Appearances mattered to him. Jessica looked around, trying to find onlookers. The courtyard was empty. She couldn’t see any lights on in the palace, but a window on the third floor was conspicuously open, a white curtain floating on the breeze.
“My, my, my,” Jessica said. “I never would’ve guessed you’re so shy. Am I embarrassing you?”
“You would embarrass yourself,” he said. “Fasilidas followed you. Do not make me harm him. Fana would like him to stay with her.”
“Oh, I see your little game now. We all get a comfortable room, nice meals, every courtesy. That’s how you’ll justify violating her.”
She had chosen the right word. Now that she was closer to Michel’s eyes, she saw them wither. He pursed his pink lips tightly.
“Yes, Michel,” Jessica said. “Call it what it is. That’s what I always tell Fana.”
Jessica heard wind gather in the treetops, rolling around them. An unnatural wind.
“She’s free to go. I have not touched her,” Michel said. “You are also free to go.”
“If I’m free, why are you here?” she said.
“I’m here to ask you to stay.”
“What a surprise.”
Michel’s poncho flapped as he knelt to the ground in a sudden motion. She instinctively moved away from him, expecting him to become the tiger, but he was only bent on one knee. He bowed his head to her.
“I am the one who came to beg you,” he said, his words falling in a breathless flurry, as if in prayer. “On Thursday, I hope you will become a kind of mother to me, but I understand if it asks too much. My mistakes will take time to mend. But Fana wants you here …”
“Don’t tell me what Fana wants.”
Michel didn’t raise his head. “Signora, she chose each one of you, each voice. She loves all of the others, but she needs you here too. She needs your voice close to her … even if you tell her she should try to destroy me.”
Adrenaline swept through Jessica’s pores as Michel looked up at her suddenly, his eyes revealing how much he knew. “Si, you want me dead. Of course you do! It’s all you’re praying for. You think I’m the devil. Any mother would! Tell Fana all of your thoughts. Don’t hide them. She won’t always do as you ask, but your voice will stay with her. She must have all of her voices. If she doesn’t, I can’t know …”
“You?” Jessica said. She was angry at herself for feeling moved by Michel’s plea, straining to make out his whispered words. Of course it was about him!
“I must be sure she is choosing me,” he said. “That I haven’t moved her. Her choice is very important to me. It’s all I’ve prayed for. We both want the same thing for her, signora.”
If she’d had the strength, Jessica would have laughed until she cried.
He did think he loved her. God help them all.
Michel raised himself to his feet. A light had gone on behind the third-floor curtain, someone making his presence known. Michel glanced up at the palace. Flurried footsteps from the darkness sounded like armed guards scurrying into position on the palace’s rooftop.
“Now my father is worried,” he said. “He’s never seen me kneel to anyone, so imagine the sight. He forgets I don’t need a guardian.”
“Everyone needs a guardian,” Jessica said. “Especially you.”
The double doors to the palace opened. Dawit, Berhanu, and Fasilidas appeared with flashlights. “Jessica?” Dawit called, anxious. His gun might be in his hand. “Are you all right?”
“We’re fine!” Jessica called back. “Michel and I are having a chat.”
Their voices ricocheted through the courtyard.
Dawit and the others stopped short at the top of the stairs, watching. Fasilidas and Berhanu were close enough to probe her. Why had they stopped?
“Let’s walk to them,” Michel said, extending a genteel elbow to her. “Please stay.”
Jessica shook her head, her jaw trembling with shame at how much she wanted to give up her escape plan and go to sleep. How much she missed her Dreamsticks.
“I may be the only person who ever says no to you, Michel,” Jessica said.
FORGIVE THIS INTRUSION, BUT I WANT YOU TO UNDERSTAND …
“Get out of my head.” She didn’t shout or scream, or Dawit would have tried to shoot Michel for her right to go. A single gunshot might be the end of the world.
Jessica tightened her fist around the key hard enough to cut her palm.
Michel leaned to Jessica’s ear, his hand on her shoulder. He whispered, his breath sweet with cloves. “What do I know of love, signora? I’m not blaming love. Please forgive me in advance. Teka couldn’t put it into words for you, but I can show you in an instant. I want you to know what Fana is suffering. Both of us. I want you to know why she’s stayed …”
Before Jessica could say no, a flash of white heat swallowed the night.
