Blood Colony (13 page)

Dawit clasped her hands while water spewed from the marble lions’ mouths and roiled in their ears. There was no time to say everything that could be said, so she settled for the necessities.

“We owed them the truth about Fana. Some of it, anyway,” Jessica said, answering the question in Dawit’s eyes. She hadn’t told them about the hurricane, and so much more. Cal would have been much more upset if he had known the most personal secret she kept from him: Teka had erased Cal’s memory of the Brother’s telepathic gifts long ago. The Brothers had insisted.

And when Khaldun had spoken of Fana in Lalibela nearly fifteen years ago, his language had terrified Jessica:
Fana is both salvation and destruction. She will be either our most awaited friend or our most fearsome enemy…. A child born with the power to stand between mortal and immortal, the two races of man.
Should she have told the others that part, too? Would anyone have believed her?

“I had to say something,” Jessica went on. “They’re my friends, Dawit. Our friends.”

Dawit spoke gently, without reprimand. “Adversity has no friends. It was a mistake.”

“They’re scared.”

“More scared now than before, I’m sure,” Dawit said, and he might have been right. Nita had barely made eye contact after the talk in the living room, and Cal was probably off somewhere cursing a blue streak. “My Brothers are anxious, too. I wish we had peace today.”

“Then I guess you need to bring Fana back,” she said, squeezing his warm palms.

Dawit brightened, nodding. He thrived when he had a plan, no matter how dire the situation. He was the most efficient person she knew. Too efficient, sometimes.

“We’ll bring her back,” Dawit said. “Berhanu’s already picked up a trail. The girls stole a car from a parking lot in Toledo early this morning.”

Jessica’s heart leaped, flushing her with relief. “Let’s hope Caitlin was driving,” she said, and even managed to smile. But Jessica didn’t smile long.

Had they forced Fana to run away by thrusting too much weight on her? Had she understood better than they did how much her presence made a difference?
Come back to us, sweetheart. Forgive us our rashness. I know you didn’t mean to hurt Alex. Do you think you could ever do anything I wouldn’t forgive?

Dawit sat on the smooth edge of the fountain, patting the space beside him. More bad news, Jessica realized. After she sat, Dawit leaned close and slipped his arm around her shoulder. Last night, she never would have believed that Dawit’s touch would comfort her again.

“The Brothers have decided what to do about Justin O’Neal,” Dawit said quietly.

All relief vanished. “No vote?”

“A vote would only serve appearances. We are the majority, Jess.” More and more often, when Dawit used the word “
we”
he was referring to his Life Brothers, not his family.

Jessica gazed at meticulous rows of cedar planks on the Council House walls, just visible through the trees that separated them. “Appearances matter, Dawit,” she said. “They can’t just kill O’Neal, not for theft. There has to be due process. An open trial. Testimony and evidence.”

“They’re not going to kill him,” Dawit said. “It’s a memory wash. Twenty years.”

Jessica closed her eyes. Thank God for that, at least. She remembered how it had felt when Fana had tricked her memory when she was only three: Jessica had felt like herself in every way, except that she had forgotten Kira, her first child. For a minute, maybe two, Jessica had stared at Kira’s photograph and not recognized her own little girl. She had forgotten the agony of rocking her dead child in her arms.

Losing the memory hadn’t been the hard part; the hard part had been having it back.

But Justin O’Neal’s daughters were barely past twenty. With that much memory loss, he wouldn’t know them anymore. And O’Neal was a better man now than he’d been twenty years ago. Jessica hadn’t known him then, but she was sure of that.

“Teka agreed to this?” Jessica said.

“Yes, as a compromise. He’ll do it himself. He has a gentle hand, more practiced than Fana’s. O’Neal will fare better than Alex.”

Jessica’s throat flared with pain, but not long. No time. “What about Caitlin?”

“Caitlin would have to agree to stay with us. Away from her family. The Brothers won’t allow another family of mortals here.”

“Of course she can stay with us.”

Dawit squeezed her hand. “Then that’s decided. I’ll take it to Teka.”

Alex joked that Jessica and Dawit should be called
Your Highness,
since they thought they were king and queen of the colony. Together, they had created a nearly impossible union of peoples. But Fana and Caitlin would have their own ideas, if Fana was even willing to come back. “What if you don’t find her?” Jessica said, the thought she had tried to silence all day.

Dawit kissed her forehead. “We will. Probably today. Maybe tomorrow.”

“But what if you don’t?”

Dawit sighed, nodding. The Searchers would have found anyone else already. Fana wouldn’t be easy to find if she could misdirect them with mental scents. There were probably a thousand ways she could elude them.

