My Soul to Take

by Tananarive Due

  “Are you sure?” Johnny said, reading her thoughts from her eyes.

  “If this is what you want—I’m sure,” she said. “Lie down. We don’t have much time.”

  After a quick glance at the door, a reflex, Johnny rushed to the spongy pallet where Jessica had dreamed so many months away. The pallet still smelled stale and sharp, but Johnny might not notice. Mortals couldn’t smell scents and odors the same way.

  Fana sat beside Johnny like a nurse at his bedside, slipping so easily into the pose. She had never before visited the room he called his Bat Cave, but now she saw how ridiculous the pretense of distance had been between them. No wonder Fasilidas could see it, and everyone else. Fana was a virgin, but she and Johnny had been lovers all this time.

  “I won’t let him change me into his image,” Fana told Johnny, a promise.

  “He’s telling himself the same thing. He’s ready for you.”

  Fana laid her finger across Johnny’s lips: shhh. Would talking about Michel conjure him? The ground shook when we fought, Fana whispered. We both nearly bled to death. I’ll talk to him this time. And I’ll listen.

  “Will he listen?” Johnny said. His hands were clasped across his chest, his nervous fingers locked. Fana rested her hand on top of his. Johnny’s skin shivered beneath her touch.

  “He might,” Fana said. “But I don’t know the future, Johnny.”

  Sometimes she could find a piece of the future in her dreams and visions, but hindsight made clues clearest. Aside from her visit to Michel’s thoughtstreams, Fana hadn’t dreamed about him in a year, when she had imagined them inside the beautiful Frida Kahlo painting he had used to seduce her, Love Embrace of the Universe. While Mom had been lost in her dreams, Fana had been exiled from hers; even in meditation, her visions were hazy now.

  Teka said it was her price for blocking out Michel.

  Fana stared into Johnny’s brown eyes, overflowing with anxious life. She could always tell a mortal by the eyes: their hunger to engage, to confront, to find language for their thoughts.

  “Once you have the Blood, don’t run out into the world like you think you’re invincible,” Fana said. “Find a safe, quiet place to sit with it. Don’t draw attention to yourself. Uncle Lucas can help you transition, since he’s been through it. Go to him right away.”

  Johnny only nodded, barely listening, fogged with fear. Fana fought a strong, sudden urge to probe him, to peel him open. Her awareness licked at a glaring omission in his thoughts.

  “You haven’t told me everything,” Fana said.

  “Then you’ll have to live with that,” Johnny said. “Like the rest of us.”

  Did Johnny mean to try to kill Michel? Even without a probe, Johnny’s fondest hope seemed to leak from his body language, his eyes. Johnny expected the Blood to solve far too much. But how could she deny him? Her blood was Johnny’s, too, and always had been.

  “Give me a chance to do this my way,” Fana said. “The Blood won’t protect you from him any more than it could protect you from me. Even less.”

  She saw a quicksilver flicker in Johnny’s eyes. He didn’t like remembering how easily she could kill, how different and dangerous she was. She would give him the Blood—but she would show him everything that lay underneath it, her true face. And Michel’s.

  She owed him that.

  Fana rooted around her mother’s desk for something sharp enough to make her bleed. The search took longer than she expected; her mother didn’t keep sharp objects within easy reach. Fana checked the sturdy length of her right thumbnail and decided that should be enough for the thin skin at their wrists.

  She would stop his heart with her thoughts, then cut them both to give him a drop of her Blood, in the ancient way. She might not need the ceremony’s incantation, but she knew the words from her father’s memories. Only her father had heard Khaldun’s words the night he gave fifty-nine men the Living Blood.

  BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM.

  Johnny’s heart was beating so hard, he might be shaking the walls. Or was it hers?

  “You’ll be awake,” Fana said. “If you’re strong enough for the Blood, you’re strong enough to die. But I’ll try to be fast.”

  Johnny blinked, his eyes red. “Okay.” He sounded brave, but he looked ready to vomit.

  “Now you’ll see how easy it is for me to stop your heart.”

  “I always knew that,” he said, his voice feeble. He tried to smile.

