My Soul to Take (29 page)

A sharp blade appeared before her, and Fana glimpsed her own face, elongated and distorted. Fana took her father’s knife and poked at Johnny’s wrist, opening his vein in a stream of bright crimson. Her pain when she cut herself was an insect’s pinch. Her wound bled far less, tingling to heal right away, but she needed only a drop.

Fana pressed her torn skin to Johnny’s, washing herself in his blood. Washing him.

“The Blood is the vessel for Life …” she recited, although she was certain that she and Michel didn’t need to use an incantation like the others. “The Blood flows without end …”

Dawit’s whisper joined hers, their last words in unison.

“… Like a river through the Valley of Death.”

Fana stroked Johnny’s warm forehead. His corpse was curled in a fetal position on the floor beside the pallet, his struggle absent on his calm face.
I’m sorry
, she whispered.
I didn’t mean for it to hurt so much
.

Johnny was still dead. His body would start to cool. Rigor mortis would set in.

Then, in a few hours, he would grow warm again. His heart would stir. He would wake.

Dawit paced the room slowly, rubbing his face with both hands as if he were trying to scrub off his skin. His thoughts rang with his disappointment and anger.

WHY? WHY NOW?

He asked me, Dad. The Blood belongs to him, too
.

“Fana, this was the worst possible course with Michel!” This time, he spoke aloud.

She had just traded something away. Something awful, maybe. But her father couldn’t say he didn’t understand.

“If you want your singer, we can’t stay to see him wake, Duchess,” Dawit said.

Fana nodded. They should have left long ago.

Fana stood above Johnny, enjoying his peace the way the Shadows had savored his suffering. The kindest gift would have been to free him, but how could she have made him understand that?
Safe journey
, Fana told Johnny.
I’ll find a way, Johnny. Trust in me
.

Fana raised her palm to her nose and smelled the warm, damp oils from the skin on Johnny’s forehead. Even as his face grayed, she could imagine his boyish dimples when he smiled. She looked at him for only an instant, but she made the instant last.

Fana turned away from Johnny.

Phoenix first. Then, to Mexico. To Michel.

She was a year late for her wedding.

“W
ake up, you selfish son of a bitch.”

The voice made Johnny stir.

He opened his eyes, and saw only a white sheet of light.
Am I dead?

The woman’s voice sounded mousy and faraway. Not Fana. Somewhere outside him.

“I can’t believe you would go over without me. I hope you have a really, really bad hangover. Worse than a hangover. But you better wake up and stop scaring the crap out of me.”

Johnny was awake, suddenly. His heartbeat rang in his chest,
thump thump
. He could hear it without trying to. His bloodstream was swollen, all his nerve endings tingling. His lungs drank in the air, and oxygen flooded him. Had he gained ten pounds? His back chafed against his soft bed because he felt so heavy. His blood was glowing as it charged through his veins.

Glow
. They had named it right.

He opened his eyes and saw Caitlin leaning over him.

“You jerk—thank God!” she said. She grabbed his hand, then flung it away as if it had bitten her. “What the hell were you thinking? She could have killed you, Johnny!”

“We knew she wouldn’t.” Johnny’s throat was so parched that it hurt. He glanced around the room for water and found none within easy reach. When he sat up, the room whirled. His heartbeat was louder in his ears.

You did it
, he reminded himself.
It’s done
.

The simple words stilled Johnny’s thoughts, paralyzing him.

He didn’t have to ask Caitlin if he had died and come back. More than his blood was new; he had new skin, too, taut and lively across his bones. He barely recognized the room because his vision was so much brighter, everything vivid and crisp. Johnny stuck out the tip of his tongue, and his tongue lapped up the flavors in the air: citrus and incense and rich oxygen. Had the air had a taste before? He closed his mouth when he noticed the bed’s odor. The bed smelled rotten, as if that scent was on his tongue, too.

Johnny had been tired when he first heard Caitlin’s voice, but after a minute he was ready to leap to his feet and run. It was hard to imagine ever feeling tired again.

“She did it?” Caitlin said, hushed. “She gave it to you?”

Slowly, Johnny nodded. His head rocked up and down, fluid. Johnny thought about the Tin Man from
The Wizard of Oz
, and how oil made him a new man.