“Then she’s a woman, Jess,” Dawit said, shrugging. “Her life begins.”

Was it really that simple? Maybe it was. All parents faced the day when their children wanted to leave, and most parents thought their children weren’t ready. But all parents didn’t have killers hunting their child’s blood. All parents hadn’t looked into their child’s eye in the midst of a hurricane and seen something staring back that hadn’t been the slightest bit human.

Please, Lord, don’t let her hurt anyone else.

“What about Alex?” Jessica said, her throat tight. Would she be forced to forever remember that she could have heeded the warnings but hadn’t—just like with Kira?

“Teka will work with Alex if Fana doesn’t come back,” Dawit said. “But we’ll find her. If you have any worries while I’m gone, talk to Teka.”

Without Teka here, Jessica knew she would be as nervous as Cal, Nita and Lucas. An hour ago, when Jessica had asked Teka if there was anything he could do for her mother’s nerves, the man had stood outside of Alex’s room, where Bea was sitting vigil, and made Bea stop trembling. Jessica had watched it happen. She had
seen
the fear lift from her mother’s face, with Teka’s single thought. If Teka wasn’t a true friend, so be it. He was close enough.

“I’ll find her,” Dawit said and lightly kissed her lips.

Jessica stayed at the fountain, watching as Dawit walked back to the car, where Teferi was waiting. She waved as the car pulled around the driveway. Both men waved back, although neither smiled. Dust followed them on the unpaved path into the woods.

Was Fana powerful enough to hear her now? Jessica knew she had squandered her opportunity to talk to Fana last night, when it had mattered, but she had been talking to her daughter in her head all day, like she had when Fana was three. The night of the storm.

Come home right away, Fana. We need you here.

Remember Teka’s lessons, Fana. Remember mine.

Respect your gifts.

Never lose control.

Vancouver, Washington

T
he first miracle had been making it to the road while it had still been dark, out of sight of two pickups that had ambled past them on their way to Interstate 5.

Exhausted but infused with new energy, Fana and Caitlin walked half a mile to the Minit Mart in Toledo, where Caitlin hoped they could find a car. The choices were stealing a car or hitchhiking, and neither of them liked the idea of climbing into a car driven by a stranger. Fana didn’t want to steal, but what else could they do?

“It’s not for us—it’s for Glow,” Caitlin reminded her, Caitlin’s rationalization of choice. Too many rationalizations were dangerous, but a few were indispensable.

The store lights were already on, although it wasn’t quite dawn and the sign in the window said Closed. Even if the store had been open, they had agreed not to go inside. Too close to home. Fana had never shopped at that store a day in her life, and today wasn’t the day to start. She was masking her presence as well as she knew how, but the Minit Mart would be the first place her parents, and the Searchers, would look for her.

Caitlin spotted a brand-new red Orbit parked against the brick side wall of the parking lot. Better yet, it was unlocked. Caitlin got in, and the car started right away. No more crouching and running or hiding from cars driving by. They drove off without a soul seeing them.

With a car and a seasoned driver at her behest, Fana was free for the first time.

On Interstate 5, the clear, open space hit them like a shock wave, and they laughed together as if they were drunk. Above them, the dawn finally broke free of the night, casting a sheen of pink, orange and gold across the lush green forest on each side of the road. When had her head ever felt so quiet outside the colony?

It was the best sunrise Fana had ever seen. Freedom was a powerful intoxicant. For a short while, she forgot everything. The world was fresh and lovely.

The problems started when they approached the state line into Oregon, closer to Portland.

Fana could feel the approach of the city almost as soon as they drove beyond Longview; it was a tremendous vibration in her head. Cacophonous voices overpowered the threads her mind had carried from home: Whispers from Aunt Alex. Mom. Dad. Gramma Bea. Teka. She hadn’t noticed how close their minds were to hers until the new voices began drowning them out. Fana hoped they could drive past Portland quickly.

But Caitlin wanted to stop at McDonald’s.

“I can’t believe you’ve never tasted a biscuit from Mickey D’s,” Caitlin said, pulling off the interstate when she saw the restaurant’s arched logo in yellow. Then Caitlin rattled off her disclaimer about how she hated the way megacorps were poisoning the world with empty calories and saturated fat. Fana barely heard her as she struggled to find Aunt Alex’s sleeping hum in her head.

But Fana was so glad to hear Caitlin sound lighthearted that she didn’t object. Besides, she was hungry. She hadn’t eaten since dinner, except for a few handfuls of almonds. Caitlin ordered a plain biscuit and a carton of milk for Fana, and two biscuits for herself.

