Chapter 2

He was born again. But not into the world outside.

The world of the inner welcomed him first. His brain remoistening with blood, one drop, one vessel at a time. One cell, two cell, red cell, blue cell. Synapses beginning to fire slowly, randomly, like the hammers of a typewriter striking a blank sheet of paper but spelling nonsense. Thoughts – what a strange concept, "thoughts" – being pieced together, the images and feelings primitive cave paintings on the inside of his skull. Then a filmstrip of disjointed frames flashing before him – what a strange concept, "him" – his mind gathering steam now, the fog of death lifting. Here, a dandelion in his six-year-old hand, his feet running across lush green grass. Here, the dirt hearth of a Kentucky cabin. Here, a candlelit book and the smell of bread cooling in the next room. A fleeting feeling of disconnected joy, then grief, then rage, coming and going at random as his brain emerged from its tomb. Each reanimated cell a speck of dirt being brushed off a long-buried fossil. The voices came next. Far-off words in some as yet foreign language. The cries of a child, echoing down a hallway. The moans of lovemaking.

Then, suddenly and unrelentingly, the nightmares. Horrific visions: the faces of his beloved children crying out as they burned away to ash. That ash swirling in a disembodied shaft of light as winged demons flew overhead, their skin so black that only their eyes and teeth showed. His son – the name…why can't I remember his name? – reaching out for him, crying out as the impossible hands of the devil himself dragged him away to burn forever. The boy's face streaked with tears, Abe helpless to save him. And then the nightmares broke like a fever, and Abe could breathe again. It was as if God had tired of watching him gasp and flop and had dropped him back in the cool waters of the now.

On the third day, Abe rose again. He heard a different voice beyond the darkness of his closed eyelids. Unlike the screams that had accompanied his nightmares, this voice came to Abe by way of his ears. It was a familiar voice, speaking words that were also familiar, though Abe wasn't sure why. Nor was he certain what language the man was speaking, as those parts of the fossil had yet to be uncovered.

"Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it," said the voice. "He died as one that had been studied in his death, to throw away the dearest thing he owed, as 'twere a careless trifle…"

Abe's eyes opened, though there was no life behind them. He looked around the room – that's what it's called…a room – as spare as a room could be. White walls. A fireplace a the foot of his large bed. A single, framed painting of a rosy-cheeked young boy hanging on the opposite wall. Yet as spare as the room was, there was also something vaguely familiar about it. A feeling of being home.

Abe noticed a shape to his right. A dark shape, hovering over him. A man, sitting in a chair beside his bed. There was something familiar about him, too. That face. That ghostly face framed by dark, shoulder-length hair.

The tiniest sliver of sunlight squeezed between the drawn curtains and fell on the wall above his head. Abe feared the light. He hated it. It blinded him. It burned him. He wanted it to go away, and it did. As if hearing his thoughts, the curtains were drawn shut, and the burning and blindness were gone.

Now, in the black pitch, Abe saw as never before. Every detail of the room revealed itself, as sharp as day, though drained of nearly all color. Every creak of the house was magnified by his ears. A mouse scurrying behind the walls became a horse galloping over cobblestones. The bristles of a broom sweeping a neighborhood sidewalk sounded like sheets of paper being torn and inch form his ear. And voices. Voices crashing ashore a hundred at a time, the result sounding quite like the jumbled din of an audience milling about in a theater lobby during intermis-

A theater. I was in a theater.

There were other voices – strange voices that didn't pass his ears but were somehow heard just as clearly. Abe looked back to the man in the chair. With the sliver of sunlight gone, he was able to make out the features of the man's face. It was the same face that had greeted him in his twelfth year – the first time he had been spared from the comforting embrace of death. He knew because it was exactly the same face. The face belonged to a man. The man who had steadied him when his body convulsed. Dried his skin when it ran with sweat. Who, now that Abe thought about it, had been right there, every time his fevered eyes had chanced to flitter open for a moment over the last days and nights. There was something familiar about it all. Lying here in a bed, with this man – the familiar man – by his side. Waking from a dream without end. They'd been here before, the two of them. What is your name?

And suddenly, like a ship enshrouded in fog catching the first faint sweep of the lighthouse beam, it came to him.

"Henry," said Abe. "What have you done?"

It had been a little over three years since they'd last been in each other's company, and they hadn't parted as friends.

Henry took a considerable time before answering. When he did, it was with a calm and clear voice, not wanting to agitate Abe any more than he already was.

"You were murdered," said Henry. "Assassinated, in Ford's Theater."

Abe was silent for a time.

"By whom?"

"A vampire named Booth."

"Mary?"

"Unharmed. Though quite stricken with grief, as you would imagine. The whole nation is in mourning, Abraham. Even the South."

The South…the war…

"Where is she?"

"In Washington, with your sons."

My sons…Eddie…Willie…

"Willie," said Abe. "The last time I saw you…we fought about Willie."

"Yes."

"They took him…they killed my boy."

"Yes."

Here was the book of Abe's life, it's pages filled with a jumble of random letters. With every passing second, the letters arranged themselves into words, the words into memories: The mother he'd buried. The sister, the two sons, and the lover he mourned. The vampires. The hunts. The nation. The end. The memories began to overwhelm him. Sorrows coming not as single spies, but in battalions – for all of it, every goddamned word of it was darkness. Loss.

Abe lay on the bed, staring at nothing in particular. Piecing it together.

"I heard a noise," he said after a long silence. "I felt a pain…a hot pain, radiating out from the back of my skull."

