It was hop-stepping its way up the far stairwell to the family residence, leaping the stairs two and three at a time.

It passed the first floor and kept going, with Cade right behind.

Cade headed it off. He jumped, clearing the upper railing, and met it at the second-floor landing.

It stopped, suddenly cautious. Cade had no idea how it was still navigating without eyes. But it must have known he was blocking its path.

They stood there, facing each other. Waiting for the other to move.

Zach made the second-floor landing a moment later, gasping.

The roach-Soldat angled itself toward Zach, as if looking for an easier opponent.

Cade turned to him. “Get out of here.”

The creature tensed, prepared to spring.

Zach scrambled into the entrance hall of the second floor, away from both of them.

The creature hopped like a spider, rising into the air, trying to go over Cade and get Zach.

Cade jumped and tackled it in mid-flight. They hit the floor hard enough to crack the boards under the carpet, Cade on the bottom. He was stunned for a moment.

The misplaced hand caught at his throat. The other limbs flailed and kicked at him.

From behind, one of the arms grasped his neck. He was caught. It wasn’t as strong as it had been when it was whole. But it was strong enough.

The roach-Soldat had his head firmly in its grip and it began to twist.

Nothing happened.

He peered up from the floor.

No one around.

Behind him, still on the stairwell, he could hear the sounds of Cade thrashing with the spare parts.

Just as Zach was beginning to haul himself to his feet, footsteps pounded behind him. A sharp kick took out his leg at the knee, and he went down again, face-first.

He was about to protest, but someone had a gun at his ear.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t pull this trigger,” a quiet voice asked.

Four days ago, Zach would have been scared shitless. Now he was merely annoyed; this didn’t even rate in the top five recent threats to his life. “Is there any good answer to that question?” he asked.

Another voice, above and behind the one with the gun.

“Let him up, you assholes, I know him.”

Candace.

“Miss Curtis, you really have to get back, we’re handling this—”

“Fuck you,” Candace said, and pushed past the Secret Service men who had Zach on the floor.

They seemed at a loss as she helped him up.

“Zach,” she said. “What the hell is going on?”

Another loud crash from the landing. Cade hadn’t won yet, apparently.

“It’s a long story,” he said. “Your mom, your brother, they’re okay?”

“They’re fine,” the first Secret Service man said coldly. “They’re in the panic room, where Miss Curtis should be.”

“And you would have shot one of my dad’s staff people if I wasn’t here.”

“He could be involved,” the other Secret Service man said.

“Candace, he’s right,” Zach said. They all looked at him like he rode the short bus to school. “Not about me being involved,” he corrected quickly, “but about you getting out of here. There’s some truly weird shit going down—”

“What about my dad?” she said, and in that moment her toughness, the veneer of the party girl manufactured for the press, dropped away. She looked scared and lost.

“We’re trying to help him. But you really have to get out of here—”

As if to emphasize Zach’s point, a scream of inhuman pain came from the landing, as if torn from the throat of some long-extinct animal.

Only Zach recognized the voice.

Cade.

He grabbed the gun from the hand of the nearest Secret Service agent—the man was still in shock from the sound—and ran for the landing.

“Stay here!” he told them. They didn’t show any inclination to follow.

He couldn’t blame them.

He tried to heave himself up off the floor, but all that did was give the roach a chance to dig clawlike fingers into the skin of his face.

He turned, but it was too late. The roach-Soldat pulled hard, and half of Cade’s cheek peeled off his skull.

He screamed. He had not been hurt like that in years.

The two limbs on his neck tightened even more. This was it. Decapitation.

He thrashed and kicked, the words of the oath burning in his brain, the need to protect the president hitting him like a cattle prod. He even bit, using his fangs to tear chunks out of the decayed flesh wherever he could.

None of it did any good. The only blood spilled was his own.

Cade was going to die. Forever, this time.

Zach took the agent’s pistol and jacked a round into the chamber.

Which immediately caused the gun to eject the round that was already in the chamber.

Real smooth, Zach.

He tried to remember everything he’d learned with the boys from the NRA. None of it was coming back to him.

He didn’t know if bullets would do any good on this thing. It took a rocket to the face and crawled away.

Then Zach saw an open wound on the thing’s back, revealing sinew and gore underneath. Damage from before.

He’d have to get close. Really close.

Ah, hell. He’d fired the rocket launcher. This couldn’t be that much tougher.

Zach walked over to the creature and put the barrel of the gun to the wound. He didn’t take time to think about it.