  Johnny’s pounding heart called to her, a perverse music. Her hands stroked his, mapping his throbbing pulse. Fear had a smell, she remembered. Pungent. Terrible at first, and then …

  “Close your eyes, Johnny,” Fana said.

  Fana’s probe dove into Johnny’s warm body, past his skin and pores. His essence blazed around her, and she surfed the brightly strobing stream, yanked and flung through his pores, riding on his blood. She was inside him.

  She imagined the quivering mass that was his heart, finding its thunder. She’d never tried to burrow inside a body before—she’d been afraid to try to heal Johnny with her mind a year ago, after Michel had made Johnny shoot himself. But now she’d gone in with ease. She could have repaired him herself! Her mind brushed the bullet’s lingering damage, pieces frayed and shredded that the first drops of her healing Blood had kept alive.

  But now she would give his blood Life, forever replenishing.

  Johnny’s heart was powerful in its youth, but it was already dying, a little each day. Fana ventured a glancing touch across Johnny’s heart. Her presence sent his heart flailing, its warm throbbing suddenly frantic, disordered.

  Johnny’s heart bucked so strongly that it brought a cry to his lips. Outside the door, Fasilidas misunderstood Johnny’s cries for pleasure.

  Fana leaned over Johnny’s wide-open, wondering eyes. She could have spared Johnny more pain, but then he would have lost the lesson.

  You’re dying now, Fana whispered.

  YOU’RE DYING NOW.

  Fana’s voice: outside, inside, everywhere. Johnny didn’t need the voice; the pain told him, making him forget everything else.

  Johnny clutched his chest, trying to claw his way out of his dying body. His chest, his back, his neck, everything radiated blinding pain. He arched his back, trying to escape, and bands of agony enfolded him. An invisible tank had pinned him, slowly flattening him.

  Johnny tried to pray, but he couldn’t catch hold of words.

  Stop, he tried to say. His inability to speak made his limbs shake. Johnny had lost control of his body, a too-familiar horror. His arms and legs wouldn’t obey. His body flung itself to the floor, but he barely noticed the impact. The weight on his chest was crushing him.

  Just one more breath! The air was too hot, too thin. Johnny heard himself gasp to the depths of his lungs, and he still couldn’t find air. He was drowning in himself.

  stop stop stop stop

  Johnny no longer knew whom he was begging, or who might be listening. He was alone.

  He begged the void, Stop. Please.

  TOO LATE, the void said in a voice he did not know.

  Johnny’s heart would not go gently. It had cowered from her at first, but now it was fighting her with surprising strength, suddenly slippery. Fana was hurled away from his heart, and she scrambled to find it again.

  If she lost Johnny’s heartbeat, she might lose her moment to give him the Blood. Sometimes the ceremony failed, or was interrupted. Her father had failed with Kira. Fana didn’t want to break her promise to Johnny. He had expected to live again after he died.

  Just when Fana needed to concentrate most, she felt her attention tossed in so many directions—to Fasilidas, by her door; to her father, packing his bag in the next room; to her mother, praying in the rock garden. Even to Michel, a growing throb in the distance.

  She was losing Johnny, hurting him more than she wanted to. Too long.

  Fana tried to visualize the bright light of the Rising, but none of the floating sensation that g
uided her in meditation came. Johnny’s cries sounded like a distant kitten’s mews. He was so far from her! Fana was drowning with him as doubts assailed her. Was Michel sabotaging her? Was she working against herself?

  Then, she understood: she had never stopped a heart with the power of the Rising! What had made her so certain she could? Why was she so surprised when she couldn’t do anything she chose?

  There’s another way. Fana’s own voice cleared her thoughts.

  When she was three, Fana had thought the words bye-bye and stilled a soldier’s heart. She had drained Kaleb’s blood while she scribbled pictures. It had been easy! But she’d had help from the Shadows then; their humming was always waiting to be unburied. She needed to practice, or how would she learn to use the Shadows instead of only being used?

  Like Michel, the Shadows were always waiting for her. Since Michel, she’d had to keep them at bay in her sleep, in her meditation, in her waking hours; it was less work to let the Shadows in than it was to shut them away.

