The Last American Vampire

by Seth Grahame-Smith

  “Even if he was real, how could he possibly do it? Vampires are a dying breed, Mr. Rockefeller. You said so yourself.”

  “They may be few in number, but there’s no overstating their ability to influence the weak and the desperate and the blind. To inspire men to take up arms against their fellow man, just as they did during the Civil War. ‘Again, the devil taketh him unto an exceeding high mountain, and showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and he said unto him, All these things will I give thee,—’ ”

  “ ‘—if you thou wilt fall down and worship me.’ Matthew four, verses eight and nine. Yes, Mr. Rockefeller, men can be convinced to take up arms against their fellow man. But it’s one thing to goad an already fractured nation to fight, and quite another to make an entire race enslave itself.”

  “It only takes one devoted man to conquer the world, Mr. Sturges… I should know.”

  Rockefeller reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small, sealed white envelope. He placed in on the table beside his teacup.

  “If the war taught us anything,” he continued, “it’s that one well-placed assassin can topple nations, kill millions. Even now, as we sit here on this beautiful spring day, Grander and those loyal to him are recruiting men to their cause. War, revolution, destabilization… those are his goals, and he means to achieve them. Unfortunately for him, my goals conflict with his.”

  “So what, then… you want me to find him?”

  “That won’t be necessary.”

  Rockefeller slid the envelope across the table. Henry stared at it, reluctant to touch it. No, he thought. There’s no way…

  “But,” said Henry, looking at the envelope, “the Union has been looking for him. The United States government—”

  “The United States government doesn’t have my resources… or my insights.”

  Henry picked up the envelope, but he couldn’t bring himself to open it.

  It was someone I knew. Someone I’d been close to. It had to be. What other reason for the theatrics? Why else would he choose to reveal the name to me and not another vampire? I know it sounds strange, but I was frightened. Deeply. I imagine it’s the way a patient feels waiting for the doctor to walk in with the results of their cancer test. That feeling that “my life is going to pivot drastically in one direction or another in the next few seconds, and no matter what, the person I was a minute ago will never exist again.”

  “A strange name, isn’t it?” said Rockefeller as Henry stared at the envelope. “ ‘A. Grander the Eighth.’ I thought a good long while on that name. A pseudonym, to be sure. But why ‘A. Grander’? There was always the possibility that it was simply plucked out of some vampire’s imagination at random or invented because it sounded regal. But why ‘the eighth’? Why not the seventh or the fourteenth? Or, perhaps it was a kind of statement: ‘A grander future for vampires.’ But then why the Roman numerals?”

  I began to feel a kind of dread, as if my subconscious had already worked out what he was driving at and was waiting for the rest of my brain to catch up. Waiting, like a guest at a surprise party, to see the shock on my face when the lights came on.

  “Then it occurred to me,” said Rockefeller, “what if those weren’t Roman numerals at all? What if the answer had been staring me in the face this whole time?”

  I had to. I couldn’t prolong it another second.

  Henry picked up the envelope and opened it. There were two names, one above the other. Each twelve letters across.

  The white men came, as Henry had always known they would.

  It was the summer of 1607, the same year that Henry looked to the heavens and caught his first glimpse of the then unnamed Halley’s Comet; just as he would again in 1682, the year the city of Philadelphia was founded; and 1759, when, in that same city, Henry helped found America’s first life insurance company—a way of making restitution for another vampire’s killing spree, which had left many destitute widows and orphans in its wake. In 1835, the comet’s close approach would announce the birth of his future friend Mark Twain, and in 1910 it would return to announce his death.

  But all this had yet to be written when the English landed that April.

  They came aboard three ships: the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery, making landfall on the morning of April 26th at a spot they named “Cape Henry.”6

  Not in my honor, unfortunately—but rather in the honor of the crown prince of England, Henry Frederick.

  Three ships carrying 104 English men and boys, all led by a one-armed privateer named Captain Christopher Newport. They were tasked with doing what the settlers of Roanoke had failed to do: to create a permanent English presence in the New World, and their first step was establishing a fortified settlement, which they named James Fort,7 in honor of their king.

  Word got back almost immediately. Word that white men had landed in three ships and made a fort. I remember an air of excitement in the village, some of it optimistic, some of it anxious, some of it belligerent. I was probably the only member of the tribe who felt a kind of sadness on hearing the news. I remember having two thoughts, in quick succession. The first was, Nothing will ever be the same. The second was, What will I do with Virginia?

  Henry and Virginia had been living among the Algonquins for seventeen years, mastering their language, adopting their customs. Virginia—known to all but Henry as Chepi (Algonquin for “Fairy,” or “Ghost,” on account of her white skin)—had grown into a beautiful young woman, nearly twenty years old, and still possessed of the same wavy red hair and fair complexion. Henry had been given the name Makkapitew, or “He Has Large Teeth.”

  Though it was unusual in a society that prided itself on sharing everything, Henry had been given his own small yehakin, as opposed to splitting one with a number of other families. While most of the longhouses were quite dark inside, extra care was taken to make sure no sunlight slipped into Henry’s dwelling. He’d been a vampire for only seventeen years and was still extremely sensitive to its effects.

