The President's Vampire

by Christopher Farnsworth

  “Maybe. Maybe not,” he conceded. “Part of Griff is gone. But he left behind plenty. I’m the part that gets left behind when everything good goes away. And trust me, kid: he left a lot of hate for you. He always thought you were worthless and weak.”

  Zach’s legs trembled, but he stood his ground.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  The shadows gathered tightly around Zach again. He could barely see Griff now.

  “That’s why your father split, Zach.”

  “I dealt with all this in therapy. Try again.”

  “Really?” Griff asked. “That’s not how I hear it.”

  He stepped back completely into the shadows. His voice kept droning on, however.

  “Your mother knew. Look at how she tried to protect you. Tried to shelter you from the truth of the world. Where you could never compete on your own. And you failed her, too.”

  Not fair, Zach thought. “No. I was there for her.”

  “She died alone.”

  “I only left the room for a moment. I had a call. We were in the middle of a campaign.”

  “Do you want to see it? Since you missed it before.”

  Griff’s voice had changed. It became higher, softer and raspier. Zach knew it instantly. He closed his eyes.

  And then he was there. Both the younger version of him, getting up and walking away from the hospital bed, phone already to his ear. Zach remembered the boredom and irritation he felt back then. The need to take a shower, to get back to his apartment and to get some work done. The election was in two weeks, and the voice-mail was piling up.

  His mother reached after him, her eyes suddenly open. It was the end. The doctors said she’d felt no pain.

  They’d lied.

  Without his hand there, she’d had nothing to hold on to. She could hear him talking in the hallway on his phone, too loud, disturbing other patients despite all the signs that warned against using cell phones in the hospital.

  The one time she really needed him. Her hand fell. Her body spasmed, and the life went out of her as she fell into the dark. All alone. Her last word was his name. He wasn’t there to hear it. He left her alone.

  Zach screamed so hard he tore something in his throat, screamed until his lungs ached, and still it did not release a drop of the despair he felt filling him, drowning his soul.

  EVENTUALLY, ZACH STOPPED SCREAMING.

  From the shadows, Zach’s mother stepped forward. She still wore her hospital gown, the IV trailing behind her, hollowed out by the chemicals and the pain.

  “You’re glad I’m dead,” she said. “You wanted it to happen. You were happy to be finished with the inconvenience.”

  Zach was sobbing, fat tears flowing down his cheeks.

  “No, Mom. Please don’t say that.”

  “You failed me. That’s all you’ve ever done. Failed in every way. You never loved me.”

  “Mom. Please. I love you. I’d do anything for you.”

  “It’s too late. I’m dead.”

  “No. Please. I’ll do anything.”

  “There’s only one thing you can do, Zach. You have to die. Can you do that for me? Are you ready to die?”

  FORTY

  Part of this resilience we can attribute to the fact that Cade was more durable as a human than most of us in the modern era can understand. He was born in a time without vaccines, antibiotics or even decent sanitation and hygiene. He survived malnutrition and poverty in his childhood to become a sailor at a time when the physical demands of life on the seas were unbelievably grueling. After all that, he lived through an attack from what had to be a King Vampire.

  —Dr. William Kavanaugh, Sanction V research group

  LEVEL FIVE

  When Cade exited the lab, he found Bell backed up against the wall by Tania.

  “She says she can get us out of here,” Tania said, not looking at him. “I’m pretty sure she’s better as a snack.”

  Bell trembled, her chin up in the air as she tried to push herself even further back into the wall.

  “Don’t kill her,” Cade found himself saying.

  Bell and Tania both looked at him with some surprise.

  “Not yet,” Cade added.

  Tania stepped back, frowning.

  “It’s done?” Cade asked her.

  She gave him a withering look.

  “I only wanted to know.”

  Cade was about to say something else when he heard the scream. So did Tania. Even Bell heard it faintly, though it was at the far end of the Site, muted by tons of concrete and steel.

  Zach.

  Cade had never heard anything so terrible from him. Not ever.

  He looked at Bell, who was horrified, but not by any fear of the unknown.

  She had the look of someone who knew exactly what was happening to the person doing that screaming, and exactly how bad it was.

  “Tell me,” Cade growled at her.

  “Hewitt and Reynolds,” she said. “Oh God, they must still be here.”

  “Who?”

  “The Shadowmen. They have Zach. They must be . . .” She swallowed over a catch in her throat. “They’re playing with him.”

  FORTY-ONE

  SHADOW PEOPLE: A creature or entity that shares many of the characteristics of a ghost, but also seems to have a palpable physical presence, these strange beings appear to be shadows without bodies to cast them. Witnesses report seeing a variety of types, including a man wearing an old-fashioned hat, others wearing cloaks or trench coats, and some with both. These shadows are nearly always malevolent. Rumors of a similar shadow creature preying on criminals in the 1930s and 1940s are probably urban legends, or an attempt to “domesticate” a truly frightening—and still unexplained—phenomenon.

  —Cole Daniels, Monsterpaedia

  LEVEL FIVE

  Cade walked down the corridor. He couldn’t see a thing.

