The Living Blood

by Tananarive Due

  I don’t suppose it matters to you, but I’m going back home tomorrow. I thought we would have more chances to play, but you’re always sitting in your chair. What do you see out there that keeps you staring so?

  Fana wished she could show him, that she could bring Moses to her water, too, but she didn’t dare. Breathing underwater was something other people couldn’t do, and Fana didn’t like to be different from other people. It was all right if she stayed by herself in the not-real place, but she wouldn’t bring anyone else with her. That might let the Bee Lady back inside, she thought. She couldn’t be sure, but there was always a chance, and that was enough for her. She had outgrown the days when she used to do her simple mind tricks with Moses. If only she had known then where those tricks would lead!

  Uncle Cal brought us a new football from town. Or a soccer ball, like the Americans call it. I’ve been kicking it round with Jared, but it’s not the same as with you, little witch. It’s been a long time since we played. I hardly remember when. Do you?

  At that, Fana very nearly answered him by sending a thought, but she stopped herself. Yes, she remembered the last time well: The very first day he arrived, she had chased him on the grass. It had been a wonderful time—to feel the world enveloping her, to see the joy on her parents’ faces, to enjoy Moses’s warmth—but the bad memories had hit her hard, taking away all the fun. How could she play while a dead baby was floating in her mind?

  It’s no crime, you know. To laugh, I mean. I know you remember how. And even if you don’t, I can teach you. I promise you, I can. You only have to give me a chance, Fana.

  It was hard to hear Moses sounding so sad. Fana didn’t like sadness.

  Here. Can you feel this? I’m taking your hand. I want you to stand up and come downstairs with me, Fana. Come play with our new ball.

  Fana didn’t feel his touch, not at first. And when she did vaguely sense the presence of his palm around hers, she wanted to pull her hand away. She wanted to tell him that she was sorry, but she couldn’t play with him today. Maybe another time, another day. Or maybe never again.

  But instead, Fana didn’t say a word. Before long, as if her body were moving on its own the way it had That Day—the day of the storm, the day of the bees—Fana sensed that her legs were straightening, and she was suddenly standing tall.

  • • •

  The first two cars pulled up just as they finished their meal, when the table was breaking up. The group instantly fell silent, an unspoken discomfort falling upon them as they gazed through the windows at the unfamiliar cars treading on the gravel outside the house. The only visitor they ever entertained was Moses, who studied here several months a year, but Moses was family.

  These other newcomers were not. And even though Teferi and Teka had flown out to interview each one of them personally before they were officially invited, probing them telepathically to determine if they could be trusted to maintain secrecy, it would always be difficult to trust newcomers, after the horrors. But it was time to try, at least.

  “Ah!” Teferi said, sounding pleased as he gazed through the window. “It’s Justin.”

  Jessica’s stomach soured. She glanced at Alexis, who shrugged. It figured that Justin O’Neal would be among the first to arrive! O’Neal was their legal counsel, and he had been faithful and silent so far, but his name alone brought back awful memories. David had put it bluntly from the beginning, and he’d been right: Because O’Neal knew so much, they’d had the choice between embracing him or killing him. Nothing in between.

  Teferi’s arguments for O’Neal’s life had been passionate. Teferi felt a strong emotional bond to his descendant, and he had visited O’Neal several times to test his sincerity. O’Neal was a changed man, Teferi insisted. He was now a top executive at the Clarion Health conglomerate, which would make him useful for their mission. Alexis and Lucas had refused to vote, saying their feelings were too mixed. David, in the end, had taken Teferi’s side during the passionate debates. Grudgingly, respecting Teferi’s wishes, they had agreed to allow Justin O’Neal close to them. Jessica met the eyes of the blond man in a tailored suit approaching the house with a bouquet of flowers, but she could not smile at him. She might forgive, but she could never forget. Respectfully, O’Neal nodded and then glanced away from her.

  “I’d better not regret your presence here,” Jessica overheard David tell O’Neal as he passed him at a casual pace. David’s tone, however, was far from casual.

  “Oh, God, no,” the man said, his face coloring deeply. “I’m ready to help, sir. I owe that.”

  Jessica didn’t recognize the dark-skinned black man and balding white man who climbed up to the porch behind Justin O’Neal, but she heard Lucas announce their names: “That’s Ian Horscroft, and that must be Floyd Mbuli with him. I met him, but I don’t remember. The doctors from South Africa.”

