Blood Colony by Tananarive Due

brought trouble to Caitlin. She had brought trouble to all of them.
    Fana forced herself to reclaim the images from her dream, hoping to find solace there.
    A priest in white ceremonial regalia and a cardinal’s cap kneels on the floor before her father, grasping a golden chalice full of blood. Her father walks behind the priest.
    “I’m a priest,” the man in the white robe says.
    “A dead one,” her father says, and swiftly breaks his neck. The chalice’s spilled blood soaks the corpse’s white robe crimson.
    The priest’s bloody robe flutters, and he stirs.
    The corpse isn’t dead at all.

Five
    A Camel wobbled between Caitlin’s thin fingers as she sat on the bare bed with her legs hiked up like a child’s, close to her body. Thanks to Gramps, Caitlin O’Neal had been chain-smoking since she was sixteen. He’d let her smoke her first cigarette when she was seven, the same year he’d died. Gramps had not been a nice man. If Caitlin had been able to go back in time, she would have kicked him in the balls. But the habit had outlived him, and the nicotine beat back the panic trying to fill her throat. Calm down, Caitlin. There’s a way out of this. There has to be.
    Where was her father? It had been an hour since Uncle Teferi had taken him away.
    Uncle Teferi had called this narrow room the “guest quarters,” but since there was no window and only two narrow twin beds, it was just a cell. She’d been afraid of being locked up since the night she’d first met Fana at the border of the woods, when Fana had given her a backpack hiding an ounce of her blood. But she hadn’t expected to be locked up here, a place that had been a second home most of her life.
    Casey had warned her. Even without really knowing, her twin had known about the Glow. You’re looking for a quick trip to jail, or worse, Casey had said a month before Mari had died.
    Caitlin’s heart bucked when the door opened.
    Fana slipped inside. As the door closed behind her, Caitlin saw the shadow of a man who must have been a guard. Shit. They weren’t going to let her leave.
    Caitlin choked, coughing. “Thank God it’s you,” she said. “Where’s my dad? They—”
    “He’s fine, I swear. They’re asking him questions.”
    Fana looked like she had been crying, too. Caitlin hadn’t seen Fana in three years, since the night she’d gotten the blood, and Caitlin was surprised at how tall Fana was now. She didn’t look like a kid anymore. Fana hugged Caitlin; and it felt good to be hugged. With Fana here and a nicotine bath, Caitlin felt safe for the first time since Seattle, like being in her mother’s arms.
    “I promise I’ll get you out of here,” Fana said. “Just tell me what happened.”
    “We’re busted, that’s what happened. I nearly got killed. But Dad doesn’t have anything to do with it. He doesn’t know anything.”
    “Tell me everything, Caitlin.”
    “Are you sure I should?”
    “Of course.” Fana looked hurt, but Fana was one of them. Caitlin couldn’t forget that.
    Right before Caitlin had gone to college, when Fana was fourteen, Fana had announced that Caitlin was her best friend—and she’d wanted to show her true self. As it had turned out, Fana’s “true self” had included freaky mind-tricks. And the blood.
    Fana had told her the truth about Dad’s work: Caitlin’s father was using his corporation as a front to help Fana’s people distribute their blood in secrecy to heal sick people in parts of Africa and Asia. Caitlin had thought it was the most miraculous thing she’d ever heard. She used to.
    Caitlin had tried to put the awful sound of Father Arturo’s cracking neck out of her mind, but now she had to relive it as she spoke in a hush directly into Fana’s ear. She’d be a fool not to think the room was bugged. “It’s Sunday night, and I’m meeting with Father A. People I trust vouched for him, and he was about to pass his six-month screen. That night, I went to meet him at his