He pulled up to the guardhouse, showed his ID card, waited. The guard looked at it, made a notation, and opened the barrier. He drove out and was soon headed for the freeway. It was a sunny summer afternoon, and once he was out of Reston, the world came to appear innocent again, even sweet. He loved the people in the cars, felt their hopes and loves with the special empathy that only a person who has killed in the line of duty can ever know. There is something about the taking of human life that makes human life seem incredibly precious. Even if killing somebody is necessary, the fact is that your dead remain with you all the rest of your days. Not your dead vampires, though. Only the people.

What if people knew that they were liable to be hunted down and killed, and it wasn’t against the law? The very notion was absurd.

On this deceptively peaceful afternoon, he knew that he had to act with the utmost professionalism and speed, or he was going to be hunted down himself. Right this minute, there was an urgent meeting taking place somewhere in the building—probably in Justin’s office—covering the issue of Paul Ward. He’d become what was known as a “runner,” an agent who, when his actions were challenged, had immediately taken off. To CIA, this response was prima facie evidence of guilt. The Company was very skilled at hunting such people down.

What he needed to do was clear: he needed to kill as many vampires as he possibly could between now and the time they did manage to catch up with him.

He took 495 to 95, thinking that he’d go to Baltimore, park the car somewhere, and take mass transit to the Amtrak station.

According to what little he knew about the vampire in America, he needed to go first to New York. The reporter Ellen Wunderling had disappeared there researching the gothic subculture. In Paul’s opinion, it was possible that she had stumbled across a real vampire, discovered too much, and been eaten.

So he’d go back to the plan of looking for her. She had disappeared in New York, so that would be his first destination.

He was a man who carried a lot of cash, always, so he’d be able to put some space between himself and his pursuers.

What a hell of a thing that he’d sacrificed lives for the French Book of Names and now he couldn’t use it. He couldn’t read a word of it himself, and he certainly couldn’t stop by NSA and ask them to help him with the translation.

When he reached the exit for Route 32, he decided to make it interesting for whoever would be coming after him. He took 32 up to Columbia, which was a big enough town to have both a bus system and a taxi company.