Sadia was sleeping on Ben’s shoulder, and Tenzin kept a close eye on the crowds, which were substantial even at midnight.
They walked out into a cool, misty night and saw the lights of the Bole District rising in the darkness. It was the start of the rainy season, and Ben walked carefully as they descended the long damp walkway, led by nimble porters carrying their luggage. Ben spotted two black Toyota Land Cruisers sitting on the curb.
“They’re older,” Doug said, “but well-maintained. I had to call around to find any without too many electronics that would still be comfortable.”
“These are great.” Giovanni turned and reached for Sadia, who woke briefly as they buckled her into her booster seat. “Did you already call the house?”
“The compound is ready,” Doug said. “This time of night? It’ll only take about fifteen minutes to get there.”
Ben saw Tenzin staring at the vehicles. Spacious cargo planes were one thing, but cars…
He put a hand at the small of her back. “We don’t know where we’re going.” He looked at the crowd of people in front of the airport, all clearly waiting for arrivals but staring at the foreigners who had arrived—a varied crew of Americans, an Italian, and one lone Asian woman. Probably not the strangest sight residents had seen but still something they’d remember.
“If we walk into the darkness,” Ben said, “they will definitely be watching us. And we will not be able to fly off without anyone seeing. We are not going to blend in here, Tiny.”
She glared at the vehicles. “What if I sit on top?”
“Also something that would stand out,” Ben said. “Just remember, it’s only for fifteen minutes.”
After the luggage was loaded on top of the Land Cruisers, Doug got in the driver’s seat of the lead vehicle and Zain took the rear truck. Sadia, Giovanni, Beatrice, and Dema squeezed in with Doug, which left Tenzin, Chloe, and Ben with Zain.
Ben hopped in the passenger seat in front. “You have any idea where we’re going?”
“I have a rough map,” Zain said. “But mostly I’m following Doug.”
The question finally burst out of Tenzin. “Who is Doug?”
Ben smiled. It must have been eating at her the entire flight. “Doug is our local fixer, Tenzin. He’s worked and lived here for about thirty years, and his wife is Ethiopian.”
“So why isn’t his wife guiding us?” Tenzin asked.
“Probably because she’s a civil engineer and not a spy,” Zain said, craning his neck to look for Doug, who’d entered a traffic circle. “Don’t worry. Doug knows his way around.”
Chloe appeared to be wide awake even though she’d hardly slept on the plane, according to Dema. “I’m just so excited to be here. It’s my first time in Africa.”
Zain glanced in the rearview mirror. “Oh yeah? How is that possible? You’ve been to Europe a lot, right? It’s not that much farther.”
“Yeah.” She looked slightly uncomfortable. “I heard from a couple of people that Africans aren’t exactly friendly with Black Americans. I think that made me worry a little bit.”
Zain shook his head. “I think that’s a misconception. Or maybe it depends on the country, I don’t know. I doubt you’ll run into that in Addis. Honestly?” He looked at her again as he exited the circle and continued following Doug off a main road and onto narrower, cobbled surface streets. “You’re probably more likely to get people who assume you’re Ethiopian and raised in the US. Prepare to learn some basic Amharic, my friend, because everyone is going to want to talk to you.”
“What about you?” Chloe asked.
Tenzin said, “Zain looks West African.”
“Bingo.” He nodded as he maneuvered through mind-bending traffic that did not seem to respect any signal or rule. “My mom took one of those DNA things under an assumed name—my dad is paranoid about privacy—and we come mainly from Senegal and Ghana.”
“Interesting.” Ben looked at Chloe, then Zain. “I’m a mix of everything, I think. Puerto Rican on one side—”
“Which is literally like three or four in one,” Chloe said.
“Yeah. And Lebanese on the other side.” Ben shrugged. “So I’m a man of the world. I envy you two though. I think you’re gonna fit in a lot better with the locals than we are.”
Zain laughed. “I can’t argue with you there, my friend.”
Tenzin said, “I don’t know what my DNA would show.”
