The Last American Vampire

by Seth Grahame-Smith

  But when Smith and his men reached the outskirts of the sleeping village, Smith drew his sword, turned back, and ordered one of his men to hold Henry and Virginia at rifle point.

  At first I thought he was going to order us shot. But what he had in mind was much more cruel.

  “Keep them here,” Smith told the rifleman, his eyes on Henry and Virginia. “I want them to see.”

  He spurred his horse and rode into the village with the others.

  Virginia’s eyes grew wide. “What are they doing?” she asked Henry in Algonquin.

  The English rode into the village with slashing blades and stamping hooves, slaughtering the unsuspecting villagers—some while they slept. Children ran screaming from their homes and were shot in the back. Women were beheaded where they stood. Tribal warriors struggled to mount a resistance, but the English slaughtered with impunity.

  Virginia watched it all, my arms wrapped around her. She tried to run into the gunfire and bloody mayhem. She would have preferred to die among her tribe, and she surely would have if I hadn’t restrained her. I held her tightly as she struggled. Hot tears ran down her face.

  “Liars! Murderers!” she wailed, over and over—struggling uselessly against Henry’s grasp, until the horror of it rendered her too weak to move, too hoarse to scream.

  I saw no other choice. The English were going to do what they pleased. If I’d let her go, she would’ve been killed with the rest of them.

  More than 150 Algonquin men, women, and children were butchered that night. Skulls were cleaved open. Pregnant women were impaled. Houses were set afire. The village holy man was murdered by Smith himself, his limbs hacked from his torso and piled atop his corpse like kindling for a bonfire.

  When the English finally relented, the sides of their horses were stained red, and their swords were so spattered with clotted blood and viscera that they wouldn’t fit into their scabbards.

  Henry and Virginia were given a small cabin in the fort. Virginia lay on a mat against the wall, silently replaying the horrors she’d witnessed as the sun revealed the seams between the cabin’s boards. Henry sat opposite her in a chair, staring at her back.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “But, Virginia… had I let you go, they would have killed you, too.”

  More silence. I don’t know how long it was, a few minutes, maybe, an hour, but she rolled toward me, sudden and decisive. She stood and came to where I sat, her face just inches from mine. There was something… not entirely sane about the look in her eyes.

  “Make me, Henry…”

  I was startled by her words. Her conviction. Rage burned in her, and it made her strong. It tempered her, like steel.

  “What I am… it’s a curse, Virginia. I could never—”

  “Make me as you are, and let us be together forever.”

  I had no words. In the years since Crowley had made me, it had never occurred to me that anyone would want to be a vampire. It had also—I know this sounds strange, but it’s true—it had never occurred to me that Virginia might grow old without me. It came at me all at once… a vision of our future. She and I, forever childless. Living our little lie as her youth faded, year after year. I would watch her grow sick and old. I would bury her. Mourn her.

  “Virginia…”

  “I’ll grow old, Henry. I’ll grow old and you won’t love me anymore.”

  She’s right. The love might remain, but the passion…

  “I could never stop loving you—”

  “You will!” she cried. “And you’ll leave me… and I’ll be alone in the world.”

  I looked at her. At those eyes filled with tears. At her face, flushed red. I can’t describe to you how beautiful she looked. How helpless I felt. I suppose I would’ve done anything she asked me in that moment.

  “Make me… or I’ll tell the white men what you are. And it will be the end of us both.”

  She was the woman I loved. I had to get her back to England, back to safety.

  I looked down at my right hand.

  My claws extended, slowly, over my fingernails. I dragged one of them across my left wrist, making sure the gash was long and deep enough to remain open before my body healed itself. The blood came, and Virginia grabbed hold of my wrist and lifted it to her mouth. She drank until her mouth was full and the blood ran from either side of her lips—her eyes locked on mine. And when she’d drunk her fill, we kissed, the blood still running from her chin onto the front of her dress… between her breasts. We pulled each other’s clothes off, each of us bleeding on the other. We made love—Virginia’s body warmer than it would ever be again. Her eyes filled with the last tears they would ever shed. We made love until her eyes rolled back in her head and the sickness took her.

  “My father…,” she whispered. “My lover… my maker.”

  For three days and nights I looked after her, holding her down when she writhed. Wiping the sweat from her brow and the sick from her face. I comforted her when she woke from her transformation, confused and overwhelmed by her new senses. I cleaned her and held her until she remembered me again. When she did, we made love as immortals, biting and clawing at each other, collapsing into each other. I drifted off to sleep in her arms. When I awoke, she was gone.

  Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the New World, had disappeared into the American wild.

  Henry looked across the table at Rockefeller. That old face. Gaunt and weathered but wise.

  [Rockefeller] was smiling at me. He was clearly pleased with how the meeting had unfolded so far. It had all gone exactly as he’d envisioned. But then, everything did.

  Henry felt sick. Off balance. The idea that Virginia was still alive after all this time… that she and Grander were one and the same… it didn’t make any sense. And yet it made perfect sense.

  I was too stunned to speak. Somehow, this rich old man across the table from me knew. Knew the people and places I had associated with hundreds of years before. He knew that I’d made Virginia immortal. But how? How the hell could he have known? And how the hell could any of it be true?

