The Last American Vampire

by Seth Grahame-Smith

  The cruel have always been my type, no matter their gender. When I witness cruelty—that is, the powerful abusing the less powerful or the meek—it triggers an involuntary response. A chain of emotions that I never had a name for, until the 1950s, when I began calling it “the Ignition Sequence,” after reading about the Mercury space program. First I become flush with righteous anger, which, if you must be angry, is the very best kind. That righteous anger quickly sharpens into determination. Determination, of course, being nothing more than anger with brakes and a steering wheel. Finally, joy. A strange but unmistakable joy, based in the knowledge that here, in this place, on this night, some small measure of justice will be done in the world, and I’ll be the one doing it. That feeling—that joy—is something I’ve never tired of.

  It’s one of the few true blessings to the curse of being a vampire. For in those ephemeral moments, we cease to be monsters and get to be superheroes. You might ask, is death a just punishment for abusing a horse? Here’s how I see it. This man knows it’s wrong to hurt this animal, and yet he does it anyway. He allows himself to revert into a base creature, telling himself that a horse is just a dumb animal, after all, well below him on the food chain. So I take my cue from him, and do the same.

  The horse struggled up Sullivan Street, passing the dark windows of modest shops and apartment buildings, the driver whipping and cussing all the while, until at last they came to a small, ramshackle house set back from the street and drove through an opening in a wooden fence, its white paint faded and badly chipped, its old boards hanging at odd angles, like a bad set of teeth. The yard was an overgrown nest of weeds, littered with the orphaned treasures of New York—broken wagon wheels; piles of scrap metal; window frames, some of their panes cracked and missing, most clouded over with grime.

  The driver unhitched the exhausted animal, the circle of black ash and raw skin plainly visible against its white coat, and led it to a barn beside the house. It was a small barn, little more than a shed, the doorway just tall enough for the horse’s head to clear, the stall inside too narrow for it to turn around. The driver pulled off the horse’s bridle, closed the stall, and tossed in a flake of hay, which the ravished horse began to eat at once. The driver took off his hat, wiped a dirty coat sleeve across his brow, and took a pull off his cigar.

  “Eat up, you lazy old son of a bitch. Not that you earned it.”

  He reached to give the horse a pat on the snout, but it recoiled and groaned—afraid of being burned again. The driver liked this.

  “Good,” he said. “You go right on bein’ skittish. Maybe next time you’ll think twice about stop—”

  The barn doors swung shut behind him. The driver spun around, startled. His cigar hung low from the corner of his mouth, a thin wisp of smoke spiraling heavenward like a spirit. He squinted, trying to make out shapes in the dark.

  “Who’s there?”

  No answer.

  The wind, he thought. The driver took a pull off his cigar, its orange glow illuminating his face in the blackness of the barn. His eyes began to adjust, and he turned back to the horse—its white form the easiest thing to make out. He looked at it, as if to ask, Did you have something to do with this? The horse merely went on eating its hay. The wind; that’s all it was. The driver put his hat back on and walked toward the barn doors, chuckling at himself for being so jumpy. He reached the doors and gave them a push… but they didn’t open.

  They’d been latched from the outside.

  “What in the…”

  He pushed again to be sure. He could hear the rattle of the rusted latch on the other side. It had been closed, no question about it. The driver’s heart began to pound. It wasn’t the wind.

  Footsteps on the creaky floorboards behind him. Not the horse’s. There’s someone else in here. The driver spun again, back toward the stall, instinctively holding his hands out in front of his body. Feeling around in the dark.

  “Goddammit! Who’s there?”

  Two more footsteps. Closer this time. The driver took a pull off his cigar and threw it in their direction. The orange dot sailed a few yards through the dark…

  Then stopped.

  There’d been no impact. No embers cascading outward like a firework shell as it hit the intruder. It had simply stopped in midflight, snatched out of the air. The driver watched the orange dot hover in the darkness—impossible, it’s impossible—slowly rise to eye level, and grow brighter as someone drew breath through it. And as its glow grew more intense, a face began to emerge behind it. A face unlike any the driver had ever seen. Dead, black eyes. Animal mouth. Veins pulsing beneath its porcelain skin. A demon, breathing smoke through its nostrils.