  That in itself was unusual. His eyes were sensitive to the slightest amounts of light or heat. But it was as if the darkness lay over everything in the cells like a great blanket, smothering any possible detail.

  He listened, instead.

  He was unarmed.

  He’d given his pack to Tania and told her to take Bell and go into the access shaft. If he and Zach didn’t show up at the elevator, she would know what to do.

  He’d considered taking one of the guns with him, but Bell only shook her head.

  “You can’t shoot them. They’re barely even there.”

  He didn’t have time to ask what that meant.

  He kept listening, moving down the corridor, his mind forming a picture from the sounds in the darkness.

  There. Through the metal of a cell door locked open. The sound of a heartbeat. Zach’s heartbeat.

  Faint. And getting fainter.

  Cade stepped over the threshold.

  A single, half-dead fluorescent tube flickered in the ceiling overhead. The murky light washed everything blue-gray in a small patch at the center of the cell.

  Zach huddled on the floor, nearly catatonic. His body temperature had dropped. Cade’s senses barely registered Zach’s breathing. From the rustle of Zach’s clothes on the floor, Cade could hear him twitching—but slowly. Even his involuntary muscle movements were failing.

  Cade had to get him out of here.

  Again, he hesitated.

  Someone else was in there with him. Even if he couldn’t see him. Or scent him.

  The entire place seemed soaked in dread. All the terrors of the night were coiled in the corners, waiting to spring. It would have been quite frightening if Cade hadn’t been one of those terrors himself.

  They wanted him inside. Zach was bait.

  Cade knew it. He stepped over the threshold anyway.

  He saw something, out of the corner of his eye. He moved, barely in time. He saw a daggerlike shadow retreat back into the dark.

  Immediately, behind him, another stabbing attack. A blade—a wooden blade—appeared from nowhere in the
dark. It sliced at him. He turned and caught it in his arm, rather than his back.

  It was pulled from his flesh with a wet kiss of a noise, and vanished again.

  He whirled and sent a kick back at his attacker, but nothing was there. If it weren’t for the cut, there’d be no evidence of any attacker at all.

  Interesting.

  There was still enough fresh blood in his system for the wound to close.

  Behind him. The slightest scraping noise, a shoe touching the pavement, broke him from his thoughts.

  He jumped this time, not waiting for it. A blade made of shadow sliced through the air where his head had been.

  If he hadn’t moved, decapitation.

  The follow-up attack came from behind, as he expected. This time he was ready for it, and avoided another cut from another razor-edged shadow.

  What had Graves made here? They were not as fast as he was—not in thought or reflex, anyway. But they vanished without a trace. He spun around in a complete circle, trying desperately to see something. Anything.

  He cranked his reflexes to their limit again. Everything in the room slowed. The darkness thickened, and this time, he could see the silhouette of a dagger, the edge looming like a battleship in the sea. Standing behind it was an outline, a man in a dark trench coat and old-fashioned fedora.

  It was just a shadow. Only darkness, given form.

  The shadow of the dagger raised over Zach’s head.

  Cade had no time for other options. He threw himself into the shadow’s path.

  It skidded along his ribs. If he had not leaned the right way, redirecting the force of the thrust, it would have pierced his heart.

  They could have used flamethrowers and burned him. It would have been more effective. But all things in the dark hated and feared the light. It was instinctive. Fire was man’s first and oldest weapon against the Other Side. That told Cade something about what they were. They didn’t use the same equipment as the A/A soldiers, either because they didn’t have it or because they feared it like he did.

  Of course, they didn’t need DU rounds or white phosphorus. They could just keep picking at him until they got lucky and got his heart. They could end him with a dollar’s worth of surveying stakes from Home Depot.

  He hunched over Zach, trying to guard his chest and protect Zach at the same time.

  He heard something.

  Laughter. From the dark, from everywhere at once.

  They were laughing at him. They took a moment to enjoy his helplessness. They loved being stronger. You could hear it in the echoes off the walls.

  That’s how he knew for certain the Shadowmen were still partially human, whatever else they were.

  That gave him something to work with.

  He’d fought an invisible man once. This was different. That was no contest: he still breathed, still left footprints and still bled when Cade got to him. These Shadowmen didn’t just drop out of sight; they dropped completely out of the world.

  As unbelievable as it was, they were somehow crossing back and forth between this world and the Other Side. They jumped over the border at will.

  Cade marshaled everything he knew about the Other Side, trying to find a strategy.

  He’d seen ghosts, and they were random and unstoppable and unfathomable. They belonged fully to the Other Side, and they only pushed through with great effort. He could outlast ghosts.

  These two, however, didn’t appear to be slowing down.

  But nothing human could survive on the Other Side. The things over there were starved for life. Anything real, anything alive—even as little as a drop of blood—was like a light, drawing a billion buzzing insects. They would swarm for even a small taste of the living. And they would take any chance they could to breach the vital world again.

  They must be protected somehow, Cade realized. As invisible over there as they were over here.

  The strain must have been enormous. The Other Side didn’t let go of live meat that easily.

