Zach was on the other end, talking a mile a minute. Griff’s relief on hearing the kid’s voice didn’t last long.

He listened. Then he hung up, pulled on his suit jacket and moved as fast as he could for the door.

He choked back the nausea, the booze and the shame all rising in his throat at the same time. He could feel that later, if there was time.

Right now, he had to get to the White House.

Zach got out of the car on slightly wobbly legs. There wasn’t an aircraft, or a person, anywhere in sight.

“Move,” Cade growled, and Zach wasn’t sure where he was supposed to go.

Then he saw the plane.

It was stark black, unlit, almost invisible against the night sky and the black asphalt. It looked like a flat triangle. But it was hard to see—physically, it was hard for him to focus on it. His eyes seemed to slide off its rounded corners.

A door opened in its belly, and Zach suddenly realized just how big it was—they were still more than a hundred yards away.

A tall, gangling man in a flight suit waved at them impatiently from the hatch—a normal-looking guy surrounded by flying-saucer tech.

“Come on,” he called. “Meter’s running.”

Cade turned to Zach. “Stay here,” he said. “You’ll be safer.”

“Fucking what?”

“I said—”

“I heard what you said,” Zach snapped. “You think I’m going to bail out now?”

“I won’t be able to look after you, and I don’t have time to argue,” Cade said, impatience putting an edge in his voice.

“Yeah? Well, that’s fine, because this won’t take long,” Zach said. He wasn’t sure where he was getting the balls for this, but he tumbled forward anyway. “I’m going with you, Cade, and if you don’t like it, tough shit. Because that is an order.”

There was no change in Cade’s tone or facial expression. But somehow, Zach got the unmistakable sensation that the vampire was proud of him.

“Good,” Cade said.

Within a few minutes, Zach was strapped into a half-egg seat, filled with foam that molded itself to his body.

The pilot—the name on his fatigues read AHREN—handed him a mask and helmet. “Put that on,” he said. “Try not to puke into it.”

A copilot turned and checked on Cade, who was already strapped in. Cade had obviously made this run before.

“We don’t have time to put you in the case, sir,” the copilot said. His tag read GRAHAM. Neither of them showed any rank, but they both wore identical patches. A black circle, outlined with red letters, some kind of Latin: “Si Ego Certiorem Faciam . . . Mihi Tu Delendus Eris.”

“We are going to get a little sunlight when we reach apogee,” the copilot said, like an airline captain pointing out the Grand Canyon to passengers.

“I’ll be fine,” Cade said. “Let’s go.”

The pilots sat in their own chairs, which were more like recliners with a series of wires and tubes. Zach could have sworn he saw one of them insert a computer cable directly into a slot under his jaw, but that had to be an optical illusion. Both pilots zipped up and strapped on large insect-eyed helmets, then began flipping switches.

There was almost no sound—just a persistent humming that Zach felt in his bones. It took him a minute to realize they were moving.

They were moving very fast.

The pilots didn’t have any of the usual preflight chatter or speak into their radios.

Zach, positioned directly behind them, could only see the edges of what was going on out through the cockpit windows.

The wing-shaped craft was at the edge of the runway in a fraction of a second, and then Zach’s stomach lurched as they reared back at a ninety-degree angle.

“Approaching delta,” one of the pilots said. Zach heard it through his helmet. He retched a little as his insides kept flipping.

One of the pilots must have heard him. “Don’t worry,” he said. “This is the worst of it.”

“Well, unless we explode,” the other said.

“Explode?”

Both pilots laughed.

Zach didn’t have time to worry. In front of them, the sky went from black to purple to another, deeper black—but one lit up as if by halogen bulbs.

The craft stopped in midair, and Zach got one uninterrupted look out the windows as they spun upside down.

Zach saw blue again, a wide curve in the corner of the windscreen, and realized what he was looking at.

They were above the Earth—in orbit.

“We are at apogee,” the copilot said. “Thirty seconds and counting.”

The craft hung there at the edge of space, while the Earth spun below them. Just over the blue curve, a bright, glaring light appeared.

Sunrise, on the far side of the world.

“My God, what is this thing?” Zach asked. He realized he was floating against his harness. Even inside the plane, he could feel the cold of space clinging to it, sucking the warmth away.

“Near-Earth orbital reconnaissance plane,” the pilot said, a little pride in his voice. “TR-3B Black Manta. Modified for passengers, of course.”

“Unbelievable. I didn’t know we had anything this fast. . . .”

“Not fast enough,” Cade said. Zach couldn’t see him behind the helmet, but he could hear the pain in his voice.

The pure, unfiltered sunlight stabbed at Zach’s eyes, and he realized what this must have been doing to Cade.

“Hang on, sir,” the copilot said. “Almost ready for reentry.”

Cade didn’t reply, his fingers in a death grip on his armrest.

“Cade, we’re almost out of this. . . .”

“Not what I meant,” Cade said. “I wasn’t fast enough. I should have put it together. Now we’re three hours from sunrise when we land. And they’re already down there. We’re out of time. Because I was too slow.”

Silence.

“Three forty-four a.m. local time, sir,” the copilot said. “Starting descent.”

“We’re going to make it, Cade,” Zach said, without thinking. He was reassuring a vampire.

Again, Cade didn’t respond.

The plane dipped, and all of Zach’s weight returned. Velocity and gravity caught up with them again, and every muscle in Zach’s body strained against the harness as the plane hit the atmosphere.

They fell below the burning sunlight and then went screaming back into the dark.