  “Mr. Rockefeller—”

  “You’re dying to know how I came to possess this information.”

  You’re goddamned right I am.

  “ ‘Wealth’ and ‘information,’ Mr. Sturges. Two of the most important words in the English language. And it just so happens that they mean exactly the same thing. One is interchangeable with the other, in any context. I have more wealth than any man on this earth. Therefore, by definition, I have more information than any man, too.”

  I was done being polite. I couldn’t have him spouting off vague, bullshit axioms when he’d just dropped a bomb in my lap.

  “Mr. Rockefeller, I have to insist that you—”

  “I became aware of a letter about, oh, a year ago. A recommendation for the Medal of Honor. This letter was brought to my attention by certain men who work in my employ. Men whose job it is to keep a sharp eye out for signs of the strange and unusual. A rather vague description of duties, I know. But they’re quite effective, these men. They alert me when there’s an item in the newspapers that requires following up. Or when, say, a letter lands on the desk of the secretary of war, telling tales of soldiers throwing hundred-pound shells great distances, inhaling mustard gas with no ill effects, taking bullets without yielding an inch of ground. This account reminded me of similar ones, in letters written by soldiers during the Civil War, describing the ‘impossible feats’ of a number of Confederate soldiers on the battlefield. Letters that I have collected over the years.

  “I wanted to meet this extraordinary soldier,” Rockefeller continued. “I wanted to see what the hero of Belleau Wood looked like firsthand and offer him further opportunities to serve his country.”

  “That’s lovely,” said Henry, “but I’m afraid you have the wrong soldier. I wasn’t present at the Battle of Belleau Wood. And no one’s ever recommended me for the Medal of Honor. Not that I know of, anyway.”

&nbs
p; “Oh, I know, I know. But you were a witness to the Civil War, were you not? I understand you were a trusted adviser to none other than Abraham Lincoln himself.”

  Again, I was surprised that Rockefeller knew of my friendship with Abe. But not shocked. Nothing could have shocked me after seeing Virginia’s name. At least, that’s what I thought.

  “I had the privilege of being his friend.”

  “I voted for him in 1860, you know,” said Rockefeller. “And again in sixty-four. I thought him an eloquent man. He had his deficits, of course, but he had tremendous perseverance. I do not think any quality so essential to success as perseverance, don’t you agree?”

  Henry didn’t answer.

  “Perseverance, Mr. Sturges, in sufficient quantities, can overcome most everything. Even nature. Such a shame that he was cut down in his prime. To think of what he might have accomplished, if only he’d had more time.”

  “We are time’s subjects,” said Henry, “and time bids be gone.”10

  “Are we, Mr. Sturges? Are we all time’s subjects?”

  Again, Henry chose not to answer.

  “Tell me, how did you receive the news of Mr. Lincoln’s death?”

  “I felt the loss deeply, as many did. It was too much to bear the thought of losing such a great man, such a cherished friend.”

  “Is that why you made him a vampire?”

  My thoughts spiraled out of control, like a plane with one of its wings shot off. A dread began to fill my body. Cold water in an empty vessel, starting in my toes and flooding every compartment of me from the inside.

  I’d kept that secret locked deep in the vault of my mind for more than fifty years. I hadn’t shared it with a single soul, and here—somehow—Rockefeller knew. And if Rockefeller knew, then others knew. And if others knew, knew that I’d broken my oath, broken a sacred code—a vampire will make no other vampire—then I was in imminent, mortal danger. What if [Rockefeller] hadn’t called me here for a discussion? What if he’d called me here for some kind of—

  “Relax. Your secret is quite safe, I assure you. I’ve made my fortune identifying valuable commodities,” said Rockefeller. “Mr. Grander—or rather I should say, Ms. Dare—is a very serious problem. And it seems, given your history and abilities, that you are uniquely suited to deal with this problem, Mr. Sturges. That makes you a very valuable commodity indeed.”

  “Who told you that I made Lincoln a vampire?”

  “I would very much like you to meet this hero of Belleau Wood. I believe the two of you could accomplish great things together. He’s just in there,” said Rockefeller, leaning his head toward the Shinto temple.

  I hadn’t sensed another presence with us. I’d been so distracted, first by meeting Rockefeller, then by the shock of what he’d told me, that I’d just plain missed it. But there was someone… someone just inside. I could smell him.

  “Go on, Mr. Sturges. I’m sure he’ll explain everything to your satisfaction.”

  On average, a vampire’s heart beats once, maybe twice a minute at rest. But mine raced now. I couldn’t bring myself to turn around, in part because I was afraid—legitimately afraid that this could be the end of me.

  Henry pushed his chair away from the table, the iron legs scraping over the concrete of the terrace. He rose and walked slowly, slowly toward the front of the temple. He felt as if he’d been drugged. His feet seemed a mile away from his head. It was too much. Too much revelation in too short a time.

  I’ve made two vampires in my five centuries. In both cases, it was because I loved them. Because I couldn’t bear the thought of living in a world without them. And in both cases, I ended up mourning them anyway.

