SIX
There is no known physiological reason for the
pain Cade experiences when exposed to the sight or touch of a
cross, or other religious paraphernalia. While there are no lasting
effects, a cross can be enough to keep a vampire at bay.
It appears that prolonged and repeated exposure
can build a resistance, or at least, an accommodation with this
pain. Unlike other vampires, our subject wears a cross around his
neck. (He claims the pain helps him focus on beating his thirst for
human blood.) Some in the research group have suggested that the
pain is psychosomatic, an abreaction to the vampire’s disgust and
self-loathing at his or her transformation. However, this does not
explain why religious symbols affect all vampires more or less
equally, without regard for the individual’s religious
background.
—BRIEFING BOOK: CODENAME: NIGHTMARE PET
Zach sipped his coffee and grimaced. It was
awful. The only stuff he’d ever had that was worse had been in the
mess of an aircraft carrier, during a visit with the president. But
a single cup kept him awake for twenty hours.
He looked at Cade, then Griff.
“Okay,” he said. “So he has to do what I
say?”
Cade’s face didn’t move, but Zach got the distinct
feeling he didn’t like the question.
“Not exactly,” Griff said. “He will follow the
orders you pass on from the president. But for now, you should
learn the ropes from us.”
Zach shrugged. He supposed he had no choice but to
see where this ride would go.
“Where do we start?”
Griff handed a sheet of paper to Cade.
“This is what I tried to tell you about before you
stormed off to bed,” Griff said.
Zach laughed at that, then turned it into a cough
when Cade looked at him.
“ICE has found something in a container off a ship
at the Port of Baltimore. Their report triggered our flags in the
system,” Griff said to Zach. “When we get an alert like that,
you’ll call and tell their superiors to seal off the scene until
you and Cade can get there. We have priority commands for every
branch of the federal government.”
Zach suddenly felt like he was in grade school
again. He could have sworn Griff was talking slower than normal for
his benefit.
“What did they find?”
“We’ll see for ourselves,” Cade said. There was no
change in his tone, but again, Zach caught a distinct undercurrent
of impatience.
Cade crossed the room. Even walking, the vampire
moved impossibly fast. Zach hurried to follow.
Cade hit a stone in the wall at the far end of the
Reliquary. The concrete slid back as if on wheels, and revealed
another hidden door.
“How many of these things do you have in
here?”
“I’ve never counted,” Cade said, and slipped into
the passage.
Zach looked back at Griff. “What, that’s it? That’s
all the training and orientation? Now you just expect me to go
after him?”
“Nature of the job,” Griff said. “You hit the
ground running.”
“Fantastic. Any advice, then?” Zach said it with
heavy sarcasm, but Griff appeared thoughtful before he
answered.
“He’s smarter than you, stronger than you, and he
was eating people over a century before you were born,” Griff said.
“He’ll try to dominate you. It’s nothing personal. Just how he sees
us. Don’t let him.”
“Don’t let him?”
“He can’t touch you, Zach. It’s his job to keep you
safe. Push back.”
Griff returned to the papers in front of him.
“That’s a big help,” Zach muttered. Then he
followed the vampire into the dark.
THE TUNNEL SMELLED like a YMCA locker room. Small
electric bulbs wired to the ceiling provided dim light. Zach had
never thought of himself as claustrophobic, but the roof was barely
over his head, and he and Cade had to walk single file to get
through.
“Where the hell are we?”
“You don’t know? You worked for the White
House.”
“You learn something new every day.
Apparently.”
“Washington, D.C., was designed by a Masonic
architect, Pierre-Charles L’Enfant, at the direction of Thomas
Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. They included a series of secret
tunnels, which have been updated every few decades, ever since. We
can get into the Metro from here—even all the way down to
Virginia.”
“Masons?” Zach snorted. “Please don’t tell me you
think there’s a conspiracy to take over the U.S. government.”
“Eight.”
“What?”
“At last count, there were eight allied groups of
conspirators working to assume control of the U.S. government,”
Cade said. “Those are just the major players, of course.”
“Oh, of course.”
There was a scrabbling in the corner of the tunnel.
Zach made a face. “Jesus Christ. A master’s in public policy, and
I’m walking around the sewers with rats.”
Zach kept talking, if for no other reason than to
drown out the sound of little feet. “So. You’re a good vampire.
How’d that happen?”
“There is no such thing as a good vampire, Mr.
Barrows,” Cade said.
“But you’re—”
“Trust me on that.”
Whatever, Zach thought. Out loud, he tried a
different tack. “Have you really been doing this for a hundred and
forty years?”
“Yes.”
Zach waited. Nothing else.
“What does that make me, your manservant? Should I
pop down to the animal shelter and pick up a cat for dinner?”
Cade moved.
One moment a step ahead of Zach, the next a dozen
feet away.
In a flash, Zach realized why people believed
vampires could turn to mist.
Cade faced Zach. In his hand, a rat
struggled.
Cade brought it to his mouth, fangs bared, and
snapped his jaws shut. Blood spurted, and he sucked on the writhing
animal like a kid with a milk shake.
Zach tasted lunch at the back of his throat. He
swallowed hard.
Cade tossed the dead rat away and wiped his
mouth.
“I get my own meals,” he said.
Cade turned and walked down the tunnel again.
Zach shoved down the bile in his throat. He can’t
touch you, Griff said. Push back.
“What, you don’t offer me some?” he called after
Cade. “Nice manners, dude.”
