The Living Blood

by Tananarive Due

  But why was Teacake standing over Fana so protectively? Teacake had never felt a special attachment to Fana, not like he had with Kira, so the cat’s behavior was strange. Jessica felt sure that her cat meant to attack her if she came any closer.

  Other things were wrong, too. They weren’t big things, but they were there, and Jessica could feel them. Like the air in this room. The rest of the house was still cool from the air-conditioning which had just shut down when the power went off, but the air in the room was warm, nearly soupy. And it was highly charged. The air made all of Jessica’s nerves sing, warning her that someone was behind her. And in front of her. And on both sides of her. She swung the flashlight around her, expecting someone to spring out, but she saw nothing. Just shadows.

  Then, gradually, she noticed the smell. As a young reporter, Jessica had been sent out on a police call to a Miami canal, where she’d arrived in time to see a naked white man pulled from the water. He looked as if he weighed three hundred pounds, but the public information officer had explained to her that he was only so bloated because he’d been in the water a long time. As Jessica had peered closer, she’d realized with shock that even though the man’s skin was a pale pinkish color, he wasn’t white, he was black. He’d just been so bloated that his skin had literally changed its coloring as it expanded and peeled off, with isolated brown spots that were no longer sufficient to cover the body’s puffy bulk. And although she’d been standing several yards away, her nose had caught the scent in the wind. The smell was only vague and diluted, nothing like it must have smelled to the divers and the officers standing at the canal bank with handkerchiefs pressed to their faces, but it had been enough.

  She’d never forgotten that rancid, watery smell. And that smell was in this room with her.

  Mom-my help me.

  Jessica heard Fana’s frightened voice penetrate her mind, like a panicked shout from a distant tunnel, but the Fana on the bed was still gazing at her with that inane, happy grin. Posed in every way.

  “This is such lovely weather we’ve been having,” Fana said pleasantly. Was that a buzzing sound floating from her throat, audible just beneath her words? “Isn’t it, Mommy?”

  help Mom-my pleeeeeeease

  This is not my child, Jessica thought suddenly as she stared at the girl before her, a horrific realization that drained her mind, her pores, her soul. The flashlight’s beam began to have a strobe effect as it glared toward Fana’s smile, because Jessica could not hold her hand steady.

  Jesus help me, this is not my child. This is not my child.

  “Who the hell are you?” Jessica cried, surprised at the strength in her voice. She felt something warm drip onto the back of her hand, and she shined her flashlight toward the spot with a start. Blood! There was another drip, then a sudden trickle, until her hand was nearly coated with it. Where was it coming from? Suddenly, she felt the warm blood oozing from her nose.

  Remembering the sight of Kaleb’s exploding eyes, Jessica felt her limbs go sodden. She let out a strangled cry that was trampled by the thunder overhead. Her thoughts gone, Jessica turned to run. The thing on the bed began humming “Stormy Weather” again.

  • • •

  This wasn’t the not-real place, not the way Fana remembered it. She never saw anything she liked here—not her house in Botswana or the mopane trees or a table full of cakes or a camel or anything nice. Worst of all, she never saw any friends with kind voices or smiling faces. She didn’t see The Man or Moses or Jay-Red or anyone. She only saw people she didn’t want to see.

  Fana couldn’t tell how much time had passed, or how long she’d been crying. She seemed to always be crying, so now she hardly noticed it anymore. The tunnel where she’d found Jay-Red was gone now. It had disappeared long ago, after the Bee Lady had held her upside down until she’d got tired of fighting and she’d finally given up, falling asleep.

  When she’d awakened, Fana had found herself standing at the airport in Rome, with its bright lights and shiny floors and endless streams of strangers hurrying with their bundles and suitcases. Her mommy wasn’t here with her, not like before. Fana searched all the faces above her as people walked past (and they didn’t even glance down at her curiously the way strangers usually did, bending over to tell her how precious she was, or to ask her what was wrong; the people just walked on, staring straight ahead, not seeing her), but she couldn’t find her mommy. She couldn’t even find the boy with spots on his face. She was lost.

