Blood Oath (6 page)

Except for the cross. Made of old, tarnished metal, it rested on a leather cord in the hollow of Cade’s throat. No matter what else Cade wore, he never removed the cross. If it weren’t so rough and weathered, it might be something a rock star would wear. Instead, it looked more like the museum pieces upstairs.

Once dressed, Cade continued to ignore the carton. He stepped over to a computer terminal, the only concession to the twenty-first century in the entire place.

Unlike Griff, Cade had no problem with computers. Given time, he could learn to use any tool. He had to, if his kind was going to hunt an endlessly inventive race of tool-using apes. Anything a man could build, he had to be able to master. Anything a man could learn, he had to learn it faster.

It might surprise some people that Griff looked at Cade as the product of evolution. But he’d watched Cade, and to him, it was obvious: he was looking at an apex predator. He was human once, but that was a long time ago. Now he just carried the shape, which enabled him to move among his prey. Everything else was engineered to make him—and all the creatures like him—the most efficient hunter of Homo sapiens possible. What they called, in a different age, a man-eater.

But it wasn’t a matter of belief or disbelief for him. Griff had been with Cade as he fought—and killed—demons, vampires, werewolves, invisible men, aliens, creatures that had no names, and even one thing that called itself a god.

Most of those things had ended up on any number of government autopsy slabs, and he’d seen the results. And whatever else they were, they were solid. They existed in this world. And whatever put them together had to use the same toolbox of physics and biology that governed every other creature on the planet.

Sure, some of those hard-and-fast rules of science got bent pretty badly. There was a lot Griff didn’t understand, and a lot the government’s teams of eggheads couldn’t explain. Like Cade’s aversion to crosses and other religious symbols. Or the magic that bound Cade as securely as iron to the will of the president.

But no one had ever been able to explain quantum mechanics to Griff’s satisfaction, either. It didn’t make the science wrong. He just didn’t have the math.

Some things you just had to take on faith.

“You send the boy home already?” Cade asked, typing away.

“He’s in the shower,” Griff said. “Getting ready for his first day on the job.”

“Did you warn him?” The shower facilities had been built in what was once a lockup for prisoners who needed to be kept in secret. Some of them seemed to like the place enough to remain after their deaths. Occasionally the shower ran red with blood, and skeletal faces appeared in the mirrors, behind the steam.

“It didn’t come up,” Griff said.

Cade’s mouth twitched. You had to watch for it; it was usually the only way you knew he was amused. His fingers flew over the keys, entering his report on the Kosovo incident.

“You locked up the artifact?” he asked.

“It’s secure,” Griff said. He pointed to the carton. “You should eat something.”

“I’m fine.”

“When was the last time you fed?”

“Few days ago.”

“Cade. Eat.”

“Is that an order?” Cade’s tone was sharp.

Griff sighed. “It’s advice.”

Cade turned away from the computer, and picked up the container and opened it. It was filled with dark red blood, still steaming from the microwave. A mixture of cow and pig, from livestock kept in a CDC testing facility near McLean, Virginia.

Cade drained it in one long gulp, not spilling a drop.

The effect was immediate. He stood taller. His muscles corded and flexed, and his pale skin flushed before the blood settled down into him.

“Thank you,” Cade said, and threw the carton into the trash from across the room, without looking. He went back to the keyboard.

“So. What do you think of the kid?”

“Bit of an oilcan,” Cade said.

Griff waited. Sometimes Cade used expressions long out of date. It was a side effect of fourteen decades of slang crammed into his head, and slowing down his thought processes for normal conversation.

But it took only a second for him to realize he’d slipped. “A fake. A politician.”

“Maybe the president figures you need that more than you need a field agent. That’s probably why they sent him over earlier than expected.”

Then, with a deep breath, Griff decided to tell him.

“And the cancer’s back.”

Cade’s fingers hesitated on the keyboard for a fraction of a second.

“I know,” he said, the clatter of the typing picking up again.