“Old as dirt?” Zain said.
Tenzin smiled a little. “From a scientific perspective, I am actually far older than dirt.”
Chloe kicked the back of Zain’s seat. “I was going to guess Mongolian.”
Ben turned and looked at her. “I don’t know what the scientists would do with your DNA, Tiny. But we’re in the birthplace of humanity here. You’re probably a lot closer to home than any of the rest of us.”
Tenzin looked out the window and watched the crowds that still flooded the streets downtown. “You’re not wrong. Look past skin color, and you see every kind of face here. African, European, Middle Eastern, Asian, even Indigenous American. This place? It’s very, very old.”
And Saba had come before it all. Ben thought about the task they had set out for themselves. Were they being utter fools? Could an object as powerful as the bone scroll really exist in a place controlled by the most powerful immortal on the planet without her knowledge?
And if it existed, was there any way they’d manage to wrest it from her control?
13
From the night sky, the city looked like a tangled web of highways, cobblestone roads, and narrow alleys flung across a series of hills. Dominated by vast government compounds and towering buildings downtown, the city spread out along the edges, where new houses and roads were lit by electric lights and rumbling trucks sped from the capital to the arteries going to every region of the country.
The capital city had been designed in the 1800s by the Emperor Menelik and was situated in the very center of the country, intended to be a capital city for all people of the empire. As the national capital of the only country on the African continent free from European colonialism, it was host to the headquarters of the African Union, a massive United Nations compound, and countless missions, international organizations, and research institutes.
Ben hovered over the maze, transfixed by the traffic churning in the streets. At night, cool traffic lamps illuminated the major streets while lights flashed on skyscrapers, music pumped from dance clubs and restaurants, and shops stayed open to catch those customers heading home from work.
Tenzin found him among the drifting clouds; there was a storm creeping in from the east.
“It reminds me of New York,” he said.
“Not at all. New York is on a grid. Addis has no grid.”
“Not that.” Ben shook his head. If he managed to find his way back to the large compound Giovanni and Beatrice were renting, it would be a miracle. “No, just the busyness. It’s a twenty-four-hour city like New York.”
“Perhaps that’s true. I enjoy that the occasional sheep or donkey still wanders into town though. You don’t often see that in New York.”
Ben smiled. “No. And the city’s poorer for it, don’t you think?”
“Agreed.” She hovered in front of him and waited for him to enclose her in his arms. Ben loved floating with Tenzin like this, wrapped in her amnis and her arms, surrounded by their element and drifting with no particular purpose.
“Why are you brooding, my Benjamin?”
“I’m not brooding.” He tucked a flyaway strand of her hair behind her ear. “I’m thinking.”
“You often think with a frown on your face. I consider that brooding.”
“I just…” Ben turned and pointed his face to the north. “Look at that.”
“Look at what?”
The northern stretch of mountains above Addis Ababa got higher and more inaccessible. In the distance, Ben saw no lights. No signs of urban modernity. What lay to the nor
th were the bones of an ancient and secretive kingdom with stories, myths, and lore stretching back for thousands of years.
“Giovanni, Beatrice, and I are meeting with Saba’s representative tomorrow night,” he said. “Gio has to give her a timeline, and he’s already told me he’s going to tell her three weeks. He’s going to be doing some research; it’s a family vacation. All that stuff. He’s making excuses for us, but we have limited time. Three weeks and what?” He gestured to the north. “Two thousand mountains?”
“I think we can do it. And we’re not going to look at two thousand mountaintops. Not all of them fit the parameters of Aksumite treasuries.”
“Do you know how many old monasteries are in this country, Tenzin?”
“I believe there are currently close to eight hundred.”
“Eight hundred.” Ben shook his head. “Think about that number.”
“I’m not saying we won’t have to use our time wisely,” Tenzin said. “And we may need to stay slightly longer than three weeks.” She laid her head on his shoulder. “I have places we can hide.”
“Tenzin, don’t ask me to make a liar out of my uncle.”
