My Soul to Take

by Tananarive Due

  “Then I guess you’ll have a good year,” Johnny told the coffin seller.

  Johnny had been lazy about disguising himself in Addis, but he would need to be more careful outside Ethiopia’s borders. He could be arrested at any airport. He slipped into the crowd so that his face wouldn’t draw stares, flipping up the hood of his light cotton jacket.

  Johnny dodged the path of five burros walking with sacks of feed and boxes tied across their backs, prodded by three boys who looked twelve. One of the boys swatted the rear burro too hard with his stick, and the animal whined in pain while the boys laughed.

  Johnny was ready to tell the boys to treat the animal more kindly, but he accidentally walked into a woman in a scarf bent over a cane, nearly knocking her over. He grabbed the woman’s stick-thin arm to hold her upright, careful not to crush her.

  “I’m sorry! I mean—” Johnny tried to remember his Amharic. He’d learned ten phrases in at least ten languages by now, and he often confused them.

  She turned to look at him with a toothless reprimand. Her face was a nest of wrinkles deep enough to make shadows. Johnny stared, his English suddenly gone, too.

  The woman looked like she could break, except for her active eyes. Walking through the crowded market must be awful for her, Johnny thought. Did she cook her own food? Was she hungry? What ailments were killing her slowly? How did her body feel when she settled in to sleep at night? Did she have a bed, or did she sleep on a pallet in an alley?

  He was horrified by her, heartbroken for her. He wished he had an emergency Glow packet in his shoe, but he was traveling without Glow for the first time in a year.

  What about your Blood? he reminded himself.

  But the woman yanked her arm from him, annoyed. Johnny watched her walk slowly away, half sliding her right foot after her left. Was he supposed to pull her into an alley, cut himself, and force her to let him cut her? Johnny was paralyzed as he watched her walk away.

  She would die soon, and so would the bearded old man driving his white truck through the packed crowd, honking when he was stuck. And the six-year-old girl in cornrows and a Princess and the Frog T-shirt singing a song with her brothers. And so would the endless parade of beggars, men and boys who looked malnourished and desperate. All of them would die.

  The street seemed to melt into a black-and-white photograph like the ones in his college history books, a crowd captured before they were ghosts. Johnny stood lost in the flock of the dying, his heart hammering in his chest. He was suddenly drenched in sweat across his back. He had forgotten to eat before he left Lalibela—he had forgotten to eat before he tried to sleep, too—and now he was sick to his stomach.

  He was zoning. Damn! He’d had Fana’s Blood for two days, and he was still freaking out. Johnny closed his eyes. We can’t save everyone, Fana’s advice reminded him. He could barely tell the difference between his memories of Fana and the gentle sound of her thoughts.

  No, he couldn’t save them all. He couldn’t heal them one by one.

  But he could try to stop the Cleansing.

  Johnny’s heartbeat slowed as he remembered why he was in the throng, how important his task was. His eyes skated past the faces.

  He only needed to find Mahmoud.

  Mahmoud wasn’t in the colony. After Johnny had searched for Mahmoud all day, Yacob had finally told him that Mahmoud had gone upworld to look for Khaldun. And there was a mortal woman in Addis he often saw for a day or two, Yacob had added with a smile. He’d told Johnny as a joke, looking forward to Mahmoud’s irritation if Johnny found him with a lover.

  Yacob’s advice to check the fresh-fruit stands at the markets had seemed too broad, a fool’s errand, but it was Johnny’s only lead. As Jessica had suggested, Johnny hadn’t confided his plan to the other Brothers, even Yacob. He didn’t know Yacob’s feelings about Michel, and Sanctus Cruor had a strong foothold in the House of Science.

  Michel might have swayed them all.

  Johnny would look for Mahmoud until nightfall. If he couldn’t find him or get his support, he would go on his own. Catch a redeye, if he could. He didn’t like the candidate that he and Caitlin had come up with during their all-night brainstorm, but the benefits outweighed the cost. They didn’t have time to be picky.

  “Any luck yet, gorgeous?” Caitlin’s voice came to his ear from his radio. She’d begun flirting with him, an old, familiar feeling to make Fana’s silent absence less horrifying.

  “Not yet,” Johnny said. “Still looking.”

