Free Blood Colony by Tananarive Due

herself?
    Fana was their colony’s only common ground—the meeting place. Compromises would be brokered. Hard choices would be made. And with the battle ahead, Jessica couldn’t spare any energy to referee between Alex and Bea. Not tonight.
    Besides, she agreed with her mother this time: Their only safety was in numbers. That was the reason she had compromised so much already.
    “Jessica?” Alex said to Jessica, ignoring Bea. Her eyes were solemn. “Look after Fana. She’s mad her friend is locked up. That situation needs to change. Soon.”
    Jessica nodded. It was dangerous to upset Fana. They all knew that.
    “Alexis Jacobs Shepard…,” Bea said, never one to allow a subject to be changed beneath her feet. “Don’t you come to my dinner table spreading worry. I don’t want you riling up that hothead redneck, Cal. Sometimes when people think the sky is falling, it’s really only rain.”
    I hope so, Mom, Jessica thought, remembering the shame she had seen in Dawit’s eyes. But just ask Noah: Once the rain starts, sometimes it goes on for forty days and forty nights.
     
    “Simpering fool,” Dawit Wolde muttered in Amharic, rubbing his temples. Justin O’Neal’s rambling had given him a rare headache. “He should have died with his father.”
    His voice whispered against the walls of the Council Hall.
    “Agreed,” Melaku said. “You know where I stand.”
    “And me,” Berhanu said. “I’d never have allowed him among us.”
    “Perhaps it was a mistake,” Teka said, forever placating. “But mistakes can be rectified.”
    “Yes,” Dawit said. “Preferably with the point of a dagger.”
    But Dawit did not enjoy killing, even if he wished he did. Caitlin O’Neal’s frightened eyes still haunted him. And how could they blame Justin O’Neal for his mortal nature? Mortals would choose any course but death. He and his Brothers would have been no different, once.
    Dawit longed for the time he’d lived by the Covenant he and his Brothers had once sworn their lives to: No one must know. No one must join. We are the Last.
    He and his Brothers had changed too much, too fast.
    After five hundred years in Lalibela, ensconced within a brotherhood of fifty-nine men, only a fraction of his Life Brothers had reassembled themselves on the shores of the New World. No maze of caverns protected them from the eyes of others, as it had in their sacred home. No underground fortress walls proclaimed their history in murals and secured their kind from the world of curious mortals above. Dear Khaldun was not here to swear fealty to, nor Khaldun’s Covenant. All of it, gone. And what were they creating in its place?
    Their tallest brother, Teferi, strode from the hallway into the meeting room, snuffing the last chuckles. “If this gathering represents hope for mankind’s sick and unfortunate, then God help them all,” Teferi said, taking a seat. “Justin is terrorized. And you reek of hypocrisy, Dawit. You should be ashamed for the way you’ve treated them both. As if you’re not guilty of worse.”
    The colony had been created when Dawit had disobeyed Khaldun, refusing to leave his wife and first daughter behind two decades ago. He had done worse than share his Living Blood with Jessica—he had invoked the Ceremony to generate it in her veins, breaking their colony’s Covenant with Khaldun. In doing so, he had created a child in Jessica’s womb with gifts that went beyond his own. And he had fractured his Brotherhood in Lalibela, scattering them apart.
    “The O’Neals are Teferi’s descendants,” Teka said. “Even Dawit would agree that one’s children cannot always be controlled.”
    Teferi nodded. “It’s not a decision for this table. I call for a colony-wide vote.”
    Berhanu shook his head. “Why should we vote? We are the majority.”
    “My vote certainly does not stand with yours, Berhanu,” Teferi said.
    And mine is uncertain, Dawit thought, although he tried to hold the thought close.