  “Help me, Mommy!” Fana screamed out. She kept thinking her mommy must be here somewhere, and maybe she would hear her yelling the way Fana had been able to hear Aunt Alex telling her things in her sleep. Fana could usually find people when they were sleeping. She’d been trying hard to yell out the things Aunt Alex had told her, because she hoped her mommy would hear that, too. Fana was almost sure, somehow, that her mommy could hear. Almost. But Fana also knew she was probably in a trance again, and she’d never been in a trance this deep before. Usually she could feel some part of her body, but Fana felt far away from herself this time, as if her body had begun another life without her. That thought made her cry harder.

  Why didn’t Mommy come hold her hand and help her find her way?

  Fana walked and walked, winding past the grown-ups’ long legs, but she could never tell one part of the airport from another. The floors and counters all looked the same to her, and the colored signs above the counters all spelled out A-L-I-T-A-L-I-A just like on the day she’d been there with Mommy. She kept passing a booth far across from her, but Fana didn’t want to look in that direction. She knew who was always waiting for her there.

  Bella. Look at me, Bella.

  Fana didn’t want to look at Giancarlo. She’d been fooled by him once, glancing in the direction of his cloying voice, but when she’d seen him, she turned her head as fast as she could. He didn’t look the same way he’d looked when Fana had seen him at the airport with her mommy. He was still in his uniform, and he still carried the long black gun he had for ter-or-ists, but his skin was much darker and he was filthy with dirt. As if he’d climbed out of the ground.

  Let me touch you, Bella. Let me take you to my room.

  No matter how fast Fana tried to walk, she knew Giancarlo was always in the same place, beckoning her, as if she were standing still. Worse, she thought he might be getting closer. She glanced at him occasionally out of pure dread, and he was closer each time, even though she never saw him actually move; it was as if he were on a checkerboard, coming closer every time she turned away. And she hated him. Whenever he tried to talk to her, or whenever it seemed that he might appear right in front of her and take her hand, she felt such a big hate feeling that she wished he wasn’t dead already. She wanted to kill him again.

  But Fana didn’t like that feeling. When she felt that burning in her chest, the hate feeling, she’d noticed that the airport felt just a little bit bigger, and she felt just a little more lost. She knew the Bee Lady wanted her to hate Giancarlo. Bad things happened to people when she felt the burning, to people she didn’t even know. Old people, babies, little children, daddies and mommies, all of them were drowning. And flying, some of them. People were flying in the wind.

  Fana could feel the wind, deep inside her where she could feel things she couldn’t see. She felt it surging, building, whipping, screaming. Something in her was pushing, pushing, pushing, making the wind race. When she closed her eyes, she could imagine the wind carrying her away.

  That was what she was most afraid of, really. It wasn’t being lost. It wasn’t Giancarlo. And it wasn’t Kaleb, whom she could feel waiting for her somewhere with his knife, the one he’d used to cut off her mommy’s hand. Yes, Kaleb was close now. As soon as Giancarlo finally got his chance to take her to his secret room—and he would, she knew, because her mommy wasn’t here to help her, and she couldn’t stop him this time—Kaleb would be waiting for her next. Fana knew these things without wanting to. She knew she would soon open her eyes and
find that she was no longer at the airport, that she would be in the tunnels of the co-lo-ny, with Kaleb standing over her with his knife. And he would be covered in blood.

  But not before Giancarlo got to her, oh, no.

  These things were frightening to Fana, but the worst, worst, worst part was thinking that the wind might carry her away for good, that she might never see anyone who loved her again. Or maybe the Bee Lady was right: If anyone had really loved her, they wouldn’t have left her alone here. Maybe they were glad she was gone.

  “Mommy!” Fana screamed out again.

  This time, when there was no answer from her mother, Fana felt angry, not scared.

  The wind kissed her this time, and it felt good. The wind, it seemed, was her only friend.

  51

  3:31 P.M.

  The generator was on, humming efficiently, so emergency lights mounted in the corridors cast conservative beams throughout the immense house. Beatrice could go to hell.

