Blood Colony (22 page)

The stories Amare’s grandfather had told still lived in song.

As the crying children sang behind them, chasing their speeding horses, Dawit knew the future even without Khaldun’s gifts of prophecy: Ethiopia’s battles ahead were already won.

The trail of hoofprints was easy to follow through a narrow ridge hidden in the hills.

Dawit kept his eyes trained for scouts; the viewers from the House of Science gave him enough vision in near-darkness to see a flea on a man’s neck from two hundred meters. Sure enough, he saw two scouts mounted on the hilltop above them, up ahead. They, too, looked like fresh-faced boys—one African, one European, both wearing golden Sanctus Cruor medallions pinned to their white shirts.

Killers rarely looked as despicable as their deeds.

“I’ll take them,” Mahmoud said and galloped on a separate trail toward the lookouts.

USE YOUR TRANSMITTERS,
Berhanu reminded Dawit, mildly mocking. Berhanu often complained that too few other Brothers could trade thoughts with him during battles. But Berhanu was a rarity, to have mastered arts in both the mind and body. Most Brothers had the patience for only one path or the other. There was no advancement in mind arts without meditation, and prolonged meditation bored Dawit to tears.

Dawit clicked on his transmitter so Mahmoud would hear the gentle beep in his ear.

“Wait for our word to advance,” Dawit told Mahmoud. “We don’t know their number.”

“
Almighty Berhanu can’t pluck such simple knowledge out of the air
?” Mahmoud said sarcastically in Dawit’s earpiece, taking advantage of his distance from Berhanu. Their more advanced Brother could hear thoughts from thirty meters, but not beyond.

Dawit and Berhanu slowed their horses, riding close to the ridge wall to be out of the lookouts’ sight until Mahmoud could dispatch them. This time, the thin smoke floating toward them in the wind was from campfires, accompanied by the smell of coffee and cooking food.

There was no clear view of the camp; there were too many twists in the scrubby trail.

I WILL TRY TO FIND THEIR LEADERS,
Berhanu said.
WE MUST DISCOVER THEIR NUMBER, AND HOW THEY LEARNED OF THE BLOOD.

“Then they will taste the suffering they brought to that village,” Dawit said, his palm tightening around the base of his spear.

WE FIGHT FOR OUR OWN PRESERVATION, DAWIT. FORGET YOUR ANGER.

Dawit gazed through his viewers again. The two lookouts posted high on the hill had not moved. Both wore Remingtons. Dawit motioned for Berhanu to rein his horse. If they advanced farther, they might come into sight.

“
They’re within my range,
” Mahmoud’s voice said in the earpiece.

As always, Mahmoud was fleet. But as long seconds passed, the men’s position did not change. Dawit saw them talking, sharing coffee.

“Are you waiting for dessert, Brother?” Dawit said, half to himself.

Suddenly, one after the other, the men fell forward. Neither had time to raise a shout. The air pistols from the House of Science had a more limited range than conventional rifles for a lethal blast, but they were devastating in their silence.

Dawit saw Mahmoud’s head emerge where the lookouts had stood.

“
They are arrogant enough to camp behind enemy lines,
” Mahmoud reported. “
They’re supping around their fires. Some may be in tents, but Berhanu was right to guess fifty. Heavily armed with Remingtons and pistols. They are out of my range from here. We should wait until dark and attack from—”

Dawit never heard the rest of Mahmoud’s plan.

Berhanu gave a start a moment before his hurried thought came:
BEHIND US!

Gunfire cracked, echoing in the ridge, and a rifle round chipped the rocky wall two meters beside Dawit’s head. The attackers were on foot—three men running toward them at full speed, rifles firing. The shots would draw the others!

Dawit let his spear fly. Two of the men crumpled from Berhanu’s pistol fire, and the third watched, frozen, as Dawit’s spear flew into his chest, staggering him backward before he fell.