She sighed. “Fine. I’m sure there’s a way we can narrow things down. After all, your aunt and uncle are research professionals.”
“I mean, we’ve already marked the obvious places,” Ben said. “We’ll search those first.”
“But if they’re obvious to us, they’re likely obvious to others,” Tenzin said. “So there is that.”
“You have to admit, we’ll have an easier time accessing the majority of them.”
Tenzin squeezed him around the waist. “I do love a mountainous and inaccessible country.”
“I’m amazed you don’t have a house here.”
“There are a few caves I’m particularly fond of in the Simian Mountains, but I don’t see Saba being happy with me putting down roots here.” She looked up. “Her alliance with my father has always been wary at best.”
“Still…” Ben began to float toward the ground in the general direction—he was guessing—of their compound. “You and your father haven’t been joined at the hip. Historically speaking.”
“Saba does not understand family estrangement.” She gently steered him away from the football stadium. “None of Saba’s children were ever estranged from her. She didn’t permit it.”
Ben frowned. “You can’t… I mean, sometimes it just happens, right? Children want to go their own way, there are disagreements—didn’t Lucien say that Desta and Saba disagreed when his sister converted to Christianity?”
“Oh yes, they were at odds,” Tenzin said. “But they weren’t estranged. If Saba had asked Desta to join her for any reason, she would have done it.”
“Really?” Ben shook his head. “That’s… interesting.”
“That’s who she is.” Tenzin paused, looked up, and tapped his chin. “Don’t ever forget she’s like a magnet for our kind. We all feel a pull toward her. That’s part of why her cure works so well for any poisoned vampire.”
“Saba’s Cure” was still the only antidote known to cure Elixir poisoning, a debilitating vampire virus that broke the amnis, rendering a vampire nothing more than a shell of their former self. But by taking the cure, you were aligning yourself with Saba forever. All former relationships, all elemental ability, would be lost to the earth and to her clan.
“It’s no wonder she’s getting arrogant,” Tenzin said. “Her army must be in the hundreds now.”
For a vampire army, that was a lot.
A lot.
Ben looked down. “Where are we going?”
“There’s a park I want to show you,” she said. “It’s brand-new and there are fountains.”
“Fine.” He rolled his eyes. “But then we’re going back to the house, right?”
“If you want to.” The last two hundred feet, they dropped rapidly, landing on soft grass that sloped down a gentle hill that overlooked a river. Tenzin had kept them in the shadows, and they both stayed frozen as they checked their surroundings.
Nothing stirred, so they stepped forward and into the moonlight.
Tenzin nearly skipped down the hill. “We have to bring Sadia here!”
Ben swept his eyes over the buildings that looked to house different exhibits and the stages that appeared prepared for music or dancing. “It might be more fun for her during the day.”
Tenzin waved a careless hand. “Oh, we can do both. Rather, we can take the night and Dema and Zain can take the day. It’s good for her to be well-rounded.”
Sadia sat on his lap back at the compound and put both hands on his cheeks. Whatever important news she was sharing, she needed Ben’s full attention.
“Ethiopians eat with their hands,” she said. “For everything. Not just hamburgers or sandwiches.”
Ben smiled. “Do you like it?”
“Do I like it?” She rolled her eyes in rapture. “It’s just the best! And they eat bread with everything because that’s like their spoon. They pick up the food with the bread and it’s called injera and at first I wasn’t sure I was going to like it because it’s kind of sour, but then Mika said that she could make a less sour one for me if I wanted and she did and I liked that very much.”
“Less sour injera?”
“It’s still sour.” She raised a small finger. “But not as sour.”
“I see.” He hugged her and tickled her sides until she squirmed away. “What did you and Dema do today?”
She pulled him across the compound toward the massive mango tree that dominated the center. There were three houses within the walls, the main house, which rose four stories and was fronted with wide balconies. Giovanni, Beatrice, Sadia, and Dema shared that house, along with Doug.
