The Living Blood

by Tananarive Due

“Hello?” The man’s voice that answered made Lucas’s eyes cloud with tears.

  “Cal!” Lucas said, nearly shouting. “I’m so glad to hear you. Is Jared . . . is he . . . all right?”

  But Cal, on the other end of the line, was whooping and shouting so loudly that Lucas doubted he’d heard a word. Finally, Cal’s hurried words imprinted themselves in Lucas’s mind: He’s all right. He’s awake.

  “They came, Lucas. I promised I wouldn’t go into details, and there’s too many folks in the room right now, but that lady you went after, she came. She was looking for her sister, see? Lucas, it was a miracle. I can’t tell you more now, but you’ve made us all believers, Doc. Jared woke right up from a coma, and the leukemia’s gone. Completely gone.”

  The moment crystallized, obliterating everything else from Lucas’s mind. He did not understand how it had happened, but somehow Jessica Jacobs-Wolde had found his son and had given him some of the blood. Jared was alive! The room spun crazily, but Lucas stayed on his feet. Although his mind felt frozen over with joy and relief, somehow there were words still pouring from his mouth. He could hear his own voice.

  “Cal,” Lucas was saying, hardly able to speak above a whisper, “I want you to put him on. But first, write down this address—can you hear me?”

  “Loud and clear!”

  “Twelve Coral Boulevard, Star Island, near Miami Beach. That’s where I am. Dr. Jacobs and I are being held here against our will. I can’t get through to the police on these phones.”

  Suddenly, the joviality was stolen from Cal’s voice. “Star Island? Are you sure? Doc, there’s a hell of a storm—”

  “I know,” Lucas cut him off. “Never mind that. Maybe . . . no one can come now. But I just want you to know. Send someone when you can. Clarion Health is involved in this somehow. They were after the blood, Cal. Don’t let these bastards get away with it. They’ve killed people.”

  Cal was silent on the other end of the line. In that instant, Lucas realized he might as well be wishing his best friend good-bye. “Don’t you and Nita forget you’re his godparents, Cal. That’s legal. And don’t say anything to Jared about where I am. I don’t want him to worry. Can you put him on now? I don’t have much time.” Lucas glanced at the door again, remembering his captive for the first time since he’d heard Cal’s voice. Lucas aimed his gun at the lawyer’s head for good measure, in case he was plotting something while Lucas was distracted. The same question that had always dogged Lucas in Africa resurfaced in his mind: How could he be only a telephone line away from the people he cared about, and yet still be so impossibly far?

  “Sure thing, Doc,” Cal said gravely. “You take care.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Daddy!” Jared’s voice chirped over the line next. “The oncodoc said I’m all better! The leukemia cells are gone. He’s so psyched, you should see him. He’s calling in experts and stuff. He said he’s gonna write an article about me.”

  This time, Lucas’s tears came in a flood. Joy had never hurt so much, plunging so deeply into his insides. His shoulders hunched as he sobbed, and for an instant he forgot everything he’d wanted to say to Jared these past few wretched days. But when the phone line crackled with interference, he forced himself to speak, realizing he might not have another chance. “Hey, kiddo, I sure am proud of you. God, I’m sorry I haven’t been there, Jared. I’m sorry I couldn’t come back the way you wanted me to. But you know your daddy loves you, don’t you?”

  “Sure!” Jared said cheerfully. “I always knew that. I was way worried about you, Dad, that’s all. I kept having these dreams, and they seemed so real. I thought you died or something. But you sound pretty good, so I guess none of them came true.” He sounded uncertain.

  His son truly was well, Lucas realized with renewed amazement. Lucas hadn’t heard Jared sound this well in so long, he’d nearly forgotten that Jared’s voice could be so relaxed, free of worry. In that voice, Lucas heard traces of the man his son was about to become.

  “Well, don’t worry about me,” Lucas said. “I’ll be back with you as soon as I can.”

  As he spoke, there was more raucous thundering in the sky, and this time the lights began to flicker, casting a brownish hue over the room. The telephone line crackled again, but remained intact.

  “Promise, Dad?” Jared said, sounding a little more faint. “Where are you, anyway?”

