Blood Colony by Tananarive Due Page B

the two clinics in the Volta region, and he’d been pissed and scared: After he’d spent ten years helping them build their distribution network, these men still wouldn’t let him keep a few drops of the blood for his family’s safety. Their bigotry against anyone without the blood was infuriating. He wasn’t asking to live forever—he just wanted an emergency supply. How could they expect him to help thousands of other patients and leave his own family vulnerable?
    But Justin never would have taken the blood if he had known Caitlin was selling Glow.
    Justin raised his eyes to face the five dark men dressed in matching white tunics who sat in judgment in the tomblike, unadorned Council Hall. Justin kept his eyes on the small-boned man who had recited his offenses, the one they called Teka. Teka’s slight frame and immature face made him look like a boy, and his eyes were the only compassionate ones.
    This was a trial, all right, but not by his peers. Could they even be called human?
    Justin had been a defense lawyer before he’d gone corporate. He’d always been paid well for his ability to paint a bright picture, but he couldn’t choose a strategy. How could he keep Caitlin out of trouble without getting himself killed?
    Justin glanced at Dawit Wolde, and the immortal’s eyes drove him away. He was wearing white hair and stage makeup, but Dawit’s eyes hadn’t changed.
    “Remind me,” Dawit said. “How much do we pay you a year?”
    “Two million, sir.”
    “That’s a lot of money, even for someone with your expensive tastes,” Dawit said. “And how did we treat you when your wife had cancer?”
    Justin’s hands curled into fists as he remembered the scare with Holly four years earlier. Ovarian cancer. She’d been so far along that her young doctor had blanched when he’d probed Holly’s insides with his hand. “You treated us well, sir. You saved her life.”
    “Did Teferi refuse you what she needed? Did any of us object?”
    “No, sir. Teferi treated me like a son.” Justin’s voice broke. “Dawit, it was half a vial —”
    Dawit rose to his feet. “Yes. Half a vial. After we warned you that we do not tolerate theft of our blood. After we explained that we take the matter very personally, and that you must petition for personal use. We said this rule was cardinal . And you agreed, did you not?”
    “Yes, sir. I broke that rule.”
    Dawit gave him a bitter, steel smile. “In your father’s footsteps,” he said, glowering. “None of us need wonder why your daughter has so prodigiously taken up your family tradition. Caitlin far outshines you, I might add. Her offenses are far more impressive.”
    He and Caitlin were both dead if they would be judged by his father!
    More than a decade ago, long before Justin had imagined himself in this place or known about these people, Dad had prodded him into an outlandish plan to try to find “magic blood” he’d believed to be a part of their family history. Justin had thought his father had lost his mind, but as it had turned out, he had not. His medical reports had proven it: Dad had found a miraculous cure.
    But Dad had always been greedy. He’d bullied Justin into hiring mercenaries to track down a clinic in Botswana for sick children—which, unfortunately, had been run by Dawit’s wife. The mercenaries had narrowly missed abducting Dawit’s wife and child, but they’d found blood. A lot of it.
    They had also captured a scientist and a physician, a woman. Tortured and nearly killed them. The woman had been Dawit’s sister-in-law. During her rescue, Justin’s father had been shot and killed before his eyes.
    Of course, Dad had had it coming. Justin knew that. But some of the dead had been innocent, undeserving of the massacre. They had died because Justin had made a telephone call, doing his father’s bidding. Justin was only alive to remember his shame because Teferi had pled with the other Africans to spare him after discovering that