The Living Blood

by Tananarive Due

  “I can’t tell the truth, Lucas,” Alexis said, whispering in a way that suddenly reminded Lucas of Jared’s sleepover parties with his friends, when they had whispered urgently to each other in the darkness about matters that had seemed pressing to them in their safe, confined world. “I don’t know everything, but I know some. And the little bit I know could hurt people I care about very much. So I can’t, Lucas. I can’t let other people end up like this, or worse. Even if it could save my life, or yours—I can’t. No matter what. I have to have faith that we’ll be all right.”

  They would try to force her to say what she knew, Lucas realized. Someone had learned about the men whose veins ran with this potent, miraculous blood, someone without scruples who was determined to have it. After what Lucas had already seen, he had no doubt that their captors would employ torture to get the information they wanted. How else had they forced poor Stephen Shabalala to lead these monsters to his own sister?

  In the end, Lucas thought sadly, Alexis would probably talk, too. In the end, he would wish to God that he could talk, that he could give these men names and photographs and draw them a map. Men intent on finding information particularly loathed the phrase I don’t know.

  Suddenly, the false sense of euphoric comfort Lucas had felt after eating wore off. His stomach convulsed, and he was afraid he might vomit. He was only a few hours’ drive from Jared, with a vial of blood that could save his son’s life, but he could do nothing for him!

  “We have to give them something,” Lucas said between gritted teeth, keeping his voice barely audible in case someone was listening to them after all. Thank God for the hum down here, he thought, because it might just conceal their conversation from a camera’s microphone. “Close your eyes. Pretend you’re sleeping. We have to have a story, Alexis. They have to believe we’re cooperating, and they also have to believe they need us alive.”

  “How?” Alex said faintly. From her voice, it sounded as if she had decided long ago that she would die to protect the information. She had never intended to try to save herself.

  With a full stomach and closed eyelids, Lucas could feel his psyche and all of his limbs aching for sleep. But he couldn’t sleep, he realized. He and Alexis had to figure out what the hell they were going to do to live, even if it took all night.

  • • •

  By seven in the morning, with a mug of coffee in hand, Justin had risen to use the computer in the mansion’s first-floor office, which was smaller than his own private office at Clarion’s nearby Brickell Avenue corporate headquarters. The floors were tiled black, the window overlooked the bay, and the room looked as if it was rarely used, with a simple black computer desk and hutch set up near the window. Still, he had everything he needed here: a two-line telephone, a computer, a printer, a fax machine, and even a standing copy machine, all in matching black. Just another day at the office, he thought groggily. He’d managed to sleep like a baby last night, despite the excitement and worry—his father had been right about that—but he wouldn’t have minded another couple more hours in his guest-room water bed, listening to classic rock at a low volume on the satellite’s music channels. What the hell had he been thinking to leave his stash at home?

  After glancing at the Florida driver’s license and two passports Rusty Baylor had given him last night, Justin typed the name Lucas Shepard into his favorite Internet search engine, which would give him references from a dozen sources. If there was anything to be found, he’d find it.

  “Holy Christ,” Justin said when he saw what appeared on his screen.

  He was still scrolling and printing Web articles an hour later, when his father joined him in the office. “I just heard from Mr. O’Neal. The blood in the bags is real, but no dice on the other samples,” Patrick O’Neal said, disappointed. “No immortals. Those corpses are just D-E-A-D.”

  “Maybe so, Dad, but we may have the next best thing.”

  “Whatcha got?” Patrick O’Neal asked, leaning over Justin’s shoulder. Immediately he grinned. “Shit on a stick. This guy’s been interviewed on CNN?”

  “Dr. Voodoo—he’s a microbiologist who may just be the country’s leading authority on alternative healing and magic in medicine. And he’s down in our fucking basement.”

  Patrick squeezed Justin’s shoulders hard. “Good work, kiddo. Bet your bottom dollar Mr. O’Neal has had people digging this up already, but I’m going to go up and suggest he send someone to Tallahassee to search his house. Who’s the gimpy chick with him?”

