The Last American Vampire

by Seth Grahame-Smith

  “Our oldest non-Western friend above.” “Our oldest Union friend,” Adam Plantagenet. “Gone too soon.” Murdered. (It was safe to assume he hadn’t taken his own life, and he certainly hadn’t died of natural causes.) “Hasten to his house.” Get your ass back to Union Headquarters. “Shore up foundation.” We’ve been attacked, and we’re afraid it might happen again.

  Adam Plantagenet, the oldest vampire in existence as far as anyone knew, was dead. Murdered in the headquarters of the Union, which he’d founded centuries earlier.

  It was Grander. I was sure of it. No other vampire had the strength or the audacity.

  I’d spent nearly ten years searching Europe for the mysterious “A. Grander VIII.” Ten years, without so much as a glimpse of the man. Always whispers, but nothing solid. He was vapor. Rumor. And now he’d killed an old friend.

  Henry had attended countless funerals, but this was the first time he’d ever watched a vampire’s coffin lowered into the frozen earth. There were perhaps fifty mourners in all, not a single one of them human. All the same, the collars of their winter coats were turned up, and their shoulders shrugged to ward off the cold. A steady snow had begun to fall as their procession of carriages and wagons had wound its way through the Bronx, to St. Raymond’s Cemetery, which would one day be the final resting place for tens of thousands of New Yorkers but was then home to only a few lonely graves. Until recently, the cemetery had been farmland, an eighty-acre swath of flat green to the south of St. Joseph’s School for the Deaf.

  It was this school, not the cemetery, that was the reason for their trek to the Bronx. St. Joseph’s had been Adam Plantagenet’s pet cause, and he’d given liberally to see that its students—most of them orphans, like him—received the best and kindest care available.

  The burial service was so close to the school building that Henry could make out the faces of the children pressed to the windows, looking on as their anonymous patron was laid to rest. The world was freshly and perfectly white, the snowflakes falling steadily. Henry marveled at the silence of it. All that snow, millions of tons of frozen water, falling to earth without a sound. He thought of the children in those windows. How even the heaviest rainstorm would sound no different to them than the soft blanketing of a first snowfall.

  When Adam’s coffin hit bottom and the straps were pulled free, Henry stepped forward and said a few words, as he’d been asked to do:1

  “Adam Plantagenet may not have been human, but he was a lover of humanity. He believed that vampire and man could coexist, and to that end, he founded our brotherhood. I think it fitting that he goes to his rest in sight of the school he gave so liberally to, and believed so fervently in. A school where those who have been born into unenviable stations, who have been cast out by those who were supposed to love them, as Adam was cast out by his loved ones, can find their place, and thrive.”

  I stayed behind as the other mourners dispersed. I wanted one last moment alone with Adam. I couldn’t help feeling that I had failed him, that his death had been partly my doing. If I’d been more committed, more diligent in my search for Grander, he’d still be alive. I approached the lip of grave, mulling over an apology that would come too late.

  That’s when I saw the man on horseback.

  Bundled against the cold, his face obscured by a scarf, the rider was staring straight at me from across the cemetery. We were alone among the gravestones.

  I knew at once it was Grander, come to witness the fruits of his dark labor.

  Henry sprang into motion as Grander turned his horse and galloped away, speeding out of the cemetery gates with snow crunching under the hooves of his mount.

  Henry was fast, but he couldn’t outrun a horse—not in the snow, anyway. He sprinted into the street and saw a mounted policeman giving directions. Henry grabbed the man and pulled him from his saddle, hurling him to the street with far more force than he’d intended. He mounted the unfamiliar beast, and the chase was on.

  Grander rode west toward the river with Henry hot on his heels. He paid pedestrians no heed, knocking them violently aside as his mount snorted in the frigid air. The icy wind slashed at Henry’s bare face, his horse struggling to keep its balance on the wet cobblestones.

  I could see the Bronx River up ahead, covered in snow. I wondered whether Grander would turn north toward Van Cortlandt Park or south toward Rikers Island.

  He did neither. Grander urged his animal off the street, down the embankment, and straight across the frozen river. The ice groaned in protest at the sudden burden, but held.