  “I promise I’ll do my best. I’ve been having transportation problems. But I want you to concentrate on staying well now, hear? And mind your uncle Cal and aunt Nita. I love you, Jared.”

  “Love you too, Dad. Hurry up and get your butt home. Grandma’s really pissed.”

  Jared had added that last line mischievously, and Lucas could imagine his son’s grin. Lucas heard Rachel’s mother exclaim, “No, I’m not,” somewhere in the room, feigning disbelief that Jared would say such an outrageous thing, then five or six people laughed. The sound of their laughter was astonishing to Lucas, a treasure. Lucas laughed, too, feebly, warmed by the feeling of fellowship, however remote. But the pain in his left hand returned suddenly, and he couldn’t conceal a gasp.

  I’ll just bet she’s pissed, Lucas wanted to say, but by then the line had clicked dead.

  Lucas had overexcited himself on the phone, and now he felt violently dizzy, swaying. Shock was threatening again, more than ever. Lucas tried to concentrate on his breathing, but for a long minute, he was terrified he was about to faint, leaving himself to this man’s mercy. He groaned, resting his weight against the desk. His body seemed ready to keel over now that he knew Jared was all right, as if it had decided that his work was done.

  But not yet, Lucas told himself. There was nowhere to run, and no help could reach him, but there was one last thing he needed to do.

  Sucking in a deep breath, Lucas turned to the lawyer beside him. Even in the dimmed light, Lucas could see the bare dismay in the man’s face as he watched Lucas. He was a father, the man had said. Hadn’t those been his words when he begged for mercy? But he’d never cared that Lucas was a father, too, that he had his own life that had been stolen from him. Now, he’d seen it for himself.

  The lawyer tried to speak, but no sound emerged from his shuddering lips. Without a word he took the telephone’s receiver and returned it to the cradle. He didn’t meet Lucas’s eyes.

  “Where is she?” Lucas rasped. “Where’s Alexis?”

  Steadfastly, the man stared at the floor. “Upstairs being . . . questioned.” The way the man’s voice sagged on the word questioned told Lucas everything he needed to know.

  “Well, then, that’s where we’re going. Right now.”

  The lawyer’s pale eyes met his. “Both of them are with her. They’re hired killers, these guys. They’ve got guns, man.” The way he’d said that was stripped of artifice, with none of his phony yassah, massah bowing and scraping. The warning had been sincere.

  Lucas’s clammy palm tightened around the butt of his gun. He lifted the weapon for the lawyer to see, a visual reminder. “Let’s go.”

  Thunder groaned above them, and the lights flickered again like candles defying the wind.

  50

  3:21 P.M.

  They were close. The tiny guardhouse, predictably, looked empty. It sat lonely and impotent at the end of the concrete two-lane bridge rocking slightly under the duress of the rioting waves below and the winds above. The white barrier at the gate convulsed in the wind, threatening to snap in two.

  Dawit and Teferi, lacking raincoats, had resigned themselves to getting drenched in the storm, shielding their faces from the pelting rain as they fought the wind to walk across the empty bridge. As he leaned into the wind, sometimes stumbling a step or two backward when the wind direction changed suddenly, Dawit felt the surreal and disconcerting sensation that they had already been picked up in the gale, that no surface was beneath his feet. The air tasted like pure rage. Dawit didn’t have to look at his watch to know that Beatrice was almost upon them.

>   Dawit took one last curious glance at the traffic he and Teferi had left on the larger bridge that was now far behind him. The cars remained, but apparently the motorists were coming to their senses, because he saw lines of them fleeing, running toward the promise of the multistoried hotels within sight at the end of the causeway. Some of them might reach safety, Dawit mused.

  Anxiously, Dawit rattled the knob of the whitewashed door leading inside the guardhouse, a mock villa in miniature that would be an inviting temporary shelter from the rain. It was locked. Without hesitating, Dawit pulled his gun from its holster and smashed the butt against the window, and the glass shattered easily. Then, he maneuvered his hand around the jutting glass shards until he found the door’s lock.

  Inside, Teferi breathed heavily behind him. “I’ve been too long in meditation,” Teferi said. “Such a short distance, but it’s so taxing to my poor bones in this weather!”

  “Well, catch your wind. We’re not there yet.”

