My Soul to Take (52 page)

Then he saw his dear angel floating above him in the white Sanctus Cruor queen’s robe he’d made for her. Michel looked at his own clothing. He was dressed for Cleansing Day.

The Shadows were feeding in a howl.

From his throne—yes, he was in his chair for the Most High—Michel saw a room crowded with nosebleeds. The Shadows tried to smother him with the irresistible surprise, betrayal and suffering of hundreds of supplicants. His pleasure was so great, it was pain.

But Michel brushed the Shadows away with the lessons he had learned from Fana. He could not feast until he understood how he had left his wedding tower.

Had Stefan administered the vows? Had Teka? Such confusion!

Teru’s shrill scream suddenly echoed across the Council Hall from Stefan’s balcony, where she stood alone.

“No!”
she screamed, pointing at the rafters.
“Stop this, Michel!”

A woman hovered below Fana, her wide-eyed face streaked with blood. Blood crawled like tears from the corners of her eyes. Was it Fana’s mother? Michel looked up at Fana again, horrified. Fana’s face and mind were wiped clean. Where were her thoughtstreams?

What has happened? Who is doing this?

Michel tried to reach out to Jessica to stop her bleeding and bring her back to solid ground, but he could not find a way to touch her; it was like fighting endless billowing curtains. His mind felt as weak as his healing body. Jessica was wrapped in Shadows.

She was dying, draining of her Blood.

Fana, what are you doing? Your mother won’t wake if you take her Blood
.

Fana’s father suddenly came to Michel’s sight. He was staring up at Fana with an expression Michel memorized so that he could paint it, the embodiment of Pain itself.

Dawit cocked his arm back to throw his knife. Michel’s mind was sharpening, but it was still moving so slowly that the knife surprised him. Dawit was so fast that the blade was flying before Michel could send a mental stream to swipe it from his hand.

Michel almost turned the soaring blade to dust. Almost.

Set me free, Michel
, Fana said. The sound of a flea in his ear, begging. Fana was so lost in the Shadows, Michel felt barely a trace of her. But the soft words helped him understand what he had seen on Dawit’s face, and Dawit’s pain was contagious.

Michel was too weak to free Fana from the Shadows.

He allowed Dawit’s knife to fly.

Dawit’s blade was sure, pinning Fana’s heart still. Her gasp filled the hall.

Fana’s mother fell first, in a rag doll’s heap. Then Fana plunged down from high above, spinning, her gown flying behind her, trying to catch the air. Below, the supplicants scattered.

When Fana’s thoughts died, Michel screamed.

Until the last instant, Dawit was certain that Michel would turn his own knife back on him.

But it was worse: instead, Dawit watched the blade plunge into Fana’s heart to the hilt. He heard his daughter gasp in pain, and saw his wife and child tangle on the floor.

Even if the world died, at least Fana might live, or some version of her. He might have lost his wife, but he had been spared the worst, even if the world had suffered.

Supplicants crushed one another as they squeezed back through the doors, or lined themselves against the wall, trying to clear the Council Hall.

When Michel lurched to his feet, Dawit didn’t move or flinch. Michel’s face was healing, half of it sewing itself into blistered scars.

Dawit tried to look at his fallen daughter, but he could not. Perhaps when she woke.

Scurrying footsteps brought Phoenix and Teka to Dawit to huddle over Jessica. Was she lost to him? Waking grief tightened his
muscles, caught his breath. Dawit knelt beside Jessica, pressing his palm to her warm forehead.

THEY ARE SLEEPING
, Teka said, and Dawit was lightheaded with relief.
BUT THE CLEANSING GOES ON, DAWIT
, Teka finished.

Michel took pained, halting steps, dragging himself toward his bride, who was crumpled a few feet from Jessica. Michel was oblivious to any other concerns.

“Michel!” Dawit shouted, his voice rising above the room’s chaos.

Michel stopped, raised his eyes to him. Dawit had never seen eyes filled with such a void. The man behind those eyes might as easily collapse to the ground or strike him dead.

“You gave her your word!” Dawit said. “The Cleansing should not be today.”

Michel made a wild motion, as if to wave Dawit silent. Then he continued his lurching steps toward Fana. He could barely stay on his feet, but he knelt to scoop Fana into his arms, and he willed himself to stand again. Fana lay limply, her hair swinging as he walked.