In addition to the mansion, there were servants’ quarters in back that housed a security guard and a cook, and two guesthouses, one of which was a tukul, a traditional round house with thatched roofing. Of course, this tukul was more luxurious than those in the country and was fitted with all the modern luxuries. Chloe had one of the bedrooms there, and Zain had the other.
Ben and Tenzin had a long, rectangular house at the back of the compound with a wide front porch and two light-safe rooms. Ben had a feeling it was the original house in the compound because the gardens around it were lush and the red stones that fronted it had a beautiful patina of age.
All around the edges of the compound were thick walls with security wire on top, and within the walls was a dense hedge of ficus plants that soared over the wall and created the feeling of an oasis. Hibiscus flowers, plumeria, and lilies burst with color during the day and at night. Creeping plants and fragrant herbs lined the cobblestone paths that linked the houses to the large central courtyard dominated by the old mango dripping with fruit.
“Where are you taking me?” Ben smiled as his little sister pulled him along.
“To meet Mika.”
“Didn’t I meet Mika last night?”
“No, that was her mom, Mazaa, and she’s gone now, but she still runs the house, but she’s not here all the time.”
Since the house was owned by an old friend of Giovanni’s who was most definitely a vampire, Ben guessed that both Mazaa and her daughter were accomplished day-people.
That was confirmed when Ben saw Zain lounging under the mango at a table with a beautiful woman with her hair in braids who was pouring wine into two glasses. From Zain’s posture, Ben could tell the man was comfortable, which meant he was with a colleague.
“Mika!” Sadia ran to the young woman.
The woman’s face brightened with a smile. “Miss Mango!”
Sadia had been eating mangos all day, as evidenced by the sticky-sweet smears on her shirt and her cheeks. She giggled at the nickname. “This is my brother I was telling you about. He is a vampire and he can fly but his fangs are just normal and not curvy like Tenzin’s teeth.”
“I see.” Mika’s expression was one of charmed delight. She clearly enjoy
ed having a child running around the place. The woman stood and looked at Ben. “Just normal fangs then?”
“I’m so sorry to disappoint.” He offered his hand to shake; a necessary gesture since older vampires generally avoided direct contact. “Ben Vecchio. It’s very nice to meet you.”
She took his hand with a smile. “Welcome to Addis. I hope you rested well.”
“We were very comfortable, thank you.”
She gestured to an empty chair at the table. “Would you like to join us for a glass of wine? I also have blood-wine if you’d like. It’s Portuguese.”
“That sounds great.” Ben sat and Sadia dragged a small wooden stool over to sit next to them.
Blood-wine production, while still centered in Spain and France, was branching out, with the drink becoming ever more popular as the secret of its production had leaked to the broader vampire world.
It wasn’t as nutritious or as filling as fresh blood, but if you hadn’t fed that night and you were young, like Ben, it was enough to hold you over until you could hunt. “Zain, I was going to ask you and Doug about donor bars in the city.” He needed to feed that night, and Tenzin would need some blood soon.
Zain nodded at their hostess. “Mika was just telling me there are several in Bole. That’s the neighborhood where the airport is.”
“There’s one in Old Airport too,” Mika said. “But it’s more like a private club, and I don’t know if you want to bother.”
Ben cocked his head. “Are all the fancy neighborhoods in Addis around airports?”
She smiled brilliantly. “We do seem to like them, don’t we? Old Airport is a beautiful neighborhood. Definitely one of the more walkable ones in the city. Lots of shops and restaurants that will stay open after dark. So if you want to explore, it’s a popular place.”
“Do we need to worry about anyone getting too curious? My partner is Asian, so we don’t exactly blend in.”
Mika said, “If you stick to the international neighborhoods—Bole, Old Airport, Sarbet, and a few others—you’ll be fine. People are used to Asian businesspeople here. There are so many. And more and more tourists all the time. In most places, Addis is very safe. Especially for foreigners.”
The Bone Scroll: An Elemental Legacy Novel Page 10