A year into his presidency, Curtis had gotten used to it. He could switch off like a light now. Order an air strike, back to sleep. No problem.

Except when Cade was involved.

The last time Cade asked for a meeting, a little girl in Nevada was saying terrible things in a dead language. Less than a week later, Curtis had to order an entire town sterilized—burning every house and building to the ground, along with anyone and anything inside.

That still kept him up some nights.

Curtis had been in politics his whole adult life before he ran for president. He’d seen every variety of human need, greed and weakness. He thought he was beyond surprise.

Then, on his inauguration day, he met with his predecessor, an overgrown frat boy with a mile-wide mean streak.

“I’ve got something to give you,” the former president had said. Privately, Curtis thought two wars in the Middle East and an economy that resembled a bounced check were enough. There was no affection between the two men. It had been an ugly campaign. Curtis had been compared to the Antichrist. More than once.

But he kept his mouth shut as his predecessor passed him a folded piece of paper: the daily launch codes for America’s nuclear missiles. A seemingly random set of numbers that could end all life on Earth if spoken, like magic words. Curtis put them in his suit jacket pocket. He could have sworn he felt them there after he took his hand away.

Curtis watched as the former president opened a small safe behind a portrait of Kennedy on the wall. Inside was a wooden box. He took a key from a lanyard around his neck and opened it.

Inside the box was a small, leather satchel, worn and shiny with age. He showed it to Curtis, then handed him the key.

“You don’t want to lose either of those,” his predecessor said. He seemed more relieved to be rid of the key than the nuclear codes.

Curtis met Cade in person later that night, and realized why.

President Curtis thought of that moment now, as he checked the clock. 3:17 a.m.

Nuclear war, the president could comprehend. As awful as it was, it fit within the horrors he could accept. He could rationalize it.

What Cade brought him from out of the dark . . . there was nothing there to bargain with, nothing to negotiate. It was, for the most part, entirely out of his control.

That frightened him, every time.

You wanted the job, the president told himself. So get to work.

They met in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center under the East Wing of the White House. Most people knew it by the name made famous in spy movies and on TV: the Bunker. But that was the movies. In the White House, everyone called it by its acronym: PEOC, or P-OCK.

After 9/11, P-OCK was retrofitted—dug deeper into the earth, made more spacious and wired with high-capacity communications lines.

But one thing didn’t change: a hidden door that led to a tunnel called a “disused gas main” on the White House’s Environmental Impact Statement. The tunnel led all the way back to the Reliquary. It had been Cade’s pathway to the White House since 1960.

Only the president, his liaison and Cade knew about that tunnel. To the Secret Service, it always looked like Cade and his handlers were simply there when the president arrived. Privately, it drove them nuts.

Inside, P-OCK didn’t look too dramatic. The main chamber was a regular-sized conference room, just like you’d find in a better hotel.

Still, Zach was in awe as soon as he emerged from the tunnel.

Griff noticed. “You might want to close your mouth before you start catching flies,” he said as he sat down heavily in a chair.

Zach shrugged, trying to recapture a little cool. “I’ve never been in here before,” he said.

Griff only grunted in response. Zach thought he looked a bit grayer than usual. Probably past his bedtime.

The double doors opened, and a man wearing a black suit and an earpiece came in. He scowled at the three of them, but waved an all-clear.

President Curtis entered. He was tall and slim. Despite the hour, he was fully dressed and shaved. Zach knew the protection detail had code-named him “Sinatra,” because he always seemed to be wearing a tux, no matter what his actual outfit, no matter what the time of day. It was one reason Zach always insisted on wearing a suit.

Curtis was followed by another agent, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and, finally, by Vice President Lester Wyman—a small, pale Smurf of a man. Wyman was already scowling. This didn’t surprise Zach. Wyman was always pissed off about something.

The veep was selected as a concession to the values voters. He’d been in the Senate for years before Sam Curtis—most of that time railing about profanity in movies and violent video games—and was the freshman senator’s mentor. Then his protégé shot out of nowhere and became the most powerful man in the world.

Still, nobody took Wyman too seriously, even when he got the VP spot, mainly because no one could imagine an American president named Les.

But the president listened to him. Wyman was a true, down-and-dirty political type—smiling for the crowds, then carving up his friends and enemies in the back room. Every president needed a hatchet man like that.

