I shook my head in disbelief. “Wait, you’re General Washington?”

  “President Washington,” he corrected. “That is one of my names. Alive and well, though hiding underground like a rodent these days. Fame has its drawbacks when forced to shroud oneself from the eyes of angels.”

  “That’s impossible,” I said.

  “Improbable,” he corrected.

  “If you were a Black Badge. They’d hunt you.”

  “Hunt the man I was, perhaps. Not the man I became.”

  “But Judas said—”

  Again, he let out a scathing laugh. “So, he did get to you. Taught you of shadows and secrecy, no? Our kind’s never-ending graft.”

  I nodded.

  “His lifeblood is too precious to risk, and thus, he must live forever in infamy, but we who are younger?” He rose, stepping from the pool of blood. He ignored how it cascaded from his legs and drenched the floor, heading toward the back of the room. “I chose fame, and for that, I was excommunicated, until it worked.” He lifted a pointed hat off an old table and placed it upon his head. In an instant, he became those historic images come to life.

  “Where better to hide than in plain sight?” Washington said. “To reinvent myself. And war provides plenty of blood for one unable to drink it. A cost of my transformation into something unrecognizable to those above and below.”

  “But the sun,” I said, as if I caught him in a lie.

  The man shook his head. “This hat. This coat. An exuberant supply of skin powder. And this benefit of being so powerful, no man dared ask why their general spent so much time within the tent during daylight hours.”

  He ripped the hat off and tossed it to the floor like trash. “I could have been a king, except Judas preached patience. Curse my desire to win back Father’s love.”

  Washington seemed eager to get his story out. I suppose if he really was who he claimed to be, and had been sequestered for so many decades, I could understand.

  “He has a vision for the New World, you see,” he went on. “Far from the seat of those who worship the Almighty, and the ancient rivalry. A land of the free, and the home of the vampire!”

  He raised his arms in conquest as he proclaimed it. Then he scoffed and looked around at the dark, lonely room.

  “Impressive, isn’t it? Alas, a president cannot live forever as president, and I’ll be damned if I allow the White Throne to claim me after all this time and miss the future of this country I built upon the backs of so many.”

  In a flash, he grabbed me and raced me back around to his side of his pool, facing Rosa and Chapelwaite. His dirk-like nails slid against my throat, ready to rip me to pieces.

  Fucking vampires.

  “Let go of him!” Rosa yelled, drawing her five-shot.

  Chapelwaite hurried to lower her arm.

  “If you are here to finally claim me, Hand of God,” Washington whispered in my ear, “then you will join all the others in my bath.”

  “Why the hell would I stroll on in if I was looking for a fight?” I asked.

  He sneered at me with those false teeth. “I know the tools of your trade. Deceit. Deception.”

  “I’m more of a guns and bullets type of guy.”

  Chapelwaite fell to his knees and extended open palms. Seemed like he was flexing his arms too, letting the veins in his wrists pop on purpose. Subservience wasn’t a good look on him.

  “Please, Your Highness,” he said like a sniveling coward. “I would never bring him here if I believed he couldn’t be trusted.”

  Washington growled, low and brooding, and absolutely not presidential. “Lincoln trusted underlings too, and they allowed a Black Badge right into his opera box with loaded silver.”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Chapelwaite shook his head. “He made himself too available. It was inevitable.”

  “You dare question an elder?” Washington’s voice boomed.

  “No. No. Never, Excellence. You have my word, on His blood.”

  After a few more long, tense seconds, the first president of this whole damned nation released me with a playful chuckle. “Oh, display some backbone, you whelp. And you…”

  The next second, he became a blur, then had his arm around Rosa’s wrist. His squeeze forced her gun to clatter to the stone floor. “How dare you aim at me—”

  His mistake. Rosa’s survival instincts kicked in, honed by years on the run with her mother, and Ace’s attempts on her person. A defiant shout rose, and she pushed against Washington’s chest with a crackle of energy. He flew back, smashing into the hard, stone wall. A tattered American flag shook loose and fell, draping over him.

  He brushed it aside and regarded her, a sparkle in his dark eyes. “Not so dormant anymore, are you?”

  “Touch me again and see what happens!” she hissed, her eyes like two dynamite fuses at the end of the wick.

  “Relax, woman. I had to get a rise out of you and see for myself.”

  The flag sagged over nothing as Washington zipped away again. He returned to Rosa, careful not to touch her this time while sniffing her neck. She angrily swiped at him, hitting only air as he circled back around her, a wolf toying with its prey.

