Blood Colony

  Teka ignored the chide. “What other thoughts did you find?” Teka said. “Show me.”

  Dawit offered his memories to Teka, slipping into his teacher’s familiar mental stream. He remembered himself in the shelter’s kitchen, when his thoughts had been overrun by the injured priest’s cascade of English and Italian words barely ordered enough to decipher. Only one word had leaped uncluttered into his consciousness: Sangue. Blood.

  Then, images again: a crimson ribbon wound through a medallion imprinted with the unmistakable patterns of a cross and a crest he knew too well. The medallion had lain on a path within the smoking ruins of a village, evidence of killing. Burned huts. Charred remains.

  “What startled me most was…the medallion of Sanctus Cruor,” Dawit said. “I saw a vision of it, from a burned village I came across during the war.”

  The end of the nineteenth century had wearied Dawit to his soul, between being thrust into the American Civil War and then Ethiopia’s war with the Italians on its heels. The nation of his birth had nearly been destroyed by a quest for their blood, even if the history books told another story. Sanctus Cruor had been a small sect, but its high-reaching influence had served as an enduring example of the danger to their kind if their blood was ever traced to them.

  “Brothers…I believe I lost control,” Dawit said. “I felt transported to another place. An earlier time. There is no excuse.”

  “When you delve in the memories of others, you are likely to unearth your own,” Teka said, one of his most oft-repeated warnings. “Still, we must consider the possibility that the priest was involved in these killings. We’ll begin with him.”

  “Father Arturo Bragga lies at the King County morgue, a martyr to our noble cause of healing the poor and infirm,” Dawit said. He raised his drinking glass in a mimicry of mortals’ customary dinner toast. “A true man of God should welcome such a selfless death. Shall we make a contribution to his church?” he asked, half in earnest, half in jest.

  Teferi’s face was so grim that his skin was ashen. “I see the killer in you is wide awake, Dawit.”

  Was Teferi, like Teka, another who hoped they could give away blood without taking blood in return? Teferi had fought by his side in Miami fourteen years ago, fending off a rich man’s mercenaries. In the 1700s, Teferi’s own son had slit Teferi’s throat, as if he had been slaughtering livestock, draining his father’s blood into a bucket for days.

  “The killer in me is my most practical aspect,” Dawit said as gently as he could.

  It was the worst of timing.

  Suddenly Fana stood in the room, watching Dawit. Her tear-streaked face glowed with hurt that looked too much like the pain he had offered his wife long ago. Dawit’s stomach felt sheared.

  The room hushed. Fana rarely entered.

  Dawit’s Brothers rose to their feet, their heads lowered in deference. Dawit rose as well, but not as an acolyte. Dawit had vowed never to make that mistake, no matter what the temptation. This was his child.

  Dawit left his Brothers’ table, reaching out to take his daughter’s slender, delicate hand into his. In Amharic, Fana’s self-chosen name meant “light,” and Dawit felt the light endowed by her touch. She drew away at first but relented when he clasped her hand again. She allowed him to escort her away from the table.

  He had been mad to think he could kill the father of his daughter’s friend. To kill either of the O’Neals would kill a piece of his child’s heart. And what of his own?

  “It’s time for me to go home, Brothers,” Dawit said. “To my family.”

  No one would have dared argue even if they objected.

  Seven

  Gramma Bea always said grace at the dinner table, her face knit in concentration while she shared her heart with her most trusted old friend: “Lord, you have brought us all through many storms, and we need Your hand to guide us through all future tempests too. We love you, Lord. We eat this food by your blessing and live with no other calling except to carry out service in Your holy name, and in the name of Your son, Jesus Christ. Bless the Blood, Lord. Amen.”

  “Amen,” said ten people at the two tables shaped like an L in the dining hall, and silverware began its happy chorus. But Fana didn’t have any appetite.

  All these years, Fana had been afraid to be angry. What a sweet child you are, Gramma Bea always said. Quick to forgive. Last to judge. Now, Fana was the angriest she could remember, and the feeling surprised her. Anger didn’t feel hot the way people said. Instead, it made her insides cold. Detached. That was why she wouldn’t be able to eat a bite.