One bite almost made Fana throw up. It wasn’t the
taste,
since her tongue had celebrated the salty flavor at first. But the scent of the frying meat charging through the drive-thru window overpowered her taste buds.

The euphoria faded, replaced by a shocking realization. Home was gone. Familiarity, gone. Then Fana heard Caitlin’s panicked thought:
SHIT THERE’S PROBABLY A CAMERA HERE DUMBASS
. And she was right: There was a camera at the drive-thru window, aimed right into their car. It was a barely noticeable black minicam planted on the side of the cash register like an oversized bug with one unblinking glass eye beneath a pinprick of red light.

Caitlin was still waiting at the window for her sole credit card—their financial lifeline—but Fana saw Caitlin’s hand grasp the gearshift suddenly, as if she was about to run. Caitlin’s face was slack and bloodless. Scared. Between the unpleasant taste in her mouth, the growing hive-like hum from the large city looming just south and Caitlin’s fearful face, Fana’s mind knotted.

Pop.
The minicam’s red light went off, and a single crack shattered the camera’s eye in half. Fana blinked, shocked. During her sessions with Teka, she had stirred enough mental energy to make paper flutter, or blow a ball of dust. But nothing like that!

Fana didn’t have time to celebrate. Her headache started then. A bad one.

WHATINTHEWORLDISGOINGON

Fana’s head squalled with Aunt Alex’s voice, a loop from behind the schoolhouse. Aunt Alex’s thoughts were still frozen in confusion and terror. Fana had done that to her, and Fana was helpless to soothe her. She could have helped Aunt Alex if she had stayed at home, but she had chosen selfishness. Childish impulse.

She tried to say
I need to go home,
but her words were trapped in the echo chamber of her mind.
I’m sorry, Aunt Alex. I’m sorry.

A series of sharp images stole Fana’s thoughts, appearing like a 3-D movie—
indistinct, bloody writing on a wall. Spots of blood on clothes. Dark skin spurting blood from a wound.

Suddenly, Fana saw a face: Johnny Wright. He looked so close to her that she gasped.

“You OK, Fana?” Caitlin said, grabbing her arm.

Suddenly, Fana realized she no longer knew.

Berkeley
6 p.m.

When his arm vibrated, Johnny glanced at his phone’s screen, where the letters shone in royal blue:

Johnny’s heart jumped. There was no name signed, but the curt message could only be from Caitlin. Finally! But how did she know where he was?

Johnny imagined he could see Caitlin far across the cafeteria at the soda machine; there was a girl with Caitlin’s face under jet-black hair that looked more chopped than cut. But after a stream of students walked in front of him, the girl was gone.

Johnny shoved the books from his Death, Dying & Medicine class into his bookbag, slung the bag over his shoulder, and melted into the pack of undergrads walking outside, matching their pace until he peeled off past the crowded bicycle rack to round the corner toward King Union. Papier-mâché figures of President Goodard and Vice President Salazar bobbed above a crowd that was just dispersing from a protest, the lingerers stubbornly shouting, “
No more war! No more war!”
like generations of yearning hearts before them.

Johnny used to go to the protests, but he’d learned last year that the protests didn’t do any good. The war wasn’t going to stop; it was more ancient than most people wanted to admit. He could kiss his financial aid good-bye as soon as the Selective Service office figured out he’d checked the box marked
No Thanks,
but Johnny could live with that. He just couldn’t live with being sent to some desert to shoot another kid with a gun, busting his soul wide open for life.

Fuck that. If Uncle Sam didn’t like it, he’d move to Toronto.

Johnny trotted behind two tittering girls wearing red wristbands from the protest, fashionably dressed in low-slung jeans that formed a tantalizing V right below their tailbones.
Crack pants,
people called them, since only skinny girls without asses could get away with it.

Johnny checked his pager again. No new message. Damn.

He typed fast, his elbow bent so he could reach the keyboard as he passed the protesters:

Johnny jogged toward Bancroft. Four blocks west, a BART train could speed him anywhere Caitlin wanted to go. He wasn’t going to take any chances of leading someone to her.

Johnny’s arm vibrated again, and this time it was the telephone.

“Where are you?” Caitlin said on the speaker, her version of a greeting.

“Shattuck. On my way to the train.”

“Perfect,” she said. She sounded pleased with him for once. “Stand at the southeast corner of Shattuck and Bancroft. Don’t be tailed. And never put me on speaker again.”

“You’re here?” he said, elated. His voice sounded whiny at the end, like a child’s.

Luckily, Caitlin had already hung up.