  Fana’s vision dimmed, a blanket over her. Light fled the room. Had the sound always been there? The walls vibrated with buzzing, as if they were covered with bees.

  Fana remembered what she’d forgotten about the smell of fear: yes, it started out pungent … but then … Fana inhaled, her nose brushing Johnny’s face, and his waves of fright caressed her skin. Fear baked from him like hot bread.

  Sweet. After a time, fear smelled sweet.

  A scream came. Fana held on to the fascinating sound, savoring it, falling into it, climbing in and out of it. A playground to her senses. The Shadows roared with bliss.

  But that’s Johnny, someone reminded her. Or maybe she reminded herself. Still, the scream rocked and dizzied Fana, whirling inside her. Filling her. Tickling her.

  Don’t wanna die for a while. I think I’ll fly for a while.

  The singer’s voice. A memory even the Shadows couldn’t hide.

  Slowly, too slowly, the spinning stopped.

  Johnny’s fear seeped away, replaced by a tide of euphoria that swept out his pain as his body settled to die. Fana heard Johnny’s last thought: THANK YOU, LORD. Her thoughtstreams almost followed him, caught up in his euphoria. The Rising, so elusive before, swept her high. Through Johnny, she heard music somewhere in the blinding light….

  But Fana steadied her awareness, blocking out the music and the lights, forcing herself back to the physical world. She pressed her feet against the hard floor to bring herself back.

  Johnny’s heart was still. Slick, limp warmth.

  “Fana, no!” her father shouted, so commanding that Fana almost left Johnny’s heart again. But she held on. She hadn’t heard her father come in. All she knew was that Johnny’s heart lay still, and his pain was gone. “You’re killing him—”

  “Give me your knife,” Fana said.

  Wildness churned in Dawit’s eyes as he understood. “Use my blood, Fana—not yours.”

  “We want it to be mine.” With her thoughtstream, Fana squeezed Johnny’s heart to circulate his blood. Once. Twice. Not enough to bring him back; just enough to prepare him.

  Hurry, Dad!

  A sharp blade appeared before her, and Fana glimpsed her own face, elongated and distorted. Fana took her father’s knife and poked at Johnny’s wrist, opening his vein in a stream of bright crimson. Her pain when she cut herself was an insect’s pinch. Her wound bled far less, tingling to heal right away, but she needed only a drop.

  Fana pressed her torn skin to Johnny’s, washing herself in his blood. Washing him.

  “The Blood is the vessel for Life …” she recited, although she was certain that she and Michel didn’t need to use an incantation like the others. “The Blood flows without end …”

  Dawit’s whisper joined hers, their last words in unison.

  “… Like a river through the Valley of Death.”

  Fana stroked Johnny’s warm forehead. His corpse was curled in a fetal position on the floor beside the pallet, his struggle absent on his calm face. I’m sorry, she whispered. I didn’t mean for it to hurt so much.

  Johnny was still dead. His body would start to cool. Rigor mortis would set in.

  Then, in a few hours, he would grow warm again. His heart would stir. He would wake.

  Dawit paced the room slowly, rubbing his face with both hands as if he were trying to scrub off his skin. His thoughts rang with his disappointment and anger.

  WHY? WHY NOW?

  He asked me, Dad. The Blood belongs to him, too.

  “Fana, this was the worst possible course with Michel!” This time, he spoke aloud.

  She had just traded something away. Something awful, maybe. But her father couldn’t say he didn’t understand.

  “If you want your singer, we can’t stay to see him wake, Duchess,” Dawit said.

  Fana nodded. They should have left long ago.

  Fana stood above Johnny, enjoying his peace the way the Shadows had savored his suffering. The kindest gift would have been to free him, but how could she have made him understand that? Safe journey, Fana told Johnny. I’ll find a way, Johnny. Trust in me.

  Fana raised her palm to her nose and smelled the warm, damp oils from the skin on Johnny’s forehead. Even as his face grayed, she could imagine his boyish dimples when he smiled. She looked at him for only an instant, but she made the instant last.

  Fana turned away from Johnny.

  Phoenix first. Then, to Mexico. To Michel.

  She was a year late for her wedding.

  Twenty-two

  “Wake up, you selfish son of a bitch.”