  If not for Gramma Bea, Fana wouldn’t have come to dinner. During the years Fana had been lost inside her head, Gramma Bea had always left an empty chair for her at the table, the way Jews leave an empty seat for Elijah the Prophet during the Passover seder. Gramma Bea had always known she would come to the table one day, and Fana had known she was waiting.

  Fana deliberately looked away from her parents, who sat left of her. Mom and Dad would never discuss Caitlin in front of the others, and it would be too hypocritical to talk about anything else. It was an outrage that Caitlin had been held this long! If Fana didn’t have so much respect for Teka, her teacher, she would have screamed obscenities at the Council.

  Fana wanted to dive into her father’s head and search for the truth about Maritza’s death, but even now, that kind of invasion felt wrong. Besides, he was masking himself. Her father’s thoughts were a silent wall beside her.

  “There’s no meat in the greens, Bee-Bee. Just pepper and peanut butter,” Gramma Bea said, passing the steaming bowl. She never called her Fana, the name Fana had chosen when she was three. Fana had been named Beatrice after her grandmother, and Gramma Bea liked the sound of that just fine.

  “Thanks.” Fana’s stomach growled, but she felt nauseated. She tried to smile for her grandmother, scooping herself two healthy spoonfuls she knew would sit on her plate. Then Fana’s mind swam beneath the table’s babble of voices and quiet thoughts.

  Aunt Alex was joking about nearly getting thrown by a horse, but Caitlin was troubling her mind. Cal and Juanita Duhart, at the next table, were concentrating on making sure the twins ate, and they didn’t know a thing about what was happening at the Council House.

  There were a lot of things Uncle Lucas and the Duharts didn’t know.

  “Put that down right now,” Juanita Duhart said, pointing her fork toward fourteen-year-old Hank, whose eyes were hidden behind his GamePort goggles. Hank was biracial; like Uncle Lucas and Jared, his skin had been buttermilk pale, but had turned golden brown over the summer. Hank made whistling sounds under his breath, battling whatever he was seeing in the game’s three-dimensional fantasy world.

  The Duharts lived on the grounds and ate with them, but they didn’t have the Blood. Uncle Lucas was not from the original colony of immortals, but the Ceremony Dawit had performed had made him a part of the circle whether the elder Brothers liked it or not. Sort of.

  But not the Duharts. Like Caitlin and Justin O’Neal, they weren’t the same. Caitlin had a nickname for mortals: Shorties. Short-timers.

  Like Grandpa Gaines, any one of them could vanish while she slept.

  Mom was just a faraway voice in her doorway, and Fana was so angry that she could barely listen, much less speak. Sometimes it was hard to sift her thoughts fast enough to get them out.

  When she was thirteen and began complaining that other people’s dreams kept her awake at night, Dad and Cal Duhart had taken down two walls and put up a new one to build her a wing to herself. The eight-hundred-square-foot space had a wall of windows, its own library, and a corner cordoned off by an Asian screen, where she sat on pillows and meditated, surrounded by potted pygmy date palms. The trees nearly reached the ceiling with their wide fronds, so they made her room look like an indoor jungle. The trees would be too tall to keep inside soon.

  Fana’s favorite historical icons gazed down from framed photographs: Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Harriet Tubman,
Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela, Eleanor Roosevelt and Ethiopia’s Empress Taitu.

  But Fana felt lost from her heroes’ guidance tonight. Lost, period.

  Her parents stood beside each other in the doorway, as if waiting for an invitation.

  “You have to talk to us, Fana,” her father said.

  Caitlin said it would take just a word from her to solve this, and she was probably right. Fana didn’t need to attend Council meetings to know she had a place at the head of their table. Maybe her word counted more than it should, but now she no longer felt crushed under the weight of the Brothers’ awe.

  “Let them go,” Fana said. “I mean it. Right now.”

  But this wasn’t the Council Hall.

  “Watch your tone, Fana,” Mom said. “Why were you giving Caitlin your blood?”

  “You know why.”