  He could use that.

  For that moment when they stepped into reality, they were vulnerable. The question was, how would he know when they were about to step through?

  They count on being untouchable, Cade thought. Let’s test that theory.

  Cade quit moving. Stood at the center of the dark space in the room, perfectly still, guarding Zach. He waited.

  He didn’t see the Shadowmen emerge from the dark behind him. He seemed like a perfect target.

  Cade felt it. Somewhere, in the quiet place where his soul used to be, he felt the first step of darkness entering this world. Like a silk nightdress hitting the floor. The Other Side opened behind him, and the Shadowmen coalesced and stepped through.

  They were still human, and humans were predictable. Give them a defenseless target and they can’t help themselves.

  They came at him from both sides, so there would be no escape.

  They thought they had him. They stepped in for the kill, wanting to make it intimate, wanting to see it up close—

  And Cade lashed out, plunging his hands into their shadows, and grabbed. He grabbed hard.

  He connected with something warm amid all the dark and cold. Bodies, struggling under his hands. In his right, he had a man by the neck. In his left, he had the other man by the arm. Warm and unmistakably human.

  They immediately retreated back into the shadows, but Cade would not let go. He felt true cold, for the first time since he had changed. The blackness bubbled around his hands, colder than liquid nitrogen, slicker than oil, but he managed to keep his grip.

  He got them just as they were about to emerge into the real world, trapped between this reality and the Other Side.

  They were stuck.

  Cade stood between the two Shadowmen as they struggled, one man in his right hand, the other in his left.

  They tried to get back into the dark, where they would be safe. But Cade had managed to get hold of their core—the part that was still human. That was still fragile. They squirmed and panicked. Cade smirked and tightened his grasp. He felt the bones snap under his left hand. First the radius, then the ulna.

  The cold soaked him to the bone, but he didn’t let go.

  The men thrashed and pulled. On his right hand, Cade’s fingers kept slipping—he didn’t have as good a hold. He felt skin shredding. At the same time, his left hand began to slide off the arm of the other one. The bones were being crushed to powder; it was like trying to hold a greasy sock.

  The Other Side had let him in, he figured, because he already belonged to it. His vampire side was connected with the darkness there. It was almost like coming home.

  Getting out again was another matter altogether.

  The cold crept up his arm, into his shoulder, his chest. Stealing whatever heat was left from the blood he still had inside.

  The Shadowmen kept pulling.

  Cade pulled with everything he had, dragging them almost back into the real world.

  He could see them, panic in their faces, behind the thinnest veil of darkness.

  He almost had them out. But it wasn’t enough. He was about to lose his grip.

  So he let them go.

  But not before scratching them both with his thumbnails, deep enough to open skin and capillaries. Deep enough to spill blood.

  Instinctively, both of the Shadowmen retreated, back to the Other Side.

  Mistake.

  Fresh blood. Like ringing a dinner bell on the Other Side.

  Screaming began from the darkness.

  Both of them tried to escape. Their outlines reappeared, but it was as if they were drowning in quicksand.

  The Shadowmen began to condense, to sputter out, like a bad TV picture.

  The first one almost made it back. The shadow opened once more, and a man’s face appeared, his eyes wide with terror. He seemed to be up to his ears in a pool of ink. He was still screaming, but no sound escaped his lips.

  The darkness reached up and covered over him, almost g
ently. Then it dribbled away, running off into itself, as if a plug had been pulled. Cade could have sworn he heard a burp as it vanished completely.

  The other Shadowman made it all the way.

  The darkness spat, and a man hit the floor. The shadows behind him closed up and whispered away.

  He could have been a thousand years old. Skin like parchment. Bones jutting from strings of dried-out muscle. The dark stuck to him, here and there. Filled his mouth, clung to his teeth.

  He looked at Cade once. Cade saw nothing in his eyes. The man’s mind was broken. The trip back had been too much.

  He coughed, giggled once, then curled into a fetal position and quietly died.

  Cade picked up Zach. His pulse was stronger already. Whatever nightmares were tormenting him, they died with the Shadowmen.

  FORTY-TWO

  That’s probably the other, more important reason for Cade’s unusual strength and endurance. Since the vampiric transformation is accomplished by lateral genetic transmission (through retroviral bodies in the saliva or other fluids), it’s probable that the traits of the carrier can be transmitted to the infected, as well. In other words, Cade most likely inherited a set of vampire genes from a much purer, much stronger source than most of his kind. Honed by centuries of constant struggle, these genes turned Cade into as close a copy of that King Vampire as they could manage.

  —Dr. William Kavanaugh, Sanction V research group

  Zach was unconscious, exhaustion and his head wound combining to put him down. Cade looked him over, opened his eyes to examine his pupils. He was concussed. Cade had to get him awake.

  He sat Zach against the wall.

  “Zach,” he said. “Zach, wake up.”

  His breathing was steady, but he didn’t open his eyes. Cade slapped him lightly on the face.

  “Zach. You have to wake up.”

  Nothing. Cade smacked him again.