Abraham Lincoln_ Vampire Hunter - Seth Grahame-Smith [60]
This is madness.
Still, I longed to see him burn. I dropped the torch on the woodpile. He struggled against his bonds to no avail. Screamed until his lungs bled with nary a sound. The flames grew waist-high almost at once, forcing me back as his feet and legs began to blacken and burn. So great was the heat that his blond hair blew continually upward, as if he stood in a gale. Henry remained close to the flames—nearer than I was able. With the jug in hand, he repeatedly poured water over MacNamar’s head, chest, and back, keeping him alive as his legs were burned to the bone. Prolonging his agony. I felt tears on my face.
I am dead.
This went on for ten, perhaps fifteen minutes until—at my insistence—he was finally allowed to die. Henry doused the flames and waited for the charred corpse to cool.
Henry placed a gentle hand on Abe’s shoulder. Abe brushed it away.
“Why do you kill your own, Henry? And do me the honor of the truth, for I deserve as much.”
“I have never given you otherwise.”
“Then say it now and be done with it. Why do you kill your own? And why do—”
“Why do I send you in my stead, yes, yes I know. My God, I forget how young you are.”
Henry ran a hand over his face. This was a conversation he had hoped to avoid.
“Why do I kill my own? I have given you my answer: because it is one thing to feed on the blood of the old and the sick and the treacherous, but quite another to take sleeping children from their beds; quite another to march men and women to their deaths in chains, as you have seen with your own eyes.”
“Then why me? Why not kill them yourself?”
Henry paused to collect his thoughts.
“When I rode here from St. Louis,” he said at last, “I knew that you would not be dead when I arrived. I knew it with all my heart… because I know your purpose.”
Abe lifted his eyes to meet Henry’s.
“Most men have no purpose but to exist, Abraham; to pass quietly through history as minor characters upon a stage they cannot even see. To be the playthings of tyrants. But you… you were born to fight tyranny. It is your purpose, Abraham. To free men from the tyranny of vampires. It has always been your purpose, since you first sprang from your mother’s womb. And I have seen it emanating from your every pore since the night we first met. Shining from you as brightly as the sun. Do you think that it was some accident that brought us together? Do you think it was mere chance that the first vampire I sought to kill in more than a hundred years was the one who led me to you?
“I can see a man’s purpose, Abraham. It is my gift. I can see it as clearly as I see you standing before me now. Your purpose is to fight tyranny…
“… and mine is to see that you win.”
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
SEVEN
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
The Fatal First
I have now come to the conclusion never again to think of marrying, and for this reason; I can never be satisfied with anyone who would be blockhead enough to have me.
—Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to Mrs. Orville H. Browning
April 1st, 1838
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
I
Abe was on the second floor of a plantation house. He’d seen so many of them on his trips down the Mississippi—the oversize, four-columned wonders built by the hands of slaves. But he’d never been inside. Not until tonight.
I held Jack in my arms, his innards visible through the slit that ran across his belly. I saw the color leave his face… saw the fear in his eyes. And then the nothingness. My brave, sturdy friend. The roughest man in Clary’s Grove. Gone. And yet I could not grieve him now—for I too remained perilously close to death.
It had been another simple errand,