Christopher Farnsworth - Nathaniel Cade [01]

by Blood Oath: The President's Vampire

  “—welcome to sit here, or in the back with your luggage,” Zach heard, the words suddenly synching up with the man’s moving lips.

  The pilot flipped levers. Zach heard a bunch of terms he didn’t understand through the headphones as the men went through the preflight. Stuff about deltas and niners and headers. Zach walked back into the cargo hold again.

  In the back, the maintenance crew ran off the plane quickly, both the sedan and the case strapped down.

  The plane lurched forward. Zach hurried to a seat near Cade’s coffin. He felt like that’s where he belonged.

  Suddenly, the pilot was talking to Zach again. “Hey, you like Zep?”

  “Uh . . . sure,” Zach said.

  He fastened his seat belt as the sounds of Jimmy Page’s guitar began to wail through his headphones.

  Maybe there really are werewolves in the State Department, he thought.

  Then, despite the music and the roar of the engines, Zach fell asleep.

  TWELVE

  With the capture of the specimen by Operative Cade, actual physical examination reveals A. Khorkhoi to be a tentacle, the only visible part of a much larger creature. However, like a starfish, the tentacles are capable of detaching if seized, and can then grow another full-sized version of the creature. This may be the creature’s only method of reproduction, and it is quite laborious and slow The Khorkhoi’s lifespan measures on a scale similar to tortoises and trees. It’s possible the same creature has existed since the time seawater covered the Mongolian desert, splitting off and forming new bodies as years and centuries pass.

  —Notes of Dr. Peterson Sloane, Sanction V Research Group

  THE RELIQUARY, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Griff felt a draft. The papers on the desk in front of him rustled slightly.

  The only way that could have happened was if someone opened the hidden door, which no one else was supposed to know about.

  It shouldn’t have been possible, but he’d been at this too long to waste time on disbelief Instead, he reached below the desk and put his hand around the stock of the modified Protecta Street Sweeper mounted there. The semiautomatic shotgun was designed to clear riots.

  At the bottom of the stairs, he saw curly hair framing the cheerful, open face of a young woman barely into her twenties, almost a girl.

  Tania. Thirty-three years ago, when she was still twenty-one and human, Cade had promised to save her. He’d failed.

  Griff had been there. He saw it all happen. He never knew if she held a grudge against him.

  Griff supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised that she could find the secret entrance to the Reliquary. He suspected Cade had given her access once when he wasn’t around.

  She gave him her usual bright smile, like a cheerleader on meth. Vampires shouldn’t be cute little strawberry blondes, Griff thought. It was just too disturbing.

  “Where is he?” she asked.

  “Nice to see you, too,” Griff said.

  Tania smirked. “Let’s not be tiresome. I want to know where Cade is.”

  “He’s working.”

  “Where?”

  “Classified.”

  “You think I’m going to hurt him?”

  “I don’t know what you want, Tania. All I’m telling you is, he’s not here.”

  “He’s in danger. I need to speak with him. To warn him.”

  “I can take a message.”

  Tania’s smile became a grim line. “Are you going to be difficult about this?”

  He cocked the shotgun’s lever back as quietly as he could. She still heard.

  She looked at him a little more closely. “That thing between your legs won’t stop me,” she said.

  Griff smiled back at her. “Doesn’t mean I can’t—” Griff said, and then couldn’t speak.

  She was behind him, her arm around his windpipe, the cool flesh of her cheek against his ear.

  “Let’s not fight, Griff. You know how Cade hates it when we fight.”

  She added a little pressure. Griff couldn’t breathe. While he still had the strength, he shook his head.

  A little more pressure. Spots danced before his eyes. Then, as suddenly as she was there, she was gone again.

  Griff sucked down a huge lungful of air.

  “Stubborn,” she said, now back across the room. “So damn stubborn. No wonder Cade tolerates you.” She sniffed. “Then again, it’s not like you’d have a lot to lose if I did snap your neck.”

