The President's Vampire

by Christopher Farnsworth

  Prador shot a guilty look at Graves. Graves shrugged, as if to say, It’s your show.

  “It’s not just the renditions,” Prador said. “There’s something else. We think we know who has infiltrated A/A.”

  “Who?”

  Again, that hesitation. Another glance between Prador and Graves, as if deciding who got to break the bad news.

  Cade didn’t say a word. He moved an inch toward Prador, though, and that was enough to break through the reluctance.

  “You and Mr. Cade already know them, Zach,” Prador said. “I believe you called them the Shadow Company.”

  ZACH WAS STILL UNDER the restrictions of information containment, so he could never reveal too many secrets if he was captured by an enemy, or if he went rogue. That meant there were a lot of things he didn’t know yet. But he knew about the Shadow Company.

  It was like the evil twin of the U.S. intelligence apparatus. Nestled like a tumor inside every government agency, but primarily working out of the CIA, the Shadow Company did the things that could never be brought out into the light of day. Assassinations, coups, plots, drug-running—all the stuff no one in elected office wanted to know about.

  Since the Company operated in the same netherworld that Cade did, no one admitted it existed. There was no way to hold anyone accountable for its actions. Its members worked in cells, much like terrorists, with limited contact with their superiors. It ran its own operations, moved money through black accounts and answered to no one.

  And while it claimed to work in the best interests of the United States, it was so good at keeping secrets that nobody could say who headed the organization, or even what its ultimate goal was—not even most of the people who worked for it.

  One thing was certain: it had forged alliances with the things Cade was supposed to stop and kill. It had made a deal with the devil. Literally.

  Zach had encountered the Company on his first assignment with Cade. A small cell of operatives, led by a sociopathic blonde named Helen Holt, tried to kill Cade with fifty pounds of C4 and, later, assassinate the president. They failed, but only just barely. Along the way, Zach had almost died in the bomb attempt before being tortured for hours by one of the Company’s operatives.

  So yeah, Zach had issues with anything involving the Company.

  “WHAT DO WE DO NOW?” Zach said.

  “No chance you’ll let Colonel Graves handle this?” Prador asked.

  Cade simply gave Prador a look. Zach, however, laughed out loud.

  “You tell us there’s an extinction-level threat in the hands of the Shadow Company, and you want us to go home and let the senior-citizen special handle it? Not a chance. It’s his company that’s involved. For all we know, he’s working with them.”

  Graves spoke up. “I have a suggestion.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t want to hear it,” Zach snapped.

  “We work together.”

  “That’s . . . surprisingly reasonable,” Zach said.

  “You’ll need our assistance and resources. And frankly, we’ll need Cade’s experience at dealing with this kind of threat.”

  Zach hesitated. “You’re asking us to trust you.”

  “At least as much as we’re trusting you.”

  “We don’t need your help,” Cade said.

  Prador sighed with impatience. “Enough,” he said. “Almost a year ago, this organization very nearly killed the president. It knows things that no one outside the White House is supposed to know. And we still don’t have the first clue about it. You’re supposed to protect the president, Cade. So I’m telling you—I’m ordering you—to work with Colonel Graves on this. As far as you’re concerned, an order from him is an order from me. Is that clear?” Prador glared at Cade.

  Cade, however, looked at Zach. Again, the barest movement of his head. This time, a nod.

  It had all the hallmarks of a good compromise: it didn’t look like it was going to make anyone happy.

  Zach nodded back.

  Cade said to Prador, “I’ll follow your orders.”

  IT ONLY TOOK THEM a moment to decide how to proceed. Cade and Graves would go into the field and investigate the trail of the shipment; they would try to find out where it originated. They’d also try to deal with any other outbreaks of Snakeheads—the name Zach had given them—before they could spread their infection.

  Zach, meanwhile, would stay in D.C. and work with some of Graves’s analysts, trying to figure out where the Shadow Company had managed to infiltrate Archer/Andrews, and find a cure for the Snakehead virus.