  The earpiece’s microphone could pick up a whisper. Their conversations might or might not be private, since the universal radios had been built in the House of Science. Teka had proclaimed their radios clean months ago, but Johnny wondered now.

  “Just thought you’d want to know …” Caitlin said. “We’re in.”

  Johnny’s heart thudded. “What does that mean?”

  “He’ll do a meet-and-greet,” she said. “We got his attention. Told you it would all work out if the call came from the right person. One of our Camelot guys reached out.”

  Camelot was their code for Washington, D.C.; someone who owed Glow a favor, often because of a personal healing from Fana. Johnny’s heart pounded with a blend of excitement and deep paranoia. The more people they reached out to, the bigger the chance for leaks.

  Were people staring at him? Was Michel watching him in a dream?

  “That’s big, Caitlin,” he said, shielding his mouth with his palm.

  “Everything better be big from now on.”

  A broad-shouldered white man walking toward Johnny in a baseball cap made his mouth freeze. Romero! Johnny had shot Michel’s personal guard a year ago, but Romero was an immortal. He was awake, striding toward Johnny through the crowd, hardly five yards away.

  Johnny didn’t run. If Michel knew what he was planning, there was nowhere to go.

  Then the man passed, and Johnny realized the man was five inches shorter than Romero. A tourist!

  “What is it?” Caitlin said. She must have heard him stop breathing, and start again.

  Caitlin was in Nigeria with Doc Shepard and the others, but she might as well have been standing beside him on the open street. He had put Caitlin at risk. Had he neglected giving Caitlin the Blood because he’d wanted to be alone with Fana? If so, he was making the kinds of mistakes he was hoping Michel would make.

  “Cat, you better jump off,” he said.

  “I booked you on this train, remember? Underground Railroad to the last stop.”

  Even over the radio, Johnny heard the soft fear clamping her bravado. They were alone with it. So much depended on how Fana did with Michel, and they hadn’t heard anything. Neither of them wanted to go back to being alone with their waiting.

  Just when Johnny was deciding he didn’t need Mahmoud, he spotted Mahmoud’s pale forehead at the mango stand across the street. He was wearing a white guayabera, blending into the river of white fabrics at the market, but Johnny recognized his beard and long ponytail. His only disguise was a pleasant grin.

  “You won’t believe this,” Johnny said. “I see him.”

  “Handle it, cowboy. Love you.”

  “Love you longer.”

  He heard her begin to laugh before she clicked away, so he laughed, too. Better than crying or zoning, even if it was nervous laughter.

  Mahmoud was squeezing fruit for a tall woman in chic office attire and gleaming black heels beside him. The woman wore her hair long, maybe a wig, and she looked like a newscaster or a politician. Or a model. Johnny took a precious few seconds to cross the street and get out of Mahmoud’s sight. If Mahmoud thought he was being tracked—

  But Mahmoud was gone. The woman, too.

  Johnny ran to the corner table, weaving through bystanders to gape at the empty spot where Mahmoud and the woman had stood. Was he delirious? Had he convinced himself that he’d seen Mahmoud out on a date? How likely is that, exactly? What if this is a diversion?

  Johnny felt himself sinkin
g again, his heartbeat speeding to catch up with his thoughts. His own mind could become a weapon against him. Maybe it already was.

  Johnny went to the fruit stand and studied the customers and sellers, craning to see around the corners, measuring the footsteps to the nearest alleyway. He tried running a few steps in each likely direction, but he didn’t see the woman’s short skirt or Mahmoud’s ponytail.

  Johnny leaned against the corner of the squat, unpainted concrete-block building behind the fruit stand. The market around him seemed to swirl. You’re just zoning. Close your eyes and ride it.

  A fiery sting across his face snapped Johnny’s dizziness away. His ear!

  Before he could cry out, a hand clamped over his mouth and he was flung through the air, as if he were weightless. He was suddenly out of the sun and in the dark, pressed against a wall with an iron elbow against his chest. Maybe it was Romero after all. Or Michel, swooping from the air itself.

  Johnny had been in public, in broad daylight. Now he was neither.

  Hot blood ran across Johnny’s right cheek from his right ear.