  Pleasantly decorated as if it were part of a yacht club, the guardhouse was large enough for two desks and chairs, potted palm trees, and a locked cabinet. Since the light panel was useless, Dawit found a large flashlight in the desk drawer and turned it on, sweeping it across the notebooks on the desktop. The papers rustled in the wind that had followed them through the broken glass. A flash of lightning from outside shone so brilliantly that, for an instant, it looked like the noonday sun.

  Here! He’d found a computerized printout that appeared to be a list of residents, including their names, addresses, and telephone numbers. Hurrying, he scanned the list until he reached the O’s, while water from his hair and face dripped to the page in splotches. O’Neal. O’Neal. Where was it?

  “There it is!” Teferi said from over Dawit’s shoulder, pointing to the last name on the page. “Shannon O’Neal. Can it be the same man?”

  “Twelve Coral Boulevard,” Dawit muttered. “Help me find a map, Teferi. We don’t have time to go wandering blindly.”

  It took them more than five minutes to find the map of Star Island, which was posted on the wall behind them, but neither of them had spotted it. Examining the map, Dawit estimated that the house was roughly a quarter mile from where they stood, facing the bay. He ripped the map from its tacks on the wall and folded it, stuffing it into the back pocket of his jeans. Then, he peered through the window again at the squall outside. The rows of royal palm trees within his sight looked naked, their palm fronds struggling toward the sky for freedom in the winds.

  “He’d be mad not to have left,” Teferi said, naturally reading Dawit’s thoughts.

  “His madness I take for granted. It’s ours that baffles me.”

  Without another word, the two immortals ventured back outside, leaving their shelter behind.

  • • •

  Jessica felt emotionally empty after sitting in the living room watching the endless stream of news reports forecasting destruction. Most of a tiny Bahamian island was under water, and parts of Miami and Miami Beach seemed destined for the same fate, the forecasters said. It was too much to think about, so after a prayer session, she, her mother, and Daddy Gaines had opted to watch a John Woo action movie on HBO instead. That was their escape.

  Until the picture began to go snowy, phasing in and out. Then, after a few more valiant minutes, the picture and sound vanished altogether, leaving only the snow.

  With a sigh, Daddy Gaines stood up and turned the television set off. Her stepfather walked more stiffly than Jessica remembered; Bea had told her he was having problems with his back, but he refused to behave like a seventy-four-year-old, so he constantly overexerted himself. He should probably have left the shutters to David and Teferi, Bea had said, but he’d insisted on helping out.

  “I suppose we’ll lose the lights next,” Daddy Gaines said, and suddenly the room was dark.

  For an instant, they were swallowed in darkness and the barrage of the rain beating against the rooftop, until Bea flicked a match and lit the kerosene lamp she’d had waiting. The soft, yellow glow felt eerie to Jessica, as if she’d traveled from the technological age to a much earlier one in an instant. All over the country, she thought, viewers would see the end of the HBO movie and then watch the next, and the next, before retiring for a peaceful night’s sleep. In Miami, the peace was over.

  “Here we go again,” Bea said. “I have to tell you, I would have loved to see Alexis, too, but I’m glad she’s safe. I worry about her in a way I don’t have to worry about you, Jessica.”

  Jessica and Daddy Gaines exchanged a look, then quickly averted their eyes. Bea had been making remarks about Alexis on and off ever since David and Teferi had left, as if she suspected she was being lied to and was angling for information. Jessica didn’t blame her. It was weird enough that they’d suddenly appeared at her home at all, but weirder still that David and Teferi had gone back out, ostensibly to see if they could be helpful in the evacuation effort. (“We needn’t fear for our own lives, after all, so we should offer our services,” David had said so convincingly that Jessica was reminded of what a superb liar he was.) But Daddy Gaines had caught on by snooping, and Jessica wouldn’t doubt that her mother was intuitive enough to feel the lie in the air. Bea’d had that knack when Jessica was a teenager, and Jessica had no reason to believe she’d lost it.

  “Yes, Lord,” Bea said again casually. “I’m glad she’s safe.”

  Jessica felt her chest constrict. “I’d better go check on Fana,” she said, standing. Her orange cat, Teacake, had finally settled in her lap to sleep after shying away from her since her arrival. The cat’s mental state had improved since his return to the States, but he was still skittish. Now, with a mew of irritation at being displaced, Teacake ran ahead of her, toward the hallway.