  “Hello,” it said.

  The driver pissed himself.

  He turned and threw his shoulder into the barn doors, and the old latch gave. The doors flung open, and out he ran, stumbling into the night. If he could just make it to the fence, into the street…

  He heard the crack of the whip and felt a white flash in the middle of his back. Down he went, face-first into the dirt. He recovered, getting his arms underneath him and pushing himself up. Another crack of the whip. Suddenly he was choking—a black snake coiled around his throat, squeezing the life out of him. The driver clutched at the whip, trying to pry it loose as the demon—what in God’s name was that thing, oh God help me please—pulled on the other end, dragging him through the dirt and back toward the darkness of the barn.

  With the cigar still hanging from his mouth, Henry took the driver by the hair and lifted him off his feet with one arm. The driver howled in pain and grabbed Henry’s wrist, kicking his legs wildly, trying to free himself. With his spare hand, Henry grabbed the driver’s throat and pressed a clawed thumb through his Adam’s apple, opening a small hole and taking away all hope of a cry for help.

  There are endless ways to kill a man. You can be quick. Merciful. Take them in their sleep, unaware. Knock them unconscious before you drink them dry. Or you can take your time. Indulge your creativity. Shake hands with the less savory parts of your personality. Personally, I prefer the latter, especially when the victim is a scoundrel, as mine so often are. I find it’s more satisfying to fill their final moments with terror. To let them know the Grim Reaper has come to punch their ticket; to let them feel the tickle of his bony fingers on the back of their neck and give them a little taste of whatever medicine they’d dispensed in their days.

  “But, Henry,” you say. “Two wrongs don’t make a right. Aren’t you merely stooping to their level?” In a way, yes. I suppose I am. But that’s the wonderful thing about being a vampire. Our hope of heaven is revoked the moment we’re made. Every subsequent sin is a teardrop in the ocean.

  Henry took another pull off the cigar, holding the driver aloft by the hair, and placed his lips over the bloody hole he’d punched in the man’s throat. He blew the smoke into the hole, and out it came, through the driver’s mouth and nostrils.

  What can I say? Sometimes you get caught up in the moment.

  Henry pulled away, the first drops of New York blood running from his chin, and let the rest of the smoke roll slowly from own his pursed lips. With the embers still glowing hot, he pressed the cigar into the driver’s forehead. The driver tried to scream—his flesh sizzling, his body thrashing like a fish on a hook—but all that came out was a pained, gurgling wheeze.

  Enough. Henry pulled the driver close and bit into his neck, through the sternocleidomastoid muscle, into the interior jugular. Blood flowed through his hollow fangs directly into his veins, filling the emptiness in him. Draining whatever years remained in the man, converting them into borrowed time for an immortal. Henry fed until the thrashing stopped, until there was nothing left in the driver’s veins. Empty sewer tunnels, a few puddles on the stone. Henry dropped the dead, heartless husk of a man and collapsed against the side of the barn, closing his eyes and feeling the warmth run through him, feeling the world spin slowly around, the way it does when the wine finally cat
ches up with you, and you smile because you’re drunk, and being drunk was all you wanted out of the night.

  They say that certain foods taste better in New York City than anywhere else in the world. That it has something to do with the water. I wouldn’t know, not having had the pleasure of eating real food in nearly five hundred years, but I don’t doubt that it’s true. There’s something about the way blood tastes in New York City. It’s unlike any blood anywhere else in the world. It would take a vampire with a far more discerning palate to describe it better than that. All I know is, I know it when I taste it.

  He kept his eyes closed and listened to the sounds of the dark city. The carriage wheels rolling over the cobblestones of Canal Street. The seagulls perched on the masts of ships in the harbor. The crickets in the overgrown weeds of the driver’s yard. The shire horse shifting in his stall. The blood filled every cell, every sinew. Soaking into him the way a first rain soaks into the cracks of the desert clay, replenishing and exciting him. Making some parts of him softer, and others hard.

