The Lesser Dead

Set in 1978 New York City, the story is narrated by Joey Peacock, a vampire who looks like a fourteen-year-old boy but has been undead since the early 1930s. Joey warns from the start that he is an unreliable narrator. He lives in the tunnels beneath the subway system, part of a colony of 14 vampires inhabiting abandoned stations and service rooms. Their leader is Margaret McMannis, a self-appointed mayor who rules by force and cunning.

Vampires see in darkness as though everything were candlelit, find sunlight agonizing, and feed on human blood without killing, using hypnotic abilities called "charming" to make victims compliant. Joey disguises himself as a lost child to lure prey. His closest companion is Cvetko, a former Slovenian linguistics professor, bookish and ethical to a fault, who writes polite letters to elderly shut-ins requesting permission to visit and feed. Other members include Ruth, a former suffragette and Margaret's fiercest loyalist; Old Boy, a Vietnam-era Marine who serves as Margaret's protector; Luna, Joey's crush; Billy Bang, a charismatic Black musician; and Balducci, a former mobster who covets Margaret's position. Margaret also commands the Latin Hearts, a gang of Puerto Rican vampires led by Mapache who serve as her enforceable muscle. The colony's central rule: Feed without killing. Vampires who kill, called "peelers," face execution.

Joey recounts his origin. In 1933, he was the son of a businessman and socialite in Greenwich Village. When his mother's jealousy led to the firing of Vilma, the beloved cook who served as Joey's surrogate mother, Margaret was hired as her replacement. Joey resolved to frame Margaret for theft, stealing his mother's coral cameo pendant to plant in Margaret's purse. When Elise, the young Black maid, caught him, he panicked and lied. Margaret was fired but stared at Joey with full knowledge of his guilt. Two months later, Margaret returned transformed into a vampire. She stalked the family, charmed Elise into destroying a cross that had repelled her, and ultimately drained Joey at Beth Israel hospital, backwashing blood into him. He died and was reborn in the hospital morgue.

The main narrative begins when Joey, riding the subway, spots a pale, dark-haired girl of about seven charming a man with a briefcase. At Grand Central, the girl exits with the entranced man, and two small blond boys join them. Joey knows the man will die. Margaret calls a town meeting after three colony members report similar sightings and orders the vampires to search for the children in pairs.

Joey follows a tip to the Belvedere Castle in Central Park. Inside the boarded-up structure, he finds evidence of brutal killings and a civilian captive, Gary Combs, tied to a chair, covered in small bite wounds, barely alive. A blond boy, Peter, introduces himself, joined by two other children. Joey learns they cannot feed without killing. He tells Cvetko, who deduces the children are feral and that the real threat is whoever turned and abandoned them. They enlist the Latin Hearts' opposition to prevent Margaret from simply killing the children.

Margaret leads vampires to the castle, but the children have fled. Joey tracks six of them to the Central Park zoo: Peter, Camilla, Sammy, Manu, Alfie, and Duncan. He takes them to see Star Wars, buying time. The starving children then feed on a household Joey regularly visits, with alarming intensity. Margaret interrogates the children, who cry and deflect, claiming their father wore a tie and their mother "was a queen." She assigns Joey and Cvetko to teach them to survive without killing.

The children claim they were charmed from Stuyvesant Park by Wilhelm Messer, an ancient and wealthy vampire known as the Hessian, a German mercenary from the Revolutionary War era. They allege he turned them in his basement and abused them. The Latin Hearts seize on this as justification to attack the Hessian and claim his wealth. Margaret opposes the plan but tells them they can go alone.

Joey and Cvetko discover an abandoned theater filled with bodies: The children have been secretly killing on a massive scale. Joey also realizes three of the children, Peter, Camilla, and Alfie, have a different and more severe hunger. He breaks Margaret's most fundamental rule by letting them feed from his own blood.

At a town meeting, Balducci attempts a coup by introducing a hit man he has secretly turned. Margaret kills both challengers with lethal speed. During the fight, decades of mold are scraped from a tunnel wall, revealing a warning left by a previous generation of vampires: "DON'T TRUST THE CHILDREN." Margaret resolves to kill the children the following night.

The children strike first, attacking colony members in the tunnels and leaving a booby-trapped doll rigged with a white phosphorus grenade. Joey encounters the children in a hidden underground chamber where the three eldest bathe in a barrel of human blood surrounded by corpses. They explain their stomachs have shrunk and leak, requiring blood baths to absorb nourishment through their skin. When a grenade flash causes the children to drop their charm, their true forms are revealed: desiccated, mummy-like beings with outsized fangs and missing fingers, possibly a thousand years old. Camilla reveals their story about the Hessian was fabricated. Mapache's severed head among their trophies confirms the children killed the Latin Hearts.

The final battle erupts at Union Square station. Peter climbs onto the platform and charms dozens of commuters, commanding them to kill the adult vampires. The mob overwhelms Margaret and forces her onto the electrified third rail. Old Boy is decapitated. Luna, blinded by Sammy, places her neck on the rails. Joey kills Sammy with a grenade, but the other children survive. Most of the colony is destroyed.

Joey flees through Manhattan. Camilla corners him, drains him nearly dry, and the children entomb him in a brick chamber beside a skeleton Joey calls Chloë, removing his fangs and binding his hands to hers. They perform a ritual and seal the entrance. Eventually, Cvetko and Blond Jesus, a carpenter who lived near Chloë's hidden chamber and had befriended Joey, break through the wall. Cvetko revives Joey, having survived by hiding in a sunken car in the East River. He deduces from photographs that the children would entomb Joey rather than kill him. Joey and Cvetko travel to Boston and eventually part ways. Joey meets a female vampire and drives to California. The apparent ending presents them night-swimming in Oceano in 1979, a moment of fragile beauty.

A Coda follows. The narrator drops his mask, revealing he is not Joey Peacock at all. Joey was a real but simple person whose journal the narrator heavily edited and embellished. The narrator is the vampire who impersonated Cvetko throughout the entire story, serving as the children's advance scout. His role, repeated across centuries and cities, is to infiltrate vampire colonies, earn their trust, learn their weaknesses, and facilitate the children's arrival and the colony's destruction. He confirms Peter, Alfie, and Camilla are Saxons, possibly a thousand years old, whose extreme age explains their insatiable hunger. The narrator announces he will assume Joey's identity, having written the book as practice for mastering Joey's voice and mannerisms. He buries the manuscript, noting that by the time anyone finds it, he could be anyone, anywhere.