He knew. Of course he knew. He probably knew before Griff did. But he didn’t say anything; he was waiting for Griff to let him in on the secret. His version of courtesy. Of friendship.

“What did the doctors say?” Cade asked.

“Inoperable.”

Cade looked back down at the computer and finished entering the case into the log. He probably knew that, too.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Everyone around him dies, Griff thought. Sooner or later. But not him.

Griff worried what would happen once he was gone.

Griff was the closest thing Cade had to a friend. Over thirty years, he had only seen the gulf widen between Cade and everyone else. Without some kind of connection, Cade might forget what it meant to be human completely.

Griff wondered how dangerous that might be.

And remembered that whatever happened, he wouldn’t be around to see it.

 

 

 

THE KID CAME out of the bathroom, breaking up what could have been an awkward moment. His hair was still wet, and he was trying to smooth the wrinkles out of his shirt.

He froze when he saw Cade at the computer.

Griff stood up and guided Zach over to the table.

“Relax,” he said. “He won’t bite.”

“You’re. Not. Funny.” Zach was breathing hard.

“Show him your papers.”

“What?” Zach was shaking. He wouldn’t take his eyes off Cade. Griff couldn’t really blame him—he remembered the first time he’d encountered Cade, and he’d had a lot more training, with physical combat under his belt. It was a little like waking up and finding a cobra coiled on the next pillow.

Cade was doing his best to ignore this, to spare Zach any further embarrassment. Still, they had work to do, so Griff carefully reached into the jacket pocket of Zach’s suit and took out the envelope there.

“Show him your orders from the president,” Griff told Zach. “Go on. Do it.”

Zach took the envelope back from Griff, and stepped forward to hand it to Cade. As soon as it touched the vampire’s fingertips, Zach jumped back again.

Cade opened the envelope and read aloud: “‘I hereby invest Zachary Taylor Barrows with the powers of liaison for the Office of the President of these United States, with all rights, privileges and duties pertaining to that position....’”

Cade finished reading the letter silently, then nodded. “Welcome aboard,” he said, folding it into the envelope again. “You are now a designated officer of the President of the United States. You are under my protection. ”

Zach’s breathing began to slow. A little. “What? What does that mean?”

“That means he can’t hurt you. Even if he wanted to,” Griff said. “He’s bound to follow your lawful orders, and keep you from harm.”

Zach looked back and forth between them. “What is that, like a magic spell?”

“Actually,” Cade said, “it was a blood oath.”

 

 

 

C
old water stung
^h
im, a wet slap against his face. He woke up, not knowing how long he had been asleep. For one blessed instant, he thought it had all been a nightmare.

Then he felt the chains on his wrists, and it came back with terrifying clarity.

He was in a dank stone cell, the floor covered with the shit and filth of other men. His arms were locked in heavy manacles above his head. There was a dull ache in his chest, and he remembered being shot.

He looked down, and saw the bullet wounds healing on his chest and abdomen. But he couldn’t imagine how that was possible.

A second later, his mind caught up with his senses. He was aware of other men in the room.

Four soldiers with rifles, wearing the blue uniforms of the Union, watched him. One held a bucket, still dripping with the cold water he’d thrown to wake Cade.

Sitting on a stool between them, an older man. Barrel-shaped, with a greasy forelock of hair over his thick brow and nose. He wore a good suit and expensive boots.

Cade realized, with some horror, that he could smell the man, just like he’d smelled the corpses on the boat, and it seemed completely natural to him now. Like he’d grown a fifth limb without questioning it.

He smelled talcum powder, the pomade holding the forelock in place, and above all of that, whiskey. The man seemed to be sweating it.

The man in the suit turned to Cade and smiled.

“No, no,” he said. “Don’t get up.” Then he wheezed at his own joke. Cade would have been able to smell the whiskey on his breath even without his new senses.

Cade caught a whiff of the soldiers, too. Sweat-damp wool, and the already familiar stink of fear. It was just as vivid to him as the images from his eyes.

