FOUR
Subject: Cade is functionally immortal. That is to
say, his cells do not undergo regular cell death, or even aging or
degradation, as long as the subject has a regular supply of fresh
blood. Cell repairs are nearly perfect—any cells destroyed by an
outside force (see Appendix: “Subject’s Resistance to Knife and
Bullet Wounds”) are replaced with indistinguishable copies. Subject
can heal from any wound short of massive bodily trauma in a matter
of minutes, although his rate of recovery will vary depending on
the amount of fresh blood in his system.
—BRIEFING BOOK: CODENAME: NIGHTMARE PET (Eyes
Only/Classified/Above Top Secret per Executive Order
13292)
Something landed near Zach’s head, jarring
him awake.
He was facedown in the briefing book, his cheek
resting in a lake of his own drool.
He looked around blearily, realized he was sitting
at one of the tables in the basement of the Smithsonian.
And he wasn’t wearing his own pants.
“Oh good,” Zach said. “It wasn’t all just a
wonderful dream.”
He’d fallen asleep reading the briefing book. It
was hundreds of pages, and they were written like the owner’s
manual for a microwave. He noticed the volume he’d been given was
number five. He had a lot more to look forward to.
Griff loomed above him, holding the gym bag he’d
thumped down on the table a second before.
“Brought you some clothes. You should move some
things here from your apartment.
Zach yawned and stood, then had to hike up the
sweatpants—stenciled PROP. SMITHSONIAN INST.—that Griff had given
him after he’d soiled himself last night.
He checked his watch. Almost noon. “Hey,” he said.
“Why am I up? I thought he slept during the day.”
“It’s only midnight.”
Zach checked his watch again. It wasn’t noon. There
was no natural light down here. He yawned again.
Griff looked at the drool-soaked page of the book
on the table. “How far did you get in that?”
“I skimmed it.”
“Right,” Griff said. “Here’s the Cliffs Notes
version. Cade can operate during the day, just not in direct
sunlight. He’s awake for days at a time. You’ll have to sleep when
you can.”
“What if he gets hungry? Am I a convenient
snack-pack?”
“He doesn’t feed on humans.”
“Seriously?”
Griff nodded.
“Why not?”
“Ask him.”
“Terrific.”
Zach began looking through the gym bag.
Jeans. T-shirts. Sweatshirt. Cross-trainers. Griff
had gone through his bottom drawer, where he kept his rarely used
workout gear.
“What is this?”
“You’re going out in the field. You need to be able
to move.”
“You’re wearing a suit.”
“Old habits. I was FBI. We weren’t allowed to wear
anything else.”
“What am I, the gardener? I’ve worn a suit to work
every day since my first campaign, when I was fourteen. I’m not
about to change that.”
Griff shrugged. “Fair enough. Your pants ought to
be dry by now.”
He handed Zach a mug of coffee.
Zach took it, and his sweatpants nearly fell to his
knees again.
He could have sworn Griff was trying not to laugh.
Then he was distracted by the mobile phone Griff pulled from his
suit jacket.
It looked like a touch-screen model, only slightly
thicker, with a jutting antenna at the top.
“I know you wanted a decoder ring, but I got you
this instead,” Griff said as he handed it to Zach.
“Satellite-enabled, GPS tracking system, Internet access, camera,
motion detector, emergency beacon, and a few other options you get
to use after you’ve got more experience.”
“Nice,” Zach said. “Who pays for all this stuff?
I’ve never seen an appropriation bill for vampires.”
“The White House dentist’s budget is surprisingly
large.”
“Funny.” Zach kept fiddling with the phone. “Does
this play MP3s?”
“Just learn to use it. It can save your
life.”
“Do I get a gun, too?”
“Maybe when you hit puberty.”
Zach hiked up his pants with as much dignity as he
could manage. If this was his job now, he was going to make the
best showing possible. “Is there someplace I can shower? Or do you
expect me to hose off outside?”
Griff pointed toward a wooden door on the opposite
side of the room. “Help yourself.”
Zach grunted and headed through the door.
GRIFF CHECKED HIS WATCH and busied himself taking
a waxed-paper carton—the size of a half-gallon container of
milk—out of a small fridge under the coffeemaker. He shook it, then
placed it in the microwave. When the timer beeped, he took it out
and placed it on the nearest table.
Two minutes later, the coffin opened and Cade
emerged, completely alert. His eyes made a quick scan of the room,
as they did every time he woke up. He saw the carton, but ignored
it.
Instead, he stripped out of his ragged military
fatigues and stood on the cold stone floor naked. Griff had gotten
used to this: Cade didn’t care about a lot of human niceties
anymore.
Cade changed into a cheap button-down shirt and
black suit hanging from a nearby hook. It was the kind of
off-the-rack special any bureaucrat would buy on a government
salary. The only difference was Cade didn’t wear a tie. Too many
times, someone or something tried to use it to pull his head off.
So now he looked like an accountant on casual Friday.
Except for the cross. Made of old, tarnished metal,
it rested on a leather cord in the hollow of Cade’s throat. No
matter what else Cade wore, he never removed the cross. If it
weren’t so rough and weathered, it might be something a rock star
would wear. Instead, it looked more like the museum pieces
upstairs.
Once dressed, Cade continued to ignore the carton.
He stepped over to a computer terminal, the only concession to the
twenty-first century in the entire place.
Unlike Griff, Cade had no problem with computers.
Given time, he could learn to use any tool. He had to, if his kind
was going to hunt an endlessly inventive race of tool-using apes.
Anything a man could build, he had to be able to master. Anything a
man could learn, he had to learn it faster.
