The Living Blood

by Tananarive Due

  “Shit, Lucas, that older guy didn’t like me at all,” Alex whispered as soon as the door above the stairs clicked shut, leaving them in darkness. “He knew things I didn’t think he could know. He . . . caught me lying. I tried to cover, but . . .”

  Lucas sighed. The same thing had happened to him; Alexis had tried to brief him on the blood’s properties last night, and he’d embellished with a wagonload of scientific gobbledygook. But every once in a while, Lucas felt caught in a lie. He’d seen something in the older guy’s eyes when he’d pressed his fingers against his ear, deep in concentration. Of course, it wasn’t a hearing aid, Lucas had finally decided. Someone had been listening to their conversation, and someone was communicating with the man. And whoever it was, he knew more about the blood than Lucas did. At least he seemed to.

  Lucas prayed his story would hold up to the invisible captor’s scrutiny.

  As Lucas and Alexis compared notes, he was immediately grateful that they had decided to base their lies on truth as much as they could, or they might not have escaped injury today. Lucas had expected his captors to know who he was, but he hadn’t realized they would know so much about Alexis. They’d known about her relationship with David Wolde, she said. They also seemed to know exactly where she’d gotten the blood.

  Her sister. Alexis had never said it directly, but Lucas suspected as much. And if he’d figured it out, why should it be any harder for the person who’d had them brought here?

  “They were pressing me to say where this person is,” Alexis said, her voice a faint breath beside his ear, “and I handled it like we said, trying to lead them toward the Democratic Congo. But then they asked where to find my mother.”

  “Your mother?” Lucas said, dismayed. Of course! If their captors believed Jessica Jacobs-Wolde was one of the immortals and they wanted to find her, then naturally they would want to find her mother. A mother was almost sure to know where her own child was; and if nothing else, she would certainly serve as irresistible bait. Just like Alexis. “What did you say?”

  Lucas felt her body’s heaving beside him, and he realized he could smell her breath. It was slightly sour from the onions on her burger, but it also had a delicate, challenging quality. His mind suddenly clouded as he tried to remember the last time he’d smelled any woman’s breath.

  “I was stupid. I said she died of a stroke in Africa last year.”

  Lucas didn’t even have to ask why that response had been stupid; since she was working so closely with the blood, how could she allow her own mother to die? He’d had to tread carefully around that problem, too, given his wife’s widely publicized illness and death. He’d told the men Alexis had come to him after Rachel died, because she wanted him to lend them his expertise in the field of alternative medicine. In the process, he said, he’d begun learning how to synthesize the blood.

  That would make him important in their eyes. That would keep him alive, just as Alexis’s relationship with an immortal would keep her alive, at least for now.

  But that lie also had its built-in risk: Jared. Still feeling traumatized by the way the press had reported Rachel’s illness, Lucas had vowed he would keep his son’s illness quiet as long as he could. Jared’s physicians knew. Rachel’s family knew. Cal and a few other friends knew, people he trusted. So far, it had not leaked, and Lucas prayed his captors had not somehow investigated it. How credible would he be as a magic blood expert with a son on his deathbed?

  Of all the lies Lucas had been spinning, omitting Jared had been the hardest. Last night, with Alexis’s sober input, he’d spent nearly an hour weighing Jared in his mind, wondering if he could in some way offer his captors information in exchange for giving Jared a shot of blood. Ultimately, they’d both decided that would be foolish. The decision was awful—it meant not only that he couldn’t find out any information about Jared’s condition, but that he was dismissing the slim chance that these men would give his son some of the blood—but the risk was too great. It crippled his story, first of all. If Jared was alive, these men would be more likely to find him and hurt him rather than help him. And if Jared was dead, there was no point to mentioning him at all.

  But, oh, God, it had hurt. Without that vial of blood, knowing Jared’s situation was more hopeless all the time, his son’s name had nearly fallen from Lucas’s lips a dozen different times that day. But instead, when the captors had asked him where his son was (one of the articles must have mentioned Jared’s existence, obviously), Lucas had casually told them that he was living with his grandmother because of his heavy travels. They hadn’t asked him to elaborate, thank God.

