Red, White, and Blood

by Christopher Farnsworth

  But now he wondered.

  There was something too smooth in his movements. He’d already lasted far too long with Cade. And he was quiet.

  It had been Cade’s experience, since becoming a vampire, that humans were rarely ever quiet.

  They continued to dance in the back alley near Bourbon Street. Aside from the occasional grunt and the sound of his feet scuffing in mud, the Axman didn’t make a sound. If he was surprised that Cade had found him, he didn’t say anything. If he wondered how Cade was able to avoid his ax with supernatural ease, he didn’t show it.

  Instead, he simply fixed on Cade and began swinging, as if this were nothing more than a regular part of his job.

  Cade decided to end it. He stepped inside the swing of the ax, blocked it with one arm, and punched the man in the chest with the other.

  It should have caved in his ribs. At the very least, it should have put him flat on his back, gasping for air.

  But the Axman barely moved.

  Cade was flabbergasted. “What—?” he started to ask.

  Then he was knocked backward by the Axman’s fist, sent tumbling head over heels into a pile of garbage.

  Cade had definitely never been hit like that by anything human.

  He was forced to reconsider his assumptions. He thought back to the Axman’s taunting letter to the press and police—at the same time he barely avoided another swing, planted firmly in the ground where his head had just been.

  The Axman had said he was a demon from Hell collecting souls to keep him company and feed himself.

  Cade had to consider that a real possibility now.

  He stopped fighting like his opponent was mortal.

  He scaled the wall above him and launched himself into the air. The Axman looked up and turned around. Cade was already on the ground, his leg slicing out, knocking the Axman’s feet from under him.

  The Axman went down, the ax still clutched in one hand. Cade didn’t give him a chance to get up.

  He fought with more brute force than skill. He pounded on the Axman’s skull with both fists. He felt something give under the hood. He heard bone crack.

  The Axman stopped moving.

  Cade leaned back. He felt no breath in the body under him. He listened carefully for a heartbeat.

  Nothing. Cade got to his feet and stood back from the corpse.

  Cade looked down the alley to check for witnesses. He wondered what he would do with the body.

  He barely heard the ax cutting through the air in time. He ducked. The blade opened a deep gash along his face but failed to remove his head from his neck.

  Cade staggered back. He rolled and tumbled, doing his best to open up distance.

  Back on his feet, Cade saw the Axman charging him again. His eyes burned through the holes in the hood, now wet with blood. The ax was drawn back, ready to chop clean through Cade if given the chance.

  Cade did not succumb to panic or shock. It was not in his nature. And so, where a human might have frozen at seeing a clearly dead man rise up again, Cade accepted it without hesitation.

  He simply looked for the best way to make the man dead again.

  Cade reached up and grabbed the ax as it came down toward him. He used the momentum and all his own strength to flip the Axman into an arc over his head.

  The ax flew away and landed in a pile of garbage. The Axman hit the ground hard. Cade didn’t let him get back up. He spun and grabbed the Axman’s head, one hand on his chin, the other dug into a knot of the burlap hood at the base of his neck.

  He twisted, using all his strength. There was a slick, popping sound. He kept twisting. He heard the unmistakable sound of flesh ripping apart.

  With a final yank, the Axman’s head came off. Cade nearly spun around with the effort.

  The Axman’s body fell to the ground.

  Blood puddled on the dirt of the alley. Cade smelled something rank there; he was not in the least tempted to drink.

  He looked at the bundle in his hands and unwrapped the hood. Underneath the cloth, he’d seen the features of a man. Just one more face in the crowd. There was nothing to distinguish him. He was nobody special.

  But even in death, something was off about him. His mouth was yanked slightly askew by some last nervous twitch or by the violence of Cade’s hands. Either way, if Cade didn’t know better, he’d swear the Axman was smirking at him.

  Cade dropped the head. He found the ax and went to work.

