Blood Oath

by Christopher Farnsworth

  When she looked back at him, her eyes were glassy, and she dragged the hair-doll through his cut—wiping up his blood, soaking it into the hair.

  He noticed that the cell had seemed to shrink, down to just the two of them. The air thickened with smoke, and something else, something unnamable. It felt as if there were another world, crowding in around the edges of his vision, trying to get his attention.

  She spoke in a voice that wasn’t quite her own, without looking at the paper Johnson had given her, but just holding it:

  “By this blood, you are bound, ” she intoned. “To the President of the United States; and to the orders of the officers appointed by him; to support and defend the nation and its citizens against all enemies, foreign and domestic; and to serve it faithfully for all the days you walk the Earth. ”

  More of the strange language, then the hair-doll was used to crush out the smoldering embers of the herbs. She gathered the bloody, sooty doll into the leather pouch, along with the bullet, and cinched it tightly shut.

  Cade could feel the cut on his cheek healing already. And he felt something else. Like a new spine, growing down his back. A certainty that had not been there before. He knew what he had to do. He knew what his unnatural life was for, now: to protect and to serve.

  The smoke dissipated and the cell seemed to snap back to its normal size.

  Mme. Laveau rose and gathered her things, as matter-of-fact as a woman picking up her knitting.

  He still had the cross in his hand. It still hurt. But the pain helped him focus. Helped him see clearly. It gave him something other than the thirst.

  “What did you do?” he asked, not sure he wanted to know.

  “About your hunger? Nothing,” she told him. “You will have many chances to take human blood, if you want. Your president will give you that. But the choice is always yours.”

  She leaned down again, took the cross gently from his hand. The pain stopped, but Cade found he wanted it back.

  She took a length of cord and looped it through a ring on the cross, then tied it around his neck.

  She held his gaze for a long moment.

  “You are bound to this man now, and all the ones who will follow him. You will fight the dark forces. You will have to fight.

  “But you are not a slave,” she said, holding his hands in her own. “Remember that: no man is a slave.”

  She stood quickly and picked up her bag. The leather pouch was in her other hand.

  She knocked on the door, and Johnson and a soldier reappeared as it opened.

  “It’s done,” she said, and gave the pouch to Johnson. “You may remove those chains.”

  “You’re certain?” Johnson asked.

  She gave him the same scowl as before. Johnson gestured to the soldiers to unlock Cade.

  Mme. Laveau looked at Cade one last time before she walked out the door. Her eyes were full of pity.

  “I can see your road, child,” she said. “It is not easy. You might have been better off dead.”

  SIX

  There is no known physiological reason for the pain Cade experiences when exposed to the sight or touch of a cross, or other religious paraphernalia. While there are no lasting effects, a cross can be enough to keep a vampire at bay.

  It appears that prolonged and repeated exposure can build a resistance, or at least, an accommodation with this pain. Unlike other vampires, our subject wears a cross around his neck. (He claims the pain helps him focus on beating his thirst for human blood.) Some in the research group have suggested that the pain is psychosomatic, an abreaction to the vampire’s disgust and self-loathing at his or her transformation. However, this does not explain why religious symbols affect all vampires more or less equally, without regard for the individual’s religious background.

  —BRIEFING BOOK: CODENAME: NIGHTMARE PET

  Zach sipped his coffee and grimaced. It was awful. The only stuff he’d ever had that was worse had been in the mess of an aircraft carrier, during a visit with the president. But a single cup kept him awake for twenty hours.

  He looked at Cade, then Griff.

  “Okay,” he said. “So he has to do what I say?”

  Cade’s face didn’t move, but Zach got the distinct feeling he didn’t like the question.

  “Not exactly,” Griff said. “He will follow the orders you pass on from the president. But for now, you should learn the ropes from us.”

  Zach shrugged. He supposed he had no choice but to see where this ride would go.

  “Where do we start?”

  Griff handed a sheet of paper to Cade.

  “This is what I tried to tell you about before you stormed off to bed,” Griff said.

  Zach laughed at that, then turned it into a cough when Cade looked at him.

  “ICE has found something in a container off a ship at the Port of Baltimore. Their report triggered our flags in the system,” Griff said to Zach. “When we get an alert like that, you’ll call and tell their superiors to seal off the scene until you and Cade can get there. We have priority commands for every branch of the federal government.”

  Zach suddenly felt like he was in grade school again. He could have sworn Griff was talking slower than normal for his benefit.

  “What did they find?”

  “We’ll see for ourselves,” Cade said. There was no change in his tone, but again, Zach caught a distinct undercurrent of impatience.

  Cade crossed the room. Even walking, the vampire moved impossibly fast. Zach hurried to follow.

  Cade hit a stone in the wall at the far end of the Reliquary. The concrete slid back as if on wheels, and revealed another hidden door.

  “How many of these things do you have in here?”

  “I’ve never counted,” Cade said, and slipped into the passage.

  Zach looked back at Griff. “What, that’s it? That’s all the training and orientation? Now you just expect me to go after him?”