  And there had been no sudden pause as his captor checked his ear-piece.

  “I can’t let them find my mother, Lucas,” Alexis said, determination making her voice tremor.

  “Of course not,” he said. “We’ll think of something.”

  Lucas’s eyes had adjusted to the darkness nearly enough for him to make out Alexis’s features beside him; not quite, but almost. And he heard her lips fall apart. They sounded slightly moist. He felt the breath from her nostrils, and this time the scent was wholly fresh.

  “I appreciate what you’re doing, Lucas, but you don’t have to.”

  “What am I doing?”

  “You’re trying to give me hope. That sounded good for a whole second. Thank you.”

  Lucas didn’t know Alexis well enough to discern sarcasm in her voice. “I only meant—”

  “Shhhh,” she said, reminding him of how she’d shushed him so gently when he’d first seen her at the clinic. “I know. You think I need something to hold on to. And you’re right, but I’m not trusting in our own powers to bring us out of this. I have other powers I’m trusting in now. I believe we’re going to walk out of here. We have forces in our favor you don’t even know about, Lucas. And I also know that I made a big mistake today. These men think I’m lying to them, and I don’t have any illusions about what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

  Illusions. The word hacked at Lucas’s psyche. Finally, the darkness thinned slightly, and Lucas could see that she was staring back at him with wide, inquisitive eyes.

  “Lucas . . . where did you get that vial of blood?”

  “I thought it was from you, but I guess not. Someone slipped it to me while I was asleep at the clinic, right before the attack. My next guess would be Sarah Shabalala. Or her brother.”

  “Yes. I’ve always been afraid he was getting it somehow. Selling it. Lord, I bet he somehow led those crazies right to us.”

  The question nudging at Lucas’s mind seemed masochistic, but he couldn’t help himself. “Just tell me one thing, Alexis: If I’d somehow been able to get the blood back to Jared, how much would it have taken to save him?”

  Alexis’s whisper was reverent. “A drop, Lucas. One drop.” She paused. “I’m sorry.”

  So, that was all. He’d been that close, but it hadn’t been enough.

  Lucas felt a sob surface. “If you have a chance . . . you’ll get some of it to him, won’t you? Up in Tallahassee?” He was amazed at how difficult it was to speak. His throat felt sealed.

  “You’ll be able to take him some yourself.”

  It occurred to him that if it weren’t for their handcuffs, he and Alexis would be holding each other tonight, giving each other brief, passing relief from this ordeal. And as soon as he got a chance, he vowed, he was going to kiss her full, lovely lips. For pure solace, if nothing else.

  “I think my son is dead,” Lucas said suddenly, a confession. No more terrible words had ever entered his mind, much less come from his mouth. He could have shared those words with no one but this woman imprisoned beside him.

  Alexis paused, and he heard her swallow in the rigid silence. When she spoke, she sounded near tears. “Do you blame me for that?”

  He sighed. “You didn’t make him sick, Alexis. You didn’t ask me to come to Botswana.”

  “But I know that doesn’t make it any easier.”

  “N
o, it doesn’t,” he said, awed that he was still able to think, to carry on a conversation. “And part of me still believes I can save him. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t care so much about what happens to me here. He’s . . .” Lucas stopped, realizing what he’d been about to say: Jared was his life. The simple truth of that stunned him into silence.

  “When my sister lost her child,” Alexis said after a moment, “the light in her world vanished. She wasn’t the same. She still isn’t, not really. But the blood . . .” Remembering herself, Alex lowered her voice considerably. “The blood helped her. It gave her a purpose in life again. As much as I hate it, I’ve often thought Kira was the price she had to pay. And after we survive this, Lucas, you’ll be a part of the blood, too. We’ve found something that can wipe out most global disease. We can make AIDS in Africa disappear.”

  Searing tears filled Lucas’s eyes. “Not like this. Not if I have to lose Jared.”