The president sat. Everyone else in the room followed. Zach felt oddly excited. He had no idea what was going on—neither Cade nor Griff had explained anything to him—but it had to be important.

“Well, gentlemen, you’ve got us here,” the president said. “What’s the latest nightmare?”

Griff stood and went to the laptop and projector at the head of the room. Zach tried not to grin. Some things never changed. In a government meeting, even a vampire’s handler had to use PowerPoint.

Griff clicked on the laptop, and Zach’s photos lit up a screen at the back of the room.

“ICE intercepted this container earlier tonight,” Griff said. “What you’re seeing are modified human limbs.”

He stopped on the photo of the soldier’s tattoo on the severed arm.

“They’re from U.S. servicemen.”

“God above,” someone whispered.

“What does it mean?” the president asked.

Griff pressed another button, and more corpses appeared on the screen. Zach drew in a sharp breath.

The images were from Dachau. He’d seen them in history class, but those were the least offensive, the ones let out for public consumption. Nothing this graphic. Dead bodies in row after row after row. Bulldozers pushing them into mass graves already filled to the brim.

Griff looked at Cade. Cade uncoiled from his position, as if finally interested.

“Unmenschsoldaten, ”Cade said.

“What?” Curtis asked.

“Nineteen forty-three. The Nazis had a number of occult projects within the concentration camps,” Cade said.

He talks about it like he was there, Zach thought. Then he realized, he probably was.

“At that time, we discovered a scientist who was trying to create what he called Unmenschsoldaten—soldiers built from the parts of corpses.”

Cade looked directly at the president. “Someone has started that process again. These limbs were modified to be assembled into Unmenschsoldaten.”

He paused, as if to let it sink in. Everyone looked grim. Zach, on the other hand, sensed a chance to reset the agenda. He knew it was a risk, but hey, he didn’t get ahead without taking a few chances, and getting noticed. . . .

So he raised his hand.

The president noticed. “You don’t have to wait to be called on, Zach. Go ahead.”

“I know I’m new to this,” Zach said, “but . . . so what?”

Everyone in the room stared at Zach like his mother dropped him on his head. A lot.

“ ‘ So what?”’ Griff repeated.

“Well . . . yeah,” Zach said. “Maybe this is just thinking outside the box, but who cares if someone digs up some corpses and puts them back together? I mean, sure, that’s insane, and even kind of impressive, but we’re talking about a corpse here.”

Cade looked at him. Zach’s mouth went dry, but he managed to look back.

“Living humans can walk away from car wrecks, falls, even gunshots,” Cade said to him. “Now imagine a human body with all the human weakness removed. A corpse doesn’t feel pain. Doesn’t get hungry. Doesn’t suffer shock, or exhaustion, or remorse.”

“But it’s still just a dead body—” Zach insisted.

“All they remember how to do is kill,” Cade said. “Shoot them, they keep going. Burn them, they keep going. They do not stop. They do not rest. Given a day, an Unmenschsoldat can murder a thousand people with its bare hands. A dozen Unmenschsoldaten could quadruple that body count. A platoon—or an entire battalion—could increase that number exponentially.”

The smirk faded from Zach’s face. But Cade wasn’t about to let him off the hook.

“Do you understand? This is a weapon that literally kills cities—one person at a time.”

Silence.

“Is that far enough ‘outside the box’ for you, Zach?” Griff asked.

Zach looked down at the table.

“That will do,” the president said.

“How do we even know there’s more of these things?” Wyman piped up. “You only found the one container, right? Did you hit the panic button for nothing, Cade?”

The contempt in Wyman’s voice almost made Zach’s jaw drop. Didn’t he know what he was dealing with? He had to, if he was here—but he still talked to Cade as if he were any other subordinate, when the sane response would be to run screaming for the door.

Maybe that’s how vampires had lived so long, Zach thought, despite all the warnings in legends and folklore: the endless inability of humans to see past their own noses, to face what was right in front of them.

Griff spoke up. “Actually, sir, the same billing code was used for shipments that have already been in the U.S. for a while. A couple came through Baltimore, one through Long Beach, and then another one came to Los Angeles just last week. It looks like the one ICE intercepted was almost the last.”

“Which was the last?”