  Griff eyed her warily. “Everyone’s so concerned about my health these days.” He reached for the drawer that contained the holy water—something he should have done the moment he saw her.

  She saw his hand move and took an exaggerated step back.

  “I’m going. No need to be such a nervous Nellie. I guess you’ll just have to live with it if anything happens to Cade.”

  “Cade can take care of himself.”

  “You better hope so.”

  She turned, and was gone up the stairs in a second.

  Griff took out the vial of holy water just in case. It wasn’t like Tania to give up on something she wanted. She was a pain in the ass that way even when she was human. Without the restraints of mortality, she was a feeding frenzy on two legs.

  Then Griff looked down and realized why she’d left without a fight.

  He’d been checking the cargo plane’s flight schedule. It was right there in front of him, on the desk. Along with Cade’s destination: Los Angeles.

  So Cade was going to have someone tagging along.

  For a moment, Griff considered going out after Tania. She wasn’t as unstoppable as she liked to believe. He could have slowed her down. Or, if he didn’t want to put in that much effort, he could have run her latest current aliases through the computer, in case she tried to fly commercial.

  But for some reason, he decided to simply let her go. Maybe it was just his own troubles, but Griff had the feeling something bad was coming. Cade might need someone to watch his back. Sure, she was evil, inhuman and had a body count in the triple digits. But Griff had to admit, Tania was a hell of a lot more capable than Zach.

  THIRTEEN

  Edwards Air Force Base is probably best known from the movie The Right Stuff as the place where Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier in the X-1. Or you might know it from the stock footage of the landing of the first Space Shuttle.

  But the base’s real purpose—at least according to conspiracy theorists—is to test top secret aircraft designs based on technology reverse-engineered from the wreckage of intergalactic spaceships. If you believe the reports, these alien hybrid craft make a stealth bomber look like a balsa-wood glider with a rubber-band propeller . . .

  —Secret America: A Guide to Deep Weirdness in the U.S.

  They landed at Edwards Air Force Base, ninety miles outside of L.A., a couple hours before sunset. Zach woke with a start as the wheels hit the tarmac.

  Cade popped out of his coffin just like the vampires in the movies, standing straight up as they landed. It was, like everything else so far, way creepier to see it in real life.

  Cade got into the car before they opened the cargo doors, and stayed in the passenger seat even as the crew unstrapped the sedan.

  If the pilots noticed the additional passenger, they didn’t say anything.

  Zach got behind the wheel.

  “You sure you don’t want to drive? I don’t know—”

  “I’m sure. Time is wasting. Let’s go, twenty-three skidoo.”

  Zach smiled. “Twenty-three skidoo?”

  Cade might have looked embarrassed. “I said, let’s go.”

  Zach kept smiling. “Whatever you say, Grandpa Munster.”

  He drove down the ramp and off the runway, Cade directing him the whole way.

  They passed the main gate at Edwards—Zach noticed the motto TOWARD THE UNEXPLORED on a sign—and got onto Highway 14, headed south.

  They hit the evening rush hour. The highway looked like a giant parking lot.r />
  Zach felt covered with a crust of grime; he was hungry and half deaf from the flight, and sore from sleeping in the cargo seat.

  He sniffed the air. Something smelled. Zach wondered if vampires stank. Then he took off his jacket and realized the odor was coming from him.

  “Hey, this suit is really getting ripe,” he said to Cade. “I didn’t get a chance to pack a bag. If it’s okay by you, we’ll stop at a mall, get something to wear—”

  “No,” Cade said.

  “What?”

  “You’re not on vacation, Mr. Barrows. We have work.”

  “Dude, I’m really starting to stink.”

  “Yes. I know.”

  Nothing else. Zach thought about what he’d learned earlier.

  “What if I ordered you?” he asked.

  Cade looked at him. “Try it.”

  There was no change in Cade’s tone or facial expression. But somehow, Zach got the unmistakable sensation that the vampire was threatening him.

