The Living Blood

  “You talk a lot,” Fana finally broke in matter-of-factly, and Teferi laughed.

  “Fana, that’s not a nice thing to say,” Jessica told her quietly.

  “But it’s true!” Fana said, as if indignant that she could be scolded for telling the truth.

  “Believe me, my sweet child, you’re not the first who’s said it. Nor will you be the last.” Teferi was smiling as he spoke, but Jessica noticed a wistful glaze across his eyes. From that, she guessed that Teferi was not well-liked by his brothers.

  “Why is my daddy’s face on fire, Te-fe-ri?” Fana said, suddenly earnest.

  The question confused Jessica, but Teferi did not look confused. Instead, he sighed. “Yes, I should have known I could not delay bad news in the presence of someone with such gifts.” He looked from Fana to Jessica. “I’ve learned something about your husband’s reluctance to see you, Mrs. Wolde. I know it has been weighing on your mind. I’m afraid he has been disfigured.”

  Suddenly, it made sense: David hadn’t been wearing a costume when she saw him, he’d been wearing bandages! Her heart lobbed against the soft of her throat. “Disfigured? How? He can’t—”

  “Some of the brothers, led by Kaleb, burned Dawit. His skin has been very badly damaged, and he has not yet recovered. It is a most unusual injury.”

  Burned! Jessica felt her face tighten and wince. “They burned him . . . because of me?”

  Teferi didn’t answer, but Jessica saw the answer in her host’s eyes.

  “And me, too,” Fana said, although it was not a question. “D-Daddy’s all burned up.” Saddened, she wrapped her arms around Jessica’s neck. Not for the first time, Jessica wished her daughter weren’t privy to such gruesome details. She hoped Fana wouldn’t start crying again.

  “So, as you can see, the guard at your door is quite necessary. No one can kill either of you, except perhaps Khaldun himself, but pain remains a formidable weapon.”

  “We’re prisoners, then,” Jessica said in a hollow voice, hugging Fana and stroking the long dreadlocks that hung down her daughter’s back.

  Teferi looked genuinely pained at the word prisoners. “No. You are Khaldun’s guests. But we must take reasonable precautions, as you can appreciate. Please forgive us.”

  “Tell David that we don’t care if he’s disfigured. We just want to see him.”

  “I have already expressed to Dawit that you and your daughter would like very much to see him. He made no response to me. But I will relay the message again.”

  Maybe he’s afraid, Jessica thought. It was hard to imagine of David, but it might be true. Why should he be anxious to risk being set on fire again? She and Fana were forbidden, even to her own husband. Jessica sighed. She’d been in such a good mood after waking up from her dream, but now that mood was gone. Maybe she’d better stock up on dream-sticks, after all, if she was going to be forced to sit in this chamber indefinitely, waiting to see Khaldun.

  Teferi licked his lips. “It’s quite possible that we can take . . . an excursion.”

  “What kind of excursion?”

  “There are so many delightful areas of the colony, quite secluded. I’m certain we can use Khaldun’s private passageways, given the circumstances. I could show you portions of the rock garden you saw when we first arrived, and you could relax in the springs. Or visit the livestock, since children have been fascinated by animals since time immemorial.”

  “Goats? I have three, four, five, six goats at home,” Fana said, counting off on her fingers, “and nobody eats them.”

  “I’m sure we could find a goat or two. Not a goat exactly like you would recognize, but nonetheless a very stubborn creature who appreciates a good petting between the ears.” In his voice, Jessica heard the evidence of what kind of father Teferi might have been. Imagining his lost children saddened her.

  “Yayyy!” Fana said, the happiest she’d sounded since their arrival. Relaxation in the hot springs seemed like a remote concept, but Jessica thought it might not be a bad idea to keep Fana occupied somehow. If it was safe . . .

  “But wouldn’t that be dangerous, Teferi?”

  “We’d bring Berhanu along as a precaution, and perhaps even Teka, whom you met at the dinner. But the colony is large enough, as you’ve seen, to provide privacy when it’s desired.”

  “Can we go now, Mommy? Pleeeeez?” Fana’s legs swung excitedly.