  “Nature of the job,” Griff said. “You hit the ground running.”

  “Fantastic. Any advice, then?” Zach said it with heavy sarcasm, but Griff appeared thoughtful before he answered.

  “He’s smarter than you, stronger than you, and he was eating people over a century before you were born,” Griff said. “He’ll try to dominate you. It’s nothing personal. Just how he sees us. Don’t let him.”

  “Don’t let him?”

  “He can’t touch you, Zach. It’s his job to keep you safe. Push back.”

  Griff returned to the papers in front of him.

  “That’s a big help,” Zach muttered. Then he followed the vampire into the dark.

  THE TUNNEL SMELLED like a YMCA locker room. Small electric bulbs wired to the ceiling provided dim light. Zach had never thought of himself as claustrophobic, but the roof was barely over his head, and he and Cade had to walk single file to get through.

  “Where the hell are we?”

  “You don’t know? You worked for the White House.”

  “You learn something new every day. Apparently.”

  “Washington, D.C., was designed by a Masonic architect, Pierre-Charles L’Enfant, at the direction of Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. They included a series of secret tunnels, which have been updated every few decades, ever since. We can get into the Metro from here—even all the way down to Virginia.”

  “Masons?” Zach snorted. “Please don’t tell me you think there’s a conspiracy to take over the U.S. government.”

  “Eight.”

  “What?”

  “At last count, there were eight allied groups of conspirators working to assume control of the U.S. government,” Cade said. “Those are just the major players, of course.”

  “Oh, of course.”

  There was a scrabbling in the corner of the tunnel. Zach made a face.

  “Jesus Christ. A master’s in public policy, and I’m walking around the sewers with rats.”

  Zach kept talking, if for no other reason than to drown out the sou
nd of little feet. “So. You’re a good vampire. How’d that happen?”

  “There is no such thing as a good vampire, Mr. Barrows,” Cade said.

  “But you’re—”

  “Trust me on that.”

  Whatever, Zach thought. Out loud, he tried a different tack. “Have you really been doing this for a hundred and forty years?”

  “Yes.”

  Zach waited. Nothing else.

  “What does that make me, your manservant? Should I pop down to the animal shelter and pick up a cat for dinner?”

  Cade moved.

  One moment a step ahead of Zach, the next a dozen feet away.

  In a flash, Zach realized why people believed vampires could turn to mist.

  Cade faced Zach. In his hand, a rat struggled.

  Cade brought it to his mouth, fangs bared, and snapped his jaws shut. Blood spurted, and he sucked on the writhing animal like a kid with a milk shake.

  Zach tasted lunch at the back of his throat. He swallowed hard.

  Cade tossed the dead rat away and wiped his mouth.

  “I get my own meals,” he said.

  Cade turned and walked down the tunnel again.

  Zach shoved down the bile in his throat. He can’t touch you, Griff said. Push back.

  “What, you don’t offer me some?” he called after Cade. “Nice manners, dude.”

  Cade kept walking, silent. But Zach felt like he’d won a major victory anyway. He hurried to keep up.

  AFTER ANOTHER twenty yards or so, the passage opened into a much wider tunnel—like a freeway underpass. Sitting on a cobblestone floor was an anonymous, late-model government sedan. Zach could have requisitioned it from the White House motor pool.

  It was comforting, with all the deep weirdness he’d already experienced. But he still had to make a comment. “Not exactly an Aston Martin, is it?”

  “We don’t want to attract attention,” Cade said.

  “Does it at least have a smoke screen?”

  “It has specially treated windows that block all UVA and UVB rays, and certain wavelengths of the visible spectrum.”

  “Wow. Sexy.”

  “Get in the car, Mr. Barrows.”

  Inside, Cade waited for Zach to put on his seat belt before he started the engine.

  “You know, you can call me Zach.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Have I done something to offend you?” Zach asked.

  “No,” Cade said. The sedan made its way down the tunnel, headlights on.

  “You just seem like you don’t like me.”

  “I don’t know you.”

  Zach felt compelled to defend himself He thought he’d already been judged and found wanting. “Look, we’re going to be stuck together, so we might as well get along.”

  Cade shook his head ever so slightly. “We might not be stuck with each other long.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “If you’re not careful, you’ll be dead in a matter of days.”

  Zach thought about that for a few seconds. “You’re nothing but rainbows and lollipops, aren’t you?”

  Cade didn’t reply.

  They emerged from a maintenance tunnel for the Metro, not far from the Mall. Cade steered them onto 1-295, toward Baltimore.

  After a few more minutes of nothing but the sound of tires on the road, Zach decided to try wedging open the conversation again.

  “I guess crosses don’t really work on you guys, do they?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well ... that’s just something from the movies, right?”

  “No,” Cade said. “They hurt.”

  “But you’re wearing one. Around your neck.”

  “Yes. I am.”

  “I thought you said they hurt vampires.”

  “I did. They do.”

  Zach waited. Nothing else.

  “Christ,” Zach said, under his breath.

  Cade heard. “Don’t blaspheme. Please.”