  “You know what?” Zach said, after a moment. “I’m fine.”

  “Good,” Cade said.

  At least Cade didn’t seem comfortable, either. Despite the shaded windows, he fidgeted in his seat.

  That was unusual. In the short time they’d spent together, Zach had noticed: Cade didn’t move. Most people twitch, they tap their feet, swallow, turn their heads. They move around.

  Cade didn’t. He was perfectly still, until he wasn’t. Then he made nothing but smooth, precise movements. Like the hands on a very expensive watch.

  But he was flinching now.

  “You doing all right?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  Another long silence. Zach tried again.

  “I bet you don’t get out here much. California. Three hundred days of sunshine a year.”

  “I think that’s part of the reason he chose to relocate out here.”

  Konrad. “So you know this guy?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  Zach waited. And waited. Traffic moved like an IV drip.

  “Hey, you know what?”

  Cade looked at him.

  “You’re the strong, silent type, I get that, I’m sure the ladies love it,” Zach said. “And I know you think I’m nothing but a useless douche-nozzle. But I’m here. I am doing this job. So maybe you could talk to me like a frigging grown-up, huh?”

  Cade was silent for the time it took to move forward two car-lengths. Then he started talking.

  “In 1693, an alchemist in Germany named Johann Konrad Dippel was searching for the Elixir of Life—the key to immortality. Even returning the dead to life. He was rumored to be digging up corpses, experimenting on animals. You have to understand, just a few decades before, Galileo was arrested for saying the Earth went around the Sun. This was much, much worse. But he was nobility—a baron—and nobody could touch him.”

  “Diplomatic immunity.”

  “Something like that. The Baron lived a long time, especially in those days. People thought he’d found the Elixir. He went into seclusion. Nobody saw him for years. Then, one night in 1734, one of his creations got loose. The records are spotty, but it’s supposed to have killed dozens before they brought it down. Then you had the mob scene. Another thing the movies got right. Villagers, torches, storming the castle. Only the Baron was gone. Again, there’s not a lot of detail, but they found horrible things, in cages. Strange equipment. They destroyed it all. About a hundred years later, a writer named Mary Shelley was on vacation, visited the village and the castle. Which was still named for the Baron’s hereditary title—Castle Frankenstein.”

  Cade stopped. That was apparently the end. Zach needed a little clarification, however.

  “Wait. You mean this guy is the inspiration for the story. He’s the Baron Frankenstein?”

  Cade nodded.

  “You’re telling me he’s immortal?”

  Cade considered that. “When you come right down to it, ‘immortal’ simply means someone who hasn’t died yet,” he said. “If you were to, say, pull out his spine and show it to him, he’d die like anyone else.”

  Zach shuddered. Maybe it was the A/C. Maybe it was Cade’s tone. “So, there’s some kind of history between you two?”

  “Yes,” Cade said. “Too much.”

  FOURTEEN

  1970, PORT HARCOURT PROVINCE,

  SOUTHERN NIGERIA DISPUTED TERRITORY

  OF REPUBLIC OF BIAFRA

  Cade walked ahead of Agent Griffin through the deserted streets. The town was behind enemy lines, and anyone who could manage to leave had fled. They’d heard what the Nigerian soldiers did to prisoners.

  The war was close to an end. Everyone knew it. The Nigerians had run through the breakaway republic like knives through a piece of cloth. The Nigerians had MiGs and Kalashnikovs supplied by the Soviets, and money from the British to buy anything else. The Biafran army—what was left of it—went into the field with thirty rounds of ammunition and bolt-action rifles.

  There were some who couldn’t run, of course. Cade saw the child watching them, hollow-eyed and wasted, from an open doorway.

  No food or medical supplies had been allowed inside Biafra for almost six months. Even Red Cross planes were fired upon. Millions of people were left scrounging in the bush for food.

  They weren’t very good at it. The Biafrans were shopkeepers, doctors, teachers and lawyers. They weren’t prepared to play Tarzan, any more than the Duluth Chamber of Commerce.