  Henry had no choice but to follow. Gritting his teeth, he kicked his horse’s side and followed in the tracks left by Grander’s beast. The ice was already veined with cracks and fissures, but new fractures announced themselves in sharp, staccato fury. Henry’s horse whickered nervously.

  People on the street were staring and shouting now, yelling at Henry to get off the ice, warning him that it wasn’t safe.

  I know it isn’t safe, you idiots, he thought. I’m not out here on a pleasure ride.

  Grander pulled up on his reins. He turned back, waiting to see if Henry would follow through with the pursuit.

  I couldn’t stop. Not now. Not after being so close. I urged the horse on, people shouting behind me. Grander waiting ahead. The horse took a few steps forward, then—bang! A gunshot. That’s what it sounded like. A loud crack, followed by the sensation of weightlessness.

  Horse and rider plunged into the frozen river. The animal panicked as it fell, twisting its body and driving Henry into the ice at an unfortunate angle.

  Its weight forced me down, under the ice. We both sank like stones. The water went red as pain shot up my body. I looked down and saw my shinbone protruding from my leg, jagged and broken, the wound coughing blood. The pain was phenomenal, but somehow I swam back to the surface. I clawed my way onto the shoreline and looked behind me.

  Grander was still there. Watching. It was hard to know, since his face was covered, but Henry would’ve sworn he saw a smile, just before he turned and rode away across the frozen river.

  All told, Henry had spent a decade in London. In vampire terms, barely enough time to unpack his suitcase. He’d thought of Abe often—especially in the spring of 1890, when he learned that Abe’s only grandson, Abraham “Jack” Lincoln, had died at the age of sixteen, less than a mile from Henry’s home in London, where his father, Robert Todd Lincoln, was serving as the American ambassador. The cause of young Jack’s death was reported as “blood poisoning”—a vague diagnosis that caused Henry no small concern. Europe was still rife with expatriate vampires who might have seen Abraham Lincoln’s grandson as a prize. But Henry never got the chance to examine Jack’s body, as it was hurried back to the States to be entombed in Springfield (where his grandfather was supposedly interred). From a letter to Bram Stoker, dated March 15th, 1890:

  [Abraham Lincoln] buried a mother, a sister, a brother, and two of his own boys in life. And now he buries a grandson—his namesake, his legacy, in death. The fields of his future progeny are being slowly salted.

  For his part, the experience of working with Henry to catch the Ripper had inspired Stoker’s imagination.2 Nine years after Whitechapel’s summer of terror, he published a fictional account of a vampire who comes to London, only to be pursued by a great hunter of the dead. Dracula was written in epistolary fashion, that is, as a collection of diary entries, newspaper clippings, letters, and telegrams, presented as fact. And, in truth, there were many facts hidden away in Stoker’s masterpiece. For instance, the novel’s climax was likely the result of a trip that Henry took to Asia in 1894. He traveled by way of Istanbul, taking the new Orient Express—a four-day, three-night journey. An excerpt from a letter sent by Henry to Stoker, from Peking,3 on his arrival:

  Consider the plight of this lonely vessel, racing through vast expanses of the untamed and terrible wild. The dark mountains with their treacherous passes looming on all sides, in direct opposition to the opulence of the
interior. The drama seems inherent.4

  Dracula was an instant sensation. Yet for all his newfound money and fame, Stoker remained at the Lyceum, acting as both theater manager and Renfield to the great Henry Irving. He’d long hoped that Irving, with his dramatic, sweeping gestures, gentlemanly mannerisms, and specialty in playing villain roles, would play Dracula in the stage adaptation of his novel. However, when the play was mounted at the Lyceum in 1897, Irving refused to appear in it.

  He was insulted, I think. Put off by the fact that Stoker had borrowed so liberally in creating the character of Dracula. And like other vampires at the time, he was probably upset that the novel had created something of a vampire hysteria in the culture, and given millions of humans an insight into the customs and mannerisms of our kind. But what really pissed Irving off, in my opinion—the real reason he refused to do the play—was that his assistant, his employee, had achieved a fame comparable to or likely even greater than his own.

