My Soul to Take

  FROM THE FIRST TIME I FELT YOUR AURA, Michel said, I KNEW YOU WERE A QUEEN, FANA. EVERYTHING MY MOTHER SHOULD HAVE BEEN.

  We’ll heal your mother, Michel. Together, Fana said.

  Bands of light wound between them, wrapping them more tightly. What a sensation, to be held and to hold another!

  Fana, do you choose this man to be your husband? Teka said.

  I do, Fana whispered, somewhere far below. But the rest of her was launching through the rapids of their newly conjoined river. She couldn’t stand her ignorance.

  I need to learn, she said.

  I want to teach you.

  I have to teach too.

  You already do, Michel said.

  Michel, do you choose this woman to be your wife? said Teka.

  I do.

  Fana rounded a new corner of herself, and was swept up in the Rising, high above the tower, pulling Michel away from her ear. Michel chased her, pouncing to follow her with a cat’s playfulness, but he didn’t have her speed in the Rising. Bright light emptied Fana’s mind except for the hum of the jet’s engine, somewhere over Texas.

  A realization sparked in her thoughts: Johnny was coming to Nogales.

  Why? Fana’s knowledge raced, yanking her ahead of what she knew, raising the barricades she’d tried to protect her loved ones with. And then Fana knew.

  Was her sudden maw of fright a kind of love?

  Fana’s mouth, her limbs, even her thoughtstreams couldn’t keep up with the knowledge. She stood frozen in an endless moment, watching from above, unable to race to the places where Michel could hear her.

  The Shadows whispered to Fana in the growling voice she remembered from when she was three: YOU SEE? YOU DESTROY EVERYTHING YOU TOUCH.

  One side of Michel’s face dissolved into a red spray. Gone.

  Fana’s eyes couldn’t stop staring at her white dress, soiled with her husband’s blood.

  By the time Jessica heard the gunshot echo across the mountainside, Michel was already slumped at Fana’s feet, as if to curl around her legs. His blood had streaked her dress in a single line, like paint from a roller. Had he tried to embrace Fana as he’d fallen?

  Michel’s mother, Teru, was the first to scream. Her wail pierced Jessica so deeply that it dug out tears. No mother deserved to see her child shot down, even one with the Blood.

  What have I done? Jessica thought, and, Thank you, Lord. Two sides of her roiled at war.

  Gunfire began from several directions below, and the ground shook with stampeding feet as people tried to run. Screams spread through the crowd, and Jessica’s heart withered. Her legs wobbled, and she nearly sank to her knees.

  How could she have thanked God for gunshots? What had she become?

  There were children in the crowd. A catastrophe was being born.

  And Fana! As Fana stared at the perverse blood on her bridal gown, Jessica had never seen such raw bewilderment on her child’s face.

  What have I done? That might have been the only question remaining in Jessica’s mind.

  Jessica ran toward Fana, but a barrier she couldn’t see knocked her away. Berhanu’s breath huffed behind her, and Jessica realized he’d pushed her aside with a mental stream. The impact was so unexpected that Jessica stumbled to the floor.

  Berhanu snatched Michel up as if he were weightless, hoisting his limp body over his back. Michel looked so much smaller now, unrecognizable. Jessica looked away from Michel’s horrid veil of blood. The bullet’s wound had ripped away the top side of his face, leaving a horror. He would not wake right away.

  Jessica wondered why Berhanu was trying so valiantly to help Michel.

  Then she realized he wasn’t.

  Stefan roared out in Italian, his gun raised at Berhanu. Stefan was red-faced and livid, and Jessica heard her own rage in his voice. A parent’s rage.

  Until the shooting started, Jessica hadn’t realized there were so many guns in the tower.

  Dawit fell on Jessica to shield her with his body, but she never blinked, so she saw a blur as Dawit’s knife left his hand. The blade flew into Stefan’s neck, embedding there. Stefan’s gun flew over the edge of the tower. He tried to yell in pain, but he couldn’t make a sound.

  Well-orchestrated chaos played around Jessica: stone columns chipping from bullets that ricocheted against the bell above them, bodies diving and falling. Through wisps of smoke, Jessica saw lovely Fasilidas slumped in a heap, bloodied.

  Only Fana hadn’t moved, except to raise her head to show her eyes.