  They were about to leave when Graves asked Zach a question.

  “Just out of curiosity, what led you to the pirates in the first place?”

  Maybe they were working together now, but for Zach, it wasn’t even a close call. He wasn’t about to reveal their sources on this one.

  “We had a report of nonhuman activity in the area. It was related to something that happened on the Ugandan border a year or so back.”

  “What kind of a report?”

  “Tracks,” Zach said. “There were nonhuman tracks found and photographed.”

  Graves looked aghast.

  “Tracks? You flew halfway across the planet and slaughtered a bunch of people on a boat for tracks? You know those can be faked by a ten-year-old with cardboard on his sneakers, right?”

  “But they weren’t, were they?”

  Zach and Cade went to the door. Prador offered his hand to Zach before he left.

  “Sorry about all this. Just goes to show we’re all on the same side, right? Fighting the same battles.”

  Zach smiled at that. “You ought to catch the fight live sometime. It’s a little different than the view from behind a desk.”

  Prador gave Zach a smile that was barely room temperature. “Always nice to see you, Zach.”

  PRADOR AND GRAVES didn’t speak for several minutes after Cade and Zach left. They knew just how good the vampire’s hearing was.

  They also didn’t have a lot to say to each other.

  A moment later, the door opened and Vice President Lester Wyman entered.

  Wyman hadn’t been around the White House lately. Although he had an office in the West Wing, relations between the VP and the president had been strained ever since the terrorist attack on the White House. Once the remodeling was done, Wyman spent most of his time in his offices in the Eisenhower building, next door.

  Nobody missed him much.

  “You fucking idiots,” Wyman said. He’d been listening the entire time on the White House’s recording system.

  “We did our best,” Prador said. “You heard Cade. He’s not going to leave it alone.”

  “Sloppy,” Wyman said. “And disappointing. I expected better from you, Will.”

  A half dozen good replies went through Prador’s head. Maybe you should have told me what was happening in Africa. Maybe you should have kept me in the loop. Maybe you shouldn’t come crying to me for help after things go down the toilet. Maybe you should stand in front of a fucking vampire who’s threatening, not very subtly, to tear your heart out.

  Out loud, all he said was, “I didn’t see any way around it. They already know too much.”

  “You weren’t terribly impressive, either,” Wyman said, turning on Graves. “I thought this was your specialty.”

  “Shut up,” Graves said, his voice as stark as a slap across the face. “Take that tone with me again and you’ll be pissing blood for a week.”

  Wyman’s face flushed and he took a step back. “You said they’d never find out.”

  Graves sighed. “No. I said I’d handle them. And I will.”

  “Then what are you going to do about it?” Wyman demanded.

  Graves stood, and Wyman cringed again. “I’m just curious. That’s all.”

  The unamused little smile returned to Graves’s face. “Think of it this way. We’ve got them close. We can monitor their investigation. Lead them where we want them to go. We would have h
ad to deal with them sooner or later. Now we deal with them sooner. The end result is the same.”

  Wyman stewed in silence for a moment. Graves waited him out. Prador knew Graves would get what he wanted. He had them both by the short hairs.

  “All right,” Wyman said. “But I don’t like this.”

  “I suppose we’ll just have to live with that.”

  He crossed to the door, clearly done with this meeting.

  “It’s time to show some sack, boys,” Graves said. “They came to us. When you think about it, it’s almost a gift.”

  As soon as Graves was gone, Wyman stood up straight again. He pointed at Prador. “I want to make sure you understand what’s at stake here. This isn’t just your career. This isn’t getting hauled in front of Congress to testify, then moving on to a book deal and a talk show. You screw this up, and the next time you see your name in print it’ll be in an obituary.”

  Prador just nodded. Wyman glared a few more seconds, and then left as well.

