The Last American Vampire

by Seth Grahame-Smith

  The natives stopped a good fifty yards down the beach and considered the Englishman. They wore long coats made from dark animal hides, some with fur-lined collars and feathered tassels. Leather boots, laced up to their knees. Each had a different weapon—one carried a bow and a quiver of arrows, one a long wooden staff, and one a decorative war club. The fourth held a large tomahawk, its blade made from stone, the edge sharp enough to shave with.

  They were turning their heads and speaking to one another in whispers. I could hear them clearly, but it didn’t matter, since I couldn’t understand a word. I’m sure they were deciding what to do—whether to approach me, kill me, or just ignore me and move on.

  They decided to approach. Henry stood his ground, pulling the sleeping infant close to his body. The natives stopped, no more than ten feet separating the two sides. Both parties stood there, staring at each other. No words. No sound, other than the ocean lapping against the shore.

  They whispered to one another some more. Again, I had no idea what they were saying, but it was clear that something about me was causing them concern. I noticed them gripping their weapons more tightly. Examining me more closely.

  “Re’apoke…,” said the one with the tomahawk.

  “Re’apoke…,” repeated the others, in unison.

  “English,” said Henry, pointing to himself with his free hand.

  I’m not sure what I was hoping to accomplish by that. Surely they already knew I was English, but it was killing me, just standing there, being looked over. One of the natives—the one with the tomahawk—started to come forward, his eyes glued to my face. I turned my body so Virginia was behind me and balled up a fist, as if to say, That’s close enough. But he kept coming, step by step, looking at me with a sort of fascination.

  “Re’apoke…,” he whispered, and drew his tomahawk upward to strike. Henry’s eyes went black, his fangs descended—he had no control over this, it was simple instinct—and he swung a clawed hand at the native.

  I missed him. Not because I was off target, but because he moved out of the way faster than I could strike. And in that dumbfounded moment, as I regained my balance, wondering how in the hell he’d done it—whoosh!—I looked down and saw the fletching of an arrow jutting out of my neck.

  Henry staggered backward. He laid Virginia on the sand, yanked the arrow from his throat, and charged at the natives, intent on tearing them apart before they could harm the baby. They have no idea, he thought. They think I’m just some lost Englishman that they can kill for sport, but they have no idea how wrong they are.

  Except that the natives seemed to have every idea what Henry was capable of and how to protect themselves against it. The four men spread out, forming a square, and kept Henry in the center. When he charged at the native with the decorative club, he was struck from behind with a long staff. When he spun and charged at the long staff, another arrow plunged into his body. He’d never seen men fight with such speed and skill.

  I was sure they were vampires. I’d grown up in England, remember, where warriors put on fifty-pound metal suits and rode around on horseback, trying to knock each other over with long poles. But these men—they had an answer for everything I threw at them. Almost like they were toying with me. And the strangest thing was, despite my eyes and fangs and claws, they seemed to fight without fear… like men who’d faced vampires before.

  I had arrows jutting out of my chest and legs. I’d been clubbed over the head so hard that my skin had split open to the skull. There were gashes in my hands and face from that tomahawk. It started to dawn on me that I was going to lose. If I kept fighting them, I was going to lose, and Virginia would be left to their mercy. The only choice I had—the only choice for her—was to surrender. To throw myself at their mercy and fight another day.

  Henry knelt on the ground and threw his hands up, the borrowed blood of his first feeding running down his arms from the gashes in his hands. The natives closed in, cautiously, barking orders in a language he didn’t speak. But Henry got the message: “Try anything stupid, and we’ll finish you.”

  So concluded Henry’s first encounter with vampire hunters.

  He and Virginia were taken to a large Indian village10 at the mouth of a river, arriving just as dawn began to break. Henry had been gagged. The battle club’s wooden handle shoved between his teeth, pulled tight behind his head with rope. Another rope had been placed around his neck and tied to the long staff, so that he could be led at a safe distance. As an extra precaution, his hands had been tied behind his back and attached to another length of rope, which was held by a second native. The warrior who’d given up his battle club as a bit held baby Virginia in his arms. From the confidence with which he held her, and the subtle, almost subconscious noises and motions he used to soothe her, it was clear this wasn’t his first time holding an infant. Henry prayed it also meant he wasn’t planning on harming her.

  Colonist John White’s depiction of an Algonquin village, circa 1585. Henry and Virginia would have met a similar sight upon their arrival in Werowocomoco.

  Years later, the leader of another English expedition, Captain John Smith, would describe his first meeting with Powhatan, supreme chief of the Algonquin People:

  Their Emperour proudly lying uppon a Bedstead a foote high, upon tenne or twelve Mattes, richly hung with manie Chaynes of great Pearles about his necke, and covered with a great Covering of [raccoon skins]. At heade sat a woman, at his feete another; on each side sitting uppon a Matte uppon the ground, were raunged his chiefe men on each side of the fire, tenne in a ranke, and behinde them as many yong women, each a great Chaine of white Beades over their shoulders, their heades painted in redde: and [he] with such a grave and Majesticall countenance, as [drove] me into admiration to see such state in a naked [savage].

