Read The President's Vampire for Free Online

Blake said, struggling with the sudden onrush of anxiety as some vestigial part of his brain blared an alarm at him.
    “Don’t let me keep you, Blake,” Zach said.
    Blake trotted out of the room, fresh sweat staining the pits of his shirt.
    Zach sat down again, feeling a little better.
    An assistant wrapped in a short skirt emerged and told them, “He’ll see you now.”
    Cade picked up the bag and stood.
    Zach did the same. Too late to go home now, he thought.
     
     
    WILL PRADOR, the new White House chief of staff, rose from behind his desk.
    Prador was the guy Zach compared himself to when he really wanted to feel like a failure. He was only a couple of years older than Zach, but his résumé read like he’d been in politics for decades: coordinator of statewide campaigns before he was out of college; political director of a high-level think tank in the off-year; TV pundit; consultant; then a highly visible spot as the media director for Senator Samuel Curtis’s run at the White House.
    And now, chief of staff. The job Zach wanted before he became caretaker for the president’s pet vampire.
    Zach and Prador worked together on the same side of the same campaigns for years. But Zach had no idea who was sitting on the couch along the wall.
    He didn’t rise. He was dressed in a very expensive black suit with a blinding white shirt and red tie. He simply eyed Cade and Zach with a kind of bemused hostility.
    Zach immediately went into information containment protocol, which was standard whenever they dealt with someone who wasn’t in the loop.
    “Nice to see you, Will,” he said, before Prador could greet them. Then he extended his hand to the man on the couch.
    “Peter Tork. This is my partner, Mike Nesmith. We’re with the president’s Internal Security Service Office.”
    The man didn’t take Zach’s hand. He just smiled a bit wider.
    Up close, it was difficult to say how old he was. The suit was well tailored, but he was obviously fit underneath it. His hair, though white, was still full and thick. His face was a waxen mask, as if the years had polished it smooth. It seemed frozen in place, even as it moved.
    But the man’s most arresting feature was his eyes. They were pale, milked of any color except a dull, reflective silver.
    He wasn’t looking at Zach. His attention was focused on Cade.
    Zach kept his hand out. “And you are . . . ?”
    “You can cut the shit,” Prador said to Zach. “This is Colonel Graves. He’s inside the knowledge.”
    Zach was immediately concerned. That meant this guy, whoever he was, knew about Cade. And nobody was supposed to know about Cade.
    Zach noticed neither Prador nor Graves appeared too nervous around Cade. That happened from time to time.
    With Prador, Zach wasn’t surprised. It was probably Prador’s greatest gift—he was never rattled by anything. Photos of the candidate in a leather corset show up on the Internet? No problem. Down by twenty points in the latest poll? No problem. A supernatural war against the United States, and a bloodsucking fiend was America’s only real weapon? No problem. If Prador had any emotions, he kept them in a secure vault controlled by a legal trust.
    As for Graves, some people were simply so self-absorbed, so nonobservant, that they couldn’t feel the dread Cade regularly inspired in others. If they actually stopped and noticed the thing sharing their breathing space—
    Then Graves got up and stood face-to-face with Cade.
    He didn’t move like an old man: no muffled groan, no levering himself off the cushions with his arms. He just stood, and crossed the rug to Cade.
    “Mr. Barrows,” he said. “Mr. Cade.”
    Cade and Graves continued to stare at each other. Cade appeared troubled. “Do I know you?”
    “I thought vampires never forgot anything,” Graves said. “I’m sure you’d remember me if we’d met.”
    Cade didn’t say anything else. Zach was more alarmed than he wanted to show. He couldn’t remember Cade