It might surprise some people that Griff looked at
Cade as the product of evolution. But he’d watched Cade, and to
him, it was obvious: he was looking at an apex predator. He was
human once, but that was a long time ago. Now he just carried the
shape, which enabled him to move among his prey. Everything else
was engineered to make him—and all the creatures like him—the most
efficient hunter of Homo sapiens possible. What they called, in a
different age, a man-eater.
But it wasn’t a matter of belief or disbelief for
him. Griff had been with Cade as he fought—and killed—demons,
vampires, werewolves, invisible men, aliens, creatures that had no
names, and even one thing that called itself a god.
Most of those things had ended up on any number of
government autopsy slabs, and he’d seen the results. And whatever
else they were, they were solid. They existed in this world. And
whatever put them together had to use the same toolbox of physics
and biology that governed every other creature on the planet.
Sure, some of those hard-and-fast rules of science
got bent pretty badly. There was a lot Griff didn’t understand, and
a lot the government’s teams of eggheads couldn’t explain. Like
Cade’s aversion to crosses and other religious symbols. Or the
magic that bound Cade as securely as iron to the will of the
president.
But no one had ever been able to explain quantum
mechanics to Griff’s satisfaction, either. It didn’t make the
science wrong. He just didn’t have the math.
Some things you just had to take on faith.
“You send the boy home already?” Cade asked, typing
away.
“He’s in the shower,” Griff said. “Getting ready
for his first day on the job.”
“Did you warn him?” The shower facilities had been
built in what was once a lockup for prisoners who needed to be kept
in secret. Some of them seemed to like the place enough to remain
after their deaths. Occasionally the shower ran red with blood, and
skeletal faces appeared in the mirrors, behind the steam.
“It didn’t come up,” Griff said.
Cade’s mouth twitched. You had to watch for it; it
was usually the only way you knew he was amused. His fingers flew
over the keys, entering his report on the Kosovo incident.
“You locked up the artifact?” he asked.
“It’s secure,” Griff said. He pointed to the
carton. “You should eat something.”
“I’m fine.”
“When was the last time you fed?”
“Few days ago.”
“Cade. Eat.”
“Is that an order?” Cade’s tone was sharp.
Griff sighed. “It’s advice.”
Cade turned away from the computer, and picked up
the container and opened it. It was filled with dark red blood,
still steaming from the microwave. A mixture of cow and pig, from
livestock kept in a CDC testing facility near McLean,
Virginia.
Cade drained it in one long gulp, not spilling a
drop.
The effect was immediate. He stood taller. His
muscles corded and flexed, and his pale skin flushed before the
blood settled down into him.
“Thank you,” Cade said, and threw the carton into
the trash from across the room, without looking. He went back to
the keyboard.
“So. What do you think of the kid?”
“Bit of an oilcan,” Cade said.
Griff waited. Sometimes Cade used expressions long
out of date. It was a side effect of fourteen decades of slang
crammed into his head, and slowing down his thought processes for
normal conversation.
But it took only a second for him to realize he’d
slipped. “A fake. A politician.”
“Maybe the president figures you need that more
than you need a field agent. That’s probably why they sent him over
earlier than expected.”
Then, with a deep breath, Griff decided to tell
him.
“And the cancer’s back.”
Cade’s fingers hesitated on the keyboard for a
fraction of a second.
“I know,” he said, the clatter of the typing
picking up again.
He knew. Of course he knew. He probably knew before
Griff did. But he didn’t say anything; he was waiting for Griff to
let him in on the secret. His version of courtesy. Of
friendship.
“What did the doctors say?” Cade asked.
“Inoperable.”
Cade looked back down at the computer and finished
entering the case into the log. He probably knew that, too.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
Everyone around him dies, Griff thought. Sooner or
later. But not him.
Griff worried what would happen once he was
gone.
Griff was the closest thing Cade had to a friend.
Over thirty years, he had only seen the gulf widen between Cade and
everyone else. Without some kind of connection, Cade might forget
what it meant to be human completely.
Griff wondered how dangerous that might be.
And remembered that whatever happened, he wouldn’t
be around to see it.
THE KID CAME out of the bathroom, breaking up what
could have been an awkward moment. His hair was still wet, and he
was trying to smooth the wrinkles out of his shirt.
He froze when he saw Cade at the computer.
Griff stood up and guided Zach over to the
table.
“Relax,” he said. “He won’t bite.”
“You’re. Not. Funny.” Zach was breathing
hard.
“Show him your papers.”
“What?” Zach was shaking. He wouldn’t take his eyes
off Cade. Griff couldn’t really blame him—he remembered the first
time he’d encountered Cade, and he’d had a lot more training, with
physical combat under his belt. It was a little like waking up and
finding a cobra coiled on the next pillow.
Cade was doing his best to ignore this, to spare
Zach any further embarrassment. Still, they had work to do, so
Griff carefully reached into the jacket pocket of Zach’s suit and
took out the envelope there.
“Show him your orders from the president,” Griff
told Zach. “Go on. Do it.”
Zach took the envelope back from Griff, and stepped
forward to hand it to Cade. As soon as it touched the vampire’s
fingertips, Zach jumped back again.
Cade opened the envelope and read aloud: “‘I hereby
invest Zachary Taylor Barrows with the powers of liaison for the
Office of the President of these United States, with all rights,
privileges and duties pertaining to that position. . . .’”
Cade finished reading the letter silently, then
nodded. “Welcome aboard,” he said, folding it into the envelope
again. “You are now a designated officer of the President of the
United States. You are under my protection. ”
Zach’s breathing began to slow. A little. “What?
What does that mean?”
“That means he can’t hurt you. Even if he wanted
to,” Griff said. “He’s bound to follow your lawful orders, and keep
you from harm.”
Zach looked back and forth between them. “What is
that, like a magic spell?”
“Actually,” Cade said, “it was a blood oath.”