  With his attention elsewhere, I did what any righteous outlaw would. I drew my gun and sent a warning shot right through one of his ridiculous tufts of hair.

  He turned on me, crouched and hissing, ready for battle like so many vampires before him. Though he bore impotent fangs, flashing flat dentures instead. It drove home precisely how sad it was to find this once great man—or vampire—relegated to the pathetic life of a hermit.

  “I’d appreciate it if you step away from the lady so we can get to business,” I said. “And tell her to relax again, the next one goes through your shitty excuse for a heart.”

  “Is your aim so true, Hand of God?” he snarled. “I could erase you from existence in an instant if I so desired.”

  “You won’t reach him.” Rosa put a hand over Washington’s collarbone and shoved him to one knee with minimal effort, power still surging through her. His eyes went wide in shock, though he remained resolute in his arrogance.

  “As much as I enjoy a good fight,” I said, “we ain’t here for that.” I lowered my gun. “Death is on our doorstep, and I mean that literally. So, if you don’t mind, I think it’s time you honor the whims of your maker.”

  “Death, you say?” Washington remarked, one bushy brow lifting. “Curious. Judas destroyed Death, to then be reborn in blood.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. I’ve seen the Devil’s Horsemen with my own eyes.”

  “If they were beckoned for her, she must truly be special.”

  “It’s as I told you, Your Highness,” Chapelwaite said, once more prostrating himself before the immortal ex-president. “They must commune with your Maker, and I’m afraid it can wait no longer.”

  “Fine, fine. Keep your knickers on.” Washington grumbled as he rose, a bit cautious of Rosa’s power, and perhaps her proclivity toward rash action. He returned to the table in the back of the room where he pulled another flag off the wall. Behind it, he revealed an ornate bronze mirror. My concern was alleviated when I saw there was no glass, only a frame.

  He stopped before it and began reciting to himself in Latin or Aramaic or some other long-forgotten language.

  “What’s he doing?” Rosa asked.

  “Hell if I know,” I said. “Before Judas, I thought vamps were nothing more than mindless bloodsuckers.”

  Torches on either side of the mirror frame bloomed to life in brilliant red and purple hues.

  “Sanguis intra sanguis. Vita intra mortem,” Washington chanted, then lifted his wrist to his mouth and bit. His dentures couldn’t even break skin. He groaned.

  “Apologies. Old habits.” Then he barked, “Chapelwaite!”

  The fed raced to his side and produced a concealed dagger. Washington gawked at it, incredulous.

  “Are you dense, underling?”

  “A thousand apologies, Excellence.” Chapelwaite took the dagger himself and raised the blade to Washington’s outstretched arm. He paused, visibly terrified. It was clear he didn’t have the same rapport with the president as he possessed with Judas.

  “Well, what are you waiting for?”

  Chapelwaite cleared his throat, clenched his jaw, then sliced the vampire’s wrist. Thick, dark, nearly black blood oozed out. Chapelwaite stared at it longingly.

  Washington exhaled. “If you must.”

  Graciously, Chapelwaite brought his lips to the wound and slurped up blood like a drunk lapping spilled whiskey off a bar top. His eyelids fluttered in rapture. I’d seen men mid-coitus who didn’t look so pleased. After a good long suck, he backed away with a bowed head, licking his lips.

  Rosa stifled a dry heave.

  I rubbed her back. “Welcome to my world.”

  Washington returned his attention to the mirror frame and rubbed his hands together, spreading the blood healthily over each finger.

  “Sanguis intra sanguis. Vita intra mortem,” he repeated.

  The flames brightened as he extended his palms. Blood went spiraling through the air and around the frame. Each droplet swirled until a film of the dark liquid stretched to form a red mirror.

  Like my upside-down cross bearing a piece of Judas concealed me from mirrors, vampires had the same affliction, being that they all derived from him. Not this one. Washington’s reflection stared right back at him, so dark from blood, it was more just shades and shadows than anything else.

  “You may leave now, underling,” he addressed Chapelwaite without even sparing him a glance.

  “I don’t believe—”

  Washington cut him off, a harsh edge to his tone. “This concerns the family. Begone.”

  Chapelwaite didn’t dare argue. Sinking back in shame before making his way toward the exit, he offered a curt “good luck” on his way by. Then he disappeared into the dark passage that led to the strange electrical lift.

  And, so, there we were. Me, Rosa, and George fucking Washington, all alone.