"I'm relieved to see you doing well. All these years, I've faced hatred and resentment from both outside and within, and the hatred left over from the Civil War was redirected at me. If I couldn't trust your people, I don't know how many times I'd have been killed."
Abraham Lincoln had been out of office for several years. After the Civil War ended and the South surrendered, he had survived an assassination attempt thanks to Jack, the head of the Howlett Family's guard, whom James had sent to protect him. But the following four years had still been full of turmoil.
If President Lincoln had died in a postwar assassination at the hands of Southerners, the negative feelings and conflicts left by the war would have been all but erased. The Southern plantation owners' hatred of the Union would have eased considerably, and the nation's postwar divisions would have been mended to some extent.
Grieving the assassination of a victorious president, America would have remembered Lincoln as its most legendary president and a great man.
But President Lincoln had survived, and now he had to endure the boundless hatred of the old moneyed class, along with resistance from the Union's own leadership over his efforts to secure rights for the newly freed slaves. White people had no affection for him, while Black people continued to struggle through life in a daze.
Throughout his four-year term, Lincoln had faced one assassination attempt and accident after another. It was only thanks to James's arrangements for the Howlett Family's private guards to protect him, both openly and in secret, that Lincoln and his family had stayed safe.
"Your security was still relatively good while you were president. After all, you were the president of the United States of America. Even those who wanted to make a move couldn't go too far. But once you become a former president—heh, there's nothing they won't dare to do."
James lounged carelessly on the sofa, a cigar in one hand and an empty glass of whiskey in the other, gently swirling it. Daniel, beside him, refilled the glass without missing a beat. When Lincoln arrived at the Howlett Estate, he and Daniel had hit it off at once. They were close in age and could talk for hours.
Lincoln studied James with interest, rubbed his whitening beard, and said with a chuckle, "So when you wrote and invited me to 'stay a while' at your family estate, I brought Mary and the children right over. If something really happened to me, their lives wouldn't be easy either."
"But you, James—you've changed a little." The former president sounded curious.
"Got shorter?"
After reaching Huajin again, James had undergone another bone transformation. He took the opportunity to compress his bones and shrink his frame, keeping himself just over 1.9 meters tall.
Maintaining that shape required him to suppress some of his strength. Once he fully unleashed himself, he would still become a giant more than 2.3 meters tall, but at least everyday life was much more convenient.
He was still imposing, but his appearance now had a natural elegance to it. His hair had grown a little longer; his features were refined beneath a rugged demeanor. His canines were slightly pointed, and his handsome, masculine face carried an unusual beauty.
Once he advanced further in his martial arts training, James should be able to control the changes in his body's structure and growth for real, without having to seal away part of his strength.
"No."
Daniel, drinking gin nearby, took up the thread with a grave expression. "Your whole bearing, even your personality, is different. You don't seem so weighed down anymore."
James smiled.
"Sounds like a good thing."
After more than five years, James had finally dealt with the danger posed by the vampire power inside him. He had purged every trace of vampire Source Blood, leaving his body completely clear. Some of the passive improvements to his speed and reflexes remained, though; they were the result of his body adapting and evolving.
Fortunately, five years wasn't all that long. He still had time to spend with his friends. O'Hara had stayed by his side the whole time, and once she recovered, the two of them lived together until she grew old. Perhaps the vast difference in their life spans had something to do with it, but they never had a child.
Butler Vane was already getting on in years. Little by little, he settled into a quiet life at the estate and stopped involving himself in the Howlett Family's various businesses. His son, Casper Foss, took over most of his work. Casper was a few years younger than James, but he seemed much more mature.
When Mr. Vane no longer had the energy to put on his monocle and tailcoat and bring James breakfast, Mr. Casper would take over the job.
Teacher Daniel didn't spend long focusing on the Howlett Family's affairs. He was restless by nature, always stirred by an inner restlessness.
But he would never again have to trudge off to some desolate, barbaric place. He spent several years enjoying himself in Europe, and the Howlett Family covered whatever expenses he incurred for the rest of his life.
The families of the expedition members, whether they had returned or not, also received a sizable sum.
Unexpectedly, Mr. Daniel became a father late in life. He brought back a charming, considerate wife from France, along with their son and daughter, and they settled in New York. They lived comfortably. He had finally lost the energy for further adventures and devoted himself to writing a memoir of his explorations.
Abraham Lincoln lived at the Howlett Estate for several years. He spent that time writing works on civil rights and civil law; after all, law had been his original profession.
James's modern understanding of law also gave him plenty of inspiration. On James's advice and with his help, Lincoln's two younger sons changed their names and attended college in New York.
In his later years, Lincoln hoped to see the places he called home: Hardin County, Kentucky, where he was born; Indiana, where he grew up; and Illinois, where he had met and fallen in love with Mary and worked for many years.
