“Thank you for coming here tonight,” Dwicke said. He leaned over his desk and took the Undersecretary’s hand. “May I offer you a drink? I have freshly squeezed orange and pineapple juice.”
“I’m not much of a juice drinker,” the woman replied.
“Maybe you’re the Undersecretary for the wrong Cabinet,” Dwicke said which made the woman smile warmly at him.
“We all have our vices, for good or bad,” she said.
Dwicke returned her smile and reluctantly let go of her hand. “Please sit down.” He reached forward and pressed the intercom. “See that my meeting is not interrupted. The Undersecretary requires my complete attention.”
“Yes Sir.”
“I appreciate that, Mister Vice President.”
Dwicke continued to smile. The Undersecretary appeared to get better looking with each passing minute: a welcomed side effect of the excellent scotch. She was pretty with curly brown hair and dark brown eyes. He had seen pictures of her before, but the photos just didn’t do her justice. In person she was a looker.
“I want you to know that I’ve always considered health issues to be the highest priority,” Dwicke said. “I’m always on guard against things harmful to my health. Maybe you’ve heard that I’ve completed three marathons in the last year.”
“That’s amazing Mister Vice President. I fully enjoy a man who is careful about what he puts in his body.” She then leaned forward and slowly looked him over. “From what I can see you’re in great physical shape. I’m sure your wife is very pleased.”
“And you are very gracious. Perhaps after our meeting you will join me for dinner. Mrs. Dwicke is on the west coast for some charity work and I don’t like to eat alone.”
“I’d love to have dinner with you.”
“Excellent. Now what do you want to talk about?” Dwicke reached for a row of buttons on his desk and pressed one. The lock on the main door to his office silently slid in place.
The woman raised an eyebrow. “I must be honest with you. I’m finding it hard to concentrate . . . you have a very persuasive charm.”
“Madam Undersecretary, if I didn’t know any better I would take that as an invitation.”
“Mister Vice President,” she said, coyly. “We’ve only just met. What if your assistant comes through the door?”
“There’s nothing to worry about Madam, I can lock the door from right here.” Dwicke pretended to push a button on the desk panel.
“Now what?”
“Please . . . come over to my side of the desk. Let me take a good look at you.”
“How can I say no?”
Dwicke watched his guest stand up and walk around the large, man-sized safe next to his desk.
“That’s a big safe.”
“It’s fireproof and completely water tight,” Dwicke proudly said. “Just an extra precaution to keep my office paperwork secure.”
The Undersecretary stopped right in front of him. “So, do you like what you see?”
“My eyes are playing tricks on me,” Dwicke said. “I’d swear you’re more beautiful now then when you walked through the door.”
The Undersecretary slid out of her red pumps. “You don’t mind me getting comfortable do you?”
“Please do.”
She smiled as she sat on the edge of the Vice President’s desk and placed her foot between his thighs.
Dwicke looked down at her toes. “Hmm, you have a perfect pedicure.”
“I’m glad you like it. I can tell that you appreciate women.”
“How can you tell that?” Dwicke gently picked up her foot. He began massaging the arch.
“Your thoughts are clear to me,” she said, and gave him a quick wink. “Mm, that does feel good.”
“I hope I’m not being too forward,” Dwicke said.
“Of course not.”
“I like that you’re not frightened. Women can be unsure of themselves around me.”
“That’s because you’re so handsome.”
Dwicke chuckled and suddenly stopped rubbing her foot. “Look at that . . . what an unusual tattoo,” he said. “It must have been painful getting it there.”
“I got it when I was very young.”
Dwicke held up her slender foot. “I can’t place it, but I’m sure I’ve seen this tattoo before.”
“It’s pretty ordinary compared to some of the things people get these days.”
“There’s nothing about you that’s ordinary.”
The Undersecretary allowed her foot to slide from his hands. “Close your eyes and don’t open them until I tell you.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see.”
Dwicke closed his eyes. He listened as she removed her blouse followed by the snap of a bra clasp. A quick gasp escaped his lips as the Undersecretary straddled his legs and sat down on his lap.
“Oh . . . can I take a peek now?”
“Go ahead.”
Dwicke found himself looking into the loveliest eyes he had ever seen. It didn’t immediately register that the Undersecretary had somehow transformed, and now possessed long dark hair that ended in wavy curls. Even her face had changed. She had become an exotic beauty. Her perfect breasts were just inches from his face. She reached out and gently cradled his head in her hands.
“I’ve never . . . I don’t understand why I’m doing this.” Dwicke nervously laughed. “I—I can’t seem to help myself.”
“That’s because you can’t.”
“Oh, really?” Dwicke let out a pleasured sigh. “I love a confident woman.”
The Undersecretary’s eyes began to glow with a soft, pink light, but Dwicke still didn’t understand his predicament. Then her fangs extended below her lip and she opened her mouth and smiled. A knowing fear slowly gripped the Vice President. He tried to get her off, his attempts became more and more frantic, but he couldn’t match her strength.
“You look surprised.”
“Nooooo—please—please don’t do this.”
“Why?”
“I—I know you . . . Agent Villena.”
Dwicke felt a sudden presence in his mind.
If you try and scream for help this will be much worse.
“Pleeease, I don’t want to die like this,” Dwicke pleaded.
“I can’t stop now.”
“I have a wife—my family . . . .”
“There are worse ways to die.”
“Worse than—than being eaten alive—by you?”
Calida listened for a moment as Dwicke gave a prayer to Jesus. “I’ve heard this same prayer hundreds of times. It never goes answered. Can you tell me why?”
“It—it does get answered, if your faith is strong enough.”