  Here we go, Jessica thought nervously. Now it begins.

  Over the next hour, all of the guests arrived. Most of them had come a long way to be here, their expenses paid. David was hiding his aversion to crowds of mortals well, approaching each new arrival with a smile and a handshake. There was a giddiness in the living room as the group gathered and introduced themselves over coffee, but also a subdued, respectful hesitation. With the exception of Justin O’Neal, these visitors had little idea yet of why they were here, and Jessica could see apprehension and wonder in their faces. All they knew was that they would hear about a miraculous medical advance, and that the meeting was designed to discuss ways to share it with the untold numbers of people who needed it. The visitors stared curiously at the covered easels of charts and data that had been readied for the meeting.

  Jessica studied their name tags: The white-haired man wearing a colorful Native American–style shirt was Three Ravens Perez. The gorgeous, dark-skinned black woman was Thandi Shabalala, a recent nursing graduate who was nearly identical to her late sister, except not quite as tall. The slim, middle-aged black man with a receding hairline was Garrick Wright, head of the journalism department at Florida A & M University. And a curly-haired white woman was Lucille Keating, she’d been told, one of Jared’s former oncologists, whose kindness had helped Lucas and Jared through a difficult time many years before.

  Their number included healers, a lawyer, a journalist. All necessary, all carefully considered. Only seven in all, but a beginning. One day, there would be more.

  Jessica clasped Alex’s hand on one side, and Lucas’s on the other, and they walked to the head of the room. As they did, she felt the visitors’ eyes staring intently, burning. Were they ready to hear? Maybe Fana knew the future, somewhere in her world of half-dreams, but Jessica did not. God, she hoped so.

  “Showtime?” Alexis said to Jessica, prompting. David’s blood had healed the burns to Alex’s face with no traces, but the vivid shock of gray hair that had sprung up at Alexis’s temples since the storm reminded Jessica of the price her sister had paid. Jessica had come closer to losing Alex than she liked to remember, and all because of this blood.

  Maybe David had been right this morning, Jessica thought with a jolt of panic. There was so much at stake! Maybe they could rethink it, or wait a few more years . . .

  A sound caught Jessica’s ear that startled her so much her head turned quickly toward the window, even though she was nearly certain she’d only imagined it. She couldn’t forget the first day she’d heard that same sound, when she’d been a grieving mother trying her best to welcome a new life into the world. And in the wake of her anguish—both after Kira’s death and her new baby’s painful passage to life—she’d heard that fragile, miraculous sound: her baby’s laughter.

  Jessica was hearing that sound again, and the effect was hardly different after seven years. Her heart ballooned.

  Outside, just beyond the neatly tied curtains, Jessica saw Moses running in circles around Fana while he skillfully balanced a soccer ball by bouncing it on his head. And Fana was watching him with fascination, twirling around to
follow his movements—laughing. Her teeth gleamed white in the morning sun.

  Laughing.

  Even the last times Fana had gone outside, they’d practically had to carry her, but it looked as if she had gone on her own this time! Slowly, slowly, her baby was coming back to her. She really was. Jessica sensed someone’s eyes on her, and she looked up to see David, who was gazing at her from across the room with a smile so unabashedly relieved that it looked nearly pained. He had seen Fana, too. Their eyes locked, and he nodded at her purposefully.

  It was time.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming today,” Jessica began, hearing herself sound like a self-assured woman no longer cowed by her losses or her gifts. “We want to tell you about some very special blood. We call it the Living Blood . . .”

  Jessica knew that if she’d been looking for a sign, she’d gotten it when she’d glanced outside of the window at Fana.

  God, she thought, rarely speaks more plainly.

  Also by Tananarive Due

  The Black Rose

  My Soul to Keep

  The Between

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  A Washington Square Press Publication of

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  Copyright © 2001 by Tananarive Due

  Originally published in hardcover in 2001 by Pocket Books

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Due, Tananarive, 1966–

  The living blood / Tananarive Due.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-671-04084-0

  ISBN 978-1-4391-2192-4 (eBook)

  1. Mothers and daughters—Fiction. 2. Immortalism—Fiction.

  3. Miami (Fla.)—Fiction. 4. Ethiopia—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3554.U3413 L5 2001

  813’.54—dc21

  00-065820

  First Washington Square Press trade paperback printing January 2002

  WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Book design by Joseph Rutt

  Cover design by Rod Hernandez; cover illustration by Tom Hallman