  When he was done, all the Axman’s parts could be neatly gathered into a bundle and placed inside the burlap hood, which Cade used as a sack.

  He tied it shut and walked to the river. Just before sunrise, he dumped his burden into the water and began heading back for his coffin, waiting at the train station.

  He wondered where and how the Axman gained such power. But in a moment, the question ceased to matter. After all, Cade would never have to face him again.

  I can only liken it to—and I don’t want to overdramatize it—being possessed by something so awful and alien, and the next morning waking up and remembering what happened and realizing that in the eyes of the law, and certainly in the eyes of God, you’re responsible. To wake up in the morning and realize what I had done with a clear mind, with all my essential moral and ethical feelings intact, absolutely horrified me.

  —Ted Bundy, interviewed on death row Jan. 24, 1999,

  the night before his execution

  Zach’s voice dragged him back to the present.

  “You recognize the work?” he asked.

  “It’s him,” Cade said.

  “Don’t you mean it?” Zach asked, his voice slightly mocking.

  Cade didn’t rise to the bait. “Yes. Thank you. Will you make the call? I’d like to take a little more time with this.”

  If Zach was surprised by Cade’s polite tone, he didn’t say anything. He walked away from Baker to make the call to the White House. This was just what Cade had wanted. There was another scent, also familiar, but it was slightly different than his memory. It could not be a coincidence. It would be like someone having two sets of fingerprints. And unlike fingerprints, human odors could change over time.

  Still, he had to be sure.

  “Who else was here?” he asked Baker.

  Baker gulped audibly. “What?”

  “You let someone else into this area.”

  “What?”

  Cade turned his full attention on Baker. The young cop started sweating. Right now, his brain was telling him two completely different things. The civilized portion was concerned with his career and keeping the truth from the slightly odd but still very polite FBI agent in the suit. The primal, survival-oriented portion was screaming at him to run as fast and as far as he could.

  “Who was it?” Cade asked again.

  Baker hesitated. “Nobody. I swear.”

  Cade simply kept staring at him.

  Baker whimpered without knowing why. “I didn’t know, all right? I thought they were FBI like you. They had badges and everything. I thought they were legit.”

  Cade took a step closer to the young cop.

  “Tell me about them,” he said. It was not a request.

  Questioning of the apartment manager indicated the victim was involved with ERIC STEWART PALMER, 29. Neighbors complained frequently about fights between the couple. My partner ran an outstanding warrants check on Palmer and discovered he was currently on probation for aggravated assault and drunk and disorderly conduct. Palmer was also reported to be a member of Satan’s Service motorcycle gang and had prior arrests for narcotics possession with intent to distribute. With backup and detectives en route, we proceeded to Palmer’s last known address from the file. When we arrived, we discovered Palmer, identified from his most recent mugshot, about to depart in a white van. Palmer did not resist arrest and gave us permission to search his person and the van. We discovered the bloodied clothes and read Palmer his Miranda rights. As we placed him into custody, he said the following, which I
include because it seems indicative of a confession. Palmer stated, “You don’t understand. It wasn’t for me. It was for him.” When queried as to what this meant, Palmer said, “You’ll see. He’s coming back. He’s almost here.”

  —Fort Collins (Colorado) Police Department Report,

  November 11, 2010

  SEPTEMBER 20, 2012, CANTON, OHIO

  Agent Courtney locked herself into the hotel suite and pulled the blackout blinds on the window. Sometimes she wondered why hotels bothered with windows. Hotel rooms were supposed to be the last bastion of privacy; an anonymous little cave where you can shut out all natural light, walk around with your gut and your ass hanging out and order pay-per-view porn without feeling too guilty. Nobody really wanted to be seen inside a hotel room.

  Least of all Agent Courtney. Formerly Helen Holt of the CIA, DHS, and above and beneath all of those, the Shadow Company.