  Alone once more, Prador opened his desk drawer and grabbed the first bottle he found. He popped it open, but nothing came out. He checked the label. Out of refills on the Xanax. He’d have to call his doctor again. And while he was at it, he needed more Klonopin, and Ativan. He was almost out of Zoloft, too.

  This job was getting more stressful every day.

  FOUR

  MYTH #8: There is a subterranean archive center underneath the National Mall.

  FACT: The Smithsonian’s storage facilities are mostly located in Suitland, Maryland.

  BACKSTORY: The notion that a labyrinthine network of storage space exists beneath the Smithsonian museums, under the National Mall, may have started with Gore Vidal’s novel The Smithsonian Institution and was most recently popularized by the movie Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian Unfortunately, no such storage facility is to be found.... There is also a tunnel that connects the Castle with the Museum of Natural History. Built in 1909, it is technically large enough to walk through; however, a person has to contend with cramped spaces, rats and roaches.

  —Jesse Rhodes, “Urban Legends about the Smithsonian,” Smithsonian website, September 1, 2009

  THE RELIQUARY, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Zach entered through the secret passage, into the brick-walled space under the Smithsonian’s Castle. He passed the stuffed corpses of creatures seen only in amateur videos or horror movies, artifacts from incidents deliberately left out of the history books, and weapons and tools that weren’t supposed to exist.

  Cade paused to drop the Snakehead skull into a tank filled with genetically modified Dermestes maculatus, a flesh-eating beetle. The ordinary beetles grew to less than half an inch in length. These variants were three inches long, with sharp, clacking jaws. They went to work immediately, chewing away the skin from the skull so it could be preserved with all the other relics: an “alien” corpse from Dulce, a gremlin skin, a Yeti pelt, the jawbone of a werewolf.

  That was the purpose of the Reliquary: to house all the evidence of the nation’s hidden struggle against supernatural threats. That, and to provide a home for its biggest secret: Cade.

  Zach used to be amazed by the things kept inside the hidden chamber. Now he walked in like he was going into a convenience store.

  The Allghoi Khorkhoi hissed at him from behind its glass case. He opened the small fridge in the corner and took out a pack of hot dogs. Quickly, he dumped them into the worm’s terrarium and slammed the lid shut.

  Somehow, saving the world ought to be more glamorous than this, he thought.

  “You think we should do this?”

  “I don’t think we have much choice,” Cade said.

  “Fucking Prador. He set us up. Wouldn’t be surprised if this was exactly what he wanted.”

  “Why are you so afraid of him?”

  Zach stopped. Cade could do that. See underneath what you were saying to what you meant. And he had no tact, which meant he didn’t avoid saying it out loud.

  “I’m not scared of him.”

  “You don’t trust him.”

  “He’s the president’s chief of staff, Cade. I trust him as much as I trust anyone else in the White House.”

  “You didn’t reveal our source to him. You told him about footprints instead.”

  “I wasn’t lying about the footprints. I just omitted the rest. It never hurts to keep a couple things in reserve. Just in case.”

  “Then why did this meeting provoke you so much?”

  Because that was supposed to be my job, Zach thought, aware of how whiny and childish it sounded, even inside his head. He’d started working in politics before he could vote, and in the last election, ran the campaigns in three states for the president. He was a young political operator with a bright future. Everyone said so.

  Most of the time, he could tell himself he’d gotten over it. He knew that this job was more important. He’d learned there were forces in the world hostile to the very idea of human existence, and he helped Cade kill them. It was a lot more direct than his political career. He’d saved the nation a dozen times so far—or at least, he’d helped. That had to be more important.

  But there were times he was reminded of what he’d left behind. Like tonight.

  “I’m not scared of him,” Zach said again. “But speaking of scared, why wasn’t he afraid of you? You scare everyone.”

  “He’s too geed up to notice. Got a skinful of mahoska in him.”