  Mom had never been able to hoard her blood either. That was the life her parents had chosen for them once she’d begun sharing her blood. Flight, then hiding. And death, Fana thought. Death had followed her family since before she was born.

  Jessica sighed, one hand planted on her hip in a pose that made her look like Gramma Bea. “Fana, we have a carefully crafted network—”

  “Yes, and our treatment is only available in six countries, not including the one where we live,” Fana said. “Six! I don’t care about this country’s drug laws—or the Brotherhood’s. People get sick here, too. They should have the blood.”

  Mom only rested her hand against her cheek, sighing.

  “You put her in danger, Fana,” Dad said. “All of us are more vulnerable now.”

  Fana had heard enough. “I want Caitlin here. She’s going to sleep in my room with me tonight. Tomorrow, you’re going to let her and her father go.”

  She had never spoken to her parents this way, but when had they ever behaved so badly?

  Her father was inside her room suddenly, looming above her. He had never looked so upset with her. “Because Caitlin was selling the blood you gave her, her friend was tortured day and night, stabbed fifty times by the sadists who kidnaped her. Was that a part of your plan?”

  Her father’s words hurt, but Fana was relieved. At least he didn’t do it himself.

  Fana gritted her teeth as tears glided down her face. “You think I don’t know I had a role in the suffering of those people?” she said. “But at least I’m not like you, Dad. Unlike you, the killer in me is not my most practical aspect. Your words.”

  Knowing exactly which words to use was a devastating advantage. Fana’s father was silenced, and her mother looked aghast.

  “I’ll have Caitlin brought to you,” her father said. “But you will never again give away blood to be distributed outside of this colony. You’ll promise me this, Fana.”

  “Or what? I’ll be grounded?”

  Jessica sighed. “Fana, please…haven’t you learned anything from what I told you about Botswana? Our nurse died. Her brother died. All because we didn’t take the right precautions. I know it feels like a sin to walk around with this blood—”

  “Yes,” Fana said. “A sin. The worst kind.”

  “But we can’t do this as individuals,” Mom said. “We need structure. And protection.”

  Dad had moved to her window, staring out toward the Council House. “Fana, you’ll get your friend killed. I can’t say it any more plainly.” It sounded like a vow.

  “Oh, that’s right,” Fana said. “Sometimes people get killed. Don’t they, Dad?”

  He flinched. Good, Fana thought. He was afraid of what she might say. Inspired by his fear, Fana heard what he dreaded most escape through her lips. “Father Arturo didn’t see you in the kitchen. You could have taken his gun away and left it at that, but you decided it was more prudent to butcher him to get him to talk.”

  Dad turned to look at her as if he didn’t know her voice. The light had left his eyes.

  Fana tried to stop herself midway through, but the words came anyway, shattering her rule: Never say things that hadn’t been spoken aloud. Never use private memories as a weapon. “While he was bleeding to death, you kneeled with all your weight on his chest to cut off his breathing, in case that might make him talk faster. ‘Dying men forget how to lie,’ you told yourself. He begged for his life with tears in his eyes. He said, ‘I’m a priest.’ You said, ‘A dead one.’ And then you broke his neck. A very clean break. You’re very good at killing. Does Mom know you killed her friend Peter without blinking your eyes?”

  At first, when her parents’ faces didn’t change, Fana dared to hope that maybe the awful words had only been a loud, angry thought beneath the surface, not brought out into the room with them. Sometimes, she couldn’t tell the difference.

  But Mom’s eyes pooled with tears. Dad opened his mouth but didn’t speak. Mom lurched toward the door, as if she’d lost her balance. Dad tried to touch her, but she snatched her arm away. Mom was in the hall, then gone.

  Now Fana remembered what she hated most: She hated knowing.

  “S-sorry,” she whispered. She wished she was still angry instead of only horrified at herself. “I didn’t mean to say that.”

  What she had said was unforgivable, but what she had done was worse. People had died because of her. Caitlin had lost Maritza because of her.

  Dad pinched his forehead, his face knotted. “I can explain.”