  As far as Patrick O’Neal was concerned, the microfiche room in Mr. O’Neal’s library was the perfect bunker. He’d coordinated the effort to move the tables and shelves of microfiche cartons to storage closets through the house; now the rest of the staff was carting in the boxes of canned goods, bottled water, an inflatable raft, and other supplies Mr. O’Neal was certain would sustain them in case of severe flooding. It was as if the old guy had always expected some kind of massive disaster, and now his paranoia was paying off, Patrick thought. Two of the security guys had defied orders and disappeared sometime in the afternoon, so that left Patrick with the two mercenaries, Justin, and three other security staffers, including Nash, to share the space with the two prisoners. No problem, he figured. There was plenty of room.

  Mr. O’Neal himself seemed only marginally excited by the storm and all the activity in his house. His wheelchair was parked behind his desk in the library as if this were any other day, his back turned to his shuttered picture window, which was already vibrating in the wind. The old guy’s calm made sense to Patrick, in a weird way. With all of Mr. O’Neal’s money, the threat of losing a multimillion-dollar home didn’t mean much to him; and if he was as old as he said he was, then he’d probably been through worse than this in his lifetime. The more time Patrick spent around this old freak, the more he found to admire about him.

  “Nash has been with me a long time, Patrick, so I hope you’ll forgive my reliance on him,” Mr. O’Neal said, his overactive eyes holding steady just long enough to probe Patrick’s. “He has helped me secure the blood. All of it is stored beneath this very wheelchair, in waterproof containers. Only you and Nash know it is there, so say nothing to the others. Nash has prepared my personal bunker, in my bedroom closet. I can’t tolerate a crowded room, Patrick, especially since the blood would be so exposed.”

  “Of course,” Patrick said. “You’re damned right. No need to take chances.”

  “Nash will remain at my side during the storm. He will communicate on the handheld radio he has already left for you in the microfiche room. You will supervise the staff and the prisoners. It is a very important job. The woman can lead you to the immortals—her questioning should continue, even through the storm.” Mr. O’Neal paused, closing his thin eyelids before going on. “However, I received word last night that makes me suspect our scientist has exaggerated his importance to us.”

  “I’ve always thought so, sir. What’d you hear?”

  A weak smile softened Mr. O’Neal’s face. “Apparently, his son is not living with his grandmother, as he claimed. Last night, my investigators phoned the woman’s housekeeper and learned that he is at his deathbed. The lad has been ill for years. Obviously, then, Dr. Shepard has not had access to the blood. In this new light, his claim of synthetic blood is preposterous. It’s more likely that our scientist arrived at the clinic at the same time we did.”

  “That lying SOB,” Patrick said, his face tightening.

  “The lie is understandable,” Mr. O’Neal said gravely, pausing to draw a difficult breath from his tubes, “but unfortunate. He is an accomplished man. It’s quite sad, really.” Quite sssad.

  No further prompting was necessary for Patrick. “Then we don’t need him. He’s just in the way, especially now.”

  “Yes,” Mr. O’Neal said flatly. “He is.”

  The thought gave Patrick a pleasant charge. He had to admit, he’d enjoyed the power of carrying his cute little .22 the past couple of days, and he wouldn’t mind knowing what it would feel like to fire it at someone. He’d missed his chances for combat; he’d been too young for World War II, and he’d wormed his way out of Korea by hiding behind his law school books. He didn’t want to shoot a woman—maybe he was a chauvinist; that just felt sick—but why not that lying scientist?

  “Mr. O’Neal . . . ,” Patrick began, his heart hammering. “Let me deal with the scientist.”

  From the way Mr. O’Neal’s face lit up, Patrick thought he might as well have told the guy he was going to drop to his knees and suck his withered little cock. But Patrick understood—Mr. O’Neal wanted reasons to trust him, and that kind of loyalty would put him at ease. Patrick had been testing Justin the same way, watching him carry out his tasks. Patrick understood perfectly well what was at stake. Besides, what chance did the police have of pinning a murder charge on him in the middle of a fucking hurricane? This one was a freebie.

  Patrick’s stomach squirmed with excitement.

