The Living Blood

  Lucas moaned softly.

  “I know,” the Englishman said, sounding full of sincere sympathy. “No one likes to be touched in the face. How about we do the shoulder instead, then? That’s civilized enough.”

  Lucas didn’t answer or move. His wanted to close his eyes, but he couldn’t stop staring at the baton’s curved tip as it drew closer to his skin. He pulled away, but the Englishman jabbed.

  Before Lucas was aware of any real sensation, he felt his body writhing, as if the Englishman were a puppeteer jerking his limbs with invisible strings. His toes curled tight, splashing in the bucket. His shoulder, then his arm, then his torso, were drenched in fire. Ice-fire. The bucket was full of it. The room was full of it, turning his body to immovable lead. When he yelled, the ice-fire even wiggled into his throat, baking his insides.

  My name is Lucas Dorsey Shepard, my name is Lucas Dorsey Shepard, his mind repeated to him in a furious mantra, because he was honestly on the verge of forgetting. Soon, that was gone, too. Blanked out.

  The first jolt lasted only five seconds, but to Lucas it was a lifetime.

  46

  Richmond Heights

  Miami

  11:28 A.M.

  Though she felt anything but happy, Jessica smiled when her mother opened the living room’s venetian blinds to see who had rung the old iron, maritime-style bell on the front porch. This had been the day from hell, as far as Jessica was concerned. She’d barely slept waiting for Dr. Shepard’s son to wake up at the hospital, which he had shortly before dawn, but the boy hadn’t known anything. All Jared knew was that his father had gone to find a clinic with magic blood. Jessica was glad to have helped him, but that couldn’t soothe her stifling disappointment.

  Then, during their morning flight from Tallahassee, they’d learned that Miami was in the path of a dangerous hurricane. They’d arrived at ten o’clock, and the traffic heading west, away from the airport and toward the less flood-prone areas of the county, had been unreal. The thunderstorms had started an hour ago, dumping water down and making driving even more difficult.

  Jessica was wet, sad, and exhausted, but she was home. Thank God.

  Jessica could see her mother standing stock-still in the window with her silvery hair braided in cornrows, pulled tightly away from her face. The new style made her looks years younger, as did her blue, faded jeans and casual T-shirt. Bea’s eyes stared out from a face devoid of expression, just like Fana looked when she was deep in trance. Was something wrong with her? Uncertainly, Jessica waved. “Mom?” Above her, thunder growled like tramping footsteps.

  A grin spread across her mother’s face that was so overjoyed that Jessica nearly succumbed to tears. “Jessica!” Bea shrieked, her voice muted through the window. “Baby! What in the world are you doing here—”

  After flinging the door open, Bea pulled Jessica close for a spirited hug. As much as she wished she could disappear into her mother’s hug, Jessica’s muscles were tense; she couldn’t enjoy her mother’s love, not with the terrible truths in her mind. Until now, Jessica hadn’t realized how much she had missed her mother, how it hurt to live so far away. She hadn’t seen Bea in more than a year.

  “Baby, I just didn’t believe my own eyes,” Bea said, kissing her cheek with those so-familiar lips. Fana, who had been lying half-awake across Jessica’s shoulder, only whined irritably under her grandmother’s excited hugs, kisses, and exclamations. Bea stared out expectantly toward the rental car in the driveway. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? You’re lucky you got into the airport in all this weather! They’re about to close it. You didn’t hear about that hurricane? Where’s Alexis?” Bea’s face glowed with excitement.

  Jessica had planned to tell her. She’d been rehearsing the speech in her mind during the flight, and then during the long drive from Miami’s airport to this house on the outer reaches of Richmond Heights, the middle-class black community in Southwest Dade that Bea had adopted since her return. The cinder-block, bungalow-style house was on a half acre of land, relatively secluded. The house was at least fifty years old, although it had been modernized with tinted windows and new roofing over the years. Her stepfather’s sister had lived in this house until she died a couple of years ago, and Daddy Gaines had adopted it, deciding not to move back into Jessica’s childhood home farther north. He’d worried they would be too easily found at the old house. Reporters had made their lives a misery during Jessica’s pregnancy and right after Fana was born. The Richmond Heights house was still in his dead sister’s name—which was Carlson, not Gaines—so he’d figured it wasn’t likely any reporters would come looking for them here. The precaution had seemed unnecessary to Jessica at the time, but now she was relieved he’d been so cautious. She’d half feared that when she finally reached her mother’s new home, she’d find that Bea and her stepfather were gone, too.