  Henry’s introduction to the “Algonquin emperor” was similar. On arriving in Werowocomoco, he was led through a hanging animal skin and into the great chief’s yehakin.11 Narrow, perhaps twenty feet across, but incredibly long. It has to be fifty yards, Henry thought. More, perhaps. He was led past women and children, huddled together on either side of them, some on woven mats or rugs, some on the bare earth. Small fires burned everywhere, the smoke rising toward small holes in the thatched grass roof. At the far end, a man of about fifty sat on a raised platform, a large fire burning in front of him, around which sat only men—some warriors, others wizened elders. A few looked older than any men Henry had ever seen.

  Henry was presented. Words he didn’t understand were spoken between his captors and one of the elders, who sat near Powhatan. The elder then passed this information to the chief. Henry tried to read their expressions. A translator was summoned. He’d picked up a rudimentary grasp of English from the previous settlers.

  “He says you are… re’apoke.”

  There’s that word again. It was the same word the four natives had whispered to one another when they’d first seen Henry on the beach.

  “I don’t know,” said Henry. “What is”—he tried his best with the pronunciation—“re’apoke?”

  “Devil,” said the translator.

  “Devil.” I had so many questions. How had the four natives fought like that? Why hadn’t they been afraid of me? And why did they have a word for what I was?

  The chief spoke again.

  “He wants to know,” said the translator, “are you good re’apoke or bad re’apoke?”

  You’d think it would be an easy decision. When someone asks you, “Are you a good devil or a bad devil?,” you say “Good,” right? But in that instant, while they were waiting for my answer, I thought, Well, if I say “good,” what if they take it as a sign of weakness and decide to kill me? But then again, if I say “bad,” they’ll probably kill me anyway. Wouldn’t a “bad” devil lie and say he was “good”? Who knows what their concept of “good” and “bad” even is?

  “Good,” said Henry at last.

  The chief understood this without the translator’s help. H
e spoke again.

  “He says that he believes you. He says that he sees your heart is good.”

  How does he “see”? What nonsense is this?

  “He offers choice,” said the translator.

  “What choice?”

  “You give yourself or die.”

  “ ‘Give’ myself?”

  More words were exchanged between the translator and the chief.

  “You fight or die,” said the translator.

  “Fight who?”

  The translator didn’t seem to understand this, so Henry turned to the chief and shrugged his shoulders. Fight who? This time it was the chief himself who spoke:

  “Monacan.”

  The Algonquins were at war with a small collection of Virginia tribes, the Monacan, that refused to pledge their loyalty to Chief Powhatan. They were more of a nuisance than a real threat—too small in number to have any real chance of overthrowing the chief, but also too small to fight conventionally. They were constantly on the move, attacking Algonquin hunting parties and satellite villages and then retreating into the wild before Powhatan’s warriors could track them down and strike en masse.

  As it happened, Powhatan had, that very day, received word from his scouts that the Monacan chief was camped with some of his warriors and their families upriver. I suppose he was going to send a war party out. Try to cut the head off the snake that had been biting at his ankles. But here I come, a vampire—a “good devil”—delivered on a silver platter. Here was a way for him to test me and strike a blow at his enemies at the same time.

  “He says you go Monacans in the night,” said the translator. “He says you kill all the Monacan. If you do this, you and your child will be welcome. If you do not do this, you die.”

  “No,” said Henry.

  The translator understood but hesitated to pass along the answer to Powhatan. He didn’t have to. The great chief could tell what Henry had said by the look on his translator’s face.

  “Whoever the Monacan are, I won’t kill ‘all’ of them,” said Henry. “Not the women and children.”

  The translator related this to the great chief, who considered it a moment, then nodded.

  “Monto’ac re’apoke,” said the chief.

  Good devil.

  The bit was back in Henry’s mouth. His hands were tied behind his back again, and he was being led along by rope. The four natives who’d found him on the beach and captured him now led him upriver through the night.

  Little Virginia was back in Werowocomoco, being held as ransom, essentially. If I failed to do what Powhatan had asked, or if I simply ran away the minute my hands were untied, there was no question what would happen to her.

  One of Henry’s captors carried a rolled-up calfskin on his back. When the sun began to rise on the first morning of their long march, the natives cut several long branches from the trees and lashed them together, placing Henry beneath them and covering the frame with the calfskin to keep the light off his skin.

  I longed to talk to them. To ask them where they’d learned these things. Where they’d encountered other vampires. But we didn’t speak each other’s language, and even if we had, I got the feeling that they weren’t interested in communicating with me. I was an animal.

  They reached the camp12 on the second night, where a hundred or so Monacans—thirty of whom were able-bodied men—made their homes in teepees instead of longhouses. It was all designed to be picked up and moved at a moment’s notice.

  Henry’s bonds were cut. The bit taken out of his mouth. One of the foursome pointed in the direction of the camp and nodded. Go. Now. Kill.