  I was a shut-in by day, which made it hard for me to be much of a surrogate father [to Virginia]. And I think, to a degree, that I avoided her during those first years. Maybe it was the fact that she reminded me of everything that had happened. Of losing Edeva and my own child. Of the future that had been stolen from us. The women of the tribe—they’re the ones who raised her. Kept her clothed and fed. They’re the ones who mothered her. Taught her the language, the customs. Taught her how to be a woman and a member of the tribe.

  Henry quickly learned his place in the tribe, too. Chief Powhatan used his “good devil” liberally, trotting him out whenever conflicts arose with tribes outside his confederacy—the Monacans, whom Henry had been forced to attack as proof of his loyalty; the Occaneechi, the Saponi, the Tutelo—any number of smaller tribes that had aligned themselves to challenge the great chief’s dominion over modern-day Virginia.

  Typically, when there was some disagreement—usually over territory—Powhatan would send a message to the other tribe’s chief. A warning. He would tell them that he could “command the old ghosts or demons” and so on, and that they’d better back down, or he’d send one to make trouble in their camp. Chiefs don’t get to be chiefs by rolling over in the face of supernatural threats, and inevitably I’d have to kill a few warriors and make a big show of my claws and fangs in front of the terrified villagers. Problem solved.

  It was difficult at first, killing those who hadn’t wronged me. But you’d be surprised how quickly you push through that moral roadblock when you’re starving, or when the alternative is banishment or worse.

  In return for his occasional role as Powhatan’s “demon,” Henry and Virginia were accepted into the tribe. They were clothed and sheltered, taught a way of life that had evolved over thousands of years in the wilds of the New World. When there were no enemies to feed on, Henry survived on the blood of animals—mostly deer or foxes. In times of peace, he served as something of a glorified traini
ng dummy for the other warriors of the tribe. A sparring partner, used to keep their superior fighting skills sharp.

  One of the first questions I’d asked, naturally, was how they’d been able to beat me. How four living men had been able to subdue a vampire when they’d found Virginia and me on the beach that night.

  The old men of the tribe told Henry tales of creatures—“ghost men”—who’d haunted the woods in the time of their ancestors.

  These “ghosts” or “devils” had killed many Algonquin, forcing them from their land and pushing them to the edge of extinction. The Algonquin men had developed techniques for hunting and fighting them. And, if you believed the legend, they’d driven them out of their lands long before we ever landed at Roanoke. But the techniques had been passed down through the generations of their warriors, just in case they ever returned—even though no Algonquin had encountered a vampire in anyone’s memory. At least until I showed up. As for who those first vampires were, or how they came to be, I have no idea. I’m not sure anyone will ever know.

  But the skills Henry learned from his Algonquin brethren formed the basis of his own vampire-hunting techniques, which he would pass on to others, including Abe, in the centuries to come.

  Almost as difficult as Henry’s adjustment to playing the role of killer was his attempt at playing the role of surrogate father to Virginia. As she grew, he made an effort to be more involved—despite the fact that he remained a prisoner of the sun. He spent more time with her, taught her English. Not just how to speak the language, but how to be English. The manners. The dress. The religion.

  It wasn’t so much that I held on to some hope that we would return to England someday. It was more of a tribute to her parents. A feeling that they would have wanted their little girl to be raised a certain way. I suppose it also gave me some comfort, hearing someone else speaking my native tongue. A pretty white face framed by that wavy red hair. I suppose there was some of the old Englishman left in me. That sense of duty.

  When Virginia was seven, she’d asked the question. The one Henry had been preparing for since the day he ran away from Crowley with the three-year-old in his arms.

  We were sitting in my yehakin, the flaps closed to keep the sunlight out. Funny how a child will just accept those sorts of things, accept the fact that I was the only member of the tribe who never went outside during the day. I’m not sure how it came up, but I remember her looking at me, examining my face for a moment or two.

  “Why do we look different from the others?” Virginia asked in Algonquin.

  Henry poked at the fire with a stick, buying himself time as he worked out the right answer in his head.

  “Why is our skin white,” Virginia continued, “when everyone else’s skin is brown? Why do I have orange hair with waves, when your hair and everyone else’s hair is black, with no waves?”

  “Well,” said Henry in English, “you and I… we’re from a different tribe.”

  “They speak the other tongue?” Virginia asked in her shaky English. “Like we speak?”

  “Yes.”

  “We come from far?”

  “Yes,” said Henry. “From across the ocean.”

  Virginia looked away and narrowed her eyes—trying to work out how such a thing was even possible. Across the ocean? But there was nothing beyond the horizon. Nothing but the edge of the earth. She looked up at Henry again.

  “You are my…?”

  Virginia didn’t know the English word.

  “Nohsh?” she asked. Father?