  Now she was here, and she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t tell her mother about Alexis.

  “Honey, you look exhausted! Is your sister in the car?”

  “She’s . . . still in Botswana,” Jessica lied, hoping the lie didn’t show on her face, which was straining to smile. “It’s just me and F—” She paused, realizing her mother wouldn’t recognize her daughter’s new name, just as she wouldn’t recognize much else about her. “Me and Bee-Bee. And, Mom? It’s David you see in the car. With a friend.”

  “David!” Bea said, her smile disappearing. Lines creased her forehead as she peered out toward the car, trying to see through the sheet of rain. Then she looked at Jessica again, searching her daughter’s face. Her mother had never been one to tell her how to live her life, but Jessica knew Bea would not like having David here. If Jessica was having trouble forgiving her husband for the heartache he’d brought her, she knew her mother would have an even harder time. Bea had adored her granddaughter. In part, Jessica had named Bee-Bee after her mother in an attempt to help compensate her for the loss. “You’ve let him come back to you?” As Jessica had expected, Bea sounded incredulous and disappointed.

  “We have a kid to raise, Mom,” Jessica said, hoping her mother wouldn’t argue. Once again, Fana had sleepily rested her head on Jessica’s shoulder. Ordinarily, Fana would have been full of animation over a visit to Gramma Bea, but she was still groggy. Something was wrong with her daughter, Jessica thought. If she’d been any other child, Jessica would have taken her to the hospital by now to try to find out what.

  Bea sighed and pursed her lips. She wiped her hands on her T-shirt, gazing out toward the car again. “That friend with him, is he another one of those people? You know what I mean.”

  Jessica nodded. This time, she saw fascination in her mother’s eyes, along with the unmistakable pain. “Well, I guess you’d better tell them to come on in,” Bea said. “Randall is still out at the market with his pickup, getting more bottled water. They say the storm’s almost sure to hit us, so we could use a couple of able-bodied young men to help get these shutters down. Randall says this house is sound enough to withstand anything, not like these little matchboxes they’re putting up nowadays, but I’ll feel better once the windows are covered. I guess the Lord provides after all.” This time, she was smiling again.

  Much to Jessica’s surprise, once David got out of the car and walked up to the front porch, Bea even had a quick, uncomfortable hug for him. And she regarded Teferi with unmasked admiration, as if he were a visiting celebrity. “Well!” Bea announced, once the introductions were finished. “Let me put on some lunch. We can all eat when Randall gets back. We’ll have our last good meal before the power goes out. Jessica, that neurotic cat of yours is hiding somewhere . . .”

  David shared a questioning look with Jessica, and she only shrugged and smiled. He hadn’t expected such a warm reception, either. Maybe time does heal, she thought. Walking into her mother’s house, Jessica held her husband’s hand and felt like a normal family, just for an instant.

  But she didn’t feel normal long. She heard Fana’s voice intrude in
to her head.

  The guardhouse said it was a star, an island. Teferi’s son did it. He’s O’Neal.

  Fana had been doing it all morning, at least once an hour, sending nonsensical thoughts to Jessica in a monotone, as if reciting words from a script. Once again, she studied her daughter’s face to make sure she wasn’t in a trance again. And she wasn’t, or at least she didn’t seem to be. Fana’s eyes were open and blinking, and she responded verbally when she was spoken to. Still, though, she wasn’t herself, not by a long shot. David had told Jessica about Fana’s screaming fit and the incident with the hotel’s TV while Jessica was at the hospital with Jared, but he said he’d been able to calm her down fairly quickly. Fana hadn’t been talkative, but she was awake. And she was behaving the way she usually did when she hadn’t gotten enough rest: easily irritated, uncommunicative, refusing to eat. And she slept a lot, almost constantly.