James accompanied him to several places, and they saw the state of affairs across many parts of America. At last, Lincoln returned to Washington with Mary. He said he wanted to die with the dignity befitting a former president, even if he died by assassination.
In the end, Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the United States of America, who had ended the American Civil War and freed the slaves, passed away peacefully at home.
Not long after the head of the Howlett Family, James, returned, the family overcame the final technical hurdles in developing the gasoline internal combustion engine. In the late nineteenth century, the industrial capitalist world was on the brink of earth-shattering change.
As he sailed across the Mediterranean from Athens aboard a new internal combustion engine ship, James was suddenly struck by a strange feeling. It seemed as if, at that very moment, he had come infinitely close to the modern life he had once known.
It took only three days to sail from the Port of Piraeus to the Port of Alexandria near Cairo, and those three days were enough to take in the Mediterranean's distinctive scenery.
By now, he had long grown tired of the atmosphere of Europe's so-called historic universities and their academic factions. They reminded him of martial arts schools that guarded their own traditions like precious heirlooms.
The venerable Oxford looked down on every newer university and school of thought. Its admissions screening was so complicated it was maddening, and James had to go to considerable lengths to arrange a suitable British aristocratic identity before he could enroll.
Cambridge, Munich in Germany, Karolinska in Stockholm, and even the youngest of them, ETH Zurich, each held sway over its own strong disciplines. They kept a wary eye on other institutions while sparing no words in their endless academic feuds.
As a result, he had to change identities every two or three years to get into a new academy. James found it truly irritating. Sometimes he even got the names he used to conceal his identity mixed up.
Fortunately, his more than ten years of academic wandering in Europe were finally drawing to a close. His whole body was itching for a good stretch, and he badly needed to loosen up.
Once he reached Cairo, he would head south, take in Egypt's scenery, and investigate some myths or historical accounts that might actually be true. Then he would travel to a place somewhere between Kenya and Uganda, find an indigenous tribe that had been hiding for thousands of years, and hope they put on a good show.
Helwan was very close to Cairo and was known as Egypt's second-largest city, but James had already given up any great hopes for this ancient land, once home to one of humanity's most magnificent civilizations.
Aside from its historical ruins and the pharaohs' pyramid tombs, there was nothing in the country that interested James. The dilapidated houses and numb expressions left him with nothing but a sigh for this land reduced to a colony.
He didn't stay long in Helwan. After checking the map, he decided to make straight for Sudan. At his current speed, it would take him only two or three days on foot to head south and arrive there—far faster than the quickest transport he could find here.
He hadn't gone far, only about a hundred kilometers, when James suddenly felt a twitch in his thoughts.
In all these years, his Beast Perception had never given him a sudden flash of intuition. After all, the ability was more sensitive to things that posed a threat to him. But this feeling was strange. It wasn't a sense of danger, but rather...curiosity.
James began wandering around a town called Wasitai. The place was lively at the moment. A traveling variety troupe had arrived. Unlike a circus, it had few animals or beasts, offering instead strange feats and bizarre "sights."
Sword swallowing, fire eating, contortionists, dwarfs, giants, four-legged people...
He shook his head, unimpressed. It was all tired old lowbrow entertainment and sideshow freaks.
"Demons from Hell! Living demons! This is a sight you'll never forget for the rest of your life!"
The troupe's owner shouted with all his might at the end. He seemed to realize that unless he brought out something "special," this poor little town wouldn't earn him many coins. He wheeled out a cage with several iron balls chained around its base. A curtain painted with a red-skinned, long-tailed demon concealed it. The demon's face was hideous, with sharp teeth and a lolling tongue.
"Not bad painting," James thought.
Swish!
Once the owner had built up the suspense, he yanked away the curtain. For a moment, there was silence. Then mocking laughter rippled through the crowd. The cage was completely empty; only a few chains and shackles rattled faintly.
James turned to leave. Behind him, the troupe's owner hurriedly shouted for the other performers and hands, apparently trying to catch something. James grinned, thinking it was probably an animal like a baboon, dressed up with a so-called demon gimmick.
He was almost at the edge of town. James glanced around, then checked the map to make sure he was heading in the right direction.
The hairs on the back of his neck suddenly stood on end. He narrowed his eyes and quickly fixed his gaze on a half-open barn that looked long abandoned.
Pff.
James clearly heard a strange, muffled thump outside the barn door. He slowly pushed it open. The barn was empty, except for a few broken baskets and a plow leaning crookedly in the corner. He suddenly looked up and caught a glimpse of a dark red shadow. With a soft pop, it vanished in an instant.
His senses picked up where it landed, and his gaze quickly followed. The little red figure seemed unable to understand why it kept being spotted. It blinked from place to place, each time accompanied by a faint thump and wisps of black smoke.
