Zach Barrows. Twenty-five years old. Volunteered on the current president’s senate campaign before he could vote, rewarded with a staff job after college. Then he ran three states in the election, delivering them comfortably to his boss.

But no military experience, no time in law enforcement. Griff doubted that Zach had ever held a gun. For him, battles were fought with words and papers and backroom deals.

Ours is not to reason why, Griff reminded himself.

The kid looked away from the window, where the familiar sights of Washington, D.C., were scrolling past, and smiled at Griff.

Griff recognized the smile—a politician’s grin, with the kind of animated delight reserved only for total strangers within its radius. A smile designed to win friends and influence people, so they could be used and later discarded.

“So,” he said. “Where we headed?”

Griff didn’t smile back. “We’ll be there soon,” he said.

“You can’t tell me where we’re going?” His voice was full of disbelief “Information containment,” Griff said. “We tell you what you need to know when you need to know it.”

The kid smirked. That was actually how Griff thought of him when the president introduced them in the Oval Office: 150-odd pounds of smirk in a suit. He leaned forward. Here it comes, Griff thought.

“Look, Agent . . . Griffin, was it?” Zach said.

“Griff is fine.”

A more patronizing variety of the earlier smile. “Agent Griffin. I know you were probably wearing polyester and protesting Nixon before I was born. But I was the deputy director for White House affairs, and I’m not even thirty yet. Washingtonian magazine called me the next Karl Rove.”

Griff kept his face bland. “Impressive.”

“Thank you. So what say you quit with the spy stuff and just tell me what I want to know. I’m not here to play games.”

Griff considered that for a moment.

“The way I heard it,” he said, “you’re here because the Secret Service caught you with the president’s nineteen-year-old daughter in the Lincoln Bedroom.”

He took a second to savor the look on Zach’s face. Then added: “Doing something that was definitely not for the purpose of procreation.”

Zach opened his mouth to say something, then closed it and looked out the window instead.

“Don’t worry, Zach. You’ll find out what’s going on soon enough.”

Zach didn’t respond. Just kept sulking.

Griff took a small amount of pity on him, thinking of his own introduction to the job, almost forty years earlier.

“And then you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

The limo stopped.

“We’re here,” Griff said, and got out.

“I’ve done the tour before,” he said.

The older man didn’t turn around, just kept walking toward the wall of the Castle, the oldest part of the Smithsonian Institution.

“We’re not doing the regular tour,” Griff said.

Zach was used to being the youngest guy in any room. It came with the title of boy wonder. Old guys, especially in politics, didn’t want to listen to some whippersnapper with a bunch of newfangled ideas. So he’d been forced to come up with a variety of strategies for dealing with them, from flattery to outright insult. Then, once the target was unbalanced, Zach could take charge.

None of that worked with this guy. Zach couldn’t seem to throw “Griff” off his stride. From what he’d seen so far, Zach figured the older man had to be near retirement, probably FBI, or maybe Secret Service—he moved with an easy, physical confidence despite the spare tire on his big frame—but that was all he’d been able to glean so far. He simply couldn’t get an angle on the guy.

It was really starting to piss him off.

For a moment, Zach thought of the only time he was ever in trouble with the law, when a cop found him and his buddies in a stolen car. He was sixteen. Zach was a fast talker even then and spun everything he had at the cop. The cop listened to the whole story, calmly and patiently.

Then he arrested them anyway.

Griff reminded him a lot of that cop.

Zach watched as Griff pressed an otherwise ordinary looking brick.

It sank a half-inch into the wall, and an old mechanism, created by master stonecutters over a century before, locked into place.

A large slab of the wall lifted and revealed a hidden staircase, worn with use. It didn’t make a sound.

Zach didn’t even try to hold back his laughter. Griff looked back.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me. A secret entrance? Seriously?”

Griff just pointed to the stairs. “Watch your step.”

Zach snorted again, but entered the passage. “When do I get my decoder ring?”

No reply.

Thirteen steps later—Zach counted—they were inside another chamber. The lights came up automatically, once they crossed the threshold.

The carved-stone space looked, at first glance, like the museum above. The walls were lined with rows and rows of books; old, leather-bound volumes. Tables and display cases were arranged in the wide, open space between.

But these exhibits were definitely not for the general public.