  The fact is that some vampires—male and female alike—become sexually aroused during and after the act of feeding. I mean, physically aroused. And of course they do. After all, when we feed, our veins, capillaries, arteries—everything is inundated with massive amounts of blood. Empty spaces become full. Porous tissue expands. This is more noticeable with the males, given that the part of them that becomes engorged is rather larger than the female counterparts. I don’t know what you’d call it, medically. Or if such a term even exists. But among vampires it’s known as “ballooning.” It’s a stupid name, and I wish to God there was a better one. But there you have it. I’m a ballooner. I balloon when I feed. I make no secret of it.

  When Henry felt ready, he rose, threw the bridle on the old shire horse, and led it out of the barn. He walked it back to Broadway, his erection tucked into the waistband of his trousers, so as not to shock those women of stringent morals or entice those of low character. He turned north, toward home, pulling the horse behind him. They hadn’t walked long when Henry saw two young boys coming down Broadway in the opposite direction, neither older than eight.

  They were pulling a two-wheeled handcart. A bootblack’s cart, I think, though I don’t remember for sure. But I remember the two of them perfectly—each boy pulling on one of the handles, dragging that damned cart with all their might. Ragged clothes and ill-fitting shoes. Their worn soles providing no traction on the stone street. It was all they could do to keep the cart from tipping backward and lifting them in the air. If you’re willing to listen, every so often, life—or God or the Universe or whatever you prefer to call it—lets us know that it’s paying attention.

  “Here,” said Henry, handing the older boy the horse’s reins. “Perhaps he can help.”

  The boys looked up at the well-dressed gentleman and his white shire horse, their jaws hanging slack. It’s a trick. He’s playing a trick on us.

  “It’s not a trick,” said Henry, answering their thoughts. “I assure you. It so happens that this horse is in need of a good home. And you two, without question, are in need of a good horse.”

  Henry gave them a small salute and carried on his way. But he’d taken only a few steps up Broadway, when—how could I have forgotten?—he turned back.

  “Oh, just one condition,” he said. “Call him Alistair.”

  Henry looked up, as he always did when approaching the Union Headquarters. His eyes were drawn heavenward by the Gothic spire of Trinity Church across the street. At 281 feet, it was still the tallest structure in New York, and a beacon for distant ships trying to find their way to port.

  Two churches had stood on the same ground before. The first, finished in 1698, had been destroyed in a fire when the British invaded New York. The second, finished in 1790, was torn down after being weakened by heavy snows during the winter of 1838. The third, and current, church had been consecrated in 1846, this time complete with its grand spire and a subterranean passageway in its catacombs, locked behind a brass gate, which none but a chosen few knew existed.

  It was a way to sneak in and out of the Union Headquarters undetected, or, in the case of an attack, slip away. Few people would’ve dared ask questions about a locked gate in a church basement.

  The circumstances of the passageway’s construction—particularly how the Union convinced the clergy to let them build it—are unknown. Though it’s doubtful they mentioned the fact that they were vampires.

  They know, thought Henry. They know about Abe, and they’re going to kill me.

  It was all he could think as he sat in the grand ballroom of the Union—a two-tiered affair with thirty-foot ceilings, its dark wooden floors polished to a glossy finish, reflecting the painstakingly painted ceiling and the gilded railings of the second level. Years earlier, Abraham Lincoln had stood in the center of the same room and thought it the most splendid he’d ever seen.

  It was excessive in an age of excess. Every cushion was embroidered with gold thread, every rug imported from exotic lands. A crystal chandelier by Waterford, shaped like a glorious sunburst. A silver Tiffany tea service3 neatly laid out on a Boulle4 cabinet. At one end of the room sat an absurdly large fireplace, its hearth as tall as a man, its white marble mantel exquisitely carved with a scene depicting Christ the shepherd leading a flock of sheep over a mountain. I suppose this was meant to represent us. We, the vampire shepherds, guarding our human flock. We, the all-powerful and anointed, suffering in their stead. The saviors of mankind, cursed to live forever, so that others may find peace… It’s a wonder they didn’t build a huge crucifix with a vampire Jesus suffering on the cross.