  Helen—as she still thought of herself in the privacy of her own mind, at least—was now unofficially retired from all of her former aliases, mainly because her former bosses supposed her to be dead.

  They were half right.

  Helen rolled her neck as best she could and began the long process of disrobing and preparing for the night.

  With her right hand, she removed the scarf that covered the tight bandage on the left side of her neck. She examined the wound. It had started only as a needle prick, but it never healed. It was the only thing on her left side that looked vaguely alive. It was still fresh with blood. She kept the bandage on to keep it from spreading or becoming infected.

  She used her right hand to undo her shoulder holster, a specially designed double rig with a SIG Sauer and a .44 Colt lined up one under the other. Her left hand was useless for reloading. She carried the SIG for the number of shots it carried, the .44 as backup in case the SIG jammed.

  She struggled from her clothes next. That was getting easier all the time. It had taken her months to do anything more than drag her left side around like a slab of frozen meat on a hook. Now it responded to her commands, but as if it were receiving them across a great distance.

  Other people might take her for a stroke victim, as the young cop had earlier that night. Or they might assume some disease or accident or birth defect had left her partially paralyzed.

  Only when Helen was naked, examining herself in the full-length mirror, was the split running down her body starkly and readily apparent.

  It was as if her left side were petrified, turned into flesh-colored stone. Her eye did not blink, did not tear up. It was clear as glass. Her skin had become flawless and cold, smooth and unblemished. The muscle underneath was several times heavier now; if she swung her arm against a man’s neck he’d go down like he’d been clubbed with a tree branch. And any damage to her left side simply went away after a while. A bullet wound she’d suffered on her upper biceps hadn’t healed; it had filled in, like someone patched it with cement. That spot was number and deader than the rest of her.

  At the middle of her body, there was a border marking the change back to human flesh. Her right side moved and breathed. Her pulse jumped under skin that freckled in the sun. She had a slight cut scabbing on her knee from where she’d shaved that morning; hair still grew on her right leg, and she only ever had to cut one side of the hair on her head. She was stuck between immobile perfection and flexible but flawed humanity.

  She began her nightly ritual of exercises. She levered herself into a sitting position on the motel bed, her legs straight out in front of her.

  Helen had found that she did not really sleep anymore. She could drop into a kind of dull trance at night, but her open eye kept seeing, and half of her body would never really rest. Part of her brain could doze and dream. The other part would keep puttering along, a constant low murmur of thoughts and plans.

  However, if she didn’t work her left side and work it hard every night, then it grew more frozen and stony. So instead of sleeping, Helen planned and schemed while she forced her tombstone-silent limbs to respond. She started with the toes, mentally screaming at them to wiggle, dammit, wiggle. After she’d gotten a slight twitch from each one, she moved on to her ankle, her knee, and so on.

  Sweat poured from her right side as her muscles shook with the effort. She never considered stopping or giving up. Helen hated both sides of herself. But not nearly as much as she hated the people who did this to her.

  First, she blamed Dr. Johann Konrad—an asset she’d been assigned to protect several years before. A mad scientist of the very old school, he’d promised her a way to eternal youth if she betrayed her country. She’d thought she was playing him, but it turned out he’d never trusted her. Instead of his Elixir of Life, he gave her an altered version that slowed her biological processes to geological time scales. If it had not been for a last-minute, reflexive second of mistrust when she slapped away his syringe, he would have given her a full dose. She would have been frozen inside her own body for God only knows how many years, unable to do anything but think. As it was, he’d managed to cut her in two.

  The second entity she blamed for this was the Shadow Company itself. They had promised her power and they delivered. They’d recruited her from the CIA for her ruthlessness, for her total lack of a moral compass. But they knew her weakness, her fear of aging and death, and they dangled Konrad and his Elixir in front of her. As it turned out, they’d seen her intentions before she even formed them. When she thought she was betraying them by giving Konrad the ability to carry out his attack on the White House, she was actually doing what they wanted. Then she was sacrificed like any other pawn.