  “Her name is Alexis Jacobs, but I’m not sure of the connection. She turns up quoted in about ten different news stories saying ‘No comment’ in relation to that Miami serial killer, David Wolde. Her sister was married to him. Mean anything to you?”

  When his father didn’t speak, Justin turned around to see what was wrong. Patrick O’Neal’s face was frozen as if he’d just seen a ghost. “You’re kidding.”

  “What does it mean?”

  With his hands trembling slightly, Patrick O’Neal cupped Justin’s cheeks and moved his face so close that Justin wondered if his father was about to kiss him. His blue eyes were full of manic joy. “The only reason Shannon O’Neal moved his corporation here to Miami was to be near David Wolde,” he said, his lips spraying slightly.

  Justin didn’t move, confused. “I don’t get it.”

  “Mr. O’Neal told me he’s sure he’s the same man who was known as Seth Tillis in the 1920s. He had some experts compare his photographs. On top of that, his features are Ethiopian, very similar to Shannon’s father’s. This is the most solid clue he’s found in a long time, and he wanted to be closer to him. Wolde is one of the African immortals, Justin. I wasn’t sure before, but I’m fucking sure of it now. Mr. O’Neal has been looking for this family for nearly four years. We’ve got an immortal’s sister-in-law. And Mr. O’Neal told me this morning there’s a bag of blood for us apiece if we can lead him to an immortal. Do you have any idea how much each of those bags is worth? Maybe a billion dollars, Justin. That’s with a b.”

  Justin paused, imagining a bank balance of a billion dollars. Then he let out a yell, leaping from his chair. Laughing like two schoolboys wrestling on a playground, Justin and his father hugged and danced in a circle. A thought peeked into Justin’s mind—what if they won’t cooperate?—but he wouldn’t let himself think about that.

  They would, he decided. That was all there was to it.

  • • •

  By morning, Richard Nixon and Freddy Krueger had been replaced by two men wearing nylon hose over their heads, flattening out their features so that they were unrecognizable. The same ones, Lucas thought. As they had when they’d been in masks, both men wore tailored suits that looked misplaced in the drab basement. They looked like high-level executives. The younger man, who had a tray of fruit and cheese in one hand and a gun in the other, stood about six feet tall. The second man was shorter, his slick silver hair tied into a ponytail that dangled beyond the hose.

  The men’s perfunctoriness as they set the tray on the table and pulled out the two chairs made Lucas instantly wary. The older man, also grasping a gun, walked to the mattress and surveyed them with what felt like callous cheeriness: “Good morning, folks.”

  Neither Lucas nor Alex answered him. Lucas glanced at Alexis and noticed her wide-open, watchful eyes. He himself must have finally dozed off a couple of hours ago, but Lucas wondered if she’d slept at all after their prolonged plotting session last night. It didn’t look like it.

  “My associate has brought you some breakfast because he thought you might be hungry. You’ll also get five minutes each in the bathroom. I’d suggest you shower, since by the looks of you it’s been a hell of a long time since you’ve had one.

  “Now, I’d like to keep things very pleasant between us, but I’d better add that things can get unpleasant in a hurry around here. My associate and I are going to talk to you one at a time. We’re going to ask you some questions. If you answer our questions to o
ur satisfaction”—the man shrugged absently—“well, then, you can put this entire unpleasant episode behind you. You’ll be sent on your way with our apologies. In fact, since we’re involved in a very lucrative venture, we would feel it was only right to pay you for your partnership. I’m authorized to offer a figure in the mid–six figures to each of you, and there might be room for negotiation. Sounds like a pretty good deal, doesn’t it?”

  Lucas distinctly heard Alex make a tiny sound, almost a whimper, barely within his hearing. He knew that she wanted to believe that lie. Lucas felt such a profound sense of sympathy for her that, for a moment, he didn’t notice the cold swell of fear rolling across his insides. Suddenly, his night’s worth of hurried preparation with Alex seemed miserably inadequate, like hoping to survive a plane crash with a helium balloon.