  With Fana’s state of mind to worry about, Jessica hadn’t had time to try to evaluate the telepathic phrases her daughter was sending her about a guardhouse, a star, and an island. And what in the world did Teferi’s son have to do with anything? Teferi had told them he’d had a hundred children. Had one been named O’Neal?

  That was my son Shannon’s surname, the one I gave him while I lived in Ireland, Teferi had told her when she asked during their flight. But it is impossible that there would be any relationship between Shannon and your sister’s disappearance. As I told you, he’s been dead more than two hundred years. I was forced to set the fire that killed him myself.

  Even Teferi’s mental gifts couldn’t help them learn anything more. Fana was blocking him, Teferi said. She had hidden herself.

  Maybe Fana was only repeating random thoughts, Jessica decided. She prayed that a few days with Gramma Bea would help bring Fana back to normal, hurricane or no hurricane. Jessica felt safe here, and that meant Fana should, too. After all, they had nothing to fear from a hurricane. And if her mother or Daddy Gaines got injured somehow, there were plenty of immortals on hand to help them. Realizing that, Jessica felt an overwhelming sense of calm.

  This household, at least, would stand against the storm.

  After Daddy Gaines’s return, David and Teferi went outside to help roll down the hurricane shutters while Jessica joined her mother to prepare lunch. The kitchen was crowded with a hurricane arsenal: canned foods of all varieties, candles, matches, a propane stove, propane gas, Jessica’s old battery-operated television set, and at least two dozen bottles of water. Jessica could hear traces of the television on in the living room, mingling with the voice of the announcer on the all-news station playing on a radio in the kitchen, both of them rattling off information and precautions.

  “ . . . on a northwesterly course,” she heard the TV weatherman saying, before the radio announcer drowned him out: “And I do repeat, these evacuation orders apply to all residents of the affected areas. If you’re just tuning in, these are the areas that have been targeted for evacuation, and residents are to seek shelters immediately. Miami Beach. Star Island. Key Biscayne—”

  Frustrated, Bea switched the radio off. “What’s wrong with little Bee-Bee, sweetheart? She can’t get sick, can she? I’ve never seen her so listless.”

  But Jessica didn’t even hear the question because her mind was anchored to the radio announcer’s words. Star Island, just like Fana had said. It was an upscale island near Miami Beach, and it had a guardhouse! She was sure of it. The raw chicken she’d been washing tumbled from her fingers into the sink.

  • • •

  “I’m sure you set the fire, Teferi—but did you see his corpse?” Jessica asked for the second time after she, David, and Teferi had withdrawn for a private meeting in the den. The room was paneled with stained wood, apparently doubling as Randall Gaines’s study. The walls were covered with seemingly unrelated maps and charts: the optic nerves, the nervous system, the galaxy, Africa. Since the hurricane shutters blocked all the light from outside and Jessica had firmly closed the door, the room was dark and cheerless, lighted only by a banker’s lamp on the rolltop desk.

  Teferi looked taken aback, his hands nervously shuffling pens in a penholder on the desk. “Jessica, I hardly see the relevance of these inquiries. I’ve told you, this was so long ago.”

  “But you said he had your blood. He cut your throat and probably stole a bucket of it, or maybe more,” Jessica said. At that, David glared at Teferi with mingled surprise and disgust; he’d apparently never heard the story. “If he survived the fire, what if he used it to keep himself alive all this time?”

  “But he . . .” Teferi’s voice faltered, and he lowered his eyebrows in serious consideration. “My goodness, that’s unimaginable. A mortal? How could he?”

  “With the blood,” Jessica said, hearing impatience in her words.

  “Teferi,” David said, walking over to stare Teferi in the eye. “Do you mean to say that you allowed a mortal to take blood from you! And that you made no effort to retrieve it?”