  “You cut my—” Johnny started, but he was quiet when he saw Mahmoud’s eyes and felt the sharp, pressured prick deep in his navel. Mahmoud still had his knife, so the cutting might not be over. Despite Fana’s warm Blood, Johnny’s pores went as cold as ice water.

  “Why are you following me, monkey?” Mahmoud said in a voice of quiet death. His knife’s tip had already drawn new blood. All it needed was Mahmoud’s weight to impale him.

  “I want to kill Michel!” Johnny blurted.

  Mahmoud pulled back, surprised, and the knife’s tip retreated. He assessed Johnny for a breath that took an hour, then he laughed. The more he laughed, the farther he stepped away.

  Johnny raised his hand to his ear, which was radiating hot pain. His ear was misshapen, and blood painted his fingertips. “You really cut off my ear!” he said.

  “Don’t be a child—just the lower lobe,” Mahmoud said. “You don’t need it.”

  It didn’t matter, Johnny realized, stunned to remember.

  His ear would grow back.

  They chose the kitchen of the closest restaurant, steamy and uncomfortable, huddling near the ice machine beside the back door. An army of waiters and cooks passed them. Mahmoud never seemed concerned about being overheard, but Johnny studied every face.

  “So you want to kill him?” Mahmoud said. “Congratulations. Bring an army with you.”

  “I can,” Johnny said. “Sixty men.”

  Mahmoud studied him, probing his thoughts. “A rancher?”

  “He’s not a rancher by choice,” Johnny said. “His family was running a major cartel out of Sonora State. His brother was the king, until Sanctus Cruor came. Michel let them know they weren’t welcome. Blood on the walls, cryptic messages—you know their methods. The younger brother lived. He’s left Mexico, but he could put together an army on short notice. He can get fifty fighters, maybe sixty. With the right backing …”

  “You’ve studied him,” Mahmoud said.

  “We’ve had to study everyone,” Johnny said. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

  Suddenly, Mahmoud laughed loudly. “Your face! So much hellfire.”

  “I think people are worth fighting for,” Johnny said.

  Mahmoud doubled over, laughing harder. “You still stink like a mortal, but your wit! I shall call you Hannibal. Are you ready to march over the Alps with your elephants to save humanity, Hannibal?”

  Johnny didn’t answer, but Mahmoud’s mocking smile made his stomach sink.

  Mahmoud swallowed his laughter. “Son … dear sweet boy … poor fool … how can I put this?” Mahmoud put his hand on Johnny’s shoulder, sighing paternally. “She has agreed to marry him Thursday. Is this any way to talk about your beloved’s husband?”

  “What?” Johnny said. It was the only word he knew. He wasn’t sure he’d said it aloud.

  “They’ve been engaged for a year, Hannibal. You didn’t expect them to marry? I imagine you weren’t invited to the wedding, but they set the date right away. I’ve heard from Teka. As far as we know, he’s still an adequate source.”

  Johnny blinked, trying to clear his head. Why would Fana agree to marry Michel so quickly? Would Fana ever agree to marry Michel? He saw Fana in bed with Michel, and his stomach tried to wring itself. Did Michel already have Fana? He must!

  Johnny would have wept if not for Mahmoud. His insides were weeping.

  “It takes some of the sport out of it when you look so miserable,” Mahmoud said. He glanced out the open doorway behind him, lighting a cigarette. “If my lady friend isn’t waiting for me, Hannibal, we have unsettled business. Don’t spread your misfortune to me.”

  The air cleared, and Johnny smelled the fish and incense from the market.

  Fana always said to remember the mission. Anything else was a distraction.

  “So you do care about the monkeys,” Johnny said.

  Mahmoud chuckled, not looking back at him. “Don’t presume so much. The females amuse me from time to time. When these are gone, there will be others.”

  “And the Cleansing?” Johnny said.

  “I’ve never seen the logic in healing the perpetually dying,” Mahmoud said, “but then again, I’m unclear about who would be left to clean up Michel’s ghastly mess.”

  “You’re against it, then.”

  Mahmoud’s eyes still studied the crowd outside.

  “I’m against the Cleansing the way I’m against all forms of madness. I’m also against overcrowding. Look at them all. The famines! Endless conflict! I have to admire Michel’s willingness to take a stand. If he weren’t a raving lunatic, I might shake his hand.”