  This was the one I’d been dreading. I thought about my answer. Whether it was better to lie and tell her, Yes, yes, I’m your father, now, hush, let’s speak no more of it. That certainly would’ve been the easier way out. But lying would have dishonored the memory of her real parents. Of the father who’d suffered at the hands of a murderer. Of the mother who’d died holding a baby in her arms. I felt that I owed them the truth, as much as Virginia—as hard as it was going to be for her to hear.

  “No,” said Henry, in English. “I’m not your father.”

  There was that look again. How could it be, when we have the same skin? When we speak the other tongue? When you’re the only person I ever remember holding me?

  “I have a… father? A mother?”

  “Yes…”

  “Across the ocean?”

  “No… Your mother and father are in heaven.”

  There was that look again, as Virginia tried to work out what Henry had said.

  “Heaven,” said Henry again, and pointed a finger to the sky.

  Virginia’s expression darkened as the meaning sank in.

  “They were taken from you,” Henry continued. “Taken by a bad man.”

  “A bad man?”

  “One of the ghost men, from long ago.”

  “A ghost man…,” said Virginia. “Like you.”

  It hadn’t occurred to me that she might know what I was. I shouldn’t have been so surprised. We were members of a close-knit tribe. [Virginia] spent her time with the women, and the women talked. But what shocked me even more than her knowing was the fact that she didn’t seem to care. To her, I was just Makkapitew. Henry. The one who cared for her. The one with skin like her skin.

  “The ghost man,” said Virginia. “He is…”

  Virginia couldn’t find any of the English words she needed—“out there” or “still alive” or “in the woods.” So she simply pointed toward the tree line that would have been visible, had they been outside Henry’s dwelling.

  “No,” said Henry. “He’s dead.”

  Dead. That was a word she knew.

  “You,” said Virginia, “you made him… dead?”

  I nodded. Virginia looked at me with what—sadness? Adoration? I don’t know. I couldn’t tell. There was so much going on behind the eyes of so young a girl. But then, so much had happened to her at such a young age.

  “You are my father,” she whispered.

  “No,” Henry whispered back. “Your father is in—”

  “You are my father.” She came forward and put her arms around Henry’s neck. Laid her head on his shoulder.

  “You are my father,” she whispered.

  She kept repeating it… whispering it, over and over. “You are my father,” in English. “You are my father.” I put my arms around her and pulled her close. This went on awhile, before I was able to speak.

  “I’m your father,” Henry whispered.

  Years had passed since that embrace. The English had returned to the New World, and the little girl had become a woman. As fluent in English as she was in Algonquin.

  She was curious, especially when it came to all things English. She wanted to know everything about our “tribe.” About the great cities across the ocean. And she was strong. She was tall for a girl, especially an Algonquin girl, and unusually skinny. To a European, she was striking. But to the Algonquin, she was just different. She’d been teased mercilessly as a little girl—teased about her hair, her skin. She’d even been beaten. But in all the years we lived among the tribe—and this is something you have to understand—in all those years of being teased and beaten, out in the daylight, where I couldn’t protect her, Virginia never lost a fight. Not one. It wasn’t that she was a better fighter than the other girls. Far from it. It was that she never stopped fighting. She never submitted or cried out or ran away. She punched and pulled and bit until the other girl had no choice but to give up.

  In time, Virginia gained the respect of her Algonquin sisters. They’d welcomed her into their sorority, taught her how to weave mats, how to dry meat and berries for the winter and stretch furs to make warm clothing. When the great chief sired a daughter with one of his many wives, it was Virginia who had spent the most time caring for her. The baby was named Matoaka but would become famous for her nickname, which meant “Little Frolic”—Pocahontas.

  [Virginia] enjoyed holding her. Helping the women care for her, raise her, as was the custom. In time, Matoaka ca
me to see her as something of a surrogate older sister. I’ve often wondered if being exposed to Virginia’s white face, being around her and interacting with her as a family member from birth, was what led [Pocahontas] to fall in love with a white man later.

  Captain John Smith almost hadn’t made it to the New World. During the voyage from England, he’d been charged with planning a mutiny and placed under arrest by Captain Newport. Newport had considered executing him, going so far as to have a gallows constructed during a stopover in Bermuda. But Smith, ever the self-preservationist, had talked himself out of the noose, reminding the captain that the investors of the Virginia Company of London would be very upset indeed were one of their duly elected expedition leaders hanged without a fair trial. By the time they made landfall in Virginia, it seems Smith’s transgressions had been forgiven.

  He wasn’t the handsome, wide-eyed youth he’s always portrayed as in movies. Yes, he was only twenty-seven, but his bushy beard already had flecks of gray in it, and his hair was already thinning. He had tired eyes and bad skin. But he was a leader. I’ll give him that. In a landing party made up of overprivileged, work-averse English gentlemen, he was one of the few willing to get his hands dirty.

  When the news of the landing reached him, Powhatan called a meeting of his trusted advisers. Henry wasn’t a usual part of this group of elders and warriors, but he was invited the join them. He was “an English,” after all, and might have special insights into the situation.

  I remember all of them sitting in the longhouse that night, smoking, discussing what to do. I held my tongue. I knew I would have only one chance to make my point, and I had to wait for exactly the right moment.