“
Their full forces are at a charge,”
Mahmoud’s voice said. “
I’ll move quickly to aid you.
”

“Quickly is not fast enough, Brother,” Dawit said, spurring his horse toward the fallen men to retrieve his spear.

In such a narrow ridge, there were few places to run. A cluster of rocks ten meters behind the fallen men would serve as their cover. They would not retreat: They would stand and fight.

The man Dawit had speared lay prostrate, grasping wildly at the wood to try to free it from his chest. When Dawit yanked the spear free, the man screamed. He was more mature than the scouts, about thirty, with a long, deeply lined face. Instead of a medallion, he wore a large Sanctus Cruor emblem on a white coat. An officer.

“
P-per favore…,
” the man wheezed, begging.

Dawit spat at his face. “What mercy did you show those grandmothers and children?”

WAIT—

Dawit fired his pistol with his free hand, stopping the fallen man’s heart. Berhanu would berate him, but no matter: The man’s injury was so severe that he would have been dead within seconds. There would have been no time to question him, nor to study his memories. They would be lucky to save themselves today.

Galloping hooves raced toward them, shaking the earth.

THE ROCKS,
Berhanu said as Dawit dismounted. Dawit slapped his horse’s flank to send her away from the approaching soldiers. Dawit did not want to lose her to gunfire. He would wake again, but his loyal horse would not.

“
They are upon you!
” Mahmoud reported breathlessly. “
Fire on my word!
”

The rocks were fortuitous cover, high enough to hide them, yet porous enough to fire through. As always before a battle, Dawit’s heart shook his ribs and stanched his breath. Any sleep, however temporary, might bring the day when he would be buried alive, unable to free himself, doomed to wake and suffocate for all of time.

Dawit’s fingers itched on his trigger as soon as the first horses raced into sight, carrying their pale-skinned riders.

“
Fire!
” Mahmoud said.

Air pellets sprayed the army, flinging riders from their horses. The soldiers were confounded by the silence. Bullets without sound? A few seconds’ confusion cost two dozen men their lives. The rest were thwarted by the whinnying horses, who ran in confusion as their riders fell. Some of the quick-thinking soldiers took refuge behind fallen horses to aim their rifles, but they did not know where to fire. There were no muzzle flashes to betray Dawit and Berhanu. There was only death, in pitiless silence.

As a diversion, Mahmoud fired his rifle from the top of the ridge.

A symphony of rifle fire answered Mahmoud.

By the time the survivors realized the direction of the lethal air pellets, it was too late for them to save themselves. The rest of the killing was one by one; the dying boys screamed for their mothers. By the end, forty were dead. Thirteen still lived, if barely.

Berhanu walked up and down the row of wounded, probing their minds. The soldiers were not all Italian, as Dawit had believed. Some had features ranging from Asian to Eastern European, with a few Ethiopians scattered among them. All wore identical white shirts and golden medallions. Most were very young, made younger by their sobbing.

Dawit would not look at their faces long.

THEY KNOW VERY LITTLE,
Berhanu said.
THE ONE WHO MIGHT HAVE HELPED US, NAMED STEFAN, WAS AMONG THE FIRST TO DIE.

Dawit felt the weight of his responsibility. Had he killed too hastily?

“Are there others?” Mahmoud said.

Berhanu nodded. “I have learned a few names. Vatican officials. Merchants. We will have to take this fight far from home.”

“Khaldun will give us guidance,” Mahmoud said. “We will find the others.”

“We can get nothing else from these?” Dawit said, frustrated. He would be ashamed to report to Khaldun that their mission had failed. “What is this sect? What is their goal?”

THESE WERE ONLY SOLDIERS,
Berhanu said.
THEY CRAVED THE BLOOD, BUT THEY HAVE NEVER SEEN IT. THEY DIED ON FAITH ALONE.

Dawit gazed at the collection of fallen young soldiers. If these men had died on faith alone, they were not the first. But their ignorance was maddening.