  Toward the end of his life, Stoker, who had been suffering from ill health, wrote one last letter to Henry Sturges, dated August 1st, 1911:

  My Dear Sturges,

  Well, old friend, we come to the end of the play.

  Doyle will no doubt be remembered for [creating Sherlock] Holmes. But his adventures with you and I in that strange Autumn of 1888 added ingredients to his tales that never would have existed without you,5 just as it gave rise to the book I shall be remembered for. For this, and for your constant friendship, I leave you with a full heart, and a fondness greater today than ever in these three and twenty years.

  It gives me some comfort knowing that those memories will live on in your head for all time. Spare a thought for your old friend once in a while, will you?

  Yours Sincerely,

  Stoker died less than a year later, in London.

  It was impossible to get into Union Headquarters without being heard. Since the days of the Civil War, when the Union had helped the North win, making numerous human and vampire enemies in the process, the building had been a veritable fortress. The ground-floor windows were covered by iron shutters, which had been locked since anyone could remember. The boiler room was cemented off from the rest of the basement level, so that coalmen could make deliveries and tend to the furnace without gaining access to the rest of the building. With the exception of a pair of two-inch-thick cast-iron doors in the first-floor lobby, which were always locked, there was no way into the building from the street.

  That is, except for the tunnel. Whoever had killed Adam had known about the tunnel that ran underground between the Union Headquarters and Trinity Church on the other side of Broadway. A tunnel designed, ironically, as a means of escape, in the event that the headquarters were attacked. And whose existence was supposed to be revealed only to those who had sworn an oath of loyalty to the institution. Someone had broken that oath, and Adam had paid with his life.

  Henry was back in the Union’s grand ballroom, in the country of his vampire birth. The compound fracture in his leg had been bothering him. Usually, a broken bone would’ve taken a matter of hours for his vampire body to mend, but it had been splintered badly and set incorrectly, leaving him with a noticeable limp. Henry desired nothing more than to resume the hunt for Grander, but to do so while recovering would be to invite death.

  Adam’s portrait had been placed on an easel at the far end of the ballroom, the black lacquer finish of its frame reflecting the fire burning in the oversize hearth behind it. Dozens of red and white roses had been arranged around it, in honor of the Houses of York and Lancaster—the two branches of the Plantagenet line, which fought each other for control of England in the Wars of the Roses. Henry was admiring the arrangement and wondering just how in the hell they’d managed to find such beautiful flowers in the dead of winter, when a squeaky little voice shook him from his thoughts:

  “Are you Henry Sturges?” it asked.

  Only that’s not at all how it sounded. It was more like, “A’yu E’nry Stuh-jess?” An annoying, high-pitched, nasal voice, rendered even more annoying by its thick Cockney accent.

  Henry looked over—or rather down—at the stout frame of William Duell, a boy of about sixteen, his round face covered in freckles, his hair reddish brown and unkempt. His ill-fitting brown suit looked itchy and worn, and he looked more like an eager newsboy than a vampire.

  “And you are?”

  “Name’s Duell. I’m to be your bah’yguard.”

  “You?”

  “Yeah, me. What of it?”

  “I wasn’t aware I was in need of a bodyguard,” said Henry.

  Duell looked at Henry’s bandaged leg and snorted. “Well, you are, and I’m ’im.”

  With Adam Plantagenet gone, the Union had been left with something of a leadership gap, even though, officially speaking, it didn’t have a leader.

  A few of the older crowd—the five-hundred-and-up club—got together and decided to invoke some ancient bylaw that none of us had ever heard of. Some of us, those who had been around long enough to make a few enemies, would be paired up with “bodyguards” for the time being, and the headquarters would be placed under guard around the clock. I found the whole thing a little absurd, to be honest. I couldn’t help feeling like we were playing right into the hands of whoever had killed Adam—walking around vigilant and afraid, locking ourselves up in the safety of our cells.

  “Someone thinks you’re ’igh and migh’y enough for someone else to wanna kill,” said Duell. “So ’til they says otherwise, I’m to be your shadow.”