  Good judgment told Jessica no. But she also resented being cooped up in the chamber, and wouldn’t she and Fana be protected with three Life Brothers with them? They’d go for one hour, she told herself, frustrated anew that she hadn’t brought her wristwatch. Just one hour, and then they’d come back.

  “I promise you, I’ll bring you both back here in one piece,” Teferi said, and smiled.

  • • •

  Despite her casual clothes, Jessica felt like an important ambassador as she and Fana wound through Khaldun’s sloping private passageways in the Life Colony, led by the three immortals. Berhanu, their guard, walked nude in the lead, and Jessica couldn’t help noticing his rocklike buttocks flexing with each purposeful stride; Teka and Teferi were both clothed in long white tunics, probably out of respect for her. Unlike the caves, these passages were wider, with smoothly hewn floors. The thirty-foot walls were covered with the most extraordinary murals Jessica had ever seen, lit from the floor by the strange, small gas-filled globes that stretched ahead like an airport’s runway lights.

  Some of the images unfolding around them as they walked were landscapes and historical buildings as sharply realistic as photographs, and others were indefinable swirls of shapes and colors inside painstakingly intricate patterns. And there were faces everywhere, appearing inside the colors as if they were disembodied: men, women, children, crowds, some rendered with arresting realism and others in complex artistic styles. Each step brought a startling new sight, whether it was an African warrior painted at life-size height in the beads, paint, and animal skins of battle regalia or a sea of bowing worshipers at Mecca.

  “Khaldun painted these walls himself, when he was preparing to create our brotherhood,” Teferi said, speaking in a reverent hush. “The images represent all he has seen in his lifetime. They took him three hundred years to paint.”

  “The day he finished,” Teka added, even more solemnly, “he began seeking his pupils. And we were chosen above all others to receive the Life Gift.”

  “Mommy . . . where’s the goats?” Fana stage-whispered, breaking Jessica’s spell. Fana was apparently unimpressed with this colorful display Jessica was sure would make the Sistine Chapel look trivial, if only the world’s art experts knew of its existence.

  Jessica ignored Fana’s question. “Some of these murals are more than seven hundred years old?” she said, her voice echoing through the passageway. “But they look so fresh!”

  “They’ve been preserved impeccably,” Teferi said. “In some spots, if you look closely, the paint still looks as if it hasn’t dried. The preservatives were Khaldun’s own invention, long ago. Khaldun is a master of so much—”

  Jessica stopped walking, her eyes trained on the wall with pure wonderment. She felt a foreign impulse to fall to her knees.

  It was an image of Christ’s crucifixion, towering high above them on the wall, but not like any depiction she had seen from any King James Bible, church wall, or art-history book. The figure was nailed to a splintering wooden cross, and the details of Jesus himself made her breath freeze in her lungs: his crown of thorns was nearly hidden in the woolliness of his dark hair, he had soulful brown eyes, and his skin was the color of honey. He did not have the broad nose or full lips of an African, but he certainly was not the blue-eyed image of Christ celebrated by the Christians she knew. And his face, which was badly bruised beneath his left eye, was not nearly as beatific as she had so often seen it portrayed; instead, the face of Christ was wrenched with naked, human pain. Christ’s agony pierced Jessica’s heart like a revelation. She felt herself trembling in both sorrow
and ecstasy.

  “This painting is a marvel, as you can see,” Teferi told her gently. “The suffocation Jesus suffered on the cross is such a slow, unpleasant death. Do you see how the muscles in his arms are straining? The details! This is the only existing painting from the eyes of a witness.”

  “A . . . witness?” Jessica whispered.

  “Oh, yes. Of course Khaldun was there. How else do you think he got the bl—” Suddenly, Teferi’s head whipped toward Teka, as if he’d been struck. Teka looked more grim-faced than Jessica had ever seen him, and she realized that Khaldun’s attendant had just sent a nasty thought Teferi’s way, probably because Teferi had said too much. Did that mean the blood had come from Christ?