Soon, their flesh would feed a pyre to light the night, as if they had never existed. Whatever else would be written about Ethiopia’s war with Italy, this battle in the hills would never be known. They could not leave survivors.

“It was the one I felled with my spear,” Dawit said. “He would have told us more.”

“We cannot change the past, Brother,” Mahmoud said. “Only the future.”

Still, Dawit’s heart was heavy with dread. His Brotherhood might be known by outsiders with enough power to bring them harm.

Mistakes in the past eliminated one future and created another.

Somewhere, their new future had already begun.

The Colony
1:16 a.m.

A
s soon as Dawit appeared in her sat phone’s viewer, Jessica’s heart quailed. Bad news was written in Dawit’s joyless face.

“What happened?” she said.

As Dawit told her Mahmoud’s story, Jessica’s eyes fought tears.

She saw a shadow move beside Dawit, and she realized Mahmoud was in the car with him. Mahmoud had maimed Alex, tossing her from her apartment balcony. He was responsible for Kira’s death. He had tried to kill Fana and had helped ignite that terrible rage—that faceless being—that had controlled her baby girl. Jessica would never forget the shock and terror she’d felt when Mahmoud had held her and poor Kira at gunpoint, when her world had first collapsed. And then four years later, Mahmoud had pointed another gun toward Fana, in a twisted
déjà vu
.

Would she ever escape Mahmoud, or his memory?

“He’s there right now?” Jessica said. She could only whisper.

“He’s not the point, Jess,” Dawit said. “Right now, it’s his story that matters.”

Jessica blinked and forced her tears at bay. “How can you trust him?”

“Teka has talked to him, and he is intrigued. We’re trying to learn more, but that will take a day or two. A brother will fly out in person. Our Lalibela Brothers are difficult to reach.”

Jessica saw the tiny orange glow of what she guessed was the tip of Mahmoud’s cigarette, hardly two inches from Dawit’s chin. In Miami, she had always wondered why there had been cigarette butts strewn around her backyard. She never could have guessed that an assassin like Mahmoud had been spying on her family.

“I won’t talk like this,” she said. “Not in front of him.” Why did she even have to say it?

Mahmoud muttered impatiently in Arabic. The cigarette’s glow vanished, and his car door slammed. How dare he complain! The loathing she felt reeled in her stomach. Was Dawit’s friendship with Mahmoud so strong that even Kira’s death couldn’t sever it?

“I’m sorry, Jess,” Dawit said. “I wasn’t thinking. I had to warn you right away. You’ll follow emergency procedures tonight. All of you. Tomorrow, you’ll set out for the airport. Jima and Teka will fly you out on our plane.”

“Fly us where?” Jessica said.

“It’s best not to say.”

Jessica hoped Dawit was exercising the same commonsense precautions with Mahmoud.

“I don’t think Mom is strong enough to travel now,” Jessica said. “And Alex—”

“You’ll have all the assistance you need, Jess. But please do this, and make sure the others comply. Sanctus Cruor is all we’ve feared and more.”

Jessica tried to catch her thoughts. “This other child…,” she began. As horrible as Dawit’s story had been, nothing had made a bigger impression than the story of a child who had been born like Fana, immortal from the womb. “He wants Fana as his…mate?”

“That much is hearsay,” Dawit said. “But it’s possible that Sanctus Cruor is hunting us and may be close to you. The precautions may not be enough.”

“How is that possible?” Jessica said. Fana had eluded the firefences, but Jessica doubted anyone else could. The underground shelters were intricately protected, both in their design and an invisible canopy that protected their property even from the noses of dogs.

“There are always unknown vulnerabilities, Jess.”

The strobelike flickering from the alarm light above Jessica’s door intensified, lighting her room with intervals of brightness. She shielded her eyes.

“Keep looking for Fana,” she told Dawit.

Now it was his turn to whisper. “Yes. I know,” Dawit said. His eyes glimmered.