  “God didn’t give you a choice in it, just like he never gave my sister one. But this is what’s happened, and this is your future now.”

  Her lulling voice coaxed violent sobs from Lucas that he had been trying to fight for years, it seemed. He felt a severe spasm as his chest shuddered. Dear God, that precious little boy was gone! Jared was gone. And blood or no blood, he had run away. He had left his child to die. For the next hour, while Alexis sat in silence, Lucas cried. His sobs were moans he thought might rend him in half, followed by new sobs that went even deeper. No torture his captors could devise would ever compare to this, he thought.

  Finally, exhausted, Lucas sniffed hard to clear his nostrils. Since he was unable to move his hands, he rubbed his face against the sleeve of his T-shirt.

  Alexis’s voice floated readily toward him again. He was afraid she’d fallen asleep, but she’d waited to talk to him. “I know it won’t give you Jared again, but all of us will find a way to heal people. I know we will. That’s how I can lie here in chains and believe everything will be all right. These fools can’t do anything to me. My soul is free. I feel like Martin, Lucas—I feel like I’ve seen the promised land.” Her voice, which had deepened, cracked at the end.

  Lucas felt as if his chest were parting, as if an undiscovered shelter was buried beneath his anguish, not yet visible, but there. He knew exactly what she meant. It didn’t make any sense—in a place like this, at a time like this—but he felt it. Maybe this is what happened to Nelson Mandela in prison, he mused. He couldn’t compare his few hours of bondage to that man’s twenty-seven lost years behind bars, but for the first time he thought he understood better how Mandela had emerged from hell ready to lead a nation.

  “What year were you born?” Lucas asked her suddenly.

  “Nineteen sixty-two. I’ll be thirty-nine in November. Why?”

  “Are you old enough to remember the Movement?”

  Alexis laughed ruefully. “I remember seeing those fire hoses and dogs on TV. My father used to read me all the newspaper articles in the living room at night.”

  “Do you remember the songs?” he asked, hopeful. “I always loved those songs.”

  He didn’t have to say another word. In a moment, softly, he heard Alexis’s textured alto voice floating softly from her side of the mattress, singing “We Shall Overcome.” It was a simple, beautiful song. He’d thought it was stirring in the sixties, and he’d fallen in love with it again when he’d heard Chinese student activists singing it in the wake of Tiananmen Square. It was timeless, without boundaries. He’d hoped to teach Jared that song.

  “. . . we shall overcome somedayyyyy . . .”

  Lucas joined her then, careful to keep his voice low despite the fervor that was making his muscles twitch. He couldn’t match her ear for pitch, but he could match her spirit. “Ohhhhh, deeeeep in my heart . . . I do believe . . . we shall overcome someday . . .”

  Lucas and Alexis sang together until they were nearly hoarse, long into the night. Lucas heard Alexis mumbling the lyrics even after he was certain she had drifted to sleep.

  42

  Tallahassee

  The blond white man in the living room of Dr. Shepard’s house had been bound to a wooden chair with duct tape wrapped tightly around his wrists and ankles. Jessica was transfixed by the sight of him when she walked through the door, her lips parting. The man was wearing neither shirt nor shoes, and a bright red ring was around his neck, the beginnings of an ugly bruise. His hair was mussed, and his jowls hung low, his face soured by fury. And fear, too, she could see that. His blue eyes leaped out at her.

  “Jesus,” she said, pausing in the foyer. “Is he one of . . .”

  Teferi was standing behind the man with his arms folded. “I’m almost certain there’s nothing to indicate that he’s been to Africa. Or that he knows where Dr. Shepard is.” Without saying so, of course, Teferi was telling her that he had read the man’s mind.

  “Then . . . why is he tied up?”

  “A necessary precaution, I’m afraid,” Teferi said apologetically.

  Armed with the name of the man who had been camping out in front of the clinic, Jessica had found Dr. Shepard’s address on an Internet phone-book site while she researched him on a borrowed laptop computer during a long layover in Johannesburg. Fana had said the men who stormed the clinic were going to take him home, so that was the first place they had decided to look. After they had checked into a Holiday Inn across town so Fana could rest, David and Teferi had gone to find Dr. Shepard.

