Blood Oath by Christopher Farnsworth Read Free Book Online Page B

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