  “Now, on the other hand”—instantaneously, the silver-haired man’s voice soured dramatically—“if we find that you’re withholding information from us, attempting to deceive us, or if you’ve just decided we can go fuck ourselves, then we’ll have to report that information back to some people who will be very unhappy to hear it. And those people, if I may say, have very bad manners. Me, I think they’re savages. There isn’t a lot of room for humanness inside those revolutions and ethnic clashes, at least that’s what I’ve heard. I’ve also heard that these kind of people sometimes take pleasure in the techniques they employ to gather information. But that’s only a rumor.” The man’s shrouded eyes studied them, giving them time to reflect on that. Sadistic asshole. Lucas could barely blink, he was concentrating so hard on not letting his anger and indignation show in his face.

  “So, this is what I’d do if I were you,” the man went on, a grotesque smile distorting his face through the hose. “Ask yourselves if you think I’m bluffing. If not, then do what your instincts tell you to do. Do the smart thing.”

  Lucas knew it was going to happen before it happened. Maybe he’d known ever since the man said they would shower, because showering would mean taking off his clothes, and it would be too much to ask that he be provided privacy when he undressed. As if these men had planned to treat them with any real decency. He’d believed a lie, too, he realized.

  Lucas’s heart drilled at his breastbone when the man took a step closer to him and, without another word, pulled on Lucas’s right shoe with the unhurried nonchalance of a shoe salesman. “Now for those showers—”

  “I’ll go without the shower,” Lucas blurted, hoping he didn’t sound as terrified as he felt, but he couldn’t finish before the man tugged at his second shoe. When it pulled free from his foot, he heard glass clink to the floor.

  Lucas wanted to scream curses. In that instant, Lucas felt a part of himself break off, leaving numbness in its wake.

  The silver-haired man squatted, but he was still at eye level with Lucas when he picked up the vial of blood from the floor and held it up to him so he could look at it closely. The younger man, who’d been standing beside the table, walked closer to take a curious glance at it, too. With the vial teasing him this way, utterly beyond his reach, Lucas felt his insides weeping.

  “You see?” the older man said, sounding like a school principal. “This is exactly what I’m talking about. Deception. For your sake, Doctor, I sincerely hope you’re planning to be more cooperative during the remainder of your stay.”

  “Yes,” Lucas whispered, remembering that he still had a part to play, no matter what. “Both of us, we just want to leave. We’ll tell you anything you want to know. God, please don’t hurt us.”

  The mischievous gleam in the man’s eye clearly said, Well, I guess we’ll just see about that, won’t we? He, too, was playing his part to the hilt. Lucas knew it was going to be a very long day.

  It had been a long time since he’d been this close to Jared, but his son had never felt more out of reach.

  39

  In its present form, it was merely an infant struggling to survive, drawing sorely needed strength. It had all the means to preserve itself: the cooing growls of playful thunderstorms that had sprung from the coast of Africa, the balmy waters of the Atlantic Ocean stroking it from below, and the even, persistent kisses of winds whipping from above. Shearing winds.

  It had its womb.

  It was not supposed to have been, and it had no memory of its creation. If sophisticated enough tracking instruments existed, someone might have been able to pinpoint when and how it was born: First, like all things, it had begun as nothingness. But then, only weeks before, there had been a small rupture in the atmosphere in south-central Africa, in a spot so tiny that it should not have been of any real consequence; except, of course, it was. Clouds formed rapidly—more rapidly than such occurrences did naturally—and from those clouds rain had been willed.

  The rain had lasted only three minutes, and then the clouds had vanished. Long after the sudden, impossible rain had dried up on the dusty soil below, the ripples in the sky had lived on in invisible collisions and reactions. Entire storm systems had been born and died as a result.

  For a time, it had nearly descended to nothingness again.

  But the sky had still been restless with its memory, remaining unsettled, unresolved. Unfinished. Until it reached the Atlantic Ocean. There, it remembered itself, gathering insignificant storms unto its breast until those storms naturally sought a loose order. The clouds shifted, darkened, thickened into soupy shapes. And they began to speak, flashing piercing branches of lightning. The ocean and the wind were obliging, sustaining its life.