After ten minutes on the corner scouting every face, cyclist and passing car, Johnny wondered if he had failed Caitlin’s test. The temperature was dropping rapidly as the afternoon sun fell, and Johnny wished he had his jacket. His textbooks and ultra-thin Blade notebook computer seemed heavier now than they had when he’d left King Union.

Johnny looked at his watch. Four. Shit. He was late for Death & Dying.

Suddenly, Caitlin’s voice was behind him. “Don’t turn around. Let’s walk. Fast.” She was pressed against his back. She had been running. He smelled her sweat and skin, and he felt a surprising surge of desire. But he walked.

Johnny dared a glance, and there was jet-black hair beside him.

“I saw you at the union,” he said.

“Did anyone else?” Caitlin sounded scared shitless. Maritza’s death had wrecked her.

“I doubt it.”

“Don’t talk. Just keep walking.”

Johnny didn’t ask where they were going. He didn’t ask any of his fifty questions, because he was trying to decide what to do about Caitlin’s nervous breakdown. If he said the wrong thing, she might go ghost on him. It was better to ride out Caitlin’s storm.

“Your hair’s different,” he said.

“Please don’t talk.” Caitlin’s voice softened, a plea instead of an order. “Not yet.”

In front of Starbucks, Caitlin tugged on Johnny’s sleeve. “Here,” she said.

Great! Caitlin wasn’t usually the Starbucks type, but Johnny hoped a cup of Ethiopian coffee would give him the chance to talk her down from whatever emotional ledge she was teetering from. But Caitlin walked past the barista without a glance. Toward the back door.

Cars crammed the alley. A row of hybrids claimed the reserved spaces, while the gassers were squeezed at the end. Caitlin kept walking. She headed toward a battered, older-model PT Cruiser parked against a wall. The car’s grill and front bumper were splattered with mud.

“I thought you hated gassers,” Johnny said.

“Get in. Hurry.” The door’s locks clicked upward as they approached, even though Caitlin wasn’t holding a key. By now, she was running toward the driver’s door.

Inside, Johnny saw a tangle of wires beneath the steering wheel. Had someone broken into her car? Caitlin hunched over, playing with the wires. Johnny had already closed his door before he realized she was hot-wiring the car. Impossibly fast, the engine roared. Caitlin shifted into reverse. Her foot jammed on the accelerator, and the car leaped backward.

“Caitlin, what the hell?” Johnny said. “This car is
stolen
?”

“Just look in the backseat,” Caitlin said.

Bracing himself with the handrail while the car beeped chides for not wearing his seat belt, Johnny glanced at the tarp covering the backseat. There was something underneath, bulky enough to be a human being.

“What’s going on, Caitlin?” Johnny said, genuinely afraid to look.

Caitlin didn’t answer, her eyes intent on the road as she roared out of the alley, racing a bus. “She can’t be around too many people. It’s hurting her head. She’s gotten worse.”

Psychotic episode. Johnny had studied it all in psych last year. The first chance he got, he was going to sneak a call to Caitlin’s mother.

“You can’t call anyone, Johnny,” a tiny voice whispered from the backseat. The tarp shifted, rising. Johnny stared as the tarp fell, and he saw long dreadlocks underneath, twice as full as his. A brown face and unblemished skin. He knew her voice from her email messages, of course, even if he couldn’t quite believe she was here.

Fana?

“Everything you think you know is a lie,” Caitlin said. The tires squealed as she turned toward the 510. She was heading out of town.

“What?” Johnny said.

Between Caitlin’s dizzying driving and Fana huddled in the backseat, he felt fuck-eyed. Had Caitlin kidnaped Fana? Was he going to have to fight for the wheel?

Caitlin turned to look over her shoulder, staring back at Fana. “What’s he doing now?”

While her eyes were off the road, Caitlin was bearing down too fast on a minivan. Johnny saw every smear of grime on the rear window ahead. “Watch it!” he said, yanking on his seat belt.

Caitlin braked, and Fana was jolted forward. She must have been wearing her seat belt beneath the tarp, or she would have been flung into the front seat. Fana closed her eyes, her face wrenched, as if she were in great pain. Concerned, Johnny reached back to touch her wrist, and he was so jarred he almost pulled away. Fana’s skin felt electric; warm static shock. Fana gritted her teeth, eyes still closed.

“There’s a GPS,” Fana said, her voice weak. “On the phone. He’s…checking.”

“
Shit
.” Caitlin looked at Johnny wildly. “Throw your phone out of the window. Now.”

“Wh-what?” Johnny said.

His phone was still on his arm, and Caitlin snatched it. Her window was down in a zip, and she tossed the phone onto the freeway. Johnny looked back in time to see a silver wink before his phone was crushed beneath the tires of the semi truck behind them.