“That would be the one headed for Los Angeles right now. On another container ship. Due to arrive at the port in two days,” Griff said.

“That doesn’t prove anything,” Wyman said. “Could be a coincidence. Could be nothing.”

Griff looked at Wyman with disbelief.

“I think what the vice president is asking is, do we have any idea who’s behind this?” the president asked. “Or are we just guessing at the intent here?”

“We don’t know. The container was shipped out of Kuwait City,” Griff said. “We’re assuming an Islamic Jihad splinter group or sleeper cell.”

“Still seems pretty far-fetched to me,” Wyman said.

“Who did it is irrelevant,” Cade said. “There’s only one person who actually knows the secrets necessary to create the Unmenschsoldat,” Cade said. “Dr. Johann Konrad. I would like to bring him in.”

“Wait,” Zach said. “This guy is still alive?”

The president looked at Griff. “Didn’t you give him the briefing book?”

“He says he skimmed it,” Griff said.

“Do you have any direct evidence Konrad is involved?”

Cade shrugged. “No.”

“He’s the only man who could be doing this,” Griff said.

The president looked at his file. “According to this, that’s not strictly true, is it? Other people have used Konrad’s discoveries, haven’t they?” The president read from the page. “Evans City, Pennsylvania, 1967. Camden, New Jersey, 1957 . . . ”

“We couldn’t prove Konrad was involved in those, but we suspected him,” Griff said.

“We made him a deal,” the president said, still looking at the folder. “Full pardon. Full citizenship. We may not like it, but I am bound to honor my predecessor’s wishes, based on that favor he did for us in 1981.”

“That was no favor,” Griff said.

“You might feel differently if it was your life on the line, Agent Griffin,” the president said sharply.

“He’s still our best lead,” Griff insisted.

The president thought for a moment. Wyman used the pause as a chance to jump in again.

“I have a question,” he said. “Why didn’t we know about this before?”

“We only made this discovery a few hours ago,” Griff said.

“That’s not what I meant,” Wyman snapped. “Soldiers who don’t need to eat, don’t need body armor and can’t be stopped. Why aren’t we using this technology ourselves?”

Zach was pretty sure Wyman didn’t see the president’s look of annoyance.

“CEO Number Thirty-Seven,” Cade said, his voice flat. “Signed by President Eisenhower in 1958. Expressly forbids the use of any of Konrad’s discoveries by any agency of the U.S. government.”

Zach finally recognized something Cade was talking about; he’d gotten that far in the briefing book. The CEOs—Classified Executive Orders—were how the presidents left instructions for their successors after they had been introduced to the big secrets, including the existence of Cade. The formal numbering only began with Roosevelt, during World War II. Before then, the presidents had merely written things down in a leather-bound journal that stayed in a safe in the Oval Office.

Wyman waved Cade off. “That was a long time ago,” he said. “I’m sure Ike didn’t know all the threats we’d have to face in the twenty-first century. He probably didn’t intend to tie our hands like that.”

“Actually, he did,” Cade said. “I was there.”

Wyman’s scowl deepened, and he turned to the president.

“This is exactly what I was talking about before,” he said, his voice creeping close to a whine. “When I see these things just going to waste, under glass in that little secret hideaway he sits in . . . These aren’t artifacts. These are weapons. We should use them.”

Griff made a noise, deep in his throat.

“Something to say, Agent Griffin?” Wyman asked.

Zach hadn’t seen Griff’s face like this before. The veep had done something Zach hadn’t managed with all his needling. He’d pissed the old guy off.

“Yes, sir,” Griff said. “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

Wyman’s mouth dropped open. The president suppressed a smile.

“You are out of line, Agent Griffin,” Wyman hissed.

“I’m not finished,” Griff said. “Haven’t you been listening? Those things aren’t weapons. That’s just the promise they dangle in front of the people stupid enough to use them. They’re keys, and they open a door that has to be kept closed, at any cost. This isn’t a policy debate. You haven’t a fucking clue as to what I’ve seen, and you damn sure don’t want it walking the Earth. Sir.”

Wyman’s face went red. “We’ve already let evil inside,” he said, looking at Cade. “Some might say we’ve let it get far too close.”

Griff looked ready to fire back, but the president held up his hand.

“That’s enough, Agent Griffin,” he said.