  I suppose there’s no way to avoid losing the things you love. Even if you live forever.

  “Imagine my surprise,” said Rockefeller, watching Henry walk, “when my men tracked down this elusive hero and brought him to me. Imagine my amazement upon hearing his sensational tale.”

  I walked into the relative dark of the temple. There was a man standing inside. A tall, slender man in a dress-green army uniform.

  “There was only one man I wanted to meet,” Rockefeller continued, “after meeting the hero of Belleau Wood. The man who had made it all possible.”

  His face was clean-shaven, except for a thin mustache that hugged his top lip. His hair was cropped short and neatly combed in military fashion. He wore thin, gold-rimmed spectacles with round lenses. It was a younger version of him—smooth faced, untouched by worry and wear. But it was him. Unmistakable. Alive.

  “Hello, Henry,” said Abe.

  TEN

  Burning

  What is to give light must endure burning.

  —Viktor Frankl

  Abe didn’t remember much about May 8th, 1865, but he remembered the burning. It felt as if his skin was being ripped from his body, one layer at a time. As if the air itself was on fire.

  Decades later, in 1921, he would attend a lecture about the nature of time and space at Columbia University in New York. The lecturer, a German physicist who would win the Nobel Prize a year later, had opened with a fact that Abe found particularly fascinating, saying, with his thick accent:

  “Every second that you and I sit here, the sun burns 680 million tons of hydrogen. Takes it and fuses it into helium. Every second of your life. Do you know how much 680 million tons is? It is more than a trillion pounds. A trillion pounds of fuel, every second, for billions and billions of years! Isn’t it wonderful? And because it is so massive, this star, so heavy—gravity holds it all together! So you see, its power, the very thing that makes it want to tear itself apart, is the very thing that holds it together. And this, this is how the star spends its eternity. An eternity of this. Always the fight, the push and pull, between destruction and existence. Ah… but in the end, destruction always wins.”

  The burning had started the second he’d broken though the window. Before he’d even hit the ground. It had felt like he’d jumped into a skillet, his skin sizzling on contact. He’d thrown himself through the window, intent on returning to his grave. But the pain—a pain that couldn’t be conjured in the devil’s imagination—the pain had changed his mind. This was no way to die.

  He ran toward the trees west of Tenth Street—desperate for the relief of their shade. He ran faster than any man has a right to run. But you’re not a man, Abraham. Fast enough to draw the gaping stares of a group of children playing in the front yard of a neighbor’s house. Running inside to tell their parents that a screaming man had just flown down Jackson Street. But Abe saw none of this. He was virtually blind. There was only the contrast of green leaves against the fiery sky, calling him to their comfort. Drawing him toward the woods, where the full May canopies would choke off the blinding, burning sun.

  But even the shade burned. No, it wasn’t the burning of the open, but it was still an agony unlike any he’d experienced in life. His arms, legs, face—every inch of him felt like the exposed root of a rotten tooth, constant, shocking agony as the dentist’s pliers grabbed hold and yanked on the inflamed nerve. His skin slewing off, the pain doubling him over. In the end, destruction always wins.

  Abe dragged himself along the ground. Henry will be coming after me any minute now. He’ll tell me how to make the burning stop. His skin blistering and blackening. His eyes stinging. A trillion pounds of fuel making him suffer every second. Time seemed to melt along with his flesh, and where there was the floor of the forest there was now the floor of a horse stable; Abe dragged himself into the mercy of its innards, into one of its dark stalls, burying himself under hay and mud and manure, praying that it would keep the sun off him. That it would stop the burning.

  It hadn’t been easy. Not at first. Abe and Henry’s reunion had come with all the drama of a rock band getting back together decades after an ugly breakup. But time heals all wounds, congealing around psychic injuries like a clotted mass of platelets and white blood cells. Eventually the wound scabs over. If you don’t pick at it fo
r sixty years, it becomes a scar.

  [Abe] was… chilly, at first. Standoffish. Frankly, I would have preferred anger. Anger I could deal with. Passion and fury were emotions I understood. I’m not big on melodrama—which is frustrating, given that it’s almost exclusively how my kind are portrayed in fiction. Abe wasn’t melodramatic; he was just quiet. I almost wished he would lash out, strike me. Nothing cleanses the conscience quite so well as being wronged by the person you’ve wronged.

  The turning point in our relationship came two weeks after our reunion, when I was finally able to make him a gift of something I’d been holding on to for decades.

  Abe stood transfixed at first, staring at the gift, then at Henry, then back to the gift again. He reached over and hefted his ax for the first time in sixty years.

  He held it in his left hand first, then tossed it into his right, a slow grin spreading across his face. He ran his fingers along the worn handle, over nicks and notches that had been there since his father first gave it to him. This ax wasn’t just his weapon. It was his only link—besides me, I suppose—to a long-vanished past.

  Like Henry’s old vampire bodyguard, William Duell, Abe had accelerated his body’s resistance to sunlight (though unlike Duell, he hadn’t done it gradually, or by choice), allowing him unusual freedom of movement for a vampire still in his first century.