  All of Jessica’s senses narrowed, and she felt as if she were being yanked backward in a howling tunnel. For what seemed like a long instant, the only sound she was aware of was her galloping heartbeat. The weary, agonized face above her in the painting seemed to move, the lips peeling back beseechingly. It took her several seconds to realize the movement had been an illusion, but it wasn’t soon enough to slow a sickening racing of her heart.

  Dear Lord. Oh, dear Lord.

  “But that is for Khaldun to discuss with you,” Teferi said quickly, flustered. “I cannot speak for Khaldun. It is not my place. Please come. We will continue.”

  Jessica’s legs reluctantly obeyed her, but her mind was fixated on the memory of the mural. She touched her wrist with two fingers, feeling her pulse, and her sense of awe grew with each beat. As Teferi rattled on about the colorful rock sculptures in the courtyard and Fana complained she wanted to see the goats, one thought hammered at Jessica: Was the blood of Christ in her veins?

  The thought frightened her so much that it made her skin go cold, until she was virtually shivering in the colony’s temperate air. How had Khaldun gotten Christ’s blood? How?

  Suddenly, only one thought filled Jessica’s mind: damnation.

  • • •

  “Oooh!” Fana shrieked, and the sound of her voice echoed around them in loops. “Lookit the big chickens!” They had reached a corner corral that was home to about two dozen goats and mammoth white chickens the size of large turkeys.

  Gazing at the mutated fowl, Jessica barely blinked. Some kind of genetic splicing, she figured. More amusement for the brothers in the House of Science. The goats, too, were odd-looking to her: Their heads seemed smallish, and their flanks were bigger and bulkier than on goats she had seen before. And there was one other strange thing about all of the animals, she realized: They were silent. Aside from subdued clicking from the chickens that should have been clucking, they didn’t make a sound. And she didn’t care. Jessica patted Fana’s head in a vague acknowledgment.

  She was so distracted, she never understood exactly what happened next.

  She’d known they were out of the safety of the passageway now, but the area was so isolated that it hadn’t even occurred to her that they might not be alone. She remembered watching Teferi lift Fana over the rail so she could squat inside the animals’ enclosure, reaching her hand out toward a goat’s nose. And she almost opened her mouth to warn Fana that one of the chickens was excreting waste close to her sneakers.

  But she never had the time.

  She heard Berhanu speak for the first time, in a husky, urgent voice. She thought he was speaking a foreign language until she made out the words past his unfamiliar accent: Kaleb is near. But his words didn’t matter, because Jessica could only react to what she saw. Berhanu, this intimidating naked stranger, had leaped into the corral and was making a sudden movement toward Fana, as if to grab her and run. And despite Teferi’s sudden clinging to Jessica’s arm—presumably, she realized later, trying to force her to crouch to the ground—she yanked herself free and followed Berhanu across the wooden rail, toward her child.

  Crouching over Fana, Berhanu gave Jessica a wild-eyed look with a shout, pushing her away with one straight arm. If not for the railing behind her, Jessica would have fallen over backward from his push, but instead, the railing crashed into her back, nearly knocking the wind out of her. Her foot slipped in manure on the floor, and as she lost her balance, she heard Fana scream. Something—a strange whistling noise—made Jessica look up, and she saw an object flying end over end toward them from high above. Toward Fana.

  Jessica screamed herself, trying to lunge forward, her arms outstretched toward the flying object as if she could catch it in her hands.

  Somehow, she did. Or rather, the object caught her.

  It was a knife with a blade at least ten inches long. Jessica watched with disbelieving eyes as it sliced across her wrist, cutting through her flesh and bones as if they had been made of nothing more than soft butter. The knife clattered to the floor of the pen somewhere, and Jessica stared in front of her where her right hand had flopped, still wearing the beaded ring Sarah had given her for Christmas. It was severed so cleanly she didn’t even see blood yet. Her fingers twitched at her feet.

  Jessica was too shocked to make a sound. A thought fought to the top of her mind: Oh, my God, this is going to hurt in a minute—

  But that thought was swallowed by a sudden tide of fiery pain.