“And don’t trust him, Dawit. No matter what.”

Dawit nodded. “Don’t worry,
mi vida
. I have not forgotten.”

Dawit raised his fingers to the phone’s camera, a larger-than-life blur across the five-inch screen. Instinctively, Jessica raised her hand, too; her fingers brushed the brown image. All she felt was cool glass, but it was the next best thing to his touch.

“Go to the closet,” Dawit said. “Get the case.”

Dawit kept a spare gun in the closet—a weapon from Lalibela modeled to look like a standard .45 pistol but comprising a technology that did not exist outside of the Life Brothers. The gun was easy to aim, since it could sense human heartbeats even through walls. Instead of bullets, it fired bursts of compressed air. Silent and deadly. Dawit had taken Jessica shooting in the woods and in outbuildings many times. Jessica was good with Dawit’s gun.

But that had been target practice. This was different.

“I’ll get it,” Jessica said.

“Don’t hesitate to fire, Jess. They commit atrocities. If you must shoot, remember that anyone you think is dead might wake.”

Like the priest
. The memory of her last, horrible argument with Dawit stabbed Jessica. “Dawit…I’m sorry—”

The signal faded, and the viewer went dark.

Her heart pounding, Jessica waited ninety seconds for Dawit to call back. Had he hung up so abruptly? Had something happened to him? If there was a problem with the satellite, which happened occasionally, reception might not be restored for an hour or more.

Jessica pulled a stool into her master bedroom closet and climbed up to reach the highest shelf, pushing aside the dusty boxes of Monopoly, Scrabble and chess that had been left by the previous owners. A frigid breeze from her cracked window tickled her body with a wave of goose bumps, creeping beneath the knee-length South Beach nightshirt she slept in. The cold spurred Jessica’s thundering heart.
Are we really being hunted by other immortals?

Bea had been so weak today that Jessica hated to rustle her mother from bed and take her to the cramped quarters underground. And what about Cal and Nita? Were they gathering their kids to go to the shelters, or stubbornly locking themselves in their house? The latter, she guessed.

The loud knock on her door almost made Jessica lose her balance.

“Who’s there?” she called. Her voice told her how scared she was.

“It’s just me, Jess.” Lucas.

“And me, Auntie.” Her nephew Jared’s deep voice came next.

Jessica hid the lightweight case under the pillow on her bed; she didn’t want to open the door with a gun in her hands. Jared had only arrived back home right before dinner, and his life was in enough turmoil his first night back.

“What the hell’s going on?” Lucas said, once she opened her door.

Both father and son wore sweatpants and heavy jackets. Lucas was only a couple of inches taller than Jared, who had towered over Jessica since he was thirteen. Jared had a well-trimmed moustache, and he had grown so pale in England that she had barely recognized him when he’d first arrived. Jared’s brow was furrowed with annoyance, rare for him.

“Dawit got some intelligence,” she said. “We have to go to the shelters.”

“What kind of intelligence?” Lucas said.

Jessica glanced at Jared before answering. She knew Lucas talked to Jared, but she wasn’t used to sharing privileged information with her nephew. “Another Life Brother warned them that an enemy may be close. I’ll tell you more when we’re settled. There’s no time now.”

Lucas peeked into the hallway, then closed the bedroom door behind them. “This has a damn funny smell to it, so soon after O’Neal.”

“I know, and I can’t help that,” Jessica said. “But Dawit wouldn’t lie to me.”

“Auntie, Dad told me all about what happened with Justin O’Neal,” Jared said. He sounded exactly like his father, except for the high-bred English lilt that had crept into his speech at Oxford. “You’ve both disappointed me. It was wrong.”

Jared’s pronouncement hurt. Jessica had given Jared drops of her blood and saved his life fourteen years ago, when he was ten. Jared had grown into one of the young men she most admired; bright, hardworking and good-hearted. She wished she had time to defend her position.