He just pulled the trigger, over and over, fast as he could.

Dimly Cade connected it with the sound of a gun firing, but he didn’t dwell on the cause.

He had a chance now.

Cade pistoned one of his legs up, got his hands between the creature’s limbs and his neck and kicked as hard as he could.

The roach-Soldat flew into the air, smashed off a wall and bounced into the Treaty Room.

Cade regained his feet, stretched his neck side to side, heard the vertebrae crunch back into place. He pushed the loose flap of his cheek onto his face again.

Zach stood there, looking stunned as usual, a smoking gun in his hand.

Cade was a little surprised himself.

“Thank you, Zach,” he said.

He took the stairs in one leap and went into the Treaty Room after the roach-Soldat.

But that wasn’t what surprised him.

Cade had said “Thank you.” Even more amazing: he’d called him “Zach.”

With the Secret Service and CAT teams dead, there was nothing to attract the Unmenschsoldat’s rudimentary senses. The offices were closed for the night. It was late enough that even the most die-hard staffers had gone home.

Garcia could feel, rather than see or hear, the commotion above him. But it didn’t call him the way the glowing light on the other end of the building did.

The light was life. He could remember that much.

He didn’t make any conscious decision to go toward it, but the Unmenschsoldat’s body went in that direction anyway. As if called.

Garcia was more or less just along for the ride.

Cade wasn’t taking any chances.

He scanned the room and found what he needed.

The Resolute Desk. An authentic piece of history. Made from the timbers of the HMS Resolute, a gift from Queen Victoria to the United States. It had been in the Oval Office of a dozen presidents. Roosevelt had ordered it modified to hide his wheelchair. Kennedy’s children played under it. Reagan had it raised to accommodate his favorite chair. But Curtis had chosen a different desk, so it went back to the Treaty Room.

Of all the trivia about the Resolute Desk, however, Cade cared only about one fact: it weighed over a thousand pounds.

Cade hoisted it up, as high as he could balance it. He kicked a couch out of the way.

The roach-Soldat turned, limbs churning, trying for escape or counterattack, Cade didn’t know.

He slammed the desk down as hard as he could.

The creature went flat, with a hollow crunching noise as its bones shattered.

The Resolute Desk broke into pieces. There was still enough left of the surface that Cade could smash the roach-Soldat again.

This time the desktop shattered completely. The creature twitched one leg, then stopped moving forever.

He looked up.

He saw the answer in the skylight above. The night above was fading to a bright gray.

The sun was coming out.

Zach was still standing in the hallway, gun in his hand.

“Please tell me we’re done.”

Cade shook his head. “That’s three,” he said. “There’s still one left.”

Cade remembered he was still holding a chunk of the Resolute Desk. He dropped it, put his hands on his knees and fought the urge to sleep for a week.

“Cade, you don’t look so good.”

Cade had no response. He was running out of time, running out of strength. He’d used every trick he knew, and there was still one more Unmenschsoldat out there.

It was getting hard to think. He forced himself to focus.

“Cade?”

Like that, he had the answer.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.

He was halfway down the hall when Zach yelled at him.

“What? Where are you going?”

“Go to the Oval Office,” Cade shouted back, over his shoulder. “I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Improvise,” Cade shouted, and then he was gone, down the stairwell.

“Oh, come on!” he shouted, when he realized Cade wasn’t coming back.

He heard something. Above him, at the entrance hall, the two agents stared at him. Candace was behind them.

“Zach?” she said. “Are you all right?”

Zach nodded. “Super.” He looked at the agents. “I need more bullets.”

They looked at each other, then one shrugged and tossed him a spare clip.

He caught it, ejected the empty clip and reloaded. Almost like he knew what he was doing. The boys from the NRA would be proud.

“Get her back in the panic room.”

The agents didn’t tell him to go screw himself Zach guessed that fighting a multilimbed horror bought him a little respect.

They took Candace’s arms, gently, and started pulling her back.

“Zach,” she said, “what are you going to do?”

“It’s okay, Candace,” he said. “I’m going to check on the president.”

She still looked unsure. But she let the two agents guide her away.

Zach was glad she was gone before the adrenaline shakes started. He ran like a spastic toward the West Wing, with 99 percent of his brain totally convinced he was going to die.

Still, that remaining one percent—the idiot part of him, probably—knew that if he wanted to, he could have Candace back in the Lincoln Bedroom anytime he wanted.

He’d just have to survive this first.