Blood Oath Read online

  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

  Tania 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.

&
nbsp; 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

  THE WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

  Nobody goes into the Oval Office expecting to get a lot of sleep on the job. Samuel Curtis’s aides woke him in the middle of the night two or three times a week, minimum.

  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.

  EACH PRESIDENT DEALT with Cade differently—brought a different group inside the knowledge of his existence. FDR didn’t bother telling Truman, but Harry Hopkins, the head of the WPA, sat in on every meeting. JFK had Cade communicate through his brother, and a few other trusted aides. LBJ met with him alone, but he was the exception. More and more, it was an entire committee who sat with the president when he met with Cade. Curtis’s group was called the Special Security Council.

  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.”