  “Go ahead, then. Do what’s to be done, but hurry,” Mr. O’Neal said. “I want everyone else secured as soon as possible, before the brunt of the storm. I hoped I could rely on you, Patrick. We have much to do together, the two of us. All of us. We are family, remember.” Unless Patrick imagined it, he thought he could see tears shining in this old guy’s dark, twitchy eyes.

  “Yessir, we sure are,” Patrick said, and he leaned over to kiss Mr. O’Neal’s head. This time, kissing the old guy didn’t bother him in the slightest. In his own way, he thought, maybe he was growing fond of the old geezer. The idea of it made him smile.

  • • •

  Lucas didn’t know what he could do once he found Alexis Jacobs, but he’d promised himself he would. That goal, for long intervals, took his mind from the undulating waves of pain that so often stole his thoughts, leaving him following this blond-haired man in a state of near delirium. His vision dimmed and brightened as the young man led him from the house’s less used rear elevators along the second floor, pausing periodically to avoid the traffic of the other men in this house. How many were here? He’d seen two other men downstairs carrying boxes from the garage, and at least two more on the second floor. And there were others in the room with Alexis—that made six, at least. An army.

  “How . . . do you know about it?” Lucas asked the lawyer quietly while they hid in a darkened second-floor bathroom. Men were roaming the hallway, so they had to wait. As usual, Lucas held the gun squarely in back of the lawyer’s head.

  “Know what?”

  “Don’t play stupid,” Lucas said. “About the blood.”

  The lawyer paused, and Lucas pressed the gun harder into his scalp. By now, Lucas’s palm clinging to the gun was so slippery that he was afraid that he’d either drop it or squeeze it too hard in an effort to keep his grip, firing accidentally. “Not too much fun being questioned, is it?”

  “No,” the lawyer said, swallowing hard. “But, shit, I don’t care if you know. The guy who owns the corporation, Mr. O’Neal, he’s got a bunch of the blood. He claims he’s related to an immortal African. He’s old as hell. He says . . . he’s two-hundred years old. And he looks it.”

  Lucas tried to hold on to that thought, to marvel at it, but the pain whipped up his arm again so severely that he could barely suppress a moan. Christ. Suddenly, he realized that the voices in the hallway were gone, and he could no longer hear any footsteps on the corridor’s tiles.

  Alexis. He had to get to Alexis.

  “Take a look,” Lucas said.

  The
lawyer peeked outside the doorway, looking right and left. Then he nodded. “Yeah, they’re gone. It’s the third door on the left, the one that’s closed. That’s where they are.” There was a tremor in his voice. “I’m warning you again, those guys are killers.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that.” Lucas raised himself up from the sink, where he’d been leaning for support. “I’ve seen what they are. Move.”

  Lucas’s wild heartbeat had overtaken all other sound, forcing blood through his veins in such a fever that he felt faint again. One step. Two steps. He talked himself through, watching the man walk a few paces ahead of him, toward the closed door. Three steps. Lucas accidentally bumped his hand against his hip as he walked, and he had to swallow back what could well have been a scream. Perspiration stung his eyes. He felt his consciousness trying to flee, but he anchored himself by remembering the sound of Jared’s teasing voice on the telephone. Grandma’s really pissed. Four steps. He was almost there. Suddenly, the door loomed before him.

  “What now?” the lawyer whispered.

  “Open the door and stick your head in first.”

  Had that been him speaking, sounding so sure of himself?

  There was a click, followed by a faint squeak of a hinge, and Lucas saw the door begin to open. Immediately, inexplicably, there was a round of laughter. The room looked darker than the hallway, illuminated by the shifting shadows of candlelight. “You feckin’ ape!” the too familiar Irishman’s voice cried from inside. “You’re some can of piss. That’s a hell of a lunch break! Where’ve you been? We thought you blew away in the storm.”

  Lucas was confused at first, thinking the man was speaking to him. But, no, he remembered, the men inside couldn’t see him yet. Shakily, Lucas held his gun at the nape of the lawyer’s neck. He could feel his pulse pounding in his trigger finger.

  “It’s time to take her upstairs,” the lawyer said, leaning through the doorway. He glanced back at Lucas, as if waiting for his next set of instructions. “You’d better untie her.”