Wicked, piranha-like teeth grinned at Zach from a man-sized fish head floating in a large jar. An old brass plaque identified it as SKELETAL REMAINS FROM INNSMOUTH, MASS., 1936. Pieces of cast-iron armor, like a robot made from an old woodstove, were mounted under a sign reading BRAINERD’S STEAM MAN, c. 1865. A large beetle, colored bright gold. Something blood-red and slimy in a glass case, called Allghoi Khorkhoi. Under another case sat what looked like an ordinary log: WOOD FROM THE “DEVIL. TREE,” BRITISH GUIANA, 1897.

Other things. A crystal skull. Stone tablets. Carved idols. A mummified monkey’s paw.

Zach’s attention was drawn, finally, to the coffin at the back of the room. There was no card or plaque on that.

Zach didn’t know how long he’d been gaping at the exhibits when he heard Griff speak up behind him.

“Welcome to the Reliquary, Zach,” Griff said.

Zach managed to close his mouth before he turned around, put the necessary sarcasm into his voice.

“Nice place. All that’s missing is a giant penny.”

“This isn’t a joke, Zach.”

“You’re telling me all this stuff is real?”

Griff nodded.

Zach took a second to process that. Somehow, he knew the older man was telling the truth. There was a logical part of his brain that didn’t want to accept it, but the things in here didn’t look fake. They had the same undeniable, everyday reality of a chair or table. Looking at them, you just knew.

But he asked the next question anyway, to satisfy that nagging voice of reason.

“So that”—Zach pointed—“is a real alien corpse from Roswell, then?”

Griff looked over. “That one’s from Dulce, actually.”

“Of course it is.”

This wasn’t what Zach expected when the president called him into the Oval Office. Sure, the president probably knew about Zach’s fumbled, drunken encounter with his daughter—but Christ, it’s not like Zach was the first guy there, and she’d barely spoken to him since. Zach was a valuable part of the team. He felt sure he was going to get a promotion, maybe even chief of staff, and get that much closer to his ultimate goal. . . .

Instead, he was told he was getting a transfer. The president said something about trusting him with national security, and shook his hand. Then Griff took him to the limo.

To be perfectly honest, Zach had a little trouble listening after he didn’t hear the words “chief of staff.”

Now he was in a basement, looking at the castoffs from a traveling freak show. Somewhere along the line, he’d screwed up. Big-time.

“What am I doing here?” he asked quietly, mainly to himself.

Griff answered him anyway.

“You’re about to learn one of the nation’s oldest and most important secrets, Zach. There’s no paper trail on this—none that leaves this room anyway,” he said.

“If this is such a big secret, then why would you hold on to all this? First thing I learned in politics: you always shred the documents.”

“It’s more of a trophy room than anything else. He needs to keep trophies. He’s a hunter. You should always remember that.”

Zach gave him a long look.

“You know, just because you put words together in a series doesn’t mean you’re actually explaining anything. I can tell you like playing Yoda to my young Skywalker, but could you just tell me what the shit is going on here?”

Griff nodded, and leaned his bulk against a table.

“What I’m about to tell you is known only to the president, a few members of his cabinet, myself—and now you.”

Zach made a face. “I’m honored.”

Griff sighed heavily and continued.

“In 1867, a young man was found on a whaling vessel that had run aground outside Boston Harbor. He had apparently killed several of his crewmates. The corpses were bloodless, except the one that the young man held in his arms. He was still drinking from that one.

“They called him a vampire. He was convicted, and sentenced to be executed. But President Andrew Johnson pardoned him—spared his life. He lived out the rest of his days in an insane asylum, until 1897, when he died. At least, that was the official story.

“In fact, the young man really was a vampire. And Johnson only pardoned him so he would work for the United States. For the past hundred and forty years, it’s been his job to defend this nation against the threats from the Other Side.”

Zach tried not to laugh. “A presidential vampire, huh? Is he a Democrat or a Republican?”

“That’s a bit like asking a shark if it wants red or white with its meal.”

“Right. So why do you need me?”

“You’re the vampire’s new liaison for the office of the president. You will convey the president’s orders and instructions, provide support and intelligence, and work with the vampire in all aspects of his operations.”

Griff stopped. Zach waited for the punch line. But there wasn’t one.