“How do you feel?” Caitlin said.

Johnny wished his throat weren’t so parched. Talking hurt. Johnny rolled his head on his neck, testing every angle of himself. No twinges, pops, or pain.

“Weird. Wired. No wonder they don’t need much sleep.”

“You,” Caitlin corrected him gently. “
You
won’t need sleep.”

Her unblinking blue eyes made it real again. He was one of them. Immortal!

“We should be recording this,” Caitlin said, awestruck. “Documenting it.”

Johnny leaped up and paced, ignoring her. Caitlin was missing the point “Is she gone?”

“They left about four hours ago,” Caitlin said. “You’ve been out for nine.”

Fana was four hours closer to Michel, and four hours farther from home. She was gone. That idea stunned him almost as much as his strange new awakening. His pacing stopped cold.

“She needs help, Caitlin,” Johnny said.

“I swear, I thought he already had her,” Caitlin whispered. “But Michel wouldn’t let Fana give you the Blood.
She
did that. Right?”

“Yes,” Johnny said. “Definitely.”

Like him, Caitlin was craving assurances. But Johnny remembered that Michel had been patient when he first found Fana, humoring her by allowing her to give Johnny a drop of blood to heal the gunshot. Michel’s air of kindness had drawn Fana straight to him.

Caitlin sighed. “I’m scared for you, Johnny. And I hate you deeply right now, so imagine how scared I must be.”

“I’ll give you the Blood, too. As soon as I figure out how.”

“Thanks, but screw you,” Caitlin said. “You should have given me a chance.”

“Do you even want it?” Johnny said. “You always said you weren’t sure.”

“I would have wanted the choice!” Caitlin said. “The power to say yes or no. I never would have done it without giving you the chance.”

Johnny had never heard such envy from Caitlin. She was nearly whining. When had he become the adult and she become the child? He’d always felt two steps behind Caitlin. Something had changed already.

“You could have asked her if you wanted it,” he said, irritation creeping into his voice.

“She wouldn’t have done it just for me,” Caitlin said. “Stop playing dumb.”

Caitlin had warned him about his pattern of falling for women he couldn’t have, starting with her at Berkeley. But this was different—far different. Caitlin had tried to help him keep his sanity when he was near Fana, but no one could have. How had Caitlin avoided falling in love with Fana, too? Or had she?

“I wasn’t thinking straight, Caitlin. I just wanted …” Johnny’s new heart of brick pounded at his sternum. How much should he tell her? Caitlin might be the only person he could truly trust, unless Michel was hiding somewhere inside her. “I wanted to feel less helpless. We’re not helpless, Caitlin. I’m not. I won’t let Fana face this alone.”

Slow horror unfurled in Caitlin’s eyes. “That’s why you did this?” she said.

“Anyone can die,” Johnny said. “Even Michel.”

Johnny looked for a spark of fire in Caitlin’s eyes, but there was only fear. Michel’s men had butchered Caitlin’s girlfriend to learn about Glow. Michel had stolen control of Caitlin’s body to walk and talk inside her, too. Caitlin might not know it, but Michel had broken her.

Rare tears crept into Caitlin’s eyes. “Fana stopped your heart by
thinking
about it. If we’re worried she isn’t strong enough, what makes you think you are?” she whispered.

“I may not be,” he said. “But how can I not try?”

Johnny took a step toward the door, but Caitlin leaped in front of him. “Wait!” she said, her anxious face reminding him of how he must have seemed to her at Berkeley: naïve and excitable. “Johnny, one of the immortals is coming to talk to you. Yacob, I think. Fana asked him to orient you. She made me promise you’d talk to him, and then I’d get you to Doc Shepard. We’re meeting them in Lagos.”

“You tried, Caitlin. I have to go.”

“Why? She gave you the Blood, so you think you can fly now? Walk on water?”

That whininess again. Caitlin was the first soldier he’d known, so it hurt to see her so afraid. Fighting for Glow had taught him how to think like a fighter. All he needed was a plan.

“I’m going to kill him, Caitlin,” he said. “Or maybe I’ll die trying. You know why I have to. My beliefs don’t give me a choice.”

“Because you think he’s the antichrist?” Caitlin said, exasperated.

“Don’t you?”

“I don’t know if I believe in the Bible—how can I believe in the antichrist?”