A strangled sob tore from Michel’s throat.

THE CLEANSING HAS STOPPED, DAWIT!
Teka said.

For the first moment since the tower—in truth, the first moment since Fana had first run away from home and found herself in Michel’s web—Dawit believed disaster had been averted.

Dawit
felt
Mahmoud before he saw him.

Mahmoud was in the balcony beside Teru, raising his gun. Dawit’s second knife was in his hand, ready to throw even as he realized that Mahmoud was out of his range. Dawit never had the chance to throw his knife. He had already run out of time.

Teru gasped, or Dawit might have thought he’d dreamed it.

In one instant, Mahmoud had been biting his lip with rare emotion, his body leaning forward in his readiness to take his target, and then …

Mahmoud’s gun clattered to the marble floor.

Mahmoud vanished in a puff of pale dust that floated across the floor. The unimaginable sight stole Dawit’s breath. He could not make a sound, but his eyes screamed with the horror of it. Watching beside him, both Teka and Phoenix gasped.

Dawit stared at the empty balcony, unable to look away from the space where his most beloved Brother had just stood, ready to join him in battle. If he stared long enough, hard enough, would Mahmoud reappear and grin at him at his joke?

The emptiness was beyond conception.

The air shimmered, hot, as Michel walked past, carrying Fana.

YOUR FRIEND CAME TO OUR HOME TO HARM US ON OUR WEDDING DAY
, Michel said.
I’M SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS
.

An apology, however polite, was not nearly enough. Dawit shook with empty rage.

“What will you do with Fana?” Dawit said.

“Fana is safe, signore,” Michel said, not looking back. “We are together. She will rest with me until she wakes.”

“Michel!” Dawit called sharply.

Michel staggered to a stop, and gazed back at Dawit with the unruined side of his face.

“She is the most precious being ever created,” Dawit said. If he had thought it would make a difference, he would have begged Michel to preserve her. Not to enslave her.

Michel’s eyes shimmered with tears. “I know Fana in ways you never can,” he said. “You need not tell me who she is.”

Trust us, Dad
.

Fana’s voice? Or a memory in his ear? But how—if her thoughtstreams were dead?

I TOLD YOU, DAWIT
, Michel said.
FANA IS WITH ME
.

Michel let Dawit hear a peal of his daughter’s laughter, the exact moment he’d first made her laugh when she was three. Dawit wasn’t ashamed of the father’s tear that stung his eye.

But he could not forget the mission Fana had risked her life for.

“How many were infected?” Dawit said. He had lost track of time, but fewer than five minutes had passed between the time of Jessica’s first nosebleed and the time he’d been forced to bring Fana down. Maybe only one or two.

Michel sighed, and looked at Fana’s sleeping face. He hated for her to hear.

NINETY THOUSAND
, Michel said.
AN ACCIDENT. BUT NOW
IT IS CONTAINED. PERHAPS WE CAN HEAL THEM WHEN SHE WAKES
.

“When is the Cleansing, Michel?”

Michel turned away from him with an unsteady step, carrying away his bride.

“I do not know the future, signore,” Michel said.

Live as if you were to die tomorrow.

Learn as if you were to live forever.

—Mahatma Gandhi

It is very beautiful over there.

—The last words of Thomas Edison (1847–1931), upon waking from a coma

New York

Two Years Later

I
t was overcast in Manhattan, but the crowd in Central Park sounded like sunshine. The cheers were the sound of joy.
GLOW FOR LIFE
, the banners on the trees read, reminding everyone why they were celebrating: Glow was finally legal in the United States. The law had finally caught up with the people.

Phoenix sang “The Bees” from the stage overlooking the North Meadow, crammed with vibrant human life snaking through every visible corner. Thousands more spilled into nearby meadows even if they couldn’t see her. The police had told her there might be a million people at the concert. More would have come if she had given more notice.

Her last note hung over the crowd in the trial-roughened voice she had brought back with her from Nogales. A new voice; not as smooth, but so much stronger.

In a flash, she saw Fana’s laughing face. Music was the only place where Phoenix and Fana still met. Phoenix felt Fana coursing through her as strongly as she had at the first Glow concert, an electrical shower. Fana sent gold dust floating over the listening crowd, into stray windows, and into the cars that honked as they passed. Spreading healing.

