Christopher Farnsworth - Nathaniel Cade [01]

by Blood Oath: The President's Vampire

  His mouth was full of saliva. He found it difficult to talk. “Please,” he said. “I’m begging you.”

  Zach laughed. “Begging me? I thought you were the guy in charge, Cade—”

  He didn’t say anything else, or Cade didn’t hear it, because that’s when the seizures started.

  His right hand reached out for the flask, so he drove it into the door of the car instead. The panel crumpled under the impact. The force under all his thoughts shoved its way to the front of his mind, telling him to just pick up the flask and follow the order. He stood in front of it like a man before a tidal wave on the beach, trying desperately to keep his footing in the sand.

  His body thrashed away from him. Pain, overriding his nervous system. Punishment. His legs kicked out, and vaguely, he noticed a fender torn off the driver’s side of the car.

  Mme. Laveau’s voice came back to him, bigger than anything, softer than silk. “By this blood, you are bound,” it told him, “. . . to the orders of the officers appointed by him . . .”

  He screamed, to drown it out. Because even if it left him in ruins, he swore, never again, not one drop, no matter what.

  He thought back to a ship, the last night he had been human. He remembered how he had failed to stand against the darkness. And how easy it would be to just give in to it again.

  No. Never again. No matter what.

  Then he heard another scream, a different voice. The sound of sheer panic. It took him a moment to recognize the voice. To connect it with a name.

  Zach. “—Jesus Christ, Cade, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I take it back, I take the order back—”

  A lawful order, from an officer of the president.

  The pain vanished. The certainty moved back to its normal place, in the back of his mind.

  The gray cleared from his vision, and he noticed he was on the floor. His fingers had carved small furrows in the concrete.

  Zach was next to him, worry and fear on his face.

  Cade had bitten through his lip. He pulled his fangs back in, and shifted to a sitting position. He leaned against the door of the sedan. He didn’t think he could manage standing just yet.

  Zach had never stopped talking. Of course.

  “—I didn’t know, I swear, I mean, holy shit, holy shit, Cade, I’m sorry, I really didn’t know, I just—”

  “You just wanted to find out how far you could push,” Cade said. His voice was a croak, strangely distant in his own ears.

  Zach kneeled down closer to him. The flask was in his hand.

  “Please,” Cade said. “Get that away from me.”

  “What? Oh, this?” Zach opened the flask, and the smell touched Cade like a burn.

  Zach took a quick swig.

  “Whiskey,” he said. “Graduation gift from my dad. I carry it around everywhere. I figured by the time I actually opened it, it would be twelve-year-old Scotch, instead of the cheap crap he put in there.”

  Cade stared at him for a long moment.

  Zach finally looked away. If he wasn’t ashamed, he was doing a good job imitating it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wanted to know.”

  “Now you do,” Cade said.

  Slowly, he got to his feet. He looked at the car. The rear driver’s-side door was wrecked. The window had cracked, but not shattered. The right front fender had been sent across the garage. There were scratches in the paint Cade didn’t remember making, and a fist-shaped dent in the roof

  Zach tried to help him up. With more force than he intended—maybe—Cade shook him off.

  “Cade. Seriously, man. I’m sorry.”

  “Stay here,” Cade said. “Wait for Konrad to leave, then call me. If I don’t answer, call Griff. He’ll tell you how to activate the tracker on my phone.”

  Zach looked worried. “You’re leaving me here? Where are you going?”

  Cade walked over to the side of the garage. They were on the fourth story. The parking structure was open to the air. He breathed in deeply, smelling the night-blooming jasmine, the heavy metals in the smog.

  His hands were still shaking.

  “Let me give you a word of advice,” Cade said to Zach. “I’m not human. Don’t make the mistake of treating me like one.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You remember that magician in Las Vegas? The one who was mauled by the tiger he’d used in his act for years?”

  Zach nodded.

