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losing a staring match before. He didn’t even think it was possible.
    Graves knew who they were. He knew what Cade was. And they’d walked in here without a clue.
    Zach realized this meeting was going to be worse than he thought. He suddenly felt very conscious of the fact that he was wearing last year’s shoes.
    Prador got right to the unpleasantries.
    “You’ve really fucked the dog now, Zach,” he said in his usual, infuriatingly calm voice.
    Cade sat down, placing the bag on the floor. Zach remained standing. Something was going on here, but Cade left this sort of thing to him. It was human politics, and it barely registered on Cade’s radar.
    Zach, however, was born to it. He could find a hidden agenda in any conversation, and felt double crosses and half-truths like seismic waves. This was the division of labor: Cade killed monsters, and Zach dealt with politicians.
    “Look, Will, we just got off a plane from Somalia—”
    “I managed to figure that out from the half dozen news reports that have been playing every hour. Did you see the Fox headline? ‘Slaughter on the Water’? They’re writing it off as piracy, thankfully. Is that what you call being discreet?”
    “It was necessary,” Cade said, his voice as dry and cold as winter air. Prador didn’t appear impressed.
    “That’s not really your call, Mr. Cade,” Prador said. “I thought you were supposed to follow orders. That’s how it works, right? ‘Bound for all the days he walks the earth’ or something?”
    “Something like that,” Zach said.
    Actually, the blood oath sworn by Cade went: By this blood, you are bound: to the President of the United States; and the orders of the officers appointed by him; to support and defend the nation and its citizens against all enemies, foreign and domestic; and to serve it faithfully for all the days you walk the earth.
    The vodou priestess Marie Laveau had cinched those conditions tight around Cade back in 1867, shortly after he became a vampire. Cade’s blood was mingled with the stains on the bullets that killed Lincoln, and this small fetish anchored the pact. To this day, the bullet was kept in a small leather pouch in a safe in the Oval Office. Zach wasn’t sure why or how it worked—but it worked.
    Still, it wasn’t always as magical as it seemed. Cade was loyal. He was dedicated. He was even a patriot.
    But he was still a vampire. Zach had learned from hard experience that Cade could find a lot of room to maneuver between the lines.
    Prador would probably find that out himself.
    Zach nodded at Graves. “Before we get into anything that’s classified, you want to take a minute and explain who this guy is, and why he’s here?”
    Graves turned his pale eyes on Zach. “I am someone with whom you should not fuck. That’s all you need to know.”
    Zach blinked. “Fair enough.”
    Prador continued as if there had been no interruption: “Forty-eight hours ago, we had a detachment of special CIA operatives tracking a compromised shipment going through Somalia,” he said. “We believed the Somali pirates were working with al-Shabab, and we were very close to establishing a connection with a direct threat to the White House.”
    Zach looked over at Graves. “I’m going to assume that’s where you come in. You’re the CIA’s guy on this?”
    “I could tell you . . .” Graves let the punch line to the old joke just hang there.
    Prador picked up the story again. “Just when it looked like we were making progress, our CIA squad had to pull back. Someone dropped out of the sky and began killing everything in sight. Any chance we had of learning who compromised our supply chain was gone. In just a few minutes, you destroyed an operation that’s been in the works for months.”
    “Wait,” Zach said. “That’s the big deal? Because the CIA has to put another one in the loss column? You’d think they would be used to it by now—”
    “Shut up, Barrows,” Graves said, his voice flat.