  Somehow the “please” made it more irritating.

  “You religious or something?”

  “Yes.”

  Long pause. “But you’re a—”

  “Yes, we established that. Someone has to protect the meek until they can inherit the Earth.”

  “You know, you’re not explaining a whole hell of a lot here.”

  A slight pause. “It will help considerably if you listen the first time,” Cade said.

  “Ah, bite me.” Then Zach remembered who he was talking to. “That was a joke,” he said quickly.

  Cade ignored that. “There’s a whole secret history to this country, Mr. Barrows. Believe me when I say you don’t know the first thing about it.”

  Something in Cade’s tone really rankled Zach. So he decided to ask the question that had been bouncing around in the back of his head all night.

  “In that case, where were you on 9/11?” he asked. “Seems like someone with your talents should have been able to stop a bunch of guys with box cutters.”

  Cade stared at Zach from the driver’s seat, really looking at him for the first time since the Reliquary. In the reflected light from the road, his face looked like a skull.

  VAMPIRE RECALL IS PERFECT. Unlike human memory, every experience—every sight, sound, feeling or smell—is recorded exactly as it happened. There is no circuit breaker, like the one in the human brain that prevents people from recalling pain or severe trauma. For a vampire, the memory of an injury is just as fresh as the actual wound.

  Which is why Cade could still remember the agony of the early morning of September 11, 2001. He had trailed his target into the parking garage of a vacant building.

  Then the man vanished. The next thing he saw was a sword—literally, a flaming sword—fire actually dancing on the blade—pierce the darkness and slam through his gut.

  Something stopped him instantly, and he was pinned. The sword, still burning, rammed right through him and deep into the steel-reinforced concrete pillar behind him.

  His feet dangled from the floor. His blood began to pool under him.

  His target stood a mere five feet away. An impossibly handsome man, his face a mask of contempt. He appeared to consider Cade, to measure the danger he posed against the effort of finishing him off.

  With a smirk, he turned away and walked off. The message was clear: Cade wasn’t worth another moment.

  Cade was trapped. He couldn’t call Griff for help: the sat-phone was useless this far underground. There was only one thing he could do. He grabbed the blade and began pulling.

  It took him nine hours of slicing and burning his hands, writhing and struggling, before he could finally dislodge the sword from the pillar.

  As soon as the blade hit the concrete floor, the flames went out, like they were never there.

  At least another thirty minutes passed before he could gather enough strength to get up and find the stairwell.

  Still bleeding heavily, he made his way to the lobby of the building.

  A TV was at the reception desk, left on by a security guard or whoever had abandoned it.

  The sound was off. A news anchor was talking fast, his face strained. Then a shot of the Manhattan skyline. Smoke. And something missing.

  His phone rang. Griff. Screaming at him, with rage and frustration.

  Cade wasn’t paying attention. He realized what was missing.

  The towers were gone. They’d been gone for hours by then.

  THE LOOK ON CADE’S FACE made Zach very aware that he was trapped in a metal box going seventy miles an hour with a creature that could eat him.

  He wondered if he’d gone too far, and how much it would hurt if he threw himself out of the car.

  Cade’s mouth twitched. He seemed to take pity on Zach.

  “I was hung up,” Cade said.

  The tension drained out of the air between them. Zach said, “Part of the secret history, I guess.”

  “That’s right,” Cade replied.
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  They drove in silence after that.

  SEVEN

  The commonly held belief that vampires are capable of mes- merizing their prey does not appear to be true, at least with Cade. But there is a very real—if not easily measured—psychological and biological response triggered in humans by Cade. Research- ers meeting him for the first time reported extreme anxiety, verging on panic attacks. (The fear response is probably height- ened by the person’s encounter with a species long assumed to be mythical.) This can cause a person to “freeze,” much like a mouse will stop all movement when stalked by a snake. However, like the mouse, this is not because the person is hypnotized. It seems to be a result of an ingrained human reaction to a preda- tory species, rather than any inherent ability on Cade’s part. The response grows weaker upon repeated encounters with Cade, set- tling down eventually to a generalized unease in his presence.

  —BRIEFING BOOK: CODENAME: NIGHTMARE PET

  PORT OF BALTIMORE, BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

  The two ICE agents, a man and a woman, had clearly been waiting for a while. And they were not happy about it.

  Employees of ICE—Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the catchall investigative arm of Homeland Security—tended to be a little surly anyway. After 9/11, every agency in the country got swept into new, terrorist-fighting duties, with the plum assignments going to the big names at the CIA and FBI. Customs got new stationery and all the leftovers. They were responsible for everything from transferring prisoners to building security to searching cargo.

  The last job was the least glamorous, and it was the reason they were here tonight.

  They stood outside the giant metal shipping container, arms crossed, scowling, as Cade and Zach ducked under the crime-scene tape. The male agent moved to intercept them. Like his partner, he was dressed in a dark windbreaker with ICE stenciled in yellow on the back, and had a SIG Sauer P229 9mm in a holster on his hip. He looked like he wanted an excuse to shoot them right there.