Blood Oath (10 page)

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Authors: Christopher Farnsworth

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“What the hell ... ?”

“Photos,” Cade reminded him.

Zach pointed and shot. The camera came with its own flash, which lit up the interior of the container like day.

That was when he saw the other thing on the arm that Cade was looking at: a tattoo.

AIRBORNE FIRST BATTALION, it said, with the squad’s mascot just underneath: 508TH RED DEVILS.

This was the arm of an American soldier.

Zach suddenly felt like vomiting again, but his mouth was dry.

“Jesus Christ, what is this?”

Cade walked out of the container. “Come along.”

Zach got out of the container as fast as he could, without touching anything hanging from the chains.

As soon as Zach was out, Cade took the handles of the doors in his hands and slammed them shut.

“Call Griff. It’s the first number in your phone book. Tell him we need a dental appointment.”

“That’s really cute, but—”

“Do it.
Now.”

The vampire’s placid expression was gone. He looked
pissed.

That scared Zach, even as he fumbled with the phone to make the call.

“Cade.
What the hell is this?”

He thought he was being ignored again. Then Cade spoke.

“This is quite a week for you, Mr. Barrows,” he said. “First you meet a real vampire. Now you’re going to meet Frankenstein.”

EIGHT

In addition to his greatly amplified motor neuron transmission, subject’s IQ, particularly in strategic and problem-solving functions, ranges from exceptionally gifted to genius level (161 to 174, Stanford-Binet scale). MRI and CAT scans suggest his neural function has become more efficient over time—with greater and greater communication throughout his cortex enabled by increased folds and wrinkles through the brain matter, causing more connectivity between neurons. It has been theorized that this enables the subject to “parallel-process,” which is to say, work several angles of a problem at once, greatly reducing the time required for a solution.

—BRIEFING BOOK: CODENAME: NIGHTMARE PET

D
ylan had no trouble clearing Customs. His shipment remained one of the 97 percent of freight containers not inspected on their way into the U.S.

Dylan only knew this because Khaled knew this and repeated it endlessly to reassure him.

It didn’t work. Dylan picked up his cargo and soaked through his shirt with flop sweat. Once he’d cleared the gates of the shipyard, he took the truck out on the highway in a blind panic. Every five seconds, he checked his rearview for Delta Force commandos about to drop out of the sky and shoot him dead.

He was a hundred miles away from the port by the time he realized that no one was looking for him. No one cared.

Khaled would have said this was God’s way of testing him, of preparing him for the holy mission they were about to undertake.

Dylan was sick of hearing it. He had already done way too much work for Khaled’s science project. He wanted to get paid. But there was always just one more thing, just one more thing.

At first, it was nothing too demanding. Khaled had him make a little trip. A short hop on a plane to Dubai. During a weekend stay at a super-luxury hotel, Dylan delivered a briefcase full of cash to some other Arab guys. No big deal. When he got back, he found out the money was for the widows and orphans of the “brave warriors killed in the struggle against the Zionist occupation,” but Dylan wasn’t stupid. He knew what that meant: the cash went to pay guys to strap on suicide belts and blow themselves up.

Dylan had no real problem with that. It was like a video game, in some ways. Pick a character, send him out to do battle, and once he dies, pick another one. Simple.

But Dylan increasingly resented risking his ass to do grunt work. The trips grew more frequent. Pretty soon he was going to Dubai or Riyadh or Tel Aviv every other week. Dylan knew why he was chosen. Khaled was on too many watch lists. Dylan was a perfect, blank face.

A perfect, white, American face.

It didn’t seem like hero’s work. And he still hadn’t been paid.

Then, a month ago, Khaled had called him over to the apartment. He gave Dylan another plane ticket.

Dylan unloaded his list of complaints on Khaled. He was sick of the stink of dead bodies. He was tired of using his free time to run Khaled’s errands.

