“Safe. Placed where he will be found.”
His accent betrayed no particular origin. Was he an Englishman? An American? A Scot? He sat beside me in an intricately carved high-back chair, one leg of his dark trousers folded neatly over the other, the sleeves of his blue shirt rolled to the elbows, and a small silver cross hanging around his neck. My eyes came around, and I traced the shape of the room by the light of his oil lamp. Its walls seemed made from stones piled one on top of the other—the space between them packed with clay. Each boasted no fewer than two gold-framed paintings; some as many as six. Scenes of bare-breasted native women carrying water from a stream. Sun-soaked landscapes. A portrait of a young lady hanging beside a portrait of an old one, their features remarkably similar. I saw my belongings carefully laid out on a chest in the far corner of the room. My coat. My knives. My ax—miraculously rescued from the bottom of the Ohio. Surrounding these, some of the most elegant furnishings I had ever seen. And books! Stacks and stacks of books of every conceivable thickness and binding.
“My name is Henry Sturges,” he said. “This is my home.”
“Abraham… Lincoln.”
“The ‘father of many.’ A pleasure, indeed.”
I tried to sit up, but met with such pain as to bring me to the edge of fainting. I lay on my back and looked down my chin. My chest and stomach were covered in wet bandages.
“You’ll forgive the intrusion on your modesty, but you were quite injured. Don’t be alarmed by the smell, either. Your dressings have been steeped in an assortment of oils—all very good for healing wounds, I assure you. Not as beneficial to the senses, I’m afraid.”
“How…”
“Two days and nights. I must say, the first dozen hours were rather tenuous. I wasn’t sure you would ever wake. It’s a compliment to your health that you sur—”
“No… how did you kill her?”
“Ah. It wasn’t difficult, really. She was quite frail, you know.”
It seemed an absurd thing to say to one whose body had been shattered by her “frailty.”
“And, I might add, quite preoccupied with drowning you. In that regard I suppose I owe you a debt of gratitude for distrac—may I ask you something?”
My silence proved a suitable substitute for “yes.”
“How many vampires have you slain?”
It was shocking to hear a stranger say the word. Until that day I had heard no one other than my father speak of them as real creatures. I thought briefly of boasting, but answered him honestly.
“One,” said Abe.
“Yes… yes, that seems about right.”
“And you, sir. How many have you slain?”
“One.”
I could make no sense of it. How could someone with such skill—who had so easily slain a vampire—have so little practice?
“Are you… not a vampire hunter?”
Henry laughed heartily at the idea.
“I can say with certainty that I am not. Though it would be an interesting choice of trade, to be sure.”
In my muddled state I was slow to get his meaning. As it dawned—as I felt the truth of it sink into my skin, I was at once terrified and furious. He had killed the vampire woman. Not to save me from death, but to save me for himself. Now there was no pain. Now there was only the fire in my chest. I struck at him with all my strength—all my rage. But my arms were abruptly stopped on their way to his throat. He had fashioned bindings around my wrists. I screamed wildly. Pulled at the restraints until my face turned red. A madman. Henry looked on without so much as a blink of consternation.
“Yes,” said Henry. “I thought that might be your reaction.”
III
For the next two days and nights, I refused to say a word. Refused to eat, or sleep, or look my host in the eye. How could I, knowing that my life might end at any moment? Knowing that a vampire (my sworn enemy! my mother’s murderer!) was never more than a few steps away? How much of my blood had he tasted while I slept? I heard his shoes climb up and down a wooden staircase. Heard the creaks and clangs of a delicate door being opened and shut. But I heard nothing of the outside world. No birdsong. No church bells. I knew not when it was day or night. My only measurement of time was the sound of the match striking. The woodstove burning. The kettle boiling. Every few hours, he entered the room with a steaming bowl of broth, sat by my bed, and offered to feed it to me. I promptly refused. My refusal being accepted with like promptness, Henry picked up a volume of The Selected Works of William Shakespeare and continued reading where he’d left off. Such was our little game. For two days, I refused to eat or listen. For two days, he continued to cook and speak. As he read, I tried to occupy my mind with trivial thoughts. With songs or stories of my own creation. Anything but give this vampire the satisfaction of my attention. But on the third day, momentarily bested by my hunger, I could not help but accept when Henry came offering a spoonful of broth. I swore that I would only accept the first. Just enough to quiet the pain in my stomach, nothing more.
Abe ate three bowlfuls without stopping. When he had finally eaten his fill, he and Henry sat in silence “for what seemed an hour’s time,” until Abe finally spoke:
“Why haven’t you killed me?”
It sickened me to look at him. I cared not for his kindness. I cared not that he had saved my life. Treated my wounds and fed me. I cared not who he was. Only what he was.
“And pray, what reason have I to kill you?”
“You are a vampire.”
“And so the rest of me is written? Have I not the mind of a man? Have I not the same needs? To be fed and clothed and comforted? Judge us not equally, Abraham.”
Now it was I who could not help but laugh.
“You speak as one who does not murder to be ‘fed’! Whose ‘needs’ do not take mothers from their children!”
“Ah,” said Henry. “And it was one of my kind who took her from you?”
All traces of reason left me. There was something about the ease with which he spoke of it. The callousness. The madman returned. I struck at him, knocking the soup bowl to the stone floor in the process. Shattering it. I would have torn his face off but for the bindings around my wrists.
“Never speak of her! NEVER!”
Henry waited until my outburst had passed, then knelt on the floor and collected the pieces of the shattered bowl.
“You must forgive me,” said Henry. “It has been quite a long time since I was your age. I forget the passions of youth. I shall endeavor to choose my words more carefully.”
The last of the pieces in his hands, he stood and made to leave, but paused in the doorway.
“Ask yourself… are we so unalike, you and I? Are we not both unwilling servants of my condition? Did we not