  “There’s no need.” Fana shook her head. “Really. I understand. You were afraid.”

  In the time before Mom knew the truth about Dad and his people, he had killed to protect the secret of his blood. One of the men he’d killed had been a newspaper reporter Mom had worked with, a man named Peter, Mom’s mentor. He had done nothing wrong. Peter’s death had sprung from an ugly web of coincidences and bad luck that had ended with his throat being cut.

  Mom knew her friend had died in the front seat of his vintage Mustang, his throat slashed so wide open that his blood had coated the windshield red. Fana had seen the Mustang herself, because Peter’s dying place crossed Mom’s mind from time to time. Dad’s, too.

  Mom and Dad never talked about Peter. That was part of their uneasy truce.

  But Mom hadn’t known that the man who’d died yesterday had been a priest.

  “I was going to talk to her later tonight, Fana,” Dawit said. “I wish you hadn’t said that, especially that way. But I wasn’t going to keep it from her.”

  “I know, Dad.”

  He sighed, rubbing his forehead again. “I’m sorry I frightened Caitlin.”

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the blood.”

  There. Almost all of this wretched episode felt better, except for that very last part. The last part didn’t have an answer, unless she could make Mom forget what she’d heard. Mom told her she had done that once when she was three—simply made her forget the deepest heartaches of her life, for a minute or two anyway. She could probably do it again.

  “Don’t interfere, Fana,” Dad said quietly. “It’s my mess.”

  He had been inside her head, and so gently that she hadn’t even noticed. Usually, she felt the air prickle when someone tried to probe her, and she could swat the sensation away. Fana wasn’t used to masking herself in her parents’ presence. The only place she didn’t mask was at the Big House. At home. Now, she would have to be more careful.

  Dad was better at mind arts than he believed he was. Maybe he had been right to kill the priest. Maybe that was what the dream had been trying to tell her.

  “She’s very upset, Dad.”

  “I know she is.”

  “This won’t get better right away.”

  Dad gave a defeated smile. “No.”

  Fana wondered what it would be like to have a mate who loved her the way her dad loved her mother. How would she ever know?

  She and Dad could be outcasts together. They deserved each other, her and her father.

  “I love you, Dad.”

  Dawit’s eyes were red. “I love you too, F
ana. And you’re not like me. Not in that way. You don’t have to be afraid of that.”

  But that wasn’t true.

  She didn’t remember the time, but she knew the stories.

  Fana had killed almost as soon as she could walk.

  Jessica knew she should be outside meditating. Finding her balance. Perspective.

  Instead, her hands were shaking as she rearranged the items on her bedroom dresser. The cream-colored dresser with gold-paint trim had come from Bea’s house, matching the canopied bed Jessica had had as a girl. The worn dresser merged her lives, old and new.

  Before the Living Blood, and after.

  Jessica needed to remember who she was. Sometimes she was in danger of forgetting.

  She touched her fur hat from Botswana, a patchwork of textures and colors. The hat was precious to her because it was a gift from a child who had lived near her Botswana clinic and hadn’t had much to give. Today, he was a physician to his people. The hat from Moses reminded Jessica of why she was here. And why she had the face and body of a twenty-seven-year-old woman when her birth certificate knew full well she had just turned forty-six.

  Jessica held a child’s toy, a Troll with wild purple hair her friend had given her years ago. WRITE ON, it said on its overstuffed belly. Sweet, thoughtful Peter.

  Dawit had killed again. And, yes, Fana was right: He was good at it.

  Peter Donavitch had been one of the most gentle and generous people she’d ever known, and he had accidentally planted himself in Dawit’s path. Painless, Dawit had insisted. How could anyone who’d seen all that blood on the windshield believe there had been anything painless about Peter Donavitch’s death?

  Even after eighteen years of prayer and meditation, Jessica could not forgive Dawit for Peter’s murder. But she’d done the best she could. She had learned to live with it, even if her throat sometimes felt bloated from all the poison she’d had to swallow. And maybe it was her fault, for not knowing the truth herself. For being so blind.

  But now Dawit had killed a priest? Had it happened the way Fana had described?