Blood Oath

by Christopher Farnsworth

He cranked the wheel of the jeep to the left, and stopped. They were suddenly looking over a long trench.

  Corpses. Dozens. Hundreds. Men, women and children. Cade’s eyes fixed on a pair of tiny feet, jutting from under a woman’s torso. Perhaps she had tried to shield the infant with her body. Perhaps she had just fallen that way.

  He leaped out of the jeep and began checking the bodies.

  It didn’t take him long to find what he was looking for.

  He lifted the evidence for Griffin to see: one of the bodies, its limbs neatly severed with surgical precision at the places where the arms and legs terminated in the air.

  “It’s him,” Cade said. Then he looked at Joseph.

  “There is a camp,” Joseph said. “A few more miles. He should still be there.”

  “How many men?” Griffin asked.

  Joseph looked amused. Something had finally struck him as funny.

  “They won’t be expecting a fight. Don’t you see? They’ve already won.”

  They left the jeep a mile from the camp and continued on foot, taking great care not to make any noise.

  But Joseph was right; the Nigerian troops were celebrating. They were gathered in a circle around a bonfire, electric lanterns casting harsh light on the center of their camp. A diesel generator churned in the background, blotting out most of their laughter.

  Griffin and Cade watched as the Nigerians passed a bottle around.

  The soldiers stood by a large metal trailer, a portable Russian field headquarters. The door opened, and a pale man with neatly combed white hair appeared. He wiped his hands on a towel stained dark with blood.

  Cade recognized him from the last moment he had seen the man, wearing an SS uniform twenty-five years earlier. He had not aged a day.

  Konrad.

  Griffin took out his sidearm, checked the magazine. “Remember,” he said to Cade. “We take him alive.”

  “What?” Joseph hissed.

  “We have our orders,” Griffin said, giving the man an apologetic shrug.

  “After everything he has done, you will—”

  “Quiet,” Cade said, and they both shut up.

  Two men in Soviet fatigues followed Konrad out the door. Military advisers. Or more likely, bodyguards. Konrad was a valuable asset.

  Unlike the Nigerian soldiers, they were not drunk. They looked alert and competent.

  “I didn’t bring you here to let him escape punishment,” Joseph said to Griffin.

  Griffin’s voice held the last thread of patience, threatening to fray. “Look. I’m sorry your country got a shit deal, okay? But we have our job to do. And our job is to bring Konrad back alive, even if that means—”

  “Agent Griffin. Look.”

  It had taken Cade a moment to see it. Fire was not his friend, and he unconsciously avoided it.

  But as he pointed, it became clear even to Griffin and Joseph what Cade had seen.

  The bonfire wasn’t made of logs. It was constructed of old tires.

  And the bodies of at least three people.

  One of the Nigerian soldiers came from the bush, dragging another starved body. This one looked fresh. He hurled it onto the fire. Impossible to tell, in the firelight, if it had been a woman or a child, even for Cade’s night-vision.

  The soldier took a metal can from near the trailer and poured more gas on the fire. A huge ball of oily smoke went up into the air, along with a cheer from the other soldiers.

  Biafra had no food, but there was still plenty of gasoline.

  “Cade ...” Griffin said. Cade realized he was emitting a low growl.

  The skin was almost gone from the corpses. White bone burned to black.

  “Cade ... Konrad is the priority,” Griffin said, his tone almost pleading. “I know it stinks on ice, but he could be finishing his weapon right now. He’s got the parts. Cade, are you listening? Cade ...”

  Griffin said something else. Cade pretended not to hear it. He was already gone.

  The hot, still air parted in front of him. He hit the men in the camp like a scythe.

  Only Konrad moved, running back into the trailer and locking the door. The Russians were too shocked. The Nigerians didn’t have time.

  Out in the bush, he heard Joseph whisper, “My God.”

  Then it was over.

  Cade turned to the Russians, who were still gaping at him. One raised a pistol, arm shaking badly.

  “Cade, damn it, stop!” Griffin yelled. He was panting. He’d run from the bush. His .45 was up, and he had the Russians covered.