  The voice made Johnny stir.

  He opened his eyes, and saw only a white sheet of light. Am I dead?

  The woman’s voice sounded mousy and faraway. Not Fana. Somewhere outside him.

  “I can’t believe you would go over without me. I hope you have a really, really bad hangover. Worse than a hangover. But you better wake up and stop scaring the crap out of me.”

  Johnny was awake, suddenly. His heartbeat rang in his chest, thump thump. He could hear it without trying to. His bloodstream was swollen, all his nerve endings tingling. His lungs drank in the air, and oxygen flooded him. Had he gained ten pounds? His back chafed against his soft bed because he felt so heavy. His blood was glowing as it charged through his veins.

  Glow. They had named it right.

  He opened his eyes and saw Caitlin leaning over him.

  “You jerk—thank God!” she said. She grabbed his hand, then flung it away as if it had bitten her. “What the hell were you thinking? She could have killed you, Johnny!”

  “We knew she wouldn’t.” Johnny’s throat was so parched that it hurt. He glanced around the room for water and found none within easy reach. When he sat up, the room whirled. His heartbeat was louder in his ears.

  You did it, he reminded himself. It’s done.

  The simple words stilled Johnny’s thoughts, paralyzing him.

  He didn’t have to ask Caitlin if he had died and come back. More than his blood was new; he had new skin, too, taut and lively across his bones. He barely recognized the room because his vision was so much brighter, everything vivid and crisp. Johnny stuck out the tip of his tongue, and his tongue lapped up the flavors in the air: citrus and incense and rich oxygen. Had the air had a taste before? He closed his mouth when he noticed the bed’s odor. The bed smelled rotten, as if that scent was on his tongue, too.

  Johnny had been tired when he first heard Caitlin’s voice, but after a minute he was ready to leap to his feet and run. It was hard to imagine ever feeling tired again.

  “She did it?” Caitlin said, hushed. “She gave it to you?”

  Slowly, Johnny nodded. His head rocked up and down, fluid. Johnny thought about the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz, and how oil made him a new man.

  “How do you feel?” Caitlin said.

  Johnny wished his throat weren’t so parched. Talking hurt. Johnny rolled his head on his neck, testing every angle of himsel
f. No twinges, pops, or pain.

  “Weird. Wired. No wonder they don’t need much sleep.”

  “You,” Caitlin corrected him gently. “You won’t need sleep.”

  Her unblinking blue eyes made it real again. He was one of them. Immortal!

  “We should be recording this,” Caitlin said, awestruck. “Documenting it.”

  Johnny leaped up and paced, ignoring her. Caitlin was missing the point “Is she gone?”

  “They left about four hours ago,” Caitlin said. “You’ve been out for nine.”

  Fana was four hours closer to Michel, and four hours farther from home. She was gone. That idea stunned him almost as much as his strange new awakening. His pacing stopped cold.

  “She needs help, Caitlin,” Johnny said.

  “I swear, I thought he already had her,” Caitlin whispered. “But Michel wouldn’t let Fana give you the Blood. She did that. Right?”

  “Yes,” Johnny said. “Definitely.”

  Like him, Caitlin was craving assurances. But Johnny remembered that Michel had been patient when he first found Fana, humoring her by allowing her to give Johnny a drop of blood to heal the gunshot. Michel’s air of kindness had drawn Fana straight to him.

  Caitlin sighed. “I’m scared for you, Johnny. And I hate you deeply right now, so imagine how scared I must be.”

  “I’ll give you the Blood, too. As soon as I figure out how.”

  “Thanks, but screw you,” Caitlin said. “You should have given me a chance.”

  “Do you even want it?” Johnny said. “You always said you weren’t sure.”

  “I would have wanted the choice!” Caitlin said. “The power to say yes or no. I never would have done it without giving you the chance.”

  Johnny had never heard such envy from Caitlin. She was nearly whining. When had he become the adult and she become the child? He’d always felt two steps behind Caitlin. Something had changed already.

  “You could have asked her if you wanted it,” he said, irritation creeping into his voice.

  “She wouldn’t have done it just for me,” Caitlin said. “Stop playing dumb.”