  Zach sighed. Cade had been around a long time. As a result, his slang spanned decades. Antiquated terms could come out of nowhere. It got to the point where civilians would notice, and Zach couldn’t have Cade becoming too noticeable. So Zach had taken the rare measure (for him) of giving Cade a standing order.

  “Cade, what have we said about using slang?”

  Cade grimaced. He spoke mechanically, as if forced: “ ‘ It embarrasses both me and the person forced to hear it.’ ”

  “And . . . ?”

  Cade frowned at him, but continued: “ ‘And we try to avoid that kind of humiliation whenever we can.’ ”

  Zach smiled. It always cheered him up a little when he got to pierce Cade’s cast-iron dignity.

  “What did you mean by whatever you said there?”

  “All I said was, I suspect it had something to do with medications he takes.”

  “Prador’s on drugs?”

  “Antidepressants, anti-anxiety drugs and tranquilizers,” Cade said. “He’s under a tremendous amount of pressure, and he’s used drugs to cut off almost all of his body’s signals. I could smell it in his sweat.”

  “I never get tired of hearing what you can smell.”

  “My point is, he is no threat,” Cade said. “I thought you would want to know.”

  That was the way Cade saw the world, Zach knew. Threats and prey. The change wasn’t just physical; it went deep into the brain as well, restructuring basic responses. It was the hardest thing to remember, working with Cade. He might look like we do, but he’s nothing like us. Not anymore.

  As powerful as Cade was, there were many things he couldn’t do. For instance, he couldn’t take a step outside at noon without burning to death. But that was only the most obvious handicap Cade faced in moving through the human world. On a fundamental level, people knew he didn’t belong. Simple human interaction was often beyond him. He was a predator. He didn’t know how to talk to prey.

  That was where Zach came in. He relayed the president’s orders and did the human things that Cade couldn’t. Zach knew that emotions weren’t exactly Cade’s strong suit. When he became a vampire, he was changed on every level—including the way he saw humans. His long life had only separated him further from ordinary people. It was a constant struggle for him to remain in touch with what it meant to feel like one of the people he protected.

  Sometimes, like now, it was as if he was running a human emulation program through that computer-quick mind. Zach reminded himself that Cade was trying his best to relate to
him as an equal—even as a friend.

  It didn’t make him any less annoying, however.

  “Thanks, Cade. That’s a big help.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Zach began gathering papers into his bag. But Cade wasn’t finished.

  “Does your reaction to Prador have anything to do with your lack of sex?”

  Zach was completely thrown for a moment. If he’d been drinking coffee, he would have done a spit-take, just like in a sitcom.

  “We are not having this conversation,” he said.

  Cade didn’t even have the decency to imitate a look of embarrassment. “Your frustration is affecting your work, Zach. It’s been almost a year.”

  I could have gone into the Peace Corps, Zach thought. Or worked at the U.N. There was that internship with Greenpeace.

  “Since you’ve had sex, I mean.”

  “I know what you meant,” Zach snapped. “We don’t all have vampire girlfriends who drop by every few weeks for a little late-night cryptaction. You want to talk about affecting the job? Isn’t that a security risk?”

  Cade’s face was stonier than usual. Tania—a female vampire, one who shared a long history with him—was a sore spot. She still fed on humans, for starters.

  Zach usually avoided the topic for fear of where that conversation would end. Now he was annoyed, so he jabbed without thinking.

  Cade wouldn’t take the bait. “Don’t change the subject,” he said. “You have a problem. We need to address it.”

  “Look, Cade. It’s not exactly a babe magnet, this job. I don’t meet many nice single girls. Flesh-eating zombies, yes. Girls, not so much.”

  Cade hesitated. He seemed to search for the right words. “I know this is hard for you to hear. But you cannot have a normal life. That’s gone. The sooner you reconcile yourself to that fact, the better.”

  “No.” Zach shook his head. “That was Griff’s problem. Not mine. I’m not giving up on my life just because he gave up on his.”