  “And when he’s marching you over there to join him? Like Fana?” Johnny whispered.

  “Is that the version you like best?” Mahmoud said, winking over his shoulder. “He compelled her? It’s a pity you didn’t know Fana when she was a tot, Hannibal. She gave a whole new meaning to the term enfant terrible. They’re a perfect match.”

  Johnny was too sick to argue with Mahmoud. He suddenly vomited into a metal sink beside him while kitchen workers scowled. Quicky, Johnny rinsed the mess away.

  “As you can see,” Mahmoud said, “the Blood doesn’t heal maladies of the mind, like overpowering fear of the truth.” He leaned over Johnny, pointing out bloody handprints on the sink. “You’ll want to clean up. We prefer not to leave it in the open, since it never dries. It tends to leave a trail.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Johnny said. He rinsed his mouth in the tepid water and spit.

  “Your vision of an army is ambitious, so I admire your conviction. But before you cast your lot against Michel with druglords and other ne’er-do-wells, I offer you counsel as a new Brother …” Mahmoud said, and paused. “Make sure your damsel in distress wants rescuing.”

  There was no humor in his face or voice. Johnny felt foolish for holding his breath, hoping that Mahmoud might offer him something worth hearing.

  “This isn’t about Fana,” Johnny said. “Michel is about to let loose a pandemic outbreak, and nobody’s willing to stand up to him. Either that matters to you or not.”

  “Point well taken,” Mahmoud said noncommittally.

  “Any other advice, Mahmoud?” Johnny said, sarcastic. Before today, he hadn’t had the nerve to say more than three words to Mahmoud. “What else can I learn from your vast wisdom? We monkeys don’t usually get the chance to live hundreds of years.”

  “I wouldn’t rely on that timetable, considering your circumstances,” Mahmoud said casually, leaning over him. The tobacco on his breath reminded Johnny of Michel. “The most important thing to remember? Expect pain.”

  Johnny cried out as steel fire lashed his left ear. Mahmoud had sliced his other earlobe so quickly that Johnny hadn’t seen him move. Fresh droplets of his blood had sprayed to the kitchen’s tile above the sink, a progression of small dots.

  Both of Johnny’s e
ars flamed with pain. “You son of a—”

  “Watch yourself heal,” Mahmoud said. “That’s all the fun, the first days. Earlobes might take three to five hours. After that, there’s day and night and day again. Most days and nights are exactly the same—only the faces change. Or they don’t. Now you know the secret.”

  Mahmoud pivoted away, vanishing through the open doorway into the crowd.

  Twenty-nine

  Mahmoud had expected to be on his way to the Qinghai region of China, following another Mystic’s dream to search for Khaldun in the mountains, but life had gotten in the way.

  He had been delayed in Addis. Selam had surprised him by cooking him dinner after his impolite disappearance at the market, and he’d surprised them both by refusing Selam’s invitation to spend the night in her bed.

  Instead, Mahmoud flew his prop plane back to Lalibela.

  “You’re not as clever as you think,” Mahmoud told the councilmaster.

  “I’m thinking the opposite: I may be too clever by far,” Yacob said.

  “He’s a perfect disaster,” Mahmoud said, half to himself. “These mortal boys are like girls, with soft hands and delicate sensibilities, trained to sit at desks. He nearly pissed himself when I flicked his ears. How did he fire that gun?”

  Wright was one of the remaining puzzles from their disastrous visit to Michel a year ago when Mahmoud had first understood what a hazard Michel was to them. Even Teka had not been able to wrest himself from Michel’s mental stream! But Wright had escaped bondage to shoot Michel’s guards. Or had Michel allowed it?

  IT MAY BE TRUE THAT FANA DISTRACTS MICHEL, Yacob said. WEAKENS HIM.

  Yacob spoke silently, not wanting to be overheard. Mahmoud wished he had the skills for refined silent discourse, but he needed his meaning to be clear.

  “I want to be free of Teka,” Mahmoud said. “He is linked to me. He woke me from sleep with news of Fana’s wedding. I can’t have him so close.”

  HE MAY NOT CONTACT YOU AGAIN.

  Mahmoud shook his head. “No. Nothing must escape to him. If he attempts to reach me, I might bleed. I do not want Wright’s plan known to him.”