“We saw what he wants to do, Caitlin,” Johnny said. “Both of us saw.”

He recognized the memory in her eyes. She had seen Michel’s projections of the Cleansing, too: a planet stripped of most of humanity, exclusive to those who remained. She had seen the photos from Nigeria and North Korea, and how his virus posed the dead to pray to him.

More than that, Caitlin’s fear of Michel was personal. Michel’s men had touched her while she lay pinned under his mental paralysis. Caitlin’s terror at that moment still swam in her eyes. She didn’t want to face Michel again.

“How?” Caitlin said anyway. “How would we stop him?”

Johnny’s chest shook with the aggressive thumping of his reinvigorated heart.

“With help from my new Brothers,” he said.

Learn or die.

—Earthseed: The Book of the Living

Octavia E. Butler

Parable of the Sower

The price one pays for entering a profession or calling is an

intimate knowledge of its ugly side.

—James Baldwin

P
hoenix was nearly hoarse from singing, but she didn’t stop. She sang more softly, pacing herself, taking long breaks, sometimes only mouthing the words. Singing worked better for her than screaming, and screaming was all her body wanted to do.

Phoenix sat with her back against the door, her tailbone sore from the frigid floor in clothes so thin they were like tissue. Since Marcus had been stolen, her room was too cold. Phoenix had never gotten used to the cold after growing up in Miami. Her teeth chattered while she shivered violently. Her palms and the backs of her hands felt numb. She missed the blankets, but she’d given up asking for them back. She’d come to terms with begging long ago, but begging hadn’t worked.

Phoenix’s nose had plugged up the same day as Marcus vanished, an illness invading her when she was weakest, and she had to breathe through her dry mouth. Sometimes phlegm walled her throat, and she couldn’t breathe. Phoenix couldn’t sing during her coughing fits, so she waited for those to pass. She felt her lungs constrict with each hacking cough. Maybe bronchitis. Maybe pneumonia. Whatever had happened at the Glow concert had killed her cancer cells, but her body could still be attacked.

Whatever had happened
. Phoenix hated her ignorance. If she knew exactly, she would have told everything. Her defiance had vanished with Marcus. She’d answered every question as well as she knew how, wishing she knew more:

Her name is Fana. F-A-N-A, I think. No, I don’t know her last name. John Jamal Wright came to my house and tried to give me a
vial of Glow. I refused it. He had access to more. I don’t know why they came to me. I asked them to try someone else. I was worried about the stories I’d heard, but I thought one concert would be okay. They offered me money for charity. Something happened to us at the concert: Fana raised her arms and healed us
.

But what she knew wasn’t enough, apparently. They wanted something else from her. She only wished she knew what.

Phoenix was enraged at Fana and John Jamal Wright for the trouble they’d brought her. Sometimes her anger at them dwarfed her rage for the captors who watched her freezing to death and carefully avoided her eyes when they brought her scraps or ice-cold water to drink.

Phoenix sang of forgiving her captors so she would not scream.

She sang of seeing Marcus again so she would not scream.

She sang of Carlos so she would not scream.

And when she was half asleep, Phoenix sang about the palace on the hilltop she dreamed about, and the man and woman who held dominion there.

The Lioness meets the Lion

In the place where love collides
.

Keepers of agonies and wildest dreams

Draw blood from shadowed skies
.

Phoenix woke to hear herself singing and didn’t recognize her own words. Sometimes her song about the palace terrified her—
blood from shadowed skies
? And yet … Sometimes her strange songs brought her indescribable comfort, transporting her far outside her cell and the faceless facility that had stolen her life from her.

Those moments were always over too soon.

A tall, wide man was approaching her cell door to open it. Harley. She didn’t allow herself any feelings about Harley’s coming, since there was nothing she could do about it.

Phoenix moved away from the door. As she scooted back, her
palms flopped against the floor like dead fish, numb. Today she would tell him about her dreams and songs!

Harley wasn’t his real name, but his large Harley-Davidson belt buckle made Phoenix imagine him in leather chaps. The bridge of his nose was crisscrossed with old knife scars. Phoenix didn’t like being close to his heavy black boots, so she tried to pull herself to her feet. Her hands rebelled, useless. Her fingers were numb, too.