  But it had knowledge of none of this, even though it had journeyed a long way from oblivion. It had no knowledge that, in the strictest sense, it was only looking for its mother.

  • • •

  Rick Echeverria was not the sort to have bad feelings. But he was having a bad feeling today.

  Standing over his desk at the National Hurricane Center office in Miami, he gazed at that morning’s latest satellite photograph with his hands stuffed far into his pockets and his eyebrows low, the pose his sister told him made him look exactly the way Papi used to. The worried pose.

  “Where’d this come from?” he said to no one in particular. No one was near him to answer. Only one other forecaster was here this early, shortly before 7 A.M. Even the telephones were silent. With the office so empty, it was only a sea of white linoleum floors.

  From the satellite map, Echeverria could see a hurricane in the Atlantic, already so organized that it had taken on the unmistakable spiral shape that was the bane of his trade; the system was small, and its winds were probably no higher than seventy-five miles per hour. But it was tracking at twenty-five degrees latitude and seventy-five degrees longitude, which meant it was hovering just seventy-five miles off the coast of Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas. And unless he was crazy, it had appeared from nowhere. The last he’d heard, it had been a weak tropical storm. Overnight, it had grown up.

  After downing the last of his café con leche, Echeverria sought out the previous satellite map, taken a few hours earlier. Yes, there was some spiraling present in that spot, but . . .

  Echeverria squinted, scratching his head. He was only thirty-two, but his hairline was already speckled with gray and receding at the temples, making him look ten years older. Whenever anyone remarked on his prematurely graying hair, he only had to utter the explanation “Hurricane Floyd,” and all was understood. Floyd had been his first big storm after coming to work at the center from the Ph.D. program at the University of Florida, and he still often woke up at night with memories of those unpredictable days in 1999. Floyd had cost him countless hours of sleep from the moment he’d appeared as a tropical storm until he’d finally dissipated in the Gulf of St. Lawrence near Newfoundland, fracturing into harmless thunder-clouds—but only after throwing Florida into alert and skirting the Sunshine State entirely to instead bounce off North Carolina and then New York, of all places.

  There’s nothing like your first, he thought.

  Floyd had been
a scary mother, all right, five times the size of 1992’s Hurricane Andrew, whose devastation across south Florida was still legendary. His poor abuela, whose house in Perrine had collapsed into splinters around her while she screamed in her upstairs closet (forgetting that she should never have been upstairs at all, that she would suffer the brunt of the wind there), had never recovered from Andrew. From that time on, she had felt panic attacks every time a heavy thunderstorm passed over. Her heart finally gave out three years later, and Echeverria had always been convinced that his abuela should have been counted among Andrew’s death toll. As long as he could remember, she had always told him she expected to die in a storm, just as her father had lost his life to a lightning storm in Matanzas, her hometown in Cuba.

  “Oh, yeah . . . that’s a quirky one there,” a voice said from behind Echeverria, and he turned to see the thick tortoiseshell glasses of the assistant director, Bernard, behind him. Bernard wore a short-sleeved white shirt and black tie every day, even though the others in the office dressed more casually than anywhere else Echeverria had ever worked—except when the news stations came to shoot their obligatory stories on hurricane preparedness. With the sudden growth of this storm, the office would be flooded with local newscasters as soon as the bulletin went out, he thought.

  “Barely anything to worry about last night, not that I saw. And now there she is.” Bernard sounded nearly reverent.

  “But they don’t just appear from thin air . . . do they?” Echeverria asked.

  Bernard laughed then, pushing his glasses up higher on his broad, shiny nose. “You haven’t been in this business long enough. You bet they do.”

  Echeverria gazed at the spiraling system, like a swath of cotton candy floating over the dark water. The hurricane season had yielded only one other tropical storm so far, Alan, a weak fluke that had died without ever reaching land. This one, though, had a different destiny. If he’d been a betting man, he would have planned to enter this new system into the office pool predicting the next Big One.