  “You can bring it inside, put it on a leash and dress it up, but a wild animal never really loses the taste for blood,” Cade said. “You might want to consider that before you test me again.”

  Cade leaped over the side, and was gone.

  TWENTY

  In spite of its famous name, Frankenstein Castle is little more than a pile of rubble south of Darmstadt today. But in the 17th century, it was the home of Johann Konrad Dippel. Born in 1673, Konrad eventually entered the seminary, where his teachers and fellow-students alike admired his quick mind. But the adulation may have been too much, combined with his natural arrogance. Konrad was said to question the Catechism at age 9, and while in school, also practiced palmistry, read the Tarot, and discovered what would become his abiding passion, alchemy. His obsession with mortality is evident in the title of his 1693 master’s thesis, De Morte (On Death).

  —Chapman and Ainsworth, Lives of the Alchemists

  Konrad wanted relaxation after this pig’s ear of a day. He pressed his intercom. Laura told him the contractor was just finishing with the new window. He told her to go home. Then he checked his watch. He had some time to kill.

  Konrad moved into the next room, an opulent lounge complete with wet bar, where he would entertain celebrity clients who preferred leather chairs to paper-covered exam tables. He poured himself a drink and checked his reflection in the mirror above the bar.

  No one could say he looked his age. But there was a slight sagging to the jowl he didn’t like, and there, a slight thinning at the crown . . .

  He took out his mobile and called Nikki. She was more than happy to come over to his office, despite the time.

  Nikki was a beautiful girl, raised by adoring parents, pursued by handsome boys in a pain-free suburb of Chicago, where she did modeling for catalogs and believed everyone who told her she should be in movies. Los Angeles came after a degree in communications. She thought she would be an actress, or at least an anchorwoman.

  Two months in, she was working for a “modeling agency” that specialized in providing pretty, available girls in the right situations. She moved into Konrad’s orbit after a party where she’d been hired to dress up the scenery by serving as a human sushi platter. Naked under carefully placed salmon and unagi rolls, she’d smiled at him.

  She came when he called, and always left with money and gifts. She would have slapped anyone who called her a whore.

  Konrad was getting bored with her, but she was reliable.

  Within the hour, she arrived. No one saw her enter, because she used the door that opened into the adjacent alley, another service Konrad of fered his famous patients.

  She entered the lounge, pink and warm from a recent shower, her tight young body bound up in expensive gym clothes. Konrad smiled and pretended to care about her difficulty with the rush-hour traffic.

  She was going on about something else while he stood behind the bar, fixing her a drink. Predictably, she loved icy, frothy concoctions that required him to use the blender.

  That gave him an idea.

  He cut her off mid-sentence and called her behind the bar.

  “How would you like to compete in a little game show?” he asked.

  She came to his side, smiling.

  “Well, I don’t know. Is it network or cable?”

  “It’s right here,” he said, dumping the pink mess out of the blender, revealing the stainless steel blades. “It’s called ‘Trust.’”

  She giggled. It was her response whenever she didn’t know what was going on, like a cat
grooming itself.

  “I will give you—give you—twenty-five thousand dollars. Cash. I will pay your rent for the next three months. I will even throw in the lease on a new Mercedes SL”—and here, he pitched his voice like a TV announcer—“that’s right, a brand-new car.”

  Nikki stood there, her smile going rigid. “What do I have to do?”

  “Almost nothing,” Konrad said, smiling himself now. “You just have to trust me.

  He took her hand in his own and placed it in the blender. It was delicate and small, and fit easily.

  She jerked back, but he held her there. “That’s the game, dear. Do you trust me?”

  She looked into his eyes. He took his hand away. And she kept her hand where it was.

  Konrad nodded. And then he hit the button marked PURÉE.

  Her screams were mixed with the sound of the blades spinning.

  She tried to pull away again, but this time he grabbed her wrist and wouldn’t let go.