Michel was standing over Jessica in the shadows of the moonlit carport, an unnatural sight. SHE IS TERRORIZED, Berhanu reported, confirming what Dawit saw.
Michel had a hundred men within thirty meters; twenty on the rooftop alone. A hundred more beyond the gate, and those were only the ones Fasilidas and Berhanu had told Dawit they knew about. But Michel was an army unto himself. The rest were only for show.
If she wants to go, let her find her own way. Those had been Fana’s instructions to Fasilidas when he reported that Jessica was slipping out of the room. Fasilidas had only followed her instead of alerting Dawit and Berhanu in time. Fasilidas’s first loyalty was to Fana.
Where was Fana now? Dawit was ready to end the mission, his gun in his hand. But weapons were impractical in Michel’s house, like paper toys.
Dawit called out to her. “Jessica? Are you all right?”
“We’re fine!” Jessica said. “Michel and I are having a chat.”
The forced casualness in her voice bloated Dawit with enraged adrenaline.
Then Dawit nearly doubled over from a sudden impact across his midsection, a mental barrier at the top of the stairs. Fasilidas and Berhanu grunted, also barred. Across the courtyard, Dawit watched Michel lean closer to Jessica, practically nestling her ear. In his old skin, Dawit would have shot Michel six times over already. Berhanu was waiting to allow Dawit to defend his wife. They were under attack.
Dawit focused his mind to a pinpoint.
Where is Fana? Dawit asked Fasilidas.
SHE WILL BE HERE, BUT FANA DOES NOT MOVE QUICKLY.
Dawit’s finger ached from being so primed to shoot Michel. He called to Michel privately, not for his hidden troops or acolytes to hear.
Is this where our truce dies, Michel?
Michel backed away from Jessica, as if startled by Dawit’s presence. The pressure from the barrier was suddenly gone, and Dawit ran down the steps unobstructed. Berhanu and Fasilidas thundered behind him.
Jessica’s face was contorted. Pain?
SHE IS NOT PHYSICALLY HURT, Fasilidas said. I DON’T KNOW THE REST.
“I meant no harm, signore,” Michel said as Dawit ran past him. Even with a mask, passing so close to Michel was like having another walk through him, a warm jitter. Michel lowered his eyes, posing contritely. “I wanted her to know how much Fana needs her.”
Dawit went to Jessica, searching for damage to his wife. Jessica’s eyes were dazed, unfocused. Her thoughts were too noisy to read in her excitement. How would he know if she had been altered by Michel? Even Fana might not know.
Berhanu ventured a thought to Dawit: TO THIS COWARD, HER MIND IS A CHILD’S.
Jessica’s muddied eyes brought more than rage to Dawit. For the first time since Miami, he imagined his life’s abyss if he lost her. When he had given Jessica the Blood, he had foolishly expected to have her with him always. He should never have left her alone.
“Jess, I’m coming with you,” Dawit said. “Give me that key. We’re leaving now.”
If Michel meant to stop him, let him try.
“No!” Jessica held the key to her chest, guard
ing it. Wild-eyed.
Dawit moved closer to shield her state from Michel and the onlookers. He stroked her shoulder with his free hand. What did he do to you? Dawit asked Jessica silently.
“He let me see,” Jessica said. “He showed me why.”
Gibberish! Dawit’s trigger finger throbbed, the aftermath be damned.
“No, David, I’m all right,” Jessica said, sounding more like herself. “I needed to see.”
The worst conclusion was obvious: Michel had altered Jessica’s thoughts and will. And dear Fana might only be like Icarus, flying too close to the sun.
But the mission need not fail here.
Michel was new to civility, and a slow learner. Higher telepaths could trample less-practiced thoughts easily, and Jessica was the weakest among them, except for the singer. Jessica’s state had been fragile long before she encountered Michel. Fana would come.
Dawit hoped his reasoning was his own.
“Never have direct communication with Fana’s mother,” Dawit told Michel, a public rebuke for the witnesses. “Address our party through Teka, or under mutually agreed-upon terms. Never restrain me or anyone in Fana’s party again. Am I clear?”