  Jessica didn’t like what was in Fana’s eyes. The bewilderment was gone. Her eyes were on Michel, who still rested in Berhanu’s thick arms.

  “PUT HIM DOWN!” Fana screamed, racked with pain.

  Dust flew into Jessica’s face as Dawit’s gun vaporized in his hand. All the guns in the tower floated away in tiny clouds.

  Fasilidas, Teferi, and Stefan all lay sleeping, gone for at least six hours, probably eight. The survivors squared off against one another, wary. Berhanu, closest to Fana, hoisted Michel over his shoulder, looking for a way out of the tower. Berhanu’s leg was splotched red from a gunshot, but he was still on his feet, lurching under Michel’s weight.

  As Berhanu turned around to face Fana, his face was pained. The Life Brother’s nose was bleeding, a sight Jessica hadn’t seen since Fana was three.

  “I’m going to burn him,” Berhanu said, staring defiantly at Fana. “To ash. And then you, and all of us, are free of him. I do it in your name, Fana. And for the Lalibela Colony!”

  Jessica had never heard Berhanu make such a long speech. Blood peeked from Berhanu’s other nostril, and his jaw trembled. Berhanu was a powerful telepath; he was engaging with Fana, wrestling.

  But he was losing, and badly. Jessica saw it in the burly man’s eyes.

  Berhanu staggered to address the crowd, thrusting Michel’s prone body over his head.

  “Any of you who find this corpse, burn it to cinders!” he yelled in Spanish. His voice roared across the mountainside, woven inside the gunshots. “Scatter it in the wind!”

  Berhanu heaved as if to toss Michel over the tower, but he staggered backward again, dropping Michel to the platform. Berhanu’s last look was to Dawit, his final words silent.

  With a cry, Berhanu took three running steps and launched his large frame over the side of the tower. More frantic screams rained below, but Jessica heard only hers.

  “Fana, no!” Jessica said to Fana’s eyes, trying to find her in the holes torn by the gunshot.

  Dawit went to Michel and reached for his neck. Jessica thought he might try to break it—but instead, he felt for a pulse.

  “Fana, it’s not as bad as it seems,” Dawit said. “His heart is still beating.”

  But Jessica wasn’t sure she had heard him. Fana didn’t look like she could hear anything.

  • • •

  “Johnny? Did you hear me?” Caitlin’s voice said, excited. “He’s hit. I dunno how bad yet. All hell’s breaking loose down there. Tell me you heard me.”

  But Johnny Wright heard only the knocking of his heart. Caitlin was drowned out by every ounce of the blood throbbing through his veins.

  Johnny felt his palms press against the armrests, flexed arm muscles launching him to his feet. His body was taking flight without him. Right leg, left leg; sure, swift motion. Johnny’s body left his seat and walked to the aisle of the plane.

  He tried to tell Caitlin something was wrong, but he had lost control of his mouth. Crushing dread wrapped around Johnny, sodden and final.

  Just two minutes earlier, when Mahmoud had winked at him from the rear of the plane, Johnny had believed again. Aside from Fana’s concert with Phoenix, or waking up after Fana gave him the Blood, seeing Mahmoud might have been the finest moment of his life.

  It’s too late! He knows! Johnny tried to shout his thoughts to Mahmoud, with no idea how. Could Mahmoud see him past the curtain? Did Michel have Mahmoud, too?

  Johnny’s leg bumped hard agai
nst an armrest as he rushed past, a jolt of pain to let him know what was coming. Could he talk to Michel by thinking his name? Would it do any good?

  What did you expect me to do, Michel? What would you have done?

  Johnny stopped at row 6, leaning over to the sunburned man sitting on the aisle in 6A.

  “I’m John Jamal Wright,” Johnny heard himself say.

  The man’s face lit up with recognition. Johnny tried to scream at him, Kill me!

  Don’t make me hurt anyone, Johnny begged Michel. Just let it be me.

  Johnny watched his own limbs move in a horrifying blur: an elbow to the man’s jaw, a deft snatch into his jacket for his Glock, and a dizzying crack against the man’s skull with his forehead, all in a blink. Then the explosion as he shot the air marshal in the temple.

  Please, Michel. Not like this. Only punish me.

  Johnny heard his own voice yell in a roar as he stood in the aisle. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “welcome to my Hell!”