  Blood was spattered over both of their faces when he released the button and her wrist, at the same time. She curled into a ball, clutching her mangled fingers to her chest, shrieking.

  Konrad let out a deep sigh, savoring it. His windows were sound-proofed, of course.

  “You win,” he told her.

  “THERE, THERE,” KONRAD SAID, his tone soothing as he escorted her into the exam rooms. “It’s going to be fine.”

  Nikki sniffled, tears running down her face, her mangled hand clutched to her chest. It was bleeding through the bar towel Konrad had wrapped around it.

  “You can really fix it?” she asked, for what seemed like the hundredth time.

  Amazing, he thought. Not even a hint of anger. Just pleading with him to make it better.

  At moments like this, Konrad thought he might as well have been from another world. When he was a boy, everyone was an enemy. His father had taught him that. Everything his father had, he had because he had taken it, and killed anyone who would take it away. Death was everywhere, waiting patiently. Germany was still a collection of principalities devastated by the Thirty Years’ War. His father could remember the armies of mercenaries that scoured the land clean, spreading famine and disease. The greatest treasure of all was life, he would often say. It had to be guarded, constantly.

  Centuries later, Konrad still couldn’t fathom these children who grew up surrounded by abundance, unable to comprehend hunger or desperation. Who put their trust in strangers. Who expected to be safe as they skipped merrily from their homes and playgrounds.

  Girls like Nikki were so alienated from the idea that anyone would hurt them, they couldn’t believe it was real, even when it happened. No matter what their age, they seemed like infants to him.

  “Of course, I’ll fix it,” Konrad said. “You won’t even know the difference when I’m done.”

  It wasn’t entirely untrue.

  Konrad took her back into his private operating room, the one where he did his real work. No patient was ever allowed to see this part of the clinic.

  “Why do you have those animals in cages?” she asked.

  “Testing,” he said. “An unfortunate reality of medicine. We can’t test on humans.”

  “What’s wrong with that one?”

  She shivered. It wasn’t shock, or blood loss. He had to move.

  “Please,” he said. “We have to hurry. Lie down.”

  She hesitated, biting her lip. Her tears had erased most of her makeup. She looked like a child now.

  “I think you did it on purpose,” she said.

  Konrad tried not to sigh or roll his eyes. “No,” he insisted. “It was an accident. My finger slipped. I told you before.”

  “Maybe we should just go to the emergency room,” she said.

  “All they will do is stitch you up,” Konrad said. “I’ll make you beautiful again. Flawless.”

  Nikki waited a moment more, then nodded. She got on the steel table, on her back.

  Konrad took a syringe out of a drawer and shot Nikki up with a combination sedative and paralytic. She began to doze off immediately, her eyes fluttering.

  Konrad went into the corner and took a heavy sheet off a piece of equipment.

  Nikki’s eyes snapped open again when he wheeled the machine into view. Of course by then she couldn’t move.

  Her breathing quickened. “What is that thing?” she asked, struggling to raise her head. “Why can’t I move?”

  “Shhhhh,” he said, stroking her hair. “It will all be over soon.”

  Again, not entirely untrue.

  “What are you doing?” Her voice was little more than a whisper now.

  “I’m sorry, Nikki,” Konrad said. He kissed her forehead. “I need something from you.”

  She tried to scream, but the drugs would barely allow her to breathe. He had to get started. He needed her alive for this procedure.

  Konrad maneuvered the machine into place. It looked like an industrial press mated with a Portuguese man-of-war: tubes unrolled from the main body of the machine, slithering over her body. He flipped a switch and the tentacles came to life, writhing over her skin, seeking purchase. Flat disks at the end crawled into position, on her arms, legs, neck and chest. Then, with a sudden snap, they burrowed in.

  Nikki felt it, despite the drugs. He could tell by the widening of her eyes.

  The machine began to drink. The tendrils began drawing her life, her actual essence, from her, along with all the cells and vital fluids that carried it.