  “Here, honey. Take a flashlight,” Bea said, handing her a Durabeam that Jessica was certain had once belonged to her and David, too. So much of her old life had been absorbed into her mother’s home. Jessica glanced at her mother’s face in the lamplight, and she could see the sadness around her eyes. Bea knew something was wrong, but she was afraid to ask what.

  Damn. Please, please, please let David bring Alex back, she thought.

  “Can you find your way back there, baby doll?” Daddy Gaines asked before he sat back down on the sofa. She saw him pick up a TV Guide, and the sight of him with that magazine made Jessica’s scalp tingle with a sensation of déjà vu.

  “Yeah,” Jessica said, then she paused a moment, reflecting. It had happened something like this, she remembered suddenly. The day Fana was born.

  As she heard one of them turn on the radio, Jessica flicked on the flashlight’s bright beam and made her way into the shadowy hallway. The house was large, with three bedrooms. They had moved the hurricane supplies from the kitchen to the large main bathroom in the middle of the hall. Daddy Gaines had faith in the shutters, so Jessica had agreed to let Fana sleep in the smallest bedroom, at the end of the hallway, until the storm got worse. Fana had been so groggy when Jessica put her to bed that she hadn’t uttered a complaint about being alone in the room, as she usually would have. Even that had bothered Jessica. Something was wrong with her, Jessica thought again as she watched the flashlight illuminate the paisley-patterned carpeting.

  Suddenly, she heard a clear sound from Fana’s bedroom that reminded her, once again, of the strange day of her daughter’s birth. Fana was singing. The singing hadn’t been loud enough to hear from the living room, but Jessica definitely heard it now. Her daughter’s voice sounded surprisingly mature, dipping and rising with perfect pitch and an odd throaty quality. And the melody and words made Jessica stop in her tracks.

  “Don’t know whyyyyyyyy . . . there’s no sun up in the sky . . . stor-my weatherrrrrr . . .”

  Where in the world had her daughter learned the words and melody of an ancient jazz standard like that? Had David taught her during the short time they were alone in Tallahassee?

  Thunder crashed, and suddenly the singing
stopped. Jessica felt a deep relief to hear the silence, because the silence sounded normal to her. The singing had not sounded normal at all. But she didn’t feel relieved long; an instant later, Fana’s too-clear voice rose again.

  “I’m sinnnnnnnngin’ in the rain . . .”

  Jessica ran to Fana’s doorway, shining the light toward the twin bed. Her daughter, instead of lying covered as she’d been when Jessica left, had thrown off her sheets and was lying on her side, facing the doorway, with her head propped up on her arm as she gazed straight at Jessica. She was naked except for her panties, mirroring a pose that an older girl might have hoped was seductive.

  “Hi, Mommy!” Fana greeted her with shining eyes and a Shirley Temple smile.

  Jessica took a tentative step toward Fana, feeling a ringing dread that she didn’t even yet understand. “Honey . . . where did you learn those old songs? Did you get them out of people’s heads?”

  The smile didn’t waver. “What songs, Mommy?”

  The rain on the rooftop seemed to intensify for an instant, then quieted. “Don’t you remember? You were singing songs about rain, Fana.”

  “Was I really? Truly?” Fana shrugged, still smiling. She didn’t answer. Instead, she snapped her fingers sharply—a gesture Jessica hadn’t even known her daughter had mastered—and there was a resounding roll of thunder directly above them. Jessica jumped, surprised, and Fana giggled. Had that thunder been coincidental? Jessica didn’t think so. After all, Fana had made it rain before, hadn’t she? Suddenly, Jessica’s heart was racing.

  “You’re such a nervous Nellie,” Fana said. “You’d jump at your own shadow, Mommy.”

  Stunned at her daughter’s articulateness, Jessica began another step toward Fana, then stopped short when she heard a vicious hissing sound. Two distinct red eyes gleamed from directly behind Fana’s head in the beam of the flashlight. Jessica’s rational mind almost shut down as she stared at those two glowing eyes, until she realized it must only be Teacake. Sure enough, she could now see the angry swishing of Teacake’s feathery tail.