  Konrad had left her, half paralyzed, half dead, without looking back. The Company had abandoned her, assuming Konrad had killed her. But neither had banked on the sheer power of Helen’s hatred.

  She would live if only to spite them and to get her revenge.

  Konrad was still out there in the world. She knew she had plenty of time to deal with him. Nothing would kill him before she did. So he became the bottom of her list of priorities.

  The Shadow Company was powerful and vast and mysterious. It was a much more difficult target, as she knew from her years inside it. Agents worked in cells and information was sequestered. There was no hierarchy or chain of command that anyone at Helen’s level could see. It would take extraordinary effort to break open the Company’s inner structure. It would take years just to find out how to begin.

  That was all right. She had years. And, thanks to the skills and knowledge she’d amassed inside the Company, she had the funding and intel to be patient. She’d used passwords no one had bothered to change to empty several offshore accounts that no one had bothered to close. She set up back doors and secret log-in codes deep in the information structure of the Pentagon, the NSA and the DHS. She had everything she could want to run a one-woman insurrection.

  All of those tools and all of her preparation went into the hunt for her primary target, the center of her purest hate. She thought of him almost as a beloved doll she would take out in the middle of the night and hold and stroke with the fingers of her mind. She imagined all the lovely, lovely ways to hurt him.

  It wouldn’t be easy. He was smart, he was tough and he wasn’t human.

  Nathaniel Cade. He’d insulted her more than anyone else. He’d ignored her and belittled her. He hadn’t even considered her a threat.

  And for that, he was going to die.

  She recruited—or kidnapped, take your pick—Reyes, who was the only surviving member of her cell back in Los Angeles. Reyes was more scared of her than he was of an ancient conspiracy that worked to topple the U.S. government from within. And for good reason. She was always closer than the Company, and he’d seen her work on people who crossed her.

  With Reyes at her side, Helen sought to find a weapon that might finally destroy Cade. Once Cade was truly dead, she could move on. Find a little peace. A little closure. And start working on killing everyone inside the Shadow Company.

&nbs
p; A girl had to do something to fill her days, and she suspected she had a lot of them ahead of her. Her left side had not aged at all since Konrad’s injection. She could go days without food, water or sleep. Her right side might die, but she wasn’t sure that would mean anything at all.

  That was the other reason Helen wanted to save Konrad for last. He could either restore her or deliver what she’d originally been promised. She was sure of it. But it would take time to figure out how to get enough leverage on him to make him do it right this time.

  Helen finally finished her routine. Her right side was soaked in sweat and rank and feverish. Her left was still as cool and unscented as poured concrete.

  On her shaky right leg, she stumbled to the shower. She tripped and didn’t have the strength to put out an arm to stop herself. She plowed facedown into the carpet.

  For a moment, she just lay there, damp and stinking and exhausted.

  She hated this. She hated every single second of this weird half-life.

  But she hated Cade more.

  After a moment, she shoved herself up and dragged her body toward the bathroom once again.

  AFTER HER SHOWER and a quick, impersonal use of Reyes’s body, Helen Holt sat down in the hotel room’s faux-leather armchair. She’d thrown operational guidelines into the trash and asked for a room on a high floor. She felt the need to be above things for a little while.

  With her good hand, she lifted a tumbler of minibar vodka and drank while she stared at the dead TV screen.

  Reyes had wasted no time getting dressed and leaving the room. He was probably already in one of the nearby restaurants—a TGIChiliMcAppleBarrel’s or whatever—to order his usual variation on a burger and too many drinks.

  This life was killing him slowly. He was running to fat, his reflexes had slowed, and he struggled through a fog of hatred for her every day. She could see it. Her sexual needs—she thought of it as her physical therapy—seemed to leave him more drained every time. He was essentially in prison, dying inside the cell she’d built around him. Not that she cared much. But it meant she’d have to replace him eventually.