  The screams washed over him like a waterfall. The pleasure horrified Johnny, stroking his mind. Was this how suffering felt to Michel?

  “I’m John Jamal Wright!” his voice said. “Turn on your phones and call everybody you know. Tell them it was me. When the plane goes down, we’ll all be in pieces.”

  Real death—not just for him and Mahmoud, but for two hundred people he didn’t know.

  Is this how you treat your own followers, Michel?

  Johnny’s arm jutted straight out. He hadn’t had a chance to turn his head before the gun fired again, and more screams pierced him somewhere new. From the corner of his eye, he could see only the white hair of the old woman he’d shot, and his spirit sobbed.

  Michel, please just take me.

  “Anybody else ready to die?” Johnny heard himself say.

  Caitlin’s shocked voice whispered in his ear, “Oh my God. It’s okay, baby. I’m here.”

  Johnny wept with joy, in the place Michel couldn’t touch. He tried to slow his heartbeat so that he could hear every nuance in Caitlin’s voice from the radio in his ear.

  “You came so close,” Caitlin said, as if that was consolation. “He was hit.”

  Where was Fana? Had she been hit, too? Couldn’t she tell that Michel was killing him?

  “Fight him, Johnny,” Caitlin said. “You’ve done it before. You can fight him.”

  Johnny couldn’t find muscles to fight with. There was nowhere to flex or pull; he was only riding. Johnny turned, lurching toward the pilot’s cabin.

  He watched his arm rise again as he fired his gun at the lock, and the mangled lock fell open. Was this what life was like for Michel? Everything parted for him?

  The gunshot made Caitlin squeal in horror, but she didn’t leave him. “Fight, baby. Fight,” Caitlin said. “I know you’re in there. I know you hear me, Johnny. Put the gun down.”

  He shot the pilot seated to the right of the door without looking over his shoulder, so he never saw his face. He listened to the copilot reason for a while, and then beg, and Johnny was forced to luxuriate in the repulsive allure of his fear. Johnny was relieved for both of them when the copilot was dead, too. Caitlin strangled her cries with every shot.

  The world moved beneath his feet as the plane veered. The screams were sweet torture.

  “Johnny? If you’re still there, pick your moment, one moment, and give it everything,” Caitlin said, impossibly calm. “Mahmoud’s heard the shots by now. You’re not alone.”

  Mahmoud was behind Johnny in the cockpit as soon as Caitlin said his name. Johnny knew before he turned around, because he knew. Johnny’s body spun, fast. Mahmoud had a shiny black knife ready, fashioned from material he’d slipped past the airport’s metal detectors.

  “Bad luck for you, isn’t it, Mahmoud?” Johnny heard himself say, the words humming in his throat. “To die in a plane crash?”

  Other passengers had gathered behind Mahmoud, men and women ready to storm the cockpit. “He can’t shoot all of us!” a hoarse man shouted. A rallying cry traveled through the cabins, replacing terror with wild hope.

  “Drop the gun, Hannibal,” Mahmoud told Johnny gently. “Try to move your fingers, one by one. Leave the rest to me.”

  “Help him, Johnny,” Caitlin whispered. Caitlin’s voice slowed his heartbeat.

  How had he done it? How had he ever shot Michel’s men in Mexico?

  “Fight, Johnny,” Caitlin said. She’d stopped hiding the tears in her voice.

  Johnny’s index finger wouldn’t obey, tightening on the trigger. Mahmoud was ducking, but he wouldn’t be quick enough.

  Bless me, Lord, the way you bless Fana in the dragon’s den.

  Time slowed a fraction. If Johnny hadn’t been waiting for the moment, he might have missed it. The bullet tore into Mahmoud’s left bicep, missing his heart by a mile.

  Mahmoud didn’t show pain at his injury. He gave Johnny an impressed grin.

  WELL FOUGHT, MY SON, Mahmoud said as he threw his knife.

  I love you, Fana—

  When the blade pierced him, Johnny was the only one on the flight who heard his cry.

  Forty

  The world ended and began with a gunshot. One world gone, another world born.

  Phoenix had ducked gunfire more than once, so she knew how to dive away from death. Teferi had caught a bullet meant for her, fired from Romero’s gun. She had seen Romero glare at her with a lunatic’s loathing before he’d taken aim at her, petrified by the power in her music.