“I need to know what I’m dragging my son into,” Lucas said.

“We’ve drilled dozens of times,” Jessica said.

“So why does it feel like we’re being taken into custody?” Lucas said.

“You’re not.” She took his hand and squeezed it between her palms. “There may be…another sect of immortals. They’re violent and fanatical, and they’re looking for anyone else with our blood. Dawit and Teka think we need to go to the shelters tonight, just in case.”

Another knock, and the door eased open before Jessica could say anything.

A young, dark-skinned black man as tall as Jared stood in her doorway, dressed in a black wet suit. A stranger!
Sanctus Cruor?
Jessica gasped, turning to reach for her gun case. She was dismayed to realize that she was a full six strides from where she’d hidden it.

Teka peeked from behind the stranger in the hall.

“It’s all right,” Teka said quietly. “This man is with me.”

“Forgive my intrusion,” the stranger said and bowed deeply. “
Aznall
. My most sincere apologies. My name is Fasilidas. I am guardian to Fana, She Who Is Most Holy. Now I will be guardian to her Blessed Mother. I beg you to move with haste. We must go to the shelters.”

The man remained bowed low, both hands behind his back. Was he one of the men who lived in the woods? He must be. There were four of them, and tonight Jessica was glad of it.

“Rise, Fasilidas,” Jessica said. By the immortals’ custom, he would not rise until invited.

Jessica’s nephew looked at her as if she had become a stranger before his eyes.

The house had no elevator, so the two immortals helped Lucas carry Alex down the winding staircase, heavy feet thumping and squeaking on aged floorboards.

The Life Brothers rarely mingled, but Lucas recognized the huskier man as Jima. The other was Yonas, Jared’s minder from England. The house was mostly dark, except for dim alarm lights with eerie synchronization, like flashbulbs. With his flashlight, Jared led them down the stairs. Every time the hall lighted from the alarm, Lucas saw the panic on his son’s face.

He had been a fool to bring Jared home.

Bea and Jessica were beside the door in the foyer. Jessica bent over her mother, speaking softly as she secured a heavy blanket over her. Bea sat in the wheelchair she had used after she’d broken her hip; the man who had called himself Fasilidas was pushing her. He was a shadow, appearing from thin air. Were there more Brothers here than he knew?

When they opened the door, Teka was waiting outside.

“We must go to Cal’s, Lucas,” Teka said. “There is trouble, perhaps.”

Teka was the king of understatement, so that might mean anything. “As in?”

“Cal is packing his vehicle. He has vowed to leave with his family.”

“Please go talk to him, Lucas,” Jessica said. “I would, but I don’t think it would help. It’s too dangerous to send them out. They might be captured.”

Jared exhaled sharply. “What?”

Jessica sounded more like Dawit every day, Lucas thought. “We’re talking about Cal and Nita and their kids,” he said. “Let’s just let them drive straight up the 10 into Canada, all ties cut off. What are the odds that—”

“I don’t know the odds, Lucas,” Jessica said. “What were the odds of you finding my clinic in Botswana? What were the odds that my nurse would get murdered by an army of mercenaries? We should go down to wait out the night. I agree with Dawit.”

That was when Lucas first noticed it: Aside from Teka, the other immortals were armed. Jima and Yonas had weapons beneath their tunics; he could see the impressions of the holsters under the fabric. Fasilidas had an ominous black baton strapped to his outer thigh. Even Jessica was carrying what looked like a gun case under her arm. These four men in this foyer were not his friends. If Cal and Nita wanted to leave, it was a damn fine idea.

“Being a prisoner won’t sit well with Cal,” Lucas said.

Jima said something impatient to Teka in Amharic.

“Prisoner is an unkind term,” Teka told Lucas.

“My father raised me to call things the way I see them,” Lucas said. “So if you expect me to go talk my best friend out of doing something I’m pretty damn sure I should be doing myself, don’t expect me to coat it in bullshit.”