Seth Grahame-Smith - Abraham Lincoln - Vampire Hunter

Abe looked at the ax over his mantle.

All that I have ever loved …

“Abraham… do not give in to this despair. Remember your mother—remember what she whispered with her dying breath.”

“Do not try to manipulate me, Henry! And do not pretend to care that I suffer! You care only for your own gains! For your war! You know nothing of loss!”

Now Henry rose to his feet. “I have spent these three hundred years mourning a wife and child, Abraham! Mourning the life that was stolen from me; a thousand loves lost to time! You know nothing of the lengths I have gone to protect you! Nothing of that which I have suff—”

Henry composed himself.

“No,” he said. “No… it mustn’t be this way. We have come too far for this.” He grabbed his coat and hat. “You have my respects, and you have my offer. If you choose to leave Willie buried, so be it.”

The sound of Willie’s name roused such wildness in me—Henry’s callous tone such rage that I grabbed the ax from its perch and swung at his head with a scream, missing him by less than an inch, and shattering the clock on the mantle. I recovered and swung again, but Henry leapt over my blade. The office door now flew open behind us, and two of the trinity rushed in. On seeing us, they froze—unsure of where their loyalties lay. Lamon, however, was plagued by no such uncertainty. On entering, he drew his revolver and aimed it at Henry—only to have it taken by one of the vampires before he could fire.

Henry stood in the center of the room, arms at his sides. I charged again—raising my ax as I ran. Henry didn’t so much as blink as I came. Rather, he grabbed the handle as I brought it down on his head, took it from me, and snapped it in two, throwing the pieces on the floor. I came at him with my fists, but these he caught as well, twisting them around and forcing me to my knees. Holding me thus, he knelt behind me and brought his fangs to my neck. “No!” cried Lamon, rushing forward. The others held him back. I felt the tips of those twin razors against my flesh.

“Do it!” I cried.

The only peace in this life is the end of it …

“Do it, I beg you!”

I felt the tiny trickles of blood run down my neck as his fangs broke through my skin. I closed my eyes and prepared to meet the unknown; to see my beloved boys once more… but it was not to be.

Henry withdrew his fangs and let me go.

“Some people are just too interesting to kill, Abraham,” he said, rising to his feet. He gathered his coat and hat again and walked to the door, toward the three anxious guards whose hearts were racing faster than my own.

“Henry…”

He turned back.

“I will see this war to its end… but I do not care to see another vampire so long as I live.”

Henry offered a slight bow. “Mr. President…”

With that, he disappeared.

Abe wouldn’t see him for the rest of his life.

TWELVE

“Starve the Devils”

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue… until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

—Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address

March 4th, 1865

I

Washington, D.C., was under attack, and Abe wasn’t about to miss his chance to see the fighting up close.

On July 11th, 1864, ignoring the pleas of his personal guard, he rode alone on horseback to Fort Stevens, *where Confederate General Jubal A. Early was leading 17,000 rebels in a brazen assault on Washington’s northern defenses. The president was greeted by Union officers and whisked directly into the fort, where he would be able to relax and enjoy a cool drink behind the safety of its thick stone walls.

I hadn’t come to be coddled or hear the battle described to me—I’d come to see the horrors of war for myself. To see what others had suffered these three long years, while I had remained behind the walls of warmth and plenty. Try as they might, the officers couldn’t discourage me from peeking over the parapet to watch boys line up and ceremoniously shoot one another—to see them blown apart by [cannon fire] and run through by bayonets.

The sight of Abraham Lincoln towering over the battlefield in his stovepipe hat must have seemed a godsend for the rebel sharpshooters at Fort Stevens that day. Abe had three bullets zip past him in as many minutes, each one giving his minders terrible fits of anxiety. Finally, when a Union officer standing next to him was struck in the head and killed, the president felt a tug at the bottom of his coat, and heard First Lieutenant (and future Supreme Court Justice) Oliver Wendell Holmes yell: “Get down, you damned fool!”

But he didn’t.

He’d completely lost his fear of death.

There were no more vampires at the White House. Abe had banished them in the wake of Willie’s death and his confrontation with Henry. Even the trinity—his most capable and ferocious protectors—had been sent back to New York.

I shall save this Union because it merits saving. I shall save it to honor the men who built it with their blood and genius, and the future generations who deserve its liberty. I shall give every miserable hour to the cause of victory and peace—but I shall be damned if I lay eyes on another vampire.

The first family was now guarded exclusively by living men, and the president guarded less and less at his own insistence. Each day brought new restrictions on his guards; each day fewer rooms he welcomed them in. Over Ward Hill Lamon’s objections, Abe insisted on riding out in an open carriage when the weather was agreeable, and on walking between the mansion and the War Department alone after dark. As Lamon recalled in his memoirs years later: “I believe that it was more than an absence of fear. I believe that it was an invitation of death.”

A journal entry from April 20th, 1862, sums up Abe’s growing fatalism.

In the course of a week, I greet a thousand strange faces in the White House. Should I treat each as the face of my assassin? Indeed, any man willing to give his life to take mine would have little trouble doing it. Am I therefore to lock myself in an iron box and wait for this war to end? If God wants my soul, He knows where He may collect it—and He may do so at the hour and in the manner of His choosing.

In time, through sheer force of will, he would pull himself out of this depression, just as he had all the ones before it. Not long after Willie’s death, when his longtime friend William McCullough was killed fighting for the Union, Abe sent a letter to the grieving daughter McCullough had left behind. The comfort and advice he offered was meant as much for himself as for the girl.

Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You cannot now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only to believe it, to feel better at once. The memory of your dear Father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer and holier sort than you have known before.

But while Abe was picking himself up and soldiering on, Mary was only getting worse.

She cannot bring herself to leave her bed for more than an hour’s time. Nor can she attend to Tad, who grieves not only for a brother, but a mother as well. I am ashamed to admit that there are moments when the very sight of her angers me. Ashamed because it is no fault of hers that she suffers fits of rage, or believes the charlatans who “commune” with our beloved sons for money. She has borne more than any mother ought to bear. I fear that her mind has gone, and that it shall never return.