  But the gunshots weren’t as bad as the smell.

  Phoenix hadn’t noticed the stench until Berhanu threw himself off the tower, a sight that would have been harrowing enough. Phoenix had smelled a bare hint of the odor on Michel when she met him, maybe on the soles of his feet—but now the stench was stewing like thick crude oil floating to the surface of things. Chaos nourishing itself.

  A gunshot had ripped the seams open, freeing blind fury.

  “Fana, it’s not as bad as it seems,” Dawit said, although things were far worse than they seemed. Phoenix jumped at the chug-chug-chug of an automatic weapon spewing random death.

  “His heart is still beating.”

  The guns in the tower had turned to dust. That was the first thing Phoenix had to write about. Phoenix tried to remember everything, because someone would have to tell the story. Someone would have to sing the songs.

  Phoenix wasn’t surprised when Dawit went flying backward away from Michel, as if he’d been blown in a gale, falling against a column. Michel still lay unconscious, but some part of him was awake. Hadn’t Dawit just said that Michel’s heart was beating? Dawit better step off.

  Clouds were covering the sun, faster than clouds should move.

  Phoenix kept her eyes open, trying to see it all.

  Someone had to remember.

  Someone had to bear witness.

  Michel, where are you?

  The colorful, glittering radiance was gone, replaced by remarkable pain. The call to fuse with Michel had startled her—the severing of Michel, so suddenly, so cruelly—added new dimensions to pain. Fana was blind as she looked for him, limping, unable to fly even in her thoughts. Shadows choked her, leaving Fana to wade through a dripping, formless muck. Fana was up to her knees in Shadows.

  She felt him. She knew his breathing. Heard his heart’s weak beating.

  But the bullet had torn down the lights between them. As long as Michel was unconscious, his thoughtstreams were roaming mindlessly, disordered. The Shadows were cradling Michel while he slept, harnessing his rage. Michel was nothing but Shadows now.

  Michel, wake up! It’s still our wedding day.

  A flicker brightened a passageway in the distance, but he was out of her reach when she tried to follow, just around the next bend, diving deeper into the dark. And oh, the smell! There was a symphony of suffering steeping in that smell, a stewpot cooking. Fana couldn’t wade too deeply into the smell, or she would forget she hadn’t come to feast.

/>   Fana had experienced the first pull of the Shadows with Berhanu, watching his nose bleed like the Life Brother she had killed when she was three. No fumbling or struggling to find his heart; the Shadows were better at killing. Brushing against the Shadows was sticky, so it had been hard to pull free. Berhanu had been bleeding from both nostrils—she had made it happen—even as Fana tried to let him go.

  Berhanu, a guardian she loved, would die like an offering to the Cleansing Pool?

  If not for her games with Michel before the wedding, she would have been overpowered then. But she braced, pushed back, wriggled, washed away the smell.

  And she’d torn herself away from the Shadows’ surge in time to send Berhanu leaping out of the tower, an escape from the Shadows’ exsanguination. At least Berhanu would wake after his fall, if Michel’s followers didn’t butcher his corpse to mincemeat.

  But Berhanu had betrayed her.

  IT WILL BE A TEST, FANA, BUT KEEP CONTROL.

  She wished it were Michel’s voice, but Teka’s voice followed her instead. At least she had a guide! Fana was glad her teacher had always known what he was preparing her for.

  The Shadows whispered secrets to her in colliding voices. A flash of too-bright light, and Fana saw the charred bones of two people lying side by side with a sniper rifle between them. They had combusted in an instant, tracked by Michel’s angry Shadows. Somewhere far from her, the Shadows gaining speed, riding a horse. A rider in a cowboy hat was racing at a gallop, leaping from a cliff, an endless, petrifying fall. The conspirators were dying.

  Who else?

  A sudden cry of pain filled Fana’s core, one she knew. Johnny! The Shadows had found Johnny high above the world. She had murdered Johnny by giving him her heart long before she’d damned him by giving him her Blood.

  Fana hadn’t thought she could absorb new pain, but Johnny’s last cry ripped at her.

  Michel, stop it!

  No one but Michel could stop the power the Shadows drew from him for their blindly rampaging rage. The Shadows believed they were doing his bidding.