Read Online Blood Colony by Tananarive Due - Free Book Online Page A

is being hunted. If someone took Caitlin, how long would it take you to tell them everything you know about us? A day? An hour? Five minutes?”
    Justin couldn’t think, much less answer. Dawit’s presence over him felt like a death sentence. Dawit was impossibly quick with a knife; Justin had seen that the day they’d met. The mercenary whom Dawit had killed hadn’t even seen his knife coming.
    “You’ve made your point, Dawit,” Teka said.
    Dawit took his seat after a last glare, and Justin exhaled with force.
    “Kill me, then,” Justin said. “But not my family. They don’t know anything, except for Caitlin. You know I’m not lying. Fana told Caitlin, so let Caitlin live here with her. Let them all live here, or anywhere you say. Please.” He had convinced Holly to move to Johannesburg to keep his family as far from the colony as possible. For their protection.
    The room’s silence was broken by a chuckle from one of the Africans, a harrowing sound. Justin’s family meant nothing to them.
    “Be silent, please,” Dawit said. “Just go.”
    Go? Justin sat frozen, confused. Will they let us go free?
    Dawit waved him away. “To your room, you fool.”
    “Go be with your daughter,” Teka said gently.
    Justin leaped to his feet, seeking balance on weak knees. He was surprised he wasn’t given an escort, until he remembered that escape from this hall was probably impossible. Caitlin had told him that even the forest was booby-trapped.
    Desperation gave Justin courage. As he passed Dawit, he leaned down for a private plea: “I’m begging you, one father to another. Caitlin wasn’t in this alone—Fana gave her the blood. Don’t destroy my family. Our children are friends. Don’t do this to your daughter.”
    Dawit’s dark eyes didn’t soften. He gazed at Justin with an indifference that was worse than anger, as if Justin already didn’t exist.

Six
    J essica found her sister sitting on a low stool beyond rows of storage supply cabinets, computers, blood screen racks and tubes lighted by bright fluorescent bulbs overhead. She was shoving papers, magazines and computer files into boxes so quickly that she looked like she was late for an appointment with a moving van.
    Alex didn’t look up when Jessica came in. In Alex’s lab, the world disappeared. The lab was her shrine to medicine and music, plastered with crooked posters: Bob Marley. Phoenix. Los Van Van from Cuba. African salsa played from the CD player on the counter closest to her; Alex and their mother refused to give up CDs, just as they had clung to vinyl long ago. Alex’s bad leg was splayed out to the side for comfort while she worked. Alex liked to pretend the leg didn’t bother her, but Jessica knew it did. Her sister’s limp grew worse with time.
    A metal lockbox landed in Alex’s plastic crate with a thump.
    “I see you heard,” Jessica said.
    Alex jumped, startled. She gave Jessica a long gaze over her shoulder. “I’ve heard Caitlin crying. Saying your husband is going to kill her. Saying…he already killed someone.”
    “I don’t have the facts yet.” There was no point in answering to a rumor.
    “Why are they being held here, Jess?”
    “The Brothers consider that their right. The O’Neals haven’t been hurt.”
    “Not yet. What’s our position? Do we have one?”
    Sometimes the balance between Jessica’s family and the Life Brothers felt just right, miraculously so. Not this time. Their mission needed constant tending. Was this how Esther felt in the Old Testament, married to the king?
    “Dawit and I will talk after dinner,” Jessica said. “We’ll resolve it. Caitlin can probably sleep at the house with Fana. That should help.”
    “We haven’t used our guest room yet,” Alex said wryly. “Her dad can sleep with us.”
    Considering that Justin O’Neal had once stood and watched while a mercenary had burned Alex’s face and arms with cigarettes to try to force her to tell where the blood came from,