Dylan gave his ultimatum. He was ready to get out. He wanted his money. He was done being Khaled’s flunky.

Khaled had listened patiently. Then he asked, “Are you finished?”

Dylan nodded.

Khaled hit him.

Dylan found himself flat on his back, bleeding from his nose. He’d never been struck in his life. Not even as a child.

Khaled stood above him. He tried to sit up, but Khaled put his foot on Dylan’s throat and forced him back down. Dylan started choking. Khaled didn’t lessen the pressure a bit.

“There’s only one way out of Zulfiqar,” Khaled told him. “And that is either to a martyr’s Heaven or to a traitor’s Hell.”

Dylan wanted to ask, You’re serious about that? Then all he wanted to do was breathe.

“What do you want? Do you want out?” Khaled asked.

Dylan shook his head. Unh-uh. No sir. Team player, right here.

“You’re prepared to continue your mission?” Khaled asked.

Dylan nodded like a bobble-head doll.

Khaled lifted his foot, a big smile back on his face. He embraced Dylan like a brother. And he gave him the ticket again.

Dylan decided he’d stick with Khaled’s plan for a while. Until he could figure out a way to quit that wouldn’t make Khaled quite so mad.

So he took the trip to Los Angeles.

He met with a guy with a German name and great hair, who explained what the corpses would be used for.

Dylan didn’t quite believe it, but Khaled did. That was all that mattered.

He went back to Kuwait. There were more errands, more trips to the U.S. to check the progress of the German guy. Each time, Dylan wondered if he would finally get his money and get out.

Then Khaled had told him they were ready. The plan was almost finished.

There was just one more thing Dylan had to do. Of course.

He had to pick up a cargo shipment and drive it to a new destination. It couldn’t arrive at the target site—that would be taking too much of a chance.

But then, as soon as he made the delivery, Khaled promised, Dylan would get his reward.

The night before he flew to the States, Dylan met with Khaled and his friends at the apartment. They drank and toasted Dylan’s courage—even the hard-line Muslim guys, who never drank anything but grape juice.

Things were getting pretty rowdy, but right before the prostitutes showed up, Khaled called for silence.

“You have renounced your country to do what is right,” Khaled said to Dylan. The others nodded. “You must have a new name, to signify your new life as a warrior.”

He appeared to think hard, then beamed at Dylan. “From now on, you are Ayir al-Kelba.”

Khaled’s friends smiled just as widely at him. Dylan felt pride swelling inside him. “Ayir ... What does that mean?”

“It means ‘great leader,”’ Khaled said.

Maybe it was the booze, but Dylan got a little choked up. Even the stone-faced Saudis looked like they were struggling to contain themselves.

That was when Dylan decided he was doing the right thing. The world had to change. Khaled was right about that. And he’d chosen Dylan to help.

It all became clear: those guys really understood his potential. For the first time, he felt like someone had given him a name to match his inner greatness. They believed in him. So he would believe in them.

Dylan hung on to that moment, and to the promises Khaled made.

It helped him forget what was in the back of the truck, as he drove into the night.

NINE

Sustained exposure to high-temperature flame (propane blow-torch, approx. 600°F) causes the same damage as would be expected on normal human tissue. It’s theorized that high heat may cause the same protein “shut-off” as UV exposure, though we have not yet verified this. Aside from sunlight and fire, subject has virtually no other vulnerabilities. Tests of garlic, silver and other materials mentioned in folklore had no discernable effect. In order to kill the subject, it would be necessary to completely destroy his cardiac function—through massive damage to the heart—or sever his head completely from his body. This is, perhaps, why earlier cultures decapitated corpses and staked them through the heart, in an effort to prevent vampiric outbreaks.

—BRIEFING BOOK: CODENAME: NIGHTMARE PET

NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY,
HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES DIVISION,
NEW YORK, NEW YORK

T
ania entered the library just as the tolling bell sounded to announce fifteen minutes to closing. She gave the security guard a brilliant smile, and he was happy to let the pretty girl sneak past, despite the rules.

