Free The President's Vampire by Christopher Farnsworth Page A

nausea well up in him. “There are more.” It wasn’t a question, but he seemed to hope Cade would contradict him.
    “You’ll probably never see any of them,” Cade said. “This was an emergency. I don’t know how it got this far. Usually, I will handle something like this alone.”
    The T-man shook his head. “I don’t know how you do it. No. That’s not it. I don’t know why you do it. Aren’t you more like them than us now?”
    Cade was not insulted by the question. He was not human. He knew that under other circumstances, these men would be tempted to burn him into ash. Only the weirdness around them, and Cade’s ability to fight it, made him an ally rather than another nightmare.
    “I haven’t completely lost sight of what it means to be human,” Cade said.
    “I’m not questioning your loyalty, Mr. Cade. You’ve saved our lives a dozen times tonight. Whatever happens, I’ll remember that. But I want to know: what keeps you on our side?”
    Cade considered the question. The other men, with the flamethrowers and gasoline, made their way carefully up the rotting wharf. The sun was coming up. He’d have to get out of here soon. But he could see from the look in the federal agent’s eyes that he would not leave without an answer.
    “Do you know what a blood oath is, Mr. Ness?” Cade asked.
    The young treasury agent shook his head.
    “I took one. And I keep my word.”
    Cade sloshed through the seawater, now around his ankles, as he searched for any more of the creatures. Above him, the wharf exploded into fire and smoke, and a hundred tiny abominations squealed as they burned.

FIVE

    Deception is a state of mind and the mind of the State.
     

    —James Jesus Angleton, CIA chief of counterintelligence from 1954 to 1975

DULLES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT, VIRGINIA

    C ade and Zach were in a small, private hangar at Dulles before sunup.
    On paper, the facility was leased by Executive Transport, a privately held charter flight company. Executive was owned, according to the documents filed with the state, by a series of shell companies, their officers and directors buried in mounds of paperwork.
    In reality, the hangar was used exclusively to hold several Gulfstream V jets for A/A’s renditions.
    “Nice ride,” Zach said to Graves as the older man met them in the waiting area. “I guess torture pays pretty good these days.”
    Graves, wearing another thousand-dollar suit, gave Zach his finest patrician smile, the kind that takes years of practice. “We’re not responsible for what happens after we drop off our packages. We’re a delivery service. Just doing our job.”
    Zach snorted. “Just following orders. Right. Where have I heard that one before?”
    “Take it up with your boss. What I do might offend your squishy liberal sensibilities, but it’s necessary. You know it.”
    “Yeah, it takes a real hero to sodomize a prisoner with a nightstick.”
    Graves looked bored. “I’m sure we could have this sort of intellectual discussion all day, but we have to get a move on.”
    “I’m ready,” Cade said. “Where are the analysts who will assist Zach?”
    Graves walked out into the main area of the hangar.
    “I don’t need any assistance,” Zach grumbled, as they followed.
    Three people waited by the plane. They were dressed in cheaper versions of Graves’s business wear.
    “These are my top analysts,” Graves said. “Book, Candle and Bell. You don’t need first names.”
    They faced one another by the open door of the jet. Nobody offered to shake hands. Cade could feel the fear coming off them in varying degrees. They’d been briefed about him, clearly, but they were all struggling with the actual experience of seeing him in the flesh.
    Book, the first man, was older than Zach—late thirties or so. He wore his hair cropped military-short and regarded them with dark eyes and a scowl. He kept his weight forward, on the balls of his feet, and looked hard and lean. If he was a data