James blurred and leaped onto a beam on the right. He was even faster than the red figure. Resting his left hand lightly on the beam, he caught a dry, skinny arm with his right and dropped back down.
It was a "child" with blood-red skin. Its oversized head and tiny body, devoid of a shred of flesh, were grotesquely out of proportion. It had black eyes and hair, long, pointed, dark yellow nails, a ragged brown-black linen cloth around its waist, and a thin tail swishing behind it.
"Hiss! Hah!"
The "child" kept howling, its body trembling nonstop, as if it might vanish from James's grasp at any moment. Yet something seemed to be holding it back. Black smoke poured wildly from its body. Before long, it was too exhausted to keep struggling. Its face looked pitiful, and tears glistened in its huge eyes as they darted about.
"Hey, don't be scared. It's all right. I'm not going to hurt you." James gently reassured the little waif. He slowly loosened his grip and said softly, "See? I'm letting go. It's okay. Are you hungry? Do you want something to eat?"
Whether James's soothing words had worked or the child had simply run out of strength, it didn't try to blink away again. Instead, it quickly scuttled on all fours into a broken basket in the corner, peeking its big head out and blinking at the oil-paper parcel James took from his coat.
"This is food. Smell it. It's delicious." James took out the wrapped meat pie and broke it in half. The delicious aroma made the child sniff eagerly. It stared at the food James held out in disbelief, then tentatively reached for it with a grimy little red hand.
"Mmph, nom nom..."
Watching it bury its face in the food, James smiled happily. He offered the other half and asked gently, "Can you talk? Can you understand what I'm saying? What's your name?"
"Azazel, Azazel-zazel."
"Azazel, hmm." James furrowed his brow, seeming to think. He murmured, "It sounds like Hebrew. It should be Azazel. Azazel, one name for the devil. Not a very good name—but, well, it suits you."
Over the years, James had learned many languages so he could study the historical records of different peoples and civilizations.
The child who called himself Azazel had already finished the entire pie. His thin neck seemed to catch; he stretched it out and beat his chest clumsily, making choking little noises.
James naturally reached over and rubbed his back. The food caught in the little fellow's throat went down most of the way. He took out a canteen and handed it to him, thinking the child felt like a skeleton covered in dry, papery skin.
He studied the dense blue-black lash marks covering Azazel's body, and his gaze darkened.
Now that he was full and had something to drink, Azazel suddenly seemed at a loss. Like a frightened little animal, he instinctively grabbed some ragged woven material in the basket and used it to cover his tiny body.
James somehow understood exactly what the child was afraid of. Smiling warmly, he said, "Don't worry. Don't be scared. Look."
He held out his right arm, pulled back his sleeve a little, and slowly extended three menacing bone claws and a bone shield. Azazel's eyes lit up as he stared intently at the bones growing from James's arm.
He tentatively reached out, a little afraid, and touched a claw with his fingertips. Then, growing bolder, he stroked the bone shield. His tail wagged excitedly, and he made a string of muffled cries.
James held out his left hand to Azazel, palm open, and watched as the ugly little red child slowly placed his hand in it.
"Go check over there! Hurry up! Useless at everything, and there's nothing to eat!"
"Boss! Look, there's a man coming out of the barn. He's..." A hand from the troupe stared at the tall man emerging from the barn. He held something bundled in his cloak, and a slender red figure darted inside.
The troupe's owner eyed the man holding what looked like a baby and shouted hostilely, "What are you holding? Show us!"
James seemed not to hear the owner's shouts or notice the crowd of troupe members drawing closer. Azazel trembled in his arms, his little hands clutching James's chest.
"Is it them?" James asked in a casual whisper.
"Hit, Azazel, them..."
James's lips curved. Smiling at Azazel, he said, "Close your eyes and cover your ears. Be good."
Azazel obediently covered his ears and burrowed farther into James's chest.
James walked forward at an easy pace, casually thrusting a few times into the air and flicking his fingers. The troupe members' heads and chests burst with a series of pops, and they crumpled to the ground.
After reaching Huajin again, James had gained the ability to project his force through the air. He hadn't grasped the mysteries of wielding this kind of force; he had simply built it up through his vast, abundant reserves of blood and strength. Within ten paces, he could project a force like energy.
Carrying Azazel, he walked out of town and asked in confusion, "Is Azazel your only name? What's your surname?"
"Surname?" Azazel hesitated. He didn't know what that was. Was it something to eat? He habitually called out his name twice more.
"From now on, your surname will be Howlett. Azazel Howlett."
The Egyptian sandstorm rose quickly, soon swallowing the view. James's figure faded from sight as he set off on the road to the north.
The end of Volume One. Next volume: The Age of War
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