  Cade edged forward.

  “That is an order, Cade,” Griffin said, his voice and the gun shaking. “We can’t touch the advisers. The last thing we need is another incident with the Soviets.”

  Cade turned to him. “That’s the last thing? Really?”

  Without waiting for a reply, Cade moved to the trailer and tore the metal door from its hinges.

  Inside was what looked like an army field hospital, but one turned 180 degrees from saving lives. Blood leaked off a steel gurney from mismatched pieces of human flesh. A large, complex machine stood in one corner, shielded from the dust by long plastic surgical tubes trailing from tanks and pumps.

  They led to a row of chairs, lined up against the trailer’s far side. In the chairs were young men—boys, really. Captured refugees from the war.

  They were all dead. Desiccated. As if something vital had been sucked from all of them.

  Whatever it was, it wasn’t enough to spark life in the horror still on the table.

  Konrad stood calmly by his aborted creation, hands in the air.

  “You’re here for me, I assume,” he said.

  Griffin had entered behind Cade. He looked around.

  Konrad shrugged at the corpses. “Another failure. I thought they were healthy enough,” he said. “But starvation has its drawbacks.”

  “You sick fuck,” Griffin said.

  “Oh, do not judge me so harshly,” Konrad said. “After all, how different am I from your pet there?”

  Cade wanted, very badly, to do what his orders forbid him from doing. “I am,” he said, “nothing like you.”

  “Really?” Konrad smirked as he looked past Cade and Griffin, at the scene around the campfire. Bodies everywhere. Torn open, like burst sacks of blood. A mirror image to the carnage inside the trailer, the bodies like deflated balloons.

  “You’d be hard-pressed to prove it,” Konrad said.

  Griffin took a pair of handcuffs from his belt and locked Konrad to Cade’s wrist. “Don’t push it,” he said. “We could always make it look like an accident.”

  The Russians only watched as they dragged Konrad out. “Dosvidaniya, comrades,” Griffin said.

  Joseph drove them back all the way to the coastline. They arrived in plenty of time to rendezvous with the navy squad.

  Griffin was speaking to the crew when Joseph approached Cade.

  “What were you trying to prove back there?”

  He meant the camp. Cade said, “I should have thought you’d want to see those men dead.”

  “I did, yes. But this isn’t your country, or your war, remember?”

  “I didn’t do it for you.”

  “No,” Joseph said. “You wouldn’t have, would you?” He pointed at Konrad, who was being shackled by the sailors and loaded into the boat. “What will happen to him?”

  “I don’t know,” Cade said. He had no reason to lie.

  “You should learn. Because it’s your responsibility now.”

  Cade was, for once, caught off guard. “What does that mean?”

  “The boy”—he meant Griffin, who couldn’t have been more than ten years younger than Joseph—“doesn’t understand what you did here tonight. He has the same disease as all Americans. He believes the world can be made to behave, provided one is strong enough. He believes in the lesser evil for the greater good. He believes monsters can be tamed.”

  Cade couldn’t argue with that.

  �
��But you know better. You know what will happen if he’s ever given the chance.”

  “Why would I know that?”

  Joseph gave him the same sad smile as before. “Because you know yourself.”

  Griffin called to Cade then. The sub was waiting. Without another word to Joseph, he turned away and joined the others on the raft.

  The air strikes began again as they paddled back to the sub.

  Cade watched Joseph sit on the beach, as explosions in the distance tore the last of his country apart.

  FIFTEEN

  Subject’s body does not produce fatigue poisons, and processes blood with a far higher efficiency than human digestion. Virtually all of the metabolic energy in the subject’s blood meals is available for immediate use, or can be stored without conversion or loss of energy in the deep capillary beds in the subject’s chest and abdomen. Subject will only grow “tired” after several days of consistent effort, and can be rejuvenated simply by feeding.

  —BRIEFING BOOK: CODENAME: NIGHTMARE PET

  LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

  Dylan woke on the hotel bedspread. He’d heard that you weren’t supposed to remember anything after a drunken bender. It wasn true.