  The whole country was starving to death.

  A second later, Griffin saw the child, too.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said.

  “We’ve talked about that, Agent Griffin,” Cade said. Griffin had been his liaison with the president for almost nine months now, fresh from the FBI, and before that, two tours of covert operations with the army. He was a strapping young man who used his brain like his muscles: apply enough force, problem gets solved. The only real change he’d made since taking the job was to let his hair grow. The shaggy sideburns he wore now reminded Cade of the last time they were fashionable, just before 1900.

  “Sorry, I forgot your delicate sensibilities for a second,” Griffin said. “The kid looks like a skeleton.”

  “You were in Vietnam,” Cade said.

  “So what? This is different,” Griffin shot back.

  Cade said nothing.

  “You disagree, I take it?”

  “Nothing humans do looks very different to me,” Cade said.

  They walked in silence to the town center after that.

  The United States was officially neutral in the Nigerian conflict. Nixon had no desire to get into another proxy battle with the Reds while still struggling to extricate America from Vietnam.

  So Biafra was dying.

  But Cade and Griffin went in anyway—taken by sub off the coast, then escorted by a navy team to the shoreline under cover of darkness.

  They’d heard reports of something going on in the captured Biafran territory—something they couldn’t stay neutral about.

  The town was the last outpost of the Biafran government. Only their contact waited for them, sitting behind the wheel of a jeep parked in the center of the main square.

  They came closer. The man was asleep. Air strikes had hit the town just a few hours earlier.

  Griffin tapped the man on the shoulder. His eyes flew open. He saw their faces—their white faces—and relaxed, as much as he could.

  “Apologies,” he mumbled, wiping the exhaustion from his eyes. Like everyone else they had seen so far, he spoke English beautifully. It was the official language of Biafra. Cade wondered, for a moment, if that was meant to engender sympathy from America. If so, it didn’t work.

  The man sat up, extended his hand toward Cade. “My name is Joseph—”

  He stopped abruptly and drew his hand back as if scalded.

  Cade saw it in his eyes. Joseph knew. Somehow, he knew what Cade was.

  Cade didn’t care. “Where is he?” he demande
d.

  Joseph simply shook his head and got out of the jeep. He backed away slowly, never taking his eyes off Cade.

  Griffin tried to get his attention. “Joseph, I’m Griff. We’re here to help.”

  Joseph shook his head again. “No.” He turned and began walking quickly away from them.

  Griffin sighed. “Bring him back,” he said.

  Cade shifted, ever so slightly. Joseph was ten feet away—less than a hop for Cade. Suddenly he was in front of the Biafran man, who stopped, his shoulders sagging.

  “You plan to kill me?” he asked.

  “Not why we’re here,” Cade said.

  “You called us, Joseph,” Griffin reminded him, as he crossed the distance between them. “You know what’s going on out there. You comfortable with letting it continue?”

  Joseph glared back at Griffin. “You were comfortable with letting this happen to my country,” he said. “You let all of this happen.”

  “Not our job,” Griffin said.

  Joseph’s shoulders sagged even lower. For a moment, he looked ready to sleep, right there, on his feet. “No,” he said. “Of course not.”

  He walked back toward the jeep without Cade or Griffin forcing him. He appeared resigned as he started the engine.

  “Get in,” he said. “I will take you there.”

  Cade sat in the back. Griffin took the front seat.

  “How did you know about Cade?” Griffin asked.

  “We’re closer to the truth here.”

  Cade understood what he meant. Griffin didn’t. “You some kind of witch doctor?” he asked.

  Joseph gave him a weak smile. “I have a degree in economics,” he said. “I was the deputy minister of finance.”

  They drove for an hour, the open country surrounding them on all sides. The jeep ran without a hiccup. Even without food, the Biafrans had gasoline. Their nation sat over a vast pool of oil, and as the war ground on, the refineries never stopped.

  Griffin checked his watch. Sunrise would be coming in six hours.