She made her way through the crowds of people to the genealogy room, one of the most popular spots in the whole building. Tania had no trouble getting to the stacks she wanted; people got out of her way without even realizing it.

The section contained records going back to when the streets of New York were filled with horseshit, and clean water was a luxury item. There were plenty of family historians, academics and homeless people still in their seats, waiting for someone to kick them out, so they could scrounge just a little more data or a little more warmth. Tania disappeared into a long row of old, leather-bound volumes—fewer and fewer of these books every year, as computers ate their knowledge and took their space. It was hard to argue with the decision, however: almost no one came to peruse the old city directories, phone books and municipal records. Lists and lists of names of people long dead. A roll call that no one would ever answer, and no one would care.

Tania wasn’t looking for those names anyway. She needed fresher information.

Flipping through pages of an old citywide social register, seemingly at random, she stopped wherever some vandal had marked the book in ballpoint ink.

Circles and checks. Random words. She found the freshest ink—she could smell it—and began assembling the words together, in her head.

“Doctor” was the first new word circled. Then “commission.”

She had been out of town and out of touch for a while. And while her kind was definitely not social, they’d recognized the necessity of maintaining lines of communication. An Internet chat room wasn’t going to cut it for many of them. They needed something a little less ephemeral than digital code on a screen.

Fortunately, humans were ridiculously sentimental creatures, and they hung on to everything.

Tania kept flipping, a frown marring her perfect, pale skin. “Removal,” “extermination,” “pet control.”

Eventually, this building and all the books it held would be destroyed, plowed over by people as they rebuilt the world again. But some of the outposts of the past would remain. Look at Stonehenge. It was still around, even if it was useless as a way to deliver messages anymore.

Tania didn’t like the way this message was shaping up. Not at all. “Compensation,” “more,” “disposal,” “time,” “soon,” “president, »” pet.

Then a series of numbers. Not a phone number, but a cipher, leading anyone who knew it and had the ability to memorize a series of sixteen-digit strings to a place where communication would continue.

Tania had seen enough, however. She slammed the book shut.

A librarian at the end of the stack looked at her with disapproval. He was the sort of man who looked, on the outside, like he’d been born in tweed.

Actually, in his off hours, he was quite fond of leather and bondage. But he liked playing the part of the nerdy scholar at work. And in both his lives, he was a stickler for the rules.

“We’re closing,” he reminded her. “You’re running out of time.”

She almost smiled at that. “Not me,” she said. “But someone is, yes.”

Why do we get all the freaks, the librarian thought.

She fixed him with a glare, as if she heard inside his head.

Then she swept past him. She was very attractive, but none of the librarian’s usual fantasies about strapping her down filled his head. He didn’t even watch her pass to get a better look. He just wanted to make sure she was gone.

As she went out the door, he felt strangely relieved, like he’d narrowly escaped something awful. Maybe he’d have to talk to his therapist about adjusting his dosage.

TEN

HALDEMAN: Point is, we’ll have a harder time keeping it [unintelligible] or contained. We can ignore one paper, call it a vendetta, but if anyone else follows the story—

PRESIDENT : What about Cade?

HALDEMAN: What about him?

PRESIDENT: What if he were to talk to those two from the
Post?
Woodson, and what’s the other one, something Birnbaum?

HALDEMAN: Bernstein. I don’t think—

PRESIDENT : That would shut them up.

HALDEMAN: Cade won’t do anything against innocent citizens.

PRESIDENT: Innocent. [Laughter]

HALDEMAN: Part of the thing. His oath. Can’t touch them.

PRESIDENT: Well, that’s my luck. A [expletive deleted] vampire with a conscience.

—Partial transcript of the so-called 18½ minute gap in the tape of a meeting between H. R. Haldeman and President Richard M. Nixon, June 20, 1972