"You were shot."

"There was a struggle. Screaming. I heard Mary…heard her shouting. I tried to tell her not to worry, but my mouth wouldn't heed the command to speak, nor my eyelids the command to open. I felt myself floating through the darkness, being carried through some god-awful ruckus. And then…it was quiet again. The pain was still there, somewhere in the dark. But it was distant. I felt the cold prodding of instruments on my skin. Heard voices. Hushed voices. People coming and going; crying…but even these noises began to drift away, as if I was floating down a lazy river, and all the world was on the banks behind me. Wafting away, until there was only the beating of my own heart as it slowed, like a watch in need of winding. And after a time…"

Abe struggled to find the right words. There weren't any.

"After a time?" asked Henry.

"After a time, there was no time."

Abe looked up and met Henry's eyes.

"Henry," he said, "what have you done?"

The question now struck Henry with its full weight. "I've broken a sacred vow," he said. "I've borrowed you back. Returned you to a nation that still needs your wisdom and your strength."

Abe shook his head. "You've undone everything. Whatever good I accomplished, whatever grief I suffered – all that is lost. It means nothing now."

"Abraham- "

"You've made me the very evil I devoted my life to fighting!"

"I've made you immortal, so that you and I might continue what we have begun."

"This isn't what I wanted, Henry… You have bestowed upon me an impossible burden."

"Yes, it's a burden. But I can help you master the bearing of it."

"To what end? Henry, what becomes of me now? You would have me undo all that I devoted myself to. You would have me be the very thing that took my mother! My boy! How can I look upon myself when I am all that I despise?"

"I can teach you how to make it tolerable. If you'll just listen to me-"

"Listen to you? And then what? Do you expect me to follow you into the darkness?"

"That's the only place for you now, Abraham."

Abe rose to his full height, his back strong and straight. His limbs lean and muscular. His eyes black and lifeless. His fangs, virgin and pristine, gleamed with the flickering firelight. The last time Henry had fought Abe, he'd been a living man. Powerful, yes. Trained, yes. But a living man nonetheless and therefore at a disadvantage. Now they were equals – if not in experience, then at least in strength.

Henry braced himself, sure that Abe was going to lunge and attack. "The hunger will come, Abraham. And when it does, you'll be as powerless to stop it as I am."

"By then," Abe snarled, "I'll be in hell."

Abe stared at Henry for a moment longer, then turned and ran across the room. Henry realized what he meant to do and screamed his name. Abe leveled his shoulders and met the drapes head-on, shattering the window behind them and crashing through into the harsh light. His skin reddened and blistered the moment the sun fell upon him, and Abe cried out with the agony of it as he began to fall.

Henry was there in an instant, reached out and grabbed at Abe, using his claws to find a hold when his hands came away with burned skin. He pulled Abe back, hauling him out of the sun and back into the soothing black of the bedroom. The Trinity appeared, yanking the curtains closed again as Henry practically flung Abe into the darkest corner, desperate to protect him from further harm.

He stood between Abe and the window, shielding him from the light as the Trinity blocked out as much of the blazing sun as they could. He bit down on his tongue, summoning blood within his mouth. It was a physical strain not to shout, not to lash out at Abe for his stupidly, for his selfishness.

Abe had collapsed against the wall, slid down its cold, cool surface to end up curled into a tight ball on the floor. Where the sun had touched him, only puckered, scalded flesh remained. Sensing the disappearance of the light, he lowered his arm from his eyes, and watched as the redness retreated at once. In moments, he was healed, his skin pale and whole once more.

"You would do well to accept your new circumstance, Abraham," Henry said, working hard to keep the growl out of his voice. "There is more good yet to be done in this world. There are black times ahead, even darker than before. This nation will need you. The Union will need you. If you cannot live for yourself, then live for your family. For Mary and for Robert and for Tad. Live for little Eddie and for poor Willie. Live for your angel mother, and remember what she asked of you with her dying breath."

"What have you done?" It was only a whisper now.

Seeing a hand mirror on the bedside table, Henry handed it to Abe. The changes that Henry had witnessed over the three torturous days now revealed themselves in the silvery echo of the glass. Age had retreated from Abe's face. Gone were the deep lines that a life of heartache and worry had carved over the years, like glaciers across a plain. Gone was the hunch his tall frame had taken on in its later days, and the gray of his beard. His body was trim and solid again. His shoulders square, his skin smooth. Decades of hardship and wear, erased in a relative instant.

But Henry knew what real hardships lay ahead. The hunger. The grief of his first kill. The loneliness of his first century in darkness. But he was in good company. Henry would be Abe's companion in grief. His mentor in killing. His light in the dark.

Abe stared at himself for a time before throwing the mirror against the far wall, shattering it.

"I have given you back your youth. Your strength. Take my word for it, Abraham, you will need it."

"You are the Devil, Henry. And you have forever damned me."

Henry had made to leave, but he now turned back to the huddled figure of the former president of the United States. He looked into the empty, black coals staring back at him, at the fangs that had yet to draw blood. He saw the monster within reflected back at him. For the first time, Henry's resolve wavered, and he questioned his decision.

"We all deserve Hell, Abraham. But some of us deserve it sooner than others. Remember that."

Henry ordered one of the Trinity to remain in the room with Abe at all times, to guard against any further suicide attempts

AN:

If this chapter seemed really, really good, it's because I stole about 95% of it from the first few pages of The Last American Vampire. I changed the ending of the chapter, of course, but most of it is Seth's words, not mine.