  But when David had reappeared at the hotel, he’d come back alone. Standing with her in the hallway for what little distance they could get from Fana, he explained that Teferi was watching a prisoner, a man who’d surprised them while they were inside Dr. Shepard’s house. David told her they’d found piles of newspaper articles about serial killer David Wolde spread all over his living-room floor, so he’d been careful to hide his face from the intruder after he regained consciousness. Obviously, David pointed out, Dr. Shepard had connected the killings to Jessica’s clinic.

  But how? And had he been involved in what had happened there? No matter what, though, Jessica didn’t like keeping a prisoner. David had assured her the man had only been harmed because he came into the house with a weapon, but suddenly she felt no better than the people who had killed Sarah and abducted her sister. After gazing at the bound man, Jessica motioned for Teferi to follow her, and they went back outside. They walked a few paces into Dr. Shepard’s yard, stopping behind one of the thick trunks of a live oak so no one driving past the house would see them. It was after midnight, and the street was quiet except for the whirring of insects.

  “I understand your feelings, Jessica, but it is necessary to keep him captive,” Teferi said before she could speak. “We may be able to learn from him.”

  “Who is he? He looks scared to death.”

  “He is a friend of Dr. Shepard’s, and he lives across the street. His name is Cal. That much I’ve been able to glean from his thoughts. He’s very frightened and confused, however, so that of course muddies the clarity—”

  “Well, you can’t exactly blame him,” Jessica said, sighing.

  “Of course not.”

  Looking up at Teferi, Jessica felt another twinge of unreality. She’d grown accustomed to Teferi’s presence at the colony, but it was strange to have him back in her world. On the flight across the Atlantic, she’d been mortified when he declared, “My goodness, I haven’t been back to the States since they were the colonies,” provoking more than a few puzzled stares. Between his lack of verbal self-control and his limited ability to read thoughts, Teferi seemed much more alien to her than David ever had. Fana was a wonder to her, too, but Fana was a part of her. That made her alien qualities easier to accept.

  Jessica was sorry she’d been forced to leave Fana in the hotel room. Fana had been lapsing in and out of deep sleep since they left Serowe, mumbling when she was sleeping and silently sullen when she was awake. While Jessica was in the room with her, Fana had been half-asleep, mumbling som
ething that sounded like Jay-Red, as if she was talking to someone. Overhearing her, Jessica had spent a feverish hour puzzling over what incomplete message Fana might be bringing to help her find Alex: Was Jay-Red a license-tag number, someone’s name, a small Florida town or county? She’d scribbled a dozen possibilities on a small square sheet of hotel stationery while her daughter slept, and none of them had rung true. And it worried her to hear Fana’s mumbling, since she’d been mumbling that way shortly before her awful episode in Serowe.

  Jessica was carrying the cell phone they’d bought at a RadioShack just outside the airport when they’d arrived in Tallahassee, primed for a call about Fana. She prayed her daughter would have uneventful sleep tonight. And she wanted this awful business at Dr. Shepard’s house to end.

  “So what happens now?” Jessica asked Teferi, wrapping her arms tightly around herself. “What do we do with this guy?”

  “Dawit will devise a way to detain him,” Teferi said with the natural deference he gave David, as if he were a superior military officer. “You and I only have to see what he can tell us. I, of course, will use my meager gifts as best I can. Dawit hoped he might talk to you.”

  “I’ll try,” Jessica said, feeling little hope. “Let’s go back in.”

  When they returned to the cluttered living room, it was obvious that their prisoner had been trying to scoot his chair closer to the kitchen, but it had tipped over, leaving him leaning helplessly against the sofa. Without a word, Teferi grunted and strained to sit him upright again. The bound man was so red-faced from his effort that Jessica was afraid he would lose consciousness. His earlobes were glowing bright. Still, he sat erect and defiant in the chair despite his binds. Jessica, feeling guilty, hated to stare him in the face.