Most of them hadn’t known they were sick, or why. Doctors caught so little.

That was what bees did—they spread life. Most people preferred to heal at concerts, if they had the chance, but now they could have
Glow in the privacy of their homes. Legal Glow would make it easier to get it to everyone who needed it. Clarion had bought and leased hundreds of buildings for Glow clinics across the country, taking control of hospitals in poor neighborhoods. The U.S. revolution was about to begin.

“Thank you!” Phoenix said to her old-school mic, the one she asked for especially because it reminded her of concerts she’d seen as a child. “That’s a song I wrote in Mexico.”

The crowd roared gratitude and love. People chanted her name, but Phoenix knew they were chanting to the music, the healing, not to her. She hadn’t asked for any of it. Until the music came with its sad beauty, Fana’s wedding day had been hard to live with.

“Heal!” she told New York. The country. The world. “Safe journey, everyone!”

They were still calling her name, but Phoenix left the stage. She’d already done three encores. Everyone was giddy backstage, even roadies, who weren’t used to giddiness at concerts. Glow made everyone giddy.

“Mom, you’re a rock god!” Marcus said, giving her a bear hug. Not even ten years old, and he was nearly as big as a roadie in his Phoenix Glow Tour T-shirt. Marcus looked more like her father every day. Like his grandfather and namesake, Marcus was her biggest fan.

“I’m not a god,” Phoenix said. “I’m just making music.”

Phoenix never used the term
god
lightly. Her best friend, her sister, might as well be a goddess, but she’d never used the word. Maybe the word for Fana hadn’t been invented yet.

Carlos was in his usual spot backstage, by the curtain stage right. Trying to be invisible. Phoenix would never have thought Carlos would come with her on a Glow tour. Time truly healed everything.

Carlos rested his forehead against Phoenix’s. “Beautiful, Phee,” he said. “So beautiful. I wish Mami had been here.”

She nodded. She’d seen a woman near the stage with braids like Carlos’s mother, and another who’d looked just like Mom. Reminders that they were always nearby.

Police swarmed everywhere. Phoenix would never look at police
the same way, but at least they were trying to protect her these days.
For now
, Sarge’s voice reminded her.

“Are they here?” Phoenix asked Carlos, and he nodded, taking her hand to walk with her down the metal steps on the other side of the stage. They were led and trailed by an army.

The women’s glowing faces were waiting for her in a roped area. Two hundred women waited for her in folding chairs beneath a hanging tarp, barely covered from the drizzle. It looked too much like a pen for Phoenix’s comfort, but the women’s shining eyes didn’t mind. Most of their faces were wet with tears, not rain. When they saw her, they rose to their feet, rocking upright, many of them holding their chairs for support.

“Nobody touches Phoenix!” Gloria, Phoenix’s cousin, barked. “Please stay where you are and let her come to you one by one.”

Phoenix walked through the lines of women, one after the other, the faces of the world. Africa, Asia, Europe. Phoenix had always loved New York for its faces. Pregnant women always sought her out, some from great distances.

One by one, Phoenix rubbed her hand across the rounded bellies.

“Bless this child,” Phoenix said, touching each woman’s stomach, gazing into her hopeful eyes.
Bless this child, Fana. And bless this child. And bless this child
.

New York had been hit hard.

Birth rates were dropping. In New York City, just like in regions of China, researchers estimated that two out of ten men and women might be infertile. The percentage of live births was higher internationally, so the babies were born healthier, but fewer and fewer people could conceive. Scientists didn’t know why. There were already reports of stolen newborns.

Outside this Central Park sanctuary of music and joy, the world was panicking. Fana had explained it to Phoenix in her typical blunt way:
WE THINK THERE ARE TOO MANY
.

Fana’s compromise with Michel; their shared vision.

“Bless this child,” Phoenix said, pressing her hand to a warm, living belly.

Fana, bless this child
.

Phoenix shied away from the thirsty, longing eyes of the woman she was touching. The woman trembled so much that Phoenix thought she was cold. “You’re … an angel,” the woman said, barely able to speak the words.

“I’m just a singer,” Phoenix said.