  On either side of the fireplace hung floor-to-ceiling red velvet drapes, suggesting that there were windows of equal size behind them. But this wasn’t the case. Even though older vampires—those like Henry, who’d passed their first century—could build up a tolerance to sunlight, they didn’t go out of their way to seek it out. In fact, when the drapes were removed, they revealed a pair of massive rectangular mirrors—twenty-six feet high by thirteen feet wide, in exquisitely carved frames, painted gold, naturally. They were, at the time, the largest mirrors in North America. And since there’d been no factory capable of making mirrors of such size anywhere in America, the Union had built one, two blocks away, and imported master artisans from Venice—then the mirror-making capital of the world.

  It was all a joke. One giant, outrageously expensive joke. Like the silver tea service and the sun-shaped chandelier, the mirrors were there to poke a little fun at some of the old vampire myths. But make no mistake—they were also there because vampires are incredibly, sometimes insufferably vain creatures. In this case, there was the vanity of the extravagance itself—look at what we can afford!—combined with the vanity of admiring their own gold-framed reflections. They found it gratifying, I suppose. Staring at themselves, eternal and unchanging. Personally, I found it depressing. My reflection was a reminder of how I appeared to others. My skin a ghostly shade. My face barely more than a boy’s, but with ancient, world-weary eyes.

  Henry had been summoned by Adam Plantagenet, one of the founders of the Union of Vampires, and to anyone’s knowledge, the oldest vampire on earth.

  Christened Adam FitzRoy in 1305, he’d been the bastard son of King Edward II of England, grandson of Edward Longshanks, and half brother of Edward III, who would go on to rule England for fifty years. Adam may have been a bastard, but he was a noble bastard, and therefore he’d spent his life in relative comfort behind castle walls. But unlike his half brothers and half sisters, who would become kings, queens, and earls, Adam was shunted aside. Placed in the full-time care of a tutor who, at first, saw to his lessons and meals, then eventually to his every waking hour, tasked with keeping Adam out of the sight and mind of his father, the king. Adam, not surprisingly, grew to become a depressed and lonely child, and the tutor grew sympathetic to his plight. Grew to love him as a son. This tutor (whose name is lost to history, since Adam swore
never to reveal it) sensed greatness in the boy. Yes, he was a bastard. But he was a king’s bastard. There was royal blood in his veins, by God, and the tutor was determined to cultivate it.

  Adam couldn’t inherit titles or lands, but he could earn them—with his mind and with his sword. At the urging of his tutor, he devoted himself to becoming a warrior, squiring for one of his father’s knights, in hope that, once he’d proved himself in battle, the king might bestow a knighthood upon him, making Adam a nobleman in his own right. Making the king proud to call him his son.

  But it wasn’t to be.

  Adam fell in battle during his father’s disastrous campaign against Robert the Bruce in Scotland. Mortally wounded, the seventeen-year-old squire was carted back to the king’s tent so that his father might look upon him one last time. But the king refused him an audience. “I have no son by that name,” he is reported to have said before sending Adam away to die of his wounds among the rabble.

  In the end, it was the tutor—more of a father to Adam than his own had ever been—who’d been unable to bear the thought of his death. The tutor, who’d seen kings come and go since before the House of Wessex united England centuries earlier. Who’d looked into a bastard’s eyes and seen purpose behind them.

  And so he’d granted the boy eternal life and continued to tutor him: teaching Adam how to feed without being discovered. How to build up a tolerance to sunlight. How to master his vampire senses. Most of all, he’d taught him that vampires needn’t be evil. That they could use their powers to defend the weak, rather than prey upon them. That they could feed on what the tutor called “the sick and the wicked,” while sparing the innocent.