  Yes, damnation, she thought. Damnation. Even as Jessica’s consciousness slipped away, she still wondered how Khaldun had gotten Christ’s blood, and if losing her hand was only the beginning of the price they would all have to pay.

  23

  Botswana

  Lucas had expected to feel a whisper of joy, some sense of triumph, when he reached the secluded ranch house hidden in the bosom of a traditional Tswana village outside Serowe. The house emerged in view of his rented Toyota Camry’s windshield like a long-held dream, neatly painted and modern behind its English-country-style fencing, holding all the promise in the world. The sleepy man arranging fruit at the market in Serowe had known exactly where the American women lived, and he told Lucas to follow the dirt path a few kilometers outside of Serowe, saying, “You can’t miss it,” which struck Lucas as a ludicrous thing to say about something in the middle of nowhere, but the villager had been absolutely right. There was no other house like it anywhere nearby. It was only dawn, and he had made it.

  But Lucas was beyond joy. After his 2 A.M. telephone conversation with Jared before going to bed at the hotel in Serowe, Lucas had suspected he might never feel joy again.

  Cal had picked up the phone in Jared’s hospital room. He’d taken the week off from work, he told Lucas. “Yeah, Jared needs me here pretty much all the time,” Cal said, accusing without trying. “Nita, me, and Cleo are switching off. And I went ahead and called those numbers you left. His grandmother moved up her flight so she could get here tomorrow.” Cal hadn’t even asked how Lucas’s search was going. As if it didn’t matter.

  And it didn’t, Lucas realized as soon as Cal put Jared on the phone.

  Suddenly, the connection seemed as fragile as a spider’s web, and it was hard to hear.

  “Jared? You there, kid?”

  Silence.

  “Jared . . . can you speak up, sweetheart?” Lucas said, his voice cracking.

  “Yeah,” he heard Jared say at last.

  “I hear you’re not feeling too good. Is that right?”

  Silence again. In those few seconds, Lucas filled with a rage he didn’t know where to pin.

  “Jared, can you hear me?”

  “Yeah.” This time, his voice was clearer, but not stronger. He sounded phlegmy, awful.

  “I’m really sorry you’re feeling so lousy, Jared. Is Cleo still reading to you?”

  This time, Lucas realized the silence was not due to a bad connection, but because Jared was taking long pauses, not answering his questions. Lucas’s heart quailed. He was losing him. Lucas was on the verge of an emotional wave he wasn’t sure he’d be able to control when Jared said suddenly, “When’re you coming home?”

  Right now, Lucas wanted to say. I’m at the airport. I’ll be there by morning.

  “Rea
l soon,” he said instead. “I’m near the clinic, Jared. There’s nobody around to ask now, but I’ll probably find it first thing tomorrow, and I’m going to get some blood. I’m real close. You hear? Then I’ll be right home.”

  Silence.

  “Did you hear that, Jared? I’ve almost got it.”

  “Just . . . come back,” Jared said, wheezing more than speaking.

  “You bet, sweetheart. As soon as I get it, I’m coming right back,” Lucas said, deliberately misunderstanding his son’s plea. He’d sounded like the old Jared for an instant, and that had to be a good sign. He could make it two more days. Jared could make it until he got back.

  But there had been no mistaking the coldness in Cal’s voice when he had taken the phone again to rattle off the unsettling decline in Jared’s condition, and Lucas had felt what was left of his psyche crumble to dust. Somehow, Lucas had been able to hear about Jared’s collapsed lung and long spells of delusion with grunts of acknowledgment, without saying Okay, I’m coming right now.

  So Cal no longer knew who Lucas was, and Lucas no longer knew himself, either. His quest had taken him so far outside himself, he didn’t know how he’d ever find his way back. This is one you’ll live with till the grave, Doc, Cal had warned that day he was sanding his crib.

  His haunting had already begun. Whatever he found at this house might not matter by the end of the day. The next time he called Wheeler to talk to his son, he might learn Jared was dead.

  The instant he saw the neat, cheery house, Lucas despised it. He hated this house for forcing him to leave his son behind, as he had never hated anything else in his life. He had to sit in the parked vehicle for nearly five minutes just to stop the angry shaking of his hands.