“Bullshit,” Zach said. “I have White House clearance and I never heard anything about this.”

“That was only for what you needed to know out in the daylight world. This is something else entirely.”

“You really expect me to believe we’ve got a vampire on a leash, and we can just send him after terrorists and spies whenever we want?”

For the first time all night, Griff laughed. He seemed genuinely amused, and that pissed Zach off even more.

“What’s so funny?”

“There are worse things in this world than al-Qaeda and North Korea, Zach. And they are just waiting for their chance at us.”

He gestured at the room, all the objects in it.

“These artifacts—they’re all relics of their attempts to break out of the shadows and into the daylight. Into our lives.

“Humanity will not survive that. They’re an infection, and they spread like Ebola. Whatever it takes, we have to keep that border between light and dark. Or we lose. Everything. Every one of us will die.

“Someone has to be there to hold the line. That’s what we do. We fight every incursion they make. They invade, we repel. Forget the War on Terror, Zach. This is the War on Horror. And you’ve just been drafted.”

The room seemed very quiet now to Zach. He asked the only question that made sense.

“What if I don’t want the job?”

“Not an option, I’m afraid. There’s no quitting, no transfer. You will do this until you retire. Or you get killed. Whichever comes first.”

Zach wasn’t sure which part of the news was making his head spin—the knowledge that vampires were real, or that his career had just come to a screeching halt.

For a moment, Zach was struck with the unfairness of it all. He’d spent his whole life working his way closer to the center of power in America. He’d given up his weekends in high school to hand out flyers and hang campaign signs. Forgot what sleep was like in a half-dozen campaigns. Ate crap food and worked for less than minimum wage, when his college friends were pulling down six figures at investment firms, all so he could get to the White House.

It was all going according to plan. Now this.

“And if I refuse?”

Griff’s expression didn’t change. “You really think you can just walk away? With all you’ve seen? With all you’re going to see?”

“Is that a threat? Are you threatening me? Listen up, old man, because there’s no way in hell—”

“It’s not his job to be threatening, actually.”

For a split second, Zach didn’t know where the words had come from.

Then he turned and faced someone standing directly behind him. As if from nowhere.

“It’s mine,” he said, and smiled.

He was taller than Zach, wearing ragged black fatigues. He looked young. And pale. Very, very pale.

He stood there, perfectly calm.

Too calm, even. Unnaturally still. Almost the kind of stillness you’d only find in a casket. But just standing there.

So Zach couldn’t figure out why his whole mind narrowed down to one thought, burned in capital letters across his brain: RUN.

Zach felt a stirring of instinct honed when humans huddled at the edges of campfires, terrified of the noises in the dark. He suddenly knew he was in the presence of something that stalked his kind, and had for thousands of years. Something inhuman. A predator.

There is a reason humans are genetically programmed to fear the dark. Zach was looking at it.

Then Zach saw the fangs at the edges of the smile.

He began to shake. He couldn’t get his legs to move.

He tried to speak. Nothing came out.

Something warm and wet began running down his thigh.

Both he and the vampire—because that’s what it was, standing right there in front of him, no doubt left anywhere in Zach—looked down.

A small puddle formed around Zach’s shoe as his bladder emptied.

The vampire’s smile vanished. He looked over Zach’s shoulder and spoke to Griff.

“So this is the new boy?”

“Zach Barrows, this is Nathaniel Cade,” Griff said. “The president’s vampire.”

Zach still couldn’t move. Cade looked down at him again.

“Perhaps you should show him where we keep the mop,” Cade said.

He walked around Zach. Zach’s head swiveled to follow.

Cade paused to set a metal case on one of the tables. Then he dropped something that clattered on the wood, next to the case. It looked like the bone from some kind of animal—like a dog. Or a wolf. Lined with teeth and fur, still bloody in some places.

“Take care of that, please,” he said.

Cade headed straight for the coffin and yanked it open.

Griff tried to get the vampire’s attention. “Cade, we should talk about—”

“Later,” Cade said, and slammed the coffin lid shut.

Griff shrugged, in a sort of apology, to Zach.

“He’s been in the cargo hold of a C-130 for the past fourteen hours,” Griff said. “Makes him a little cranky.”

Zach stood there, his pant leg dripping. His mouth was open, but for once in his life, he had nothing to say.