American Gothic by Michael Romkey Page B

of blood until he began to feel drunk. Blood did that to a vampire: the first explosion of pleasure deepened into intoxication. The more one drank, the more lost one became to the boundless abandon and sense of power. It was so great that Peregrine sometimes thought he could use the force of his mind to drive the moon backward through the sky.
    Footsteps approached. He sensed the other man’s alarm. The powerful smell of fear mingling with murderous rage came to Peregrine in the next instant, but still he drank, not releasing the corpse until it had been drained of its last drop of blood, drained like a spider sucks the vital juices from a fly.
    Peregrine turned toward the intruder in time to watch the bayonet plunge into his stomach up to the tip of the barrel of the rifle holding it. He felt no pain. The rebel holding the weapon was breathing hard, panting from the run, and the terrible thrill of standing eye to eye with someone he had just stricken with a mortal wound.
    “You’ve killed me,” Peregrine said.
    “Yankee bastard,” the rebel said. There was spittle in the corners of his mouth. He was trembling. Peregrine could tell he had never killed a man up close. Like the rebel Peregrine had just killed, this one was skinny from short rations, his face sunken, with eyes and cheeks hollow, and a ratty goatee.
    “You needn’t worry,” Peregrine said. “You can become accustomed to anything, even killing, given the chance.”
    Peregrine put his hands around the rifle barrel and held it as he pushed himself backward off the bayonet. His enemy stared at him, too astonished to pull the trigger. A slug in his stomach wouldn’t have mattered more than the blade, Peregrine thought, though a gunshot would have brought more rebels running. Once he’d pushed himself off the bayonet, he jerked the rifle from the soldier’s hands, then reversed the direction of his swing and smashed the butt into the soldier’s jaw. A streak of blood and teeth made a slow parabola in the firelight before splattering on the dusty ground, the sound quickly followed by the muffled crumple of a body collapsing.
    Peregrine straddled the prostrate rebel. The man looked up at him and blinked, as if trying to clear his mind enough to comprehend the impossible thing that had just happened. A flicker of horror replaced confusion as Peregrine flipped the gun over in the air, the blade pointing downward.
    The soldier’s lips moved soundlessly, though the words were obvious enough: “No, please, no…”
    Peregrine thrust the bayonet completely through the man’s body, pinning him to the ground.
    Peregrine removed his jacket and hung it over a tree branch. His shirt was torn where the blade had gone in and wet with blood. He unfastened the buttons and ran his hand over the welt where the skin had already closed over the wound. Soon, even that would disappear. Though the shirt was damp with blood, he buttoned it back up, stuffing the tails into his trousers.
    He stripped the butternut jacket off the first dead picket, making a face when he smelled how it reeked of sweat, cheap tobacco, and wood smoke. There were blood splatters on the collar, but they were hardly noticeable on the stained and much-patched jacket.
    The other man was dead when Peregrine went back to him, bled out through the stab wound. He picked up the man’s hat and looked at it before putting it on. The straw planter’s hat was in relatively good condition and fit his large head almost perfectly.
    He probably didn’t need a disguise, but now he had one. He could go wherever he wanted among the sleeping army, unnoticed as he moved toward the front line and the generals making plans for the battle that would be rejoined with first light.
    A line of officers’ tents was pitched in the yard of a house that had been damaged by artillery fire. The canvas flaps on the tents were folded up to let in the air of the warm summer night. There was a single cot in the tent at the end of the