The man on the stool spoke again, to one of the soldiers.

“What’s it called, Corporal?”

“Cade, sir. Nathaniel Cade.”

“Cade, is it? Did you know that means ‘a pet of unknown origin or species’ in Old English?”

“No, sir. I did not.”

“I never had a proper education, you know, but I have done a great deal of reading. Never stop trying to improve yourself, Corporal.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

The man looked at Cade again, eyes narrowed.

“I suppose you are my pet now, Cade. I pardoned you. Spared your life.”

“What happened?” Cade asked.

“You’ve been asleep for nearly three days,” Johnson said. “You missed the trial. They intended to hang you at dawn. While I doubt the hanging would have killed you, the dawn most certainly would have.”

Cade looked at him, baffled.

“Who are you?”

The man in the suit laughed and then coughed. He took out a flask and uncapped it. The whiskey scent blotted everything else as he tipped it back.

“I’m Andrew Johnson, President of these United States since the death of Abraham Lincoln two years ago.”

As keen as his ears were now, Cade wasn’t sure he’d heard any of that right.

“The president is dead?”

“Don’t you listen? I’m the president. I’m alive and well. But, yes, while you were out at sea, someone put a bullet into poor old Abe’s brain. This bullet, in point of fact.”

He fished a handkerchief from his vest pocket. He unwrapped it and revealed a round lead ball, stained with rust-brown powder.

Cade smelled it immediately: blood. Old and dried but unmistakable.

His mouth watered.

“Please,” he begged. “Please. Let them kill me.” He searched for the words. “You don’t know—you don’t know what I am.”

Johnson laughed, but there was no mirth in it. “If I didn’t know what you were, you’d be dead already.”

That seemed incomprehensible to Cade. “You
know?”

Johnson nodded.

Cade was shocked. “For the love of God, why didn’t you let them kill me?”

The drunkenness seemed to slide off Johnson, and his voice was quiet and dark when he spoke.

“There are other nations in this world. Nations that don’t have names, or borders, but they exist all the same. And make no mistake—we are at war with them. They would wipe us from the face of the Earth quicker than any foreign army. Unless we find a way to strike at them before they gain a foothold inside our own country.”

Cade barely listened, panic rising inside him. He was beginning to feel the thirst again. The wounds in his chest throbbed. He started to see the blood pulsing in the men in the cell, just beneath their skin.

Cade struggled to lean forward. He had to make the man see.

“You don’t understand,
you have to kill me ...”

His chains rattled and pulled taut.

The soldier smashed his rifle butt into Cade’s face, putting him back onto the floor.

Johnson looked annoyed.

“You owe your life to me, creature,” Johnson said. “And you’re going to spend the rest of it paying off the debt.”

He took another swig and then nodded to the corporal. The soldier ducked outside the cell and returned with a different bucket. This one was smaller, and stained with red.

“I hate to drink alone,” Johnson said. “Join me.”

The aroma nearly made Cade pass out. It was not exactly right—not what the thirst really craved—but it was blood. He was close to choking on his saliva now, and he felt his canines growing.

Carefully, the soldier placed the bucket on the floor in front of Cade, and stepped back quickly.

Pig’s blood. Cade could see it was already starting to thicken in the cool of the cell.

It took everything he had to clamp his mouth shut.

They would not make him do this. He might be an abomination, but that didn’t mean he had to accept it.

He didn’t trust his voice, so he simply shook his head at Johnson.

“It’s from the finest butcher in Boston. You should be honored. What’s wrong? Had your fill on the boat?”

Cade shook his head again.

Johnson laughed, belched, and put away his flask. “You have no say in this, creature.” He turned to the corporal. “Make sure he drinks all of that. He’s not going to starve. I have plans for him.”

Johnson exited, and the soldiers turned to Cade. They regarded him fearfully, but they followed their orders. They beat him with their rifle butts until he stopped thrashing and then rolled him onto his back. One man plugged his nostrils, and they held him down as they emptied the bucket of pig’s blood into his throat.