Calida tilted her head and looked past him. “I have faith that the Sun will rise each day and bring me death unless I hide . . . and I pray each time I shut my eyes that night will come for me . . . and my prayer is always answered.” Calida leaned forward and gently touched his cheek with her tongue. “My faith is stronger than yours.”
“Pleeease,” Dwicke continued to beg. “I’ll do anything—I can do anything—for you.”
Calida paused for a moment and frowned as she appeared to be thinking about what to do.
Dwicke held his breath and watched the vampire lick her lips.
“Sorry, but I’m really hungry.”
The 46th Vice President of the United States of America squeezed his eyes hard and felt the horrific pain of having long fangs driven deep into his neck. As his life began to slip away the last thing he knew was the strange sensation of Calida swallowing his blood.
The car pulled into an empty space along the National Mall. From the darkness behind the trees a woman walked across the sidewalk, opened the door, and got inside.
“What did you find out?”
Calida looked over at Ryan who had a gloved hand on the steering wheel. “His mind was easy to read . . . they’ve sent a team to Valencia to find the stone.”
“Stupid foo
ls . . . what that stone might do to a healthy person is completely unknown.” Ryan silently stared out the windshield for a moment. Then he glanced over at Calida who had squirmed into a pair of jeans and put on an oversized sweatshirt. “Making another you might be the least of our worries.”
“I love it when you go sweet on me,” she said and began brushing her hair.
Ryan put the car in gear and drove away from the Mall. “So what do we do?”
“What can we do?”
“I’ll have to think about it, I guess. But right now I’m hungry.”
“I’m not.”
Ryan looked over at Calida with wide-open eyes. “Please tell me you didn’t.”
“He invited me for dinner.”
“He asked you to have dinner with him . . . not to have him for dinner.”
“It doesn’t mean the same thing?”
“Calida, this is serious.”
“What was I supposed to do? I was hungry.”
“Jesus, we have to get out of the city.”
“Calm down. I tidied up afterwards.”
“How did you do that?”
Calida gave Ryan a smug look. “There was this big safe sitting in his office and when I finished with him . . . I stuffed him inside.”
“Oh my God!” Ryan said. “I remember seeing that safe while watching Jon Stewart . . . but it wasn’t locked?”
“There were numbers in his mind that he kept repeating while we talked . . . before. I guessed it was the combination.”
“Aren’t you clever?”
“Anyway, I don’t think it will leak. He told me the safe was waterproof.” Calida leaned her head against Ryan’s shoulder and for several moments listened to the rain splatter on the car. “So, are we going to Spain?”
Ryan buried his fingers in Calida’s hair and absently stroked her head. “The Vice President . . . I can’t believe you just ate the Vice President.”
Calida twisted onto her back so that her head was in Ryan’s lap and she placed a hand over her round stomach. “You know what’s kind of weird about it?”
“You’re kidding.”
“It’s just that he really didn’t taste that bad, and I’m not just talking about his blood.”
“I’m going be sick for the rest of my life.”
“I’m serious, he was a runner and in great shape. His blood was surprisingly good and his—“
“Look, I’m glad you enjoyed your dinner, but I’m hungry too, and I was thinking about getting a burger.”
Calida looked up at her lover and sweetly smiled. “I guess human is an acquired taste. But you didn’t answer my question. Are we going to Spain?”
Ryan let out a long sigh. “Yeah, I guess we are, but first I need that burger.”
The car with the two lovers merged onto the Beltway and disappeared into the rainy night.
Memorandum
11 October 2009
To: Government Accountability Office
Chelton Breisbook, Comptroller General
Mr. Breisbook:
During the spring of 2009 the National Archives, at the request of the 44th President of the United States, performed an historical review of certain unusual events that took place during the previous administration’s last year in office.
The trigger for the review occurred on April 27, 2009 when Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari, during a press conference, announced to the world that Pakistani intelligence believed al-Qaeda’s leader, the Sheikh, was dead. However, Zardari also acknowledged there was no evidence to support this claim.
“The Americans tell me they don’t know, and they are much more equipped than us to trace him,” Zardari told reporters.
He went on to state: “But there is no evidence, you cannot take that as a fact. We are between facts and fiction.”
When pressed by reporters on why he felt the need to give such an ambiguous statement to the world’s media Zardari merely said: “The question is whether he is alive or dead. There is no trace of him.”
The American response to this was immediate but short: “The U.S. has no information regarding the whereabouts of the Sheikh,” a U.S. counterterrorism official said.
Many found it curious that the U.S. official wouldn’t speculate as to why Zardari made his statements, or why Zardari felt compelled to announce that his intelligence agencies didn’t have evidence of the Sheikh’s death.
After Zardari’s press conference, and the curious response by the U.S. government, a special meeting was held between the White House and the Secretary of Homeland Security. During that meeting the Director of a secret U.S. Intelligence Agency under the control of The Department, informed the meeting’s attendees that the Sheikh was in fact dead. He also acknowledged that the vice president of the previous administration had died of an unnatural cause, and finally, he briefed everyone on a matter of critical national importance that was developing in Valencia, Spain.
Following that meeting an unnamed source began to leak information to the press concerning the true cause of the former Vice President’s death and further stated that a link existed between the VP’s death and the Sheikh’s. The source claimed it wasn’t a sudden heart attack that killed the VP as had been officially announced, but that while at his official home in Washington D.C., he had actually been assassinated by someone, or something that could change its appearance, was deadly efficient, and according to the autopsy report, very hungry and partial to grey matter.
These remarkable events that took place during the spring of 2008 are only now coming to light as the new administration tries to gather all of the facts regarding this matter. The Archive, by suggestion from the White House, has been asked to keep the file open as additional facts are uncovered.
Question: Would the GAO like to comment at this time?
Jonathon Marksen
Historian and Director, National Archives
American Blood: A Vampire's Story Page 33
