mother had done the same when she read to me. I could think of nothing but her sweet face. I glared down at this man. This creature. I joined him in laughter as my father stood helpless—a fire spreading through my chest. I felt the wooden stake in my fingers. I could do anything. I was a god.
I have no memory of driving it in—I only remember that I did. His laughter ceased and he took an awkward step. His eyes turned black in the space of a single blink, as if the inkwells in his pupils had suddenly shattered—the spill contained behind glass. His fangs descended, and I could presently make out a faint blue web beneath his skin. It was true. Until that moment there had been room for doubt. But now I saw it with my own eyes. Now I knew.
Vampires were real.
His arm rose, and his stout little hand instinctively grabbed the stake. There was no fear in his face yet. Merely a puzzlement, as if he was attempting to sort out just how such an object could be attached to his body. He presently lost his footing and collapsed into a seated position, where he remained for a moment before falling the rest of the way onto his back. His hand lost its grip on the stake, and the arm fell to his side.
I walked around him, wondering when he would strike. Wondering when he would laugh at the futility of what I had done and cut me down. As I did, his eyes followed me. They were the only things that moved now. There was fear in them. He was dying… and he was afraid. What little color he had left him now—and rich, dark blood began to run from his nostrils; out the sides of his mouth. A trickle at first… then a flood—running over his cheeks and pooling over his eyes. More blood than I ever thought possible. I could see his soul (if indeed he had such a thing) departing. Bidding an unexpected, frightening farewell to such a long, long life—one undoubtedly filled with happiness, and agony, and struggle, and success. Filled with moments too beautiful to share. Too painful to recall. It was all ending now, and he was so afraid. Afraid of what nothingness awaited him. Or worse, what punishment.
And then he was gone. I expected my eyes to fill with tears. To feel remorse at the sight of what I had done. I admit that I felt nothing. I only wished he had suffered more.
Thomas stood aghast. “Look what you’ve done,” he said after a sickened silence. “You’ve killed us.”
“On the contrary… I’ve killed him.”
“More will come.”
Abe had already begun to walk away.
“Then I shall need more stakes.”
THREE
Henry
It is the eternal struggle between these two principles—right and wrong—throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle.
I
Southeastern Indiana was in the grip of fear during the summer of 1825. Three children had gone missing over a six-week period beginning in early April. The first, a seven-year-old boy named Samuel Greene, disappeared while playing in the woods near his family’s farm in Madison, a thriving town on the banks over the Ohio River. Search parties were sent out. Ponds dredged. But no trace of the boy was found. Less than two weeks later, before the people of Madison had abandoned all hope of finding him alive, six-year-old Gertrude Wilcox vanished from her bed in the middle of the night. Now alarm turned to panic. Parents refused to let their children outdoors. Neighbors leveled accusations at neighbors, all while three weeks passed without incident. Then, on May 20th, the third child was taken—not from Madison, but from the town of Jeffersonville twenty miles downriver. This time the body was found in a matter of days—along with two others. A hunter had made the gruesome discovery, following his dogs to a shallow wooded ditch where the three twisted corpses lay, hastily covered with brush. Their bodies were unnaturally decomposed—almost completely devoid of color. Each of their faces locked in an open-eyed mask of fear.
Abe Lincoln was sixteen years old that summer, and his resolution to “kill every vampire in America” was off to an inauspicious start. His father’s fears had proved needless. No vampires ever came to avenge Jack Barts. In fact, in the four years since he’d staked Barts, Abe hadn’t so much as seen another vampire, though not for lack of trying. He’d spent countless nights chasing distant screams on the wind and keeping watch over freshly dug graves just in case, as folklore suggested, a vampire came to feast on the corpse. But with nothing more than old books and old myths to guide him, and a father unwilling to help, Abe spent those four years in a constant state of frustration. There was little to do but keep up with his training. He’d reached his full height of six feet four inches, every square centimeter of him lean muscle. He could outwrestle and outrun most men twice his age. He could bury the head of an ax in a tree from over thirty yards. He could pull a plow every bit as fast as a draft horse, and lift a 250-pound log clean over his head.
What he couldn’t do was sew. After spending weeks trying to fashion himself a long “hunting coat” only to see it fall to pieces after one or two wearings, he’d broken down and paid a seamstress to do the job (he hadn’t asked his stepmother, for fear of raising the obvious question of what he needed such a coat for). The long black coat was lined with thick material over his chest and stomach, and inside pockets to store all manner of knives, cloves of garlic, and a flask of holy water, which he’d blessed himself. He wore his quiver of stakes on his back, and a thick leather collar, one that he’d commissioned from an Elizabethtown tanner, around his neck.
When word of those twisted corpses reached Little Pigeon Creek, Abe set off for the river at once.
I told Father that I had found work on a flatboat bound for New Orleans, and that I would return with $20 pay in six weeks’ time. I did so in spite of having received no such offer of work, and despite having no idea where I would find the money. I could think of no other way that Father would have permitted such a long absence.
Contrary to his infallibly “honest” image, Abe wasn’t above lying so long as it served a noble purpose. This was the chance he’d ached for those four long years. The chance to test his skills. His tools. The chance to feel the exhilaration of watching a vampire fade away at his feet. Seeing the fear in its eyes.
There were far better trackers than Abraham Lincoln. Men with far more knowledge of the Ohio River. But there was nary a human being in Kentucky or Indiana with a more extensive knowledge of mysterious disappearances and unsolved murders.
When I heard a description of the bodies at Jeffersonville, I knew at once that a vampire was responsible, and I had a very good notion of where it was going. I remembered reading about a similar case in Dugre’s On the History of the Mississippi River—one that had confounded settlers almost fifty years prior. Children had gone missing from their beds in small towns all along the river—beginning in Natchez, and continuing to Donaldsonville. North to south. The bodies had been found in groups along the river, badly decomposed. Unnaturally so—each with nothing more than small cuts on their appendages. Like that vampire, I was willing to bet that this one was heading south with the current. Furthermore, I was willing to bet that it was on a boat. And if it was on a boat, it would reach Evansville sooner or later.
That was where Abe lay in wait on the night of Thursday, June 30th, 1825, hiding behind brush on the wooded banks of the Ohio.
The moon was blessedly full, revealing every detail of the night… the light fog rolling over the river’s surface, the dewdrops on the leaves of my hiding place, the silhouettes of sleeping birds on a tree branch, and the flatboat tied up not thirty yards from where I hid. It looked no different from any of the small barges one saw up and down the river: forty feet by twelve; fashioned from rough wooden planks; all but a third of its deck taken up by covered