“Whatever you wish, signore,” Michel said quietly, sounding as eager to please him as the boy whose face he wore, ruddy with embarrassment. “Please tell Fana I meant no harm.”
His anxiousness seemed too staged to be genuine. Or was it too genuine to be staged?
There was commotion on the steps. A lamp came on, illuminating a growing crowd keeping a distance near the building’s doors, everyone in bedclothes. Michel’s father, Stefan, was the most anxious, standing at the top of the stairs with a hunting rifle.
Dawit knew that Fana had appeared from the change in Michel’s face, as if he were shrinking. Being Michel, perhaps he was. As Fana walked down the stairs toward the courtyard, Michel’s eyes raced right and left, looking for somewhere to hide.
I’M GRATEFUL FOR YOUR RESTRAINT, SIGNORE, Michel’s voice whispered. YOUR LOVE FOR YOUR WIFE IS A MODEL FOR ME.
And then Michel was gone. Michel’s dog barked once, circling the spot where Michel had stood. An impulse made Dawit look toward the doors across the courtyard, and he found Michel standing at his father’s side. Twenty meters in a sheer instant. Only a visage?
The next time Dawit glanced toward the steps, Michel and his father weren’t in sight.
Rami and the singer emerged from the palace doors, and Dawit gestured for them to come, so that their entire party would be outside. Dawit tried not to let his rage from Jessica’s stupefied eyes cloud him while he watched Fana hug Jessica, who was sobbing as if Fana were her mother.
“I didn’t know, baby,” Jessica kept saying, almost an incantation.
What has he done to her? Dawit asked Fana.
HE LET HER TASTE WHAT CALLS US, Fana answered, but her thought sounded noisy, distracted. She’d described a clear abuse of her mother without a ring of judgment! How far would Fana have to drift to meet Michel?
It’s inexcusable, Fana.
“It was … clumsy,” Fana said aloud. Softly. “He didn’t mean to hurt her.”
“Do his intentions matter?” Dawit asked Fana. “He swayed her. It is the same result.”
HIS INTENTIONS ARE EVERYTHING.
Was she speaking of Michel, or herself? She had mesmerized the singer the same way. The singer now looked petrified as she paced the outer ring of their circle, awaiting her future.
“David, I’m fine,” Jessica said. Dawit winced, noticing that she was calling him by his Miami name. “Let’s go back in with Fana. She needs us to help her get ready.”
Dawit cursed himself for not realizing that Jessica was too fragile for the journey to Michel’s. Fresh from her dream chamber, she should never have been so close to him. Now the cost of his miscalculation was clear.
Dawit gazed toward Teka: Well?
Teka, Fana’s deepest believer, had no answer for Dawit now. Teka had confided that he barely recognized Fana’s thoughtstreams since they had arrived at Michel’s, and Teka knew her mind better than anyone except Khaldun. Fana was racing so quickly that Teka couldn’t follow her. Berhanu, of course, thought they should have come to Michel only in war.
Dawit sent Fana a thought: Will you stay even if your mother is a casualty tonight?
Fana’s silence appalled him. Was she thinking about it, or too shy to say the answer? Dawit’s insides collapsed with his keenest grief since Kira had died at his hands. Was another child being destroyed before him?
TRUST ME, DAD. The voice was still too far for his comfort, but he could hear Fana.
Dawit kissed Fana’s forehead. He wished he could bundle her into the car with them. But, like Teka, Dawit had followed Fana as far as he could.
“Safe journey, Duchess.”
Teka sent him a mental nudge: JESSICA CAN FORGET HER VISIT FROM MICHEL. FANA COULD DO IT EASILY—MORE EASILY NOW THAN YESTERDAY. SHE IS GROWING, DAWIT.
Perfect simplicity!
But, however altered she was, Jessica held dominion over her mind. Dawit spoke to her in a hush. “Jessica, we could restore your earlier mindset, before Michel’s interference,” he said. “Your opinions would be as they were. You would only forget you saw Michel out here—”
Jessica shook her head. “Fana, don’t you dare.” At last, she sounded like Jessica again.
“You wanted to leave,” Dawit said. “You argued passionately.”
“Dawit, no! I won’t go, and I want you to stay too. She needs us here—all of us. I can’t go back to not knowing. You can’t learn backwards.”