  Duell may not have looked the part of the bodyguard, but he played it to the hilt. True to his word, he was at Henry’s side around the clock, ever vigilant. Two days after Adam’s funeral, the two walked down Fifth Avenue, both wearing dark glasses to ward off the late afternoon sun. They were headed back to Henry’s home on Park Avenue and had decided to take the Sixth Street elevated railway rather than walk.

  “You was around for the war, then?” asked Duell.

  “I’ve been around for many wars.”

  “The last one, I mean. North and South.”

  “Yes.”

  “And was they this worked up? Pairing us off and locking us away? Never seen ’em as worked up as this,” said Duell. “Not since I was made.”

  “No, I haven’t seen them ‘this worked up.’ But then, I’ve never seen anyone get into the headquarters uninvited, either. When were you made, if I may?”

  “Born 1701, died 1717.”

  “ ‘Died.’ There’s that damnable word again. You do realize we’re not actually dead, don’t you?”

  “You take me for an idiot? Course I know that.”

  “I don’t mean to be rude; it’s simply a term I don’t care for.”

  “Oh, well, it’s good ya don’t mean to be rude.”

  “All the same, you do very well in the light for one so new.”

  “I’m a ’undred and bloody ninety-nine years old!”

  “Relatively new.”

  “Age ain’t got nuffin to do with ’ow you ’andle the sun, anyways. ‘A century,’ they tell you. ‘A century before you can wander about during the day.’ Bollocks. I did it in a quarter of the time.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Like ’ell it is. Just ’ave to be willing to get a little burned is all.”

  Henry was taken aback. “You allowed yourself to burn?”

  “Said I did, didn’t I? What, you never tried it when you was new? Never ’eld your arm out a window to see how long you could stand the pain?”

  “I can’t say that I did.”

  “See? That’s the problem. Most vampires is proper types. They get old and rich and proper, and who do they choose to make immortal? Them ’umans that remind ’em of themselves. Other proper types. Don’t see too many cottagers with an extra pair of teeth, do you?”

  “No, I suppose you don’t.”

  “It’s no wonder we’re always getting’ mistaken for queers. Look at us—a bunch’a proper men, n
ever growin’ old, ’angin’ about in the dark, bitin’ other men on the neck. They don’t fear us ’cause we got claws and fangs; they fear us ’cause they think we’re comin’ after their sons.”

  Duell made himself laugh. It was a high-pitched, nasally laugh, and Henry found it deeply annoying.

  “They fear us,” said Henry, “because we’re an affront to nature.”

  “Oh now, don’t start that rubbish.”

  “It was man whom God invited into the Garden of Eden. Man whom He created as part of nature. Where in the Bible does it say anything about vampires?”

  “Oh, Christ. Come off it, you dowdy cunt. ‘Garden of Eden.’ First off, you ought’a be ashamed of yourself, goin’ around, quotin’ the Bible like it’s full of facts. Three ’undred odd years old, still believes in those fairy tales. Second off, there’s plenty in your Bible about us: people risin’ from the dead, miracles and what, drinkin’ Jesus’s blood, ‘oh, drink this and have everlasting life.’ Are you daft? You think bein’ a vampire’s an ‘affront to nature’? Fine. You go on and think it. But for the love’a your Mother Mary and all your made-up saints, leave me out’a your misery.”

  Henry was taken aback, to say the least.

  “I pity you,” said Henry at last. “You’ll never know what you are.”

  “Save your pity. I know exactly what I am. You ’ate bein’ a vampire. Me? I think it’s right fun.”

  “ ‘Fun’? You jest.”

  “Know what I did when I was ’uman? Mucked stalls for a bloke my father owed money to. Up before the sun I was, six days a week, shoveling ’orse shit to pay off a debt that wasn’t even mine. I ’ated bein’ ’uman, I did. ’Ated the work. ’Ated bein’ sick and tired and aching. ’Ated knowin’ that I’d probably never see thirty-five. A ’uman life’s over in a blink. Can’t squeeze but a few drops out of it, see. Then along comes a bloke, says, ‘ ’Ere, drink this.’ Next thing I know I can see in the dark and run fast as a dog. Best bloody thing that ever ’appened to me. Sleep all day, strong as ten men, get to live forever? What’s not to like?”