  Henry crept out of the trees and into the small clearing where the Monacans had made camp on the river. He saw as clearly as if it had been midday, thanks to a nearly full moon and a clear winter sky. A large fire burned at the center of the camp, around which a number of the men, young and old alike, had gathered to eat and talk. Most of the women and children looked to be asleep. Good, thought Henry. Better to have them out in the open, rather than go stalking from teepee to teepee, killing fathers in front of their sons.

  I couldn’t decide how to begin. Should I run at them, screaming? Should I make animal noises and lure them into the dark? Should I jump over their heads, land in the middle of their fire, and scare the shit out of them?

  In the end, Henry just walked up to the fire and stood there, waiting for someone to notice that their camp had been invaded by a lone Englishman. It didn’t take long.

  One of them turned, saw me there, and—I swear this is true—did a double take. He started yelling, and in a second they were all on their feet, all the warriors, spitting food out of their mouths and reaching for their weapons. They came at me with bows and axes. But they were nothing like the men on the beach. Whatever experiences or secrets had allowed the Algonquin to fight me so effectively—with grace, without fear—the Monacan didn’t possess them. They were brave men, sure. Strong. But they were ordinary men. They’d never faced a monster. I was a giant being attacked by children armed with toys.

  I didn’t use my claws and teeth at first. Why would I? I’d been a vampire all of two weeks. I was still thinking like a human and still fighting like one—balling up my fists and punching them, kicking them. And down they went, my punches ten times faster and harder than theirs. But I didn’t realize the cruelty of what I was doing.

  Before long, the ground was covered with dying men. Men with their skulls shattered, their insides hemorrhaging. Moaning and coughing up blood. Henry had broken them, but he hadn’t killed them.

  By being human, I was actually being inhumane. My hesitation to embrace my new abilities was causing needless suffering. Once you cross that moral threshold—once you decide to kill a man who hasn’t threatened or wronged you—better to do it quickly, or whatever moral high ground you’re standing on gets washed away by their blood.

  Henry could hear the screams of the women, gathering up their children and running off into the night. He looked down at the five little knives on each of his hands. Better to do it quickly.

  I often think of the first soldiers to leave the trenches of World War I, lined up in neat rows, expecting a battle like every battle that had come before, only to be slaughtered by the first machine gun. A new miracle of death. That’s what I was to those brave men.

  I began to cry as I slaughtered them. Dry sobbing13, the hallmark of a vampire’s grief. I suppose it was the guilt of taking the lives, especially those of men who hadn’t wronged me. The fact that they’d met such an unfair, inglorious death. But mostly, it was the fact that the last of me was dying with them.

  I crushed skulls like overripe fruit. I tore jugulars from screaming throats. I ripped open rib cages like rusty-hinged doors. Limbs, torn from their sockets. Flesh, ripped away like paper. Bones, snapped like sticks. Once or twice I slipped in the outpouring of entrails.

  You ask me when I became a vampire. I’m not sure. Was it the day I drank Crowley’s blood? Was it three days after that, when my fever broke and I saw the world through my new eyes for the first time? Part of me will always think it was that night. The night I first took human lives with my own hands. The night I first embraced what I’d become.

  The hunting party returned to Werowocomoco before sunrise, Henry’s face and clothes still caked in blood. His eyes in their human form, but wild. He walked the length of the great chief’s yehakin, carrying two dark bundles—one in each hand. Powhatan’s warriors stood and blocked Henry’s path with their weapons. That’s close enough. The chief spoke, and the warriors parted to let him pass. None of them taking their eyes off Henry, lest the re’apoke try anything stupid.

  Henry approached the raised platform and laid the bundles at Powhatan’s feet.

  They were the scalps of thirty men.

  The chief considered the tribute, then repeated:

  “Monto’ac re’apoke…”

  “Dear boy… you haven’t aged a day,” said Thomas Crowley.

&n
bsp; Henry could hardly move. The shock of seeing his maker, alive, all these centuries later had rendered him speechless and paralyzed. It was exactly the reaction Crowley had been hoping for. Oh, it’d been no small feat, killing all those women in such a ghastly fashion, leaving little clues for his dear old friend, but this moment—seeing Henry standing there in the doorway, mouth agape, truly shocked and helpless… this moment made all the trouble worth it.

  “You…,” said Henry.

  Crowley laughed. The big, thunderous belly laugh that Henry had heard in his nightmares.

  “ ‘You’?” he said. “Is that all you have to say? Oh, but don’t tell me you’ve forgotten my name, now. Granted, it’s been what—three hundred years? But Henry, after all we went through together… it would break my tender heart if you’d forgotten.”

  “I remember your name… and what you did to me.”

  “What I did to you is the only reason you’re still here. Imagine the shock, Henry! Imagine the shock of seeing your name on a calling card on a cordwainer’s countertop. ‘It couldn’t be,’ I told myself. ‘It couldn’t possibly be the same Henry Sturges.’ But I had to know, you see. I had to be sure. And imagine, dear boy, the shock upon seeing you walk out of No. 2 Chester Square. The miracle of it. The same man, still going by the same name.”

  “But you’ve changed your name, haven’t you?”