The President's Vampire by Christopher Farnsworth Read Free Book Online Page A

into one.”
    Prador looked down, as if the severed head might leap out and bite him.
    “You can catch it? ”
    “Not from the corpses, as far as we know,” Zach said. “Still, you might want to run some Windex over your desk just to be sure.”
    “Jesus Christ,” Prador said.
    Zach winced. Although Cade didn’t show it, he was offended by anyone taking the name of the Lord in vain. Like the cross around his neck, it was just one of the vampire’s little quirks. Zach doubted Prador knew or cared, but Zach hated it when Cade got angry. Nobody needed that, especially not right now. He was angry enough.
    Prador struggled to get control of the meeting again. “Well, that’s unusual, yes, I admit, but, uh, I don’t see how—I mean, there are still proper procedures . . .”
    He trailed off as he realized Cade was staring at him.
    “You asked about my oath,” Cade said. “Let me tell you what my oath requires. I swore to do whatever is necessary to protect this country. No matter what the cost. Failure to keep this oath is extraordinarily painful to me. And yet, at this moment, there are two men here with information about something that could, literally, end this world. Information they refuse to share. At this moment, these two men are the greatest obstacle to keeping my oath.”
    It was nothing overt, nothing as blatant as throwing over the chair or slamming his fists on the desk. But his stillness was somehow worse, implying hideous violence barely restrained.
    “ Whatever is necessary,” Cade said again.
    There was a long moment of silence. Graves and Prador glanced back and forth, as if trying to communicate in blinks.
    Prador folded.
    “Jesus, it’s just not that simple, all right?” he said.
    Graves scowled. He buttoned it down quick, but Zach caught it. Prador was going off script.
    Prador put his chair upright again. He almost managed to make it look like he had a lizard-man’s head on his desk every day.
    “Please put that back in the bag,” he said to Cade. To his credit, his voice didn’t tremble.
    Cade put the head away. Prador took a deep breath.
    “I apologize, Zach. To you and Mr. Cade. I should have been more forthcoming. If we could all just sit down?”
    Cade and Zach took their chairs. Graves took his spot on the couch again.
    Prador shot a guilty look at Graves. Graves shrugged, as if to say, It’s your show.
    “It’s not just the renditions,” Prador said. “There’s something else. We think we know who has infiltrated A/A.”
    “Who?”
    Again, that hesitation. Another glance between Prador and Graves, as if deciding who got to break the bad news.
    Cade didn’t say a word. He moved an inch toward Prador, though, and that was enough to break through the reluctance.
    “You and Mr. Cade already know them, Zach,” Prador said. “I believe you called them the Shadow Company.”
     
     
    ZACH WAS STILL UNDER the restrictions of information containment, so he could never reveal too many secrets if he was captured by an enemy, or if he went rogue. That meant there were a lot of things he didn’t know yet. But he knew about the Shadow Company.
    It was like the evil twin of the U.S. intelligence apparatus. Nestled like a tumor inside every government agency, but primarily working out of the CIA, the Shadow Company did the things that could never be brought out into the light of day. Assassinations, coups, plots, drug-running—all the stuff no one in elected office wanted to know about.
    Since the Company operated in the same netherworld that Cade did, no one admitted it existed. There was no way to hold anyone accountable for its actions. Its members worked in cells, much like terrorists, with limited contact with their superiors. It ran its own operations, moved money through black accounts and answered to no one.
    And while it claimed to work in the best interests of the United States, it was so good at keeping secrets that nobody could say who headed the organization, or even