  Nikki’s arm hung limply off the table. The bar towel had come unwrapped, and her blood dripped onto the tile floor.

  The machine kept working. In less than a minute, the blood slowed to a trickle, then stopped completely.

  Konrad watched the dials and monitors as the vials within his machine filled. Another process was already starting, which would concentrate the harvest down into its purest form.

  Konrad had what he needed. But there was still plenty left. He never believed in wasting anything.

  From the center of the tentacles, another hatch opened. The machine sprouted a bouquet of gleaming steel: scalpels, saws and blades, each on its own mechanical arm, arranged in a circle.

  They whirred to life, almost merrily, as they lowered to the body and began slicing.

  The skin, which came off in great strips, could be reduced to slurry and made into collagen filler to plump up sagging body parts for his patients, to restore lips to the fullness of youth, or even inflate a man’s penis to the size he thought he deserved.

  The bone, chipped away and captured by the extended probes, would be used to rebuild noses, chins and jawlines. The meat of the muscle and cartilage could repair ruined joints and tendons. And of course, there was a booming market in organ replacement for those who didn’t want to wait on a transplant list.

  The machine carved it all away and collected every piece, sucking it away to vacuum-sealed jars and plastic containers for freezing.

  Konrad didn’t have to watch. The machine did everything almost by itself now. He’d been at this for years, perfecting its mechanisms. He could have gotten himself a coffee.

  But he enjoyed the show.

  A small light—dignified, restrained, Konrad thought—signaled that the fluid had been processed. While his marvelous machine stored away Nikki’s tissues and organs, he prepared a syringe.

  The vital fluid filled less than 2 cc’s. Still, it was enough. He loaded the life-essence into the needle, then injected it into his veins.

  He shuddered. Felt hair growing on his scalp. Felt skin tighten, the paunch at his belly flatten out.

  Konrad had wrested the secret of eternal life from corpses, stolen from their graves centuries before.

  Eternal youth, however . . . that required something a little . . . fresher.

  Konrad disposed of the needle in a sharps container, put on his jacket and walked to the door. He glanced back at his machine, just before he switched out the lights. The steel table gleamed as if n
othing had ever been there.

  AT ABOUT SEVEN P.M., Zach watched from the sedan as Konrad left the elevator and strolled to his car. The Ferrari sounded like a jet fighter about to take off. Konrad slid out of the parking space as if greased, and the car vanished down the ramp.

  The GPS locator on Zach’s phone began blinking immediately, showing a red dot moving away on a grid, farther from his position.

  The thing was idiot-proof He could follow Konrad all over town if he wanted.

  And really, why shouldn’t he?

  He wasn’t Cade’s sidekick or errand boy. He was an officer of the President of the United States, and he was damn sure going to act like it.

  He started the engine of the sedan—the fender Cade had kicked rattled loudly—and then took off after Konrad.

  ZACH’S CAR HIT THE STREET. A black car waited in a metered space half a block away.

  Its windows were tinted, and from outside, it looked as if it were filled with a liquid darkness, blacker than ink, deeper than oil.

  When Zach turned the corner, the black car merged into traffic and followed.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Research (see “Vampire King” file) indicates most vampires of Cade’s age would be much stronger, and faster, with a range of abilities Cade does not possess. But unlike other vampires, this subject sustains himself with animal blood. He refuses to drink the blood of a human, even though human blood is what his vampiric body is designed mainly to consume and metabolize. (He refuses to drink even transfused human blood, viewing it much the same way an alcoholic views liquor.) If there were some way to overcome the subject’s squeamishness in this regard, there is no telling how effective an agent he might become.

  —BRIEFING BOOK: CODENAME: NIGHTMARE PET

  Neon Hangul characters glowed above the entrance of the place where the AA meeting was held, a run-down auditorium near Koreatown. The lobby was plastered with posters for get-rich-quick seminars, and the interior was filled with rows of salvaged theater seats. Cade took one near the back.