“What about a missile strike?” the chairman of the Joint Chiefs asked. “Conventional or nuclear, those bastards can’t walk away from that.”

“No, they can’t,” Griff agreed. “Neither will anyone else in the target area.”

The chairman made a face. “In other words, the only way to stop them from killing thousands of people is by dropping a bomb that will kill thousands of people.”

“Maybe we could get some Predator drones into the air,” the director of the CIA suggested.

“In domestic airspace?” Wyman shot back. “Are you insane?”

“And who would be at the trigger?” the chairman asked. “CIA or DOD?”

The men began talking over one another. Cade walked away from the table. The president noticed.

“Are we boring you, Cade?”

“Yes,” he said.

A short, shocked laugh from someone. “Unbelievable,” Wyman muttered.

“You have something to add, let’s hear it,” President Curtis said.

Cade looked at the ceiling, then back down at the men at the table. “Very well. Small words. If we are right, there will be dead soldiers walking down the street of an American city. Killing everything they find. Made of the pieces of men who died to protect this country. Mothers will see their dead sons’ faces on television, doing horrible things. And people will believe in the things in the dark again. Every time this happens, the Other Side gains ground. Its borders expand with fear. It feeds on our pain. And every corpse that is piled in the street will tell the world you failed to protect this nation.”

That shut everyone up. Even Wyman.

The president looked at the photo of the tattoo, still on the screen.

“So what are our options?”

“We stop them before they are activated,” Cade said. “That is the only option.”

Zach knew he probably shouldn’t say anything. But now he was scared, too. “Maybe it’s too late for that,” he said. “How do we know they haven’t been fired up already?”

“Because no one is dead yet,” Cade said.

“Like it or not, the man is a citizen now,” he said. “You hear me, Cade?”

Cade nodded.

“Zach, you’ll go with Cade,” the president said. “Nothing like starting in the deep end.”

He closed the folder and left the room, the Secret Service men right behind him. Wyman was up like a jack-in-the-box, already complaining as they walked to the elevator up to the White House.

Without a word to Griff or Cade, Zach hurried out the door after them.

“You know we should bring him in,” he said.

“No,” Cade said. “I should have killed him years ago.”

Griff nodded. “But we have our orders,” he said.

“We have our orders,” Cade agreed. He was busy wiping the hard drive of the laptop, running a program that would scour it to the bare metal. No records of these meetings were ever kept, and the digital images from Zach’s phone could never be allowed out of the P-OCK.

“What was that, with Wyman?” Cade asked.

“It’s not like I’m worried about losing my pension.”

Another uncomfortable silence. Cade really thought he’d be better at watching people die by now.

Griff nodded in the direction of the door. “Looks like the kid is going to try to quit.”

Cade gave Griff his ghost of a smile. “I wish him luck.”

The president made a small gesture, and they stepped back again. He shook Zach’s hand.

“Zach,” he said. “How do you like the job so far?”

You bastard, Zach thought. Out loud, he said, “Sir, I think you’ve made a mistake.”

“I gave you my orders, Zach. You and Cade will question the doctor—”

“That’s not what I meant, sir.” Ordinarily, Zach would never interrupt the president, but he had to talk fast. The elevator down into the P-OCK took a while, and that was all the time he’d get. “I don’t think I’m right for this job.”

“I disagree,” the president said.

“Sir, with all due respect, you’re wrong. Unbelievably wrong. I am not the guy for this. You need a Navy SEAL or someone from the CIA. For God’s sake”—Zach lowered his voice here—“when I met Cade I wet my pants.”

“He has that effect on people,” the president said.

“Sir, please, if you want me to say I’m sorry about your daughter—”

The president took Zach around the shoulders and walked him away from the others. “Zach—you really think you’re here because of what you did with Candace? I know you’re smarter than that.”

“Then why?”

The president looked him in the eye. “Because you are smart. You’re resourceful. And you’re loyal. Those are qualities that are hard to come by these days.”

Zach might have imagined it, but he thought the president glanced back at Wyman.

“Believe me, Zach,” the president said, “this is the most important job you could possibly have in my administration. Trust me when I say I need you to do this.”

The elevator chimed softly. The president turned, and he and Wyman and the agents got on board. He looked at Zach. Then the SOB actually winked at him.

Zach just stared dumbly back as the doors closed.