  The room spun around him, yes, but he remembered everything. Stopping at the hotel. Just to rest, he told himself. He wasn’t going to screw up now. Khaled was checking on him every few hours.

  But he was bored. Nothing on TV interested him. He went for a walk. Not on the Strip. Too much temptation. He used to love the five-hour drive to Vegas, arriving at the tables, spending obscene amounts of cash and then drinking at the clubs.

  But across the parking lot from his hotel, he found a dingy little strip club. He told himself he was just going in for a pack of cigarettes.

  When he saw the naked women onstage, writhing around, humping the metal pole, he realized how much he’d missed tits and ass while in Kuwait. Burqas everywhere, covering everything. He’d almost forgotten what naked chicks looked like.

  He sat down and ordered a beer. The waitress leaned over, breasts wobbling in his face, and asked if he wanted to open a tab. Without thinking about it, he handed over the credit card that Khaled had given him.

  He ended up having another beer. Then another. The girls loved him. They sat on his lap, crowded around him and rubbed themselves all over him. He signed credit card slips. A lot of them.

  Much later, he staggered back to his hotel, his shirt pulled out over his stained pants.

  His face still hurt from grinning so much.

  He found the strength to roll over, and thanked God that Khaled had not been around to see this. It was the first time in months Dylan had had any fun at all.

  He finally got his feet on the floor and checked out of the hotel room. He started toward the large asphalt lot in back of the hotel, where he had parked his truck. It was in the same direction as the strip club, which made him smile again. His phone rang. He checked the number. Khaled. Just what he needed.

  He answered, knowing it would only cause trouble if he didn’t.

  Khaled screamed at him in Arabic, then in English. Dylan had never heard him so angry. Demanding to know why the credit card they’d secured in a fake name for him was maxed out.

  “I had some expenses,” Dylan replied when Khaled paused for breath.

  “What is ‘Wild J’s Lounge’?” Khaled fired back. “Did you forget I could see your charges on the Internet?” Before Dylan could respond, Khaled was questioning his intelligence, his ancestry, his devotion....

  Dylan quit listening. Screw Khaled. Self-righteous virgin. Let him come out here and do the hard work. So far, Dylan was the one taking all the risks. Let Khaled put his ass on the line for a change, and he could—

  Dylan stopped in his tracks. The sound of Khaled’s voice became very distant in his ears.

  “I’ll have to call you back,” he said, and snapped his phone shut.

  The truck was gone.

  IT TOOK DYLAN an hour of standing at the front desk, talking to the fat, gum-chewing desk clerk—in slow, loud sentences—just to figure out what happened.

  He cursed his luck again. How was he supposed to know that the lot where he’d parked was off-limits to trucks? He had to keep his mouth shut and stifle the urge to scream at every slack-jawed employee of the hotel. He couldn’t draw any more attention to himself

  It wasn’t easy. The clerk took another forty minutes to find someone who knew where the truck had been towed. The city impound lot, halfway across town. A search through the phone book gave him a number, and a maddening voice-mail menu finally—after two disconnects—told him what he had to do. Show up, in person, with proof of ownership of his vehicle, and six hundred fifty dollars. Cash.

  The recorded voice droned on, “Business hours are Monday through Friday, nine-thirty a.m. to five-thirty p.m....”

  Dylan felt his stomach clench again. He checked the time on his watch, just to confirm.

  It was 5:34 p.m. He was stuck here until morning. At least.

  His phone kept ringing in his pocket. He didn’t answer.

  SIXTEEN

  As a result, at night, when fully nourished, subject has the strength of 20 men (bench press = 4,000 lbs.); can run at speeds up to 75 mph, and leap from a standing position roughly 24 feet into the air. Subject does not need to breathe, as long as he has fed recently. He can store oxygen in the blood he consumes for later use. In one test, subject stayed submerged underwater for over an hour.