Cade kept walking, silent. But Zach felt like he’d
won a major victory anyway. He hurried to keep up.
AFTER ANOTHER twenty yards or so, the passage
opened into a much wider tunnel—like a freeway underpass. Sitting
on a cobblestone floor was an anonymous, late-model government
sedan. Zach could have requisitioned it from the White House motor
pool.
It was comforting, with all the deep weirdness he’d
already experienced. But he still had to make a comment. “Not
exactly an Aston Martin, is it?”
“We don’t want to attract attention,” Cade
said.
“Does it at least have a smoke screen?”
“It has specially treated windows that block all
UVA and UVB rays, and certain wavelengths of the visible
spectrum.”
“Wow. Sexy.”
“Get in the car, Mr. Barrows.”
Inside, Cade waited for Zach to put on his seat
belt before he started the engine.
“You know, you can call me Zach.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Have I done something to offend you?” Zach
asked.
“No,” Cade said. The sedan made its way down the
tunnel, headlights on.
“You just seem like you don’t like me.”
“I don’t know you.”
Zach felt compelled to defend himself He thought
he’d already been judged and found wanting. “Look, we’re going to
be stuck together, so we might as well get along.”
Cade shook his head ever so slightly. “We might not
be stuck with each other long.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“If you’re not careful, you’ll be dead in a matter
of days.”
Zach thought about that for a few seconds. “You’re
nothing but rainbows and lollipops, aren’t you?”
Cade didn’t reply.
They emerged from a maintenance tunnel for the
Metro, not far from the Mall. Cade steered them onto 1-295, toward
Baltimore.
After a few more minutes of nothing but the sound
of tires on the road, Zach decided to try wedging open the
conversation again.
“I guess crosses don’t really work on you guys, do
they?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well . . . that’s just something from the movies,
right?”
“No,” Cade said. “They hurt.”
“But you’re wearing one. Around your neck.”
“Yes. I am.”
“I thought you said they hurt vampires.”
“I did. They do.”
Zach waited. Nothing else.
“Christ,” Zach said, under his breath.
Cade heard. “Don’t blaspheme. Please.”
Somehow the “please” made it more irritating.
“You religious or something?”
“Yes.”
Long pause. “But you’re a—”
“Yes, we established that. Someone has to protect
the meek until they can inherit the Earth.”
“You know, you’re not explaining a whole hell of a
lot here.”
A slight pause. “It will help considerably if you
listen the first time,” Cade said.
“Ah, bite me.” Then Zach remembered who he was
talking to. “That was a joke,” he said quickly.
Cade ignored that. “There’s a whole secret history
to this country, Mr. Barrows. Believe me when I say you don’t know
the first thing about it.”
Something in Cade’s tone really rankled Zach. So he
decided to ask the question that had been bouncing around in the
back of his head all night.
“In that case, where were you on 9/11?” he asked.
“Seems like someone with your talents should have been able to stop
a bunch of guys with box cutters.”
Cade stared at Zach from the driver’s seat, really
looking at him for the first time since the Reliquary. In the
reflected light from the road, his face looked like a skull.
VAMPIRE RECALL IS PERFECT. Unlike human memory,
every experience—every sight, sound, feeling or smell—is recorded
exactly as it happened. There is no circuit breaker, like the one
in the human brain that prevents people from recalling pain or
severe trauma. For a vampire, the memory of an injury is just as
fresh as the actual wound.
Which is why Cade could still remember the agony of
the early morning of September 11, 2001. He had trailed his target
into the parking garage of a vacant building.
Then the man vanished. The next thing he saw was a
sword—literally, a flaming sword—fire actually dancing on the
blade—pierce the darkness and slam through his gut.
Something stopped him instantly, and he was pinned.
The sword, still burning, rammed right through him and deep into
the steel-reinforced concrete pillar behind him.
His feet dangled from the floor. His blood began to
pool under him.
His target stood a mere five feet away. An
impossibly handsome man, his face a mask of contempt. He appeared
to consider Cade, to measure the danger he posed against the effort
of finishing him off.
With a smirk, he turned away and walked off. The
message was clear: Cade wasn’t worth another moment.
Cade was trapped. He couldn’t call Griff for help:
the sat-phone was useless this far underground. There was only one
thing he could do. He grabbed the blade and began pulling.
It took him nine hours of slicing and burning his
hands, writhing and struggling, before he could finally dislodge
the sword from the pillar.
As soon as the blade hit the concrete floor, the
flames went out, like they were never there.
At least another thirty minutes passed before he
could gather enough strength to get up and find the
stairwell.
Still bleeding heavily, he made his way to the
lobby of the building.
A TV was at the reception desk, left on by a
security guard or whoever had abandoned it.
The sound was off. A news anchor was talking fast,
his face strained. Then a shot of the Manhattan skyline. Smoke. And
something missing.
His phone rang. Griff. Screaming at him, with rage
and frustration.
Cade wasn’t paying attention. He realized what was
missing.
The towers were gone. They’d been gone for hours by
then.
THE LOOK ON CADE’S FACE made Zach very aware that
he was trapped in a metal box going seventy miles an hour with a
creature that could eat him.
He wondered if he’d gone too far, and how much it
would hurt if he threw himself out of the car.
Cade’s mouth twitched. He seemed to take pity on
Zach.
“I was hung up,” Cade said.
The tension drained out of the air between them.
Zach said, “Part of the secret history, I guess.”
“That’s right,” Cade replied.
They drove in silence after that.