“You see what he’s done to you,” Dawit said. “Let Fana persuade you instead.”
“She already did—she woke me up in Lalibela and asked me to come with her,” Jessica said, grabbing Fana’s hand. She entwined their fingers and rested their joined hands across her breast. “You’ve got a tough trip ahead of you, don’t you, baby?”
Fana nodded beneath her mother’s soothing voice, her head bent as if she’d been released. Jessica stroked the length of Fana’s hair down her back, and Fana closed her eyes beneath Jessica’s caress. A single tear streamed from Fana’s closed eye.
Michel and Fana were allied already. They had both won Jessica.
Was this his wife, or Michel underneath? Dawit wondered. The same question was in all their minds, except Fana’s. Her mind was nowhere near them.
The singer was standing near the car, ready to climb in. Her anxious eyes wanted to go.
“We can’t leave Fana alone when she’s with Michel,” Jessica said, her fingers moving lovingly across Fana’s locked hair. “This is why we’re here. Damn him for the way he showed me, but now I know, and I can’t unlearn. I’m worried about my head too, but I have a test: I’m still me as long as I have this in my hand.”
Triumphantly, she held up the car key she’d never stopped clutching.
The key clinked gently against its gold key chain: the crest of Sanctus Cruor.
BLOOD PROPHECY
Even bees, the little almsmen of spring bowers,
know there is richest juice in poison-flowers.
—John Keats
Me and my crew’s gonna roll.
We’re on a Party Patrol.
We’re losing control
Out on this Party Patrol.
—Phoenix,
“Party Patrol”
Thirty-one
Montana
Andres Enriquez wasn’t what Johnny had expected.
The rancher was about thirty, clean-shaven, with round tortoiseshell eyeglasses and a button-down shirt in striped shades of blue, probably Italian. Five eight, not as tall as Johnny. His build was mild, even small. He had looked bigger in his photograph. Less like a yuppie. While Enriquez saddled his horse, Johnny stared at the blue-felt image of a dragon stitched across the back of his shirt.
When Enriquez had appeared in the stable with sleep-deprived eyes and a USC coffee tumbler, Johnny had a
ssumed he was a ranch guest who had come to live out frontier fantasies and brag to his friends that he’d roped a calf or driven cattle. No rugged bones or hard, weathered lines on his face. No retribution in his eyes. He looked too small in every way.
Enriquez assessed him from the corner of his eye, too, disappointed.
With a short sigh, Enriquez plucked a brown suede cowboy hat from a row of waiting hats mounted on pegs near the stable entrance. He took a moment to be satisfied with the hat’s fit in the small square mirror on the wall. Fashion.
“You ride,” Enriquez said, a question dressed as statement. A prerequisite.
Johnny had hoped he wouldn’t be asked to ride a horse. Tallahassee wasn’t a big city, but he was a city boy. He hadn’t ridden a horse since junior high school, when the horse behind him had bitten his leg on a hiking trail. Johnny didn’t like riding horses. Hated it, in fact.
“Sure,” Johnny said. “Let’s ride.”
After one false start, Johnny mounted his huge sand-colored horse, clinging to the saddle for balance. His horse followed Enriquez’s down the wooded trail, nearly matching its pace. The horses were well trained, clopping in no particular hurry. The wide trail took them away from the guest ranch’s stables, toward the thickets of pine trees. The air smelled of pine, dead leaves, and, vaguely, manure.
Two horsemen trailed after them, bulky men Johnny had noticed following him to the stable. Bodyguards. Three days ago, the scenario would have made Johnny nervous.
“This was my first horse,” Enriquez said. “My father and I trained him together, in the vaquero way, from when I was ten years old. My father was harsh. I would train more softly now. But the barest touch on the reins, this guy knows where to go. We share a mind.”
Except for his Spanish words pronounced with flourish, Enriquez spoke flat English, with a careful lack of an accent, either Mexican or western.
“Must be an old horse,” Johnny said, reaching for a response.
“Horses live forty years—they’re not dogs,” Enriquez said. “But sure, I want him to live a long life. He’s the only one left now. Papi is gone. Charro, gone. Arturo. It’s sobering to wake up one day and your only family is a horse.”
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