  —BRIEFING BOOK: CODENAME: NIGHTMARE PET

  The doctor’s offices looked like an enormous Art Deco mausoleum. Cade and Zach walked through glass doors that swung between the statuesque legs of an idealized, sexless human form that was molded into the building’s façade. Tasteful pewter letters spelled out THE PROMETHEAN CLINIC—DR. JOHANN KONRAD, M.D.

  The lobby was empty, except for the high-gloss slab of a reception desk and the sculpted blonde behind it. She smiled at them as they approached.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “We need to see Dr. Konrad.”

  Her smile disappeared at Cade’s tone.

  “I’ll have to see if he’s in, Mr.... ?” She let the question hang there.

  Cade flipped out the wallet with the DHS creds.

  She only gave them a glance, then handed them back.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “These could be faked. We can’t let just anyone back into the offices. We have a problem with the paparazzi, you know.”

  Cade leaned closer to her. It was only a slight movement, but the receptionist rolled her chair back from him, her eyes widening.

  Zach decided it was time to play good cop. “We thought it might be more convenient for him if we talked to him now,” he said. “You know. After business hours.”

  That didn’t help. “Actually, we’re fully booked,” she said.

  Zach looked around the empty lobby. “Right now?”

  She nodded. “Dr. Konrad’s patients appreciate a certain flexibility in his schedule. Many people are still very judgmental about aesthetic enhancement.”

  “You mean plastic surgery?”

  She relaxed a little. “As the doctor always says, we don’t perform surgery on plastic. We allow human beings to reach their full potential.”

  Zach gave her his best aw-shucks grin. “Well, clearly the doctor did his best work on you.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Actually, I’ve never been a client.”

  “Oh.” Zach didn’t know what else to say.

  “Thank you both for stopping by,” she said. “If you gentlemen would like to call and make an appointment—”

  “Enough,” Cade said. “Get him out here. Now.”

  Again, Cade barely raised his voice, but she pushed her chair back even farther.

  “Just one moment,” she said, and hurried through a door behind her desk.

  “Smooth,” Zach said, as they stood there. “Couldn’t you hypnotize her or something?”

  “It doesn’t
work like that.”

  “I thought vampires were all sex gods with the ladies.”

  Cade looked at him. “What gave you that idea?”

  “Uh ... late-night TV, mostly ...”

  “Humans are our food. Do you want to have sex with a cow?”

  “Touché. So what do we do now?”

  “We wait.”

  The door opened again. The receptionist was back, flanked by a massive escort wearing a dark suit over a T-shirt. Security.

  “They showed me some phony badges,” she said, pointing at Cade and Zach. “Get them the hell out of here.”

  The huge man came around the desk. Zach moved out of his way. Cade didn’t.

  He looked down at Cade. He was nearly a head taller, and built like the door of a bank vault.

  Cade glanced at the man’s hands. Knuckles distended. Layers of scar tissue. Mallet fingers, the third joint flopping dead and nerveless, the result of too many bad breaks.

  The man was a boxer. A brawler. He was already half into his fighter’s crouch, ready to bring his dukes up and go ten rounds.

  He was no threat.

  “Time to go, little man,” he said, putting a hand on the vampire’s shoulder to march him out the door.

  Zach blinked, so he missed it.

  Cade reached over and gave an effortless tug, and suddenly, the goon was on the floor, screaming in pain, his shoulder dislocated and twisted.

  Cade looked back at the receptionist. “Dr. Konrad. Please.”

  Zach turned to see the big man get up on one knee, his face now full of rage.

  “Stay down,” Cade said, without looking.

  The man reached inside his jacket pocket, gripped something there. Cade still wasn’t looking, and Zach figured it out—

  He was about to say the word “gun” when Cade moved. Zach saw it this time.

  A casual sweep of Cade’s hand before the weapon could clear the man’s holster.

  The plateglass window, shattering as the big man flew through it.

  The receptionist screamed, but she was late to the party. Cade stood calmly. The big man was an inert lump on the pavement outside. Her wail died away almost comically. There was only the sound of the broken glass falling out of its frame.