the government’s false allegations about Glow: fatal overdoses; high addiction rates; ties to bioterror attacks. The feds were desperate to keep people away from Glow, and if she came forward, she would become a target. The life she’d been trying to give Marcus would be gone.

Phoenix hadn’t retired because of the suicides of those troubled kids in Chicago like the media claimed. She remembered her older sister Serena’s stories about how much she missed having a father while Sarge was consumed with changing the world. Sarge hadn’t known how to be a true parent until much later, when Phoenix was born. She’d promised her newborn son that she would always put him first. No trial runs.

Phoenix smiled at the collection of Marcus’s bath toys in a plastic crate near the bathtub. Marcus had stopped playing with toys when he bathed, but she hadn’t moved them yet. Grinning red Elmo on a scooter and grotesquely disfigured Mutant Men marked Marcus’s journey from toddler to big boy since they’d lived in Paso.

She’d quit show business to take care of her baby. But she didn’t have a baby anymore.

“You’ve got to see about the revolution, Phee,” she said aloud in the empty bathroom; her father’s words. Sarge had said that to her in a dream right after he died, the last words she’d heard when his voice was fresh in her ear. The words popped into her mind from nowhere.