  “I set . . . a fire,” Teferi said, his voice breaking. “I burned his house to the ground. He was so drunk, I’m certain he slept straight through. But he was my son, Dawit. I could not bear to witness—”

  Stamping his foot on the carpeted floor, David made an exasperated groaning sound, one Jessica had heard only once or twice during their marriage. He began talking to himself in a foreign language that was wholly unfamiliar, and he was probably cursing, judging from his deeply furrowed brow and the anger in his eyes.

  “Fana says your son did it, Teferi. She said he’s named O’Neal. And I think she was trying to tell me he’s right here on Star Island.” She’d dialed a half dozen times before she could get past the jammed telephone lines to reach an operator, but the frazzled woman who finally answered had told her there was a Shannon O’Neal in the Dade County directory. Both his telephone number and address were unlisted. “I think if we went to Star Island and asked the guard for the O’Neal residence, there’s a good chance we might find Alex there, or at least more clues about where she’s been taken. Fana’s been right so far, every step of the way.”

  “Is this why you insisted on coming to Miami in the path of a typhoon, when we should be thinking of nothing now except caring for our daughter?” David said, fixing a hard gaze on her.

  Jessica’s stomach plummeted. She’d forgotten how David’s words could sting her.

  “Teferi, please leave us alone a moment,” Jessica whispered, her throat tight.

  David’s eyes dropped away, and he walked a few paces, until he was facing the wall. Teferi, sensing the shifted mood between them, gave them a half bow, murmuring agreeably, “I pray I am in no way to blame for what has happened.” Then, he was gone.

  “You know I didn’t know the storm was so bad,” Jessica said.

  “And after we arrived?”

  “Why do we have to go through this again? I thought she’d be better off with her grandmother for a few days, David. Maybe you don’t understand how this works, but my mother’s love has brought me through more trials than I can count. To some people, family matters.”

  Now it was David’s turn to look stung, and Jessica regretted the words. Suddenly, the air between them felt mined with all of the hurts they had amassed. Any word might bring disaster.

  “All I have wanted,” David began, speaking slowly, “was to follow Khaldun’s bidding. I know you do not think him perfect, but he’s the wisest man I know of. He told us very clearly of the dangers if we did not care properly for Fana, and we have seen these dangers begin to manifest around us. She may have killed people we do not know of, Jessica.”

  “I don’t think so,” Jessica said softly. “But you’re right. I know that.”

  “Yet, as Fana’s state continues to worsen, you seem to have preoccupied yourself with thoughts of nothing but your sister.”

  “That’s not true, David. And it’s not fair.”

  “Do you deny that you’ve been relying on Fana to give you information?
And that each time she does, her mental condition deteriorates?”

  At that, Jessica nearly sobbed. She hated the way David sounded so detached, like a prosecutor at a trial. “I know it looks that way, David, but I’m not pressing her. She’s volunteering it. Alex is her aunt. Don’t you understand how much that relationship means to her? There are only a handful of people in the world who love this little girl, and she’s lost one of them, someone she’s known her whole life. I didn’t ask her to give me these last clues. She wants to.”

  At that, finally, David’s face softened. “It’s hurting her, Jess. I see it, and you do, too.”

  “Don’t you think I’m just as scared as you are? Or more?” Jessica whispered. She felt her joints trembling.

  For a few seconds, David didn’t respond. Then he walked toward her, and he gently rested his hands on her shoulders. His touch was like a balm to her tense muscles, and she felt her frame relax. Without allowing herself to think, Jessica pulled up against him, her head pressed to his chest.

  “Do you have any idea how much I’m hurting right now, being in my mother’s house, not having the nerve to tell her the truth?” Jessica said. “And it hurts even more when you don’t seem to understand who I am, since I’m beginning to think you’re the only person in the world who can. I know we have a lot to learn about each other, but you should know what kind of mother I am, just like I know what kind of father you are. I would never put Alex above Fana. Never.” Jessica’s nose was running, but she didn’t wipe her face. She didn’t have the strength.

  Thankfully, Jessica felt David’s arms tighten around her. He began to sway slightly, holding her, cradling her head so that she could rest it on his shoulder. Jessica surrendered herself to the sensation of leaning on someone, finally.