American Vampire #7

"Devil in the Sand," Part Two
written by Scott Snyder
art by Rafael Albuquerque and Mateus Santolouco

If, like McCogan, we suspected Skinner Sweet of being responsible for the recent spat of murders and de-sanguinations in Las Vegas, it seems we would be wrong.  Sweet's certainly taken up residence in the burgeoning "Sin City" as a pimp and businessman whose employee was one of the last to see Mr. Beaulieu alive, but there's another vampire on the loose, tracking down the bosses of the consortium tasked with the building of Hoover Dam.  And Felicia Book and her partner Jack Straw, under the pretense of being an FBI agent and his assistant, are in town to find the murderer.  They are, instead, representatives of an organization called the Vassals, whose mission seems primarily to track down and kill vampires, a turn which expands the universe of American Vampire considerably.

Likewise, although the evolution of Sweet into something new in contrast to the pack of European entrepreneurs in Hollywood necessarily entailed the possibility of variety in vampire species, the glimpse into the world of the Vassals also opens up that variety.  Felicia's forensic investigation into the death of Mr. Beaulieu allows her narrow the species of vampire which could have perpetrated the murder, all of which seem to be documented in her research materials.  This killer is a species we haven't seen before.

And what should we make of Sweet's arrangement with the Vassals?  Under what conditions could a vampire known to be a killer even in his human form be granted immunity from an organization whose purpose is to hunt down vampires?  It's a suggestive tease, one that Felicia is particularly troubled by, but one that grants even further grey over Sweet's ambiguous character.

The final scene throws a wrench in the proceedings of the second story arc, reintroducing us to Abilena and her so-far unnamed partner who have traveled to rural California to kill Pearl Jones, in her words "the deadliest vampire on Earth" (American Vampire, Vol. 2, p. 52).  This is, of course, another mystery, since Pearl may be deadly but her seemingly idyllic life with Henry seems far from requiring Abilena's attention, except that she is the only known offspring of Skinner Sweet, the American vampire.

[November 2010]

As collected in American Vampire, Volume 2 (ISBN 978-1401230692)