In Stephen Graham Jones' New Horror Novel, A Vampire Searches for Justice (Exclusive)

Stephen Graham Jones is set to publish a new, bone-chilling horror novel next year.

The bestselling author of The Only Good Indians will publish The Buffalo Hunter Hunter on March 18, 2025 through Simon and Schuster and Saga Press.

The new book, according to its publisher, is a “chilling historical novel” taking place in the American West in 1912, when a diary written by a Lutheran pastor is discovered in a wall. The diary details a chain of events that left 217 members of the Blackfeet reservation dead, and is told through interviews with Good Stab, a Blackfeet vampire who tells of his “peculiar” life throughout multiple confessional visits — and who is also haunting the reservation in search of justice.

“This is an American Indian revenge story written by one of the new masters of horror,” the book’s description reads.

Jones’ 2020 novel, The Only Good Indians, was a New York Times bestseller, and was followed up by 2021’s My Heart is a Chainsaw, Don’t Fear the Reaper in 2023 and 2024’s The Angel of Indian Lake. Jones is the recipient of the Ray Bradbury Award from the Los Angeles Times, the Bram Stoker Award and the Shirley Jackson Award, amongst other accolades.

Read on for an exclusive excerpt from The Buffalo Hunter Hunter.

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The shot pulled me away from the dying napikwan, my mouth holding on last, the Cat Man part of me screaming because I wanted more, I needed all of the blood, not just the first few drinks. And even though I needed to run, to fight, to not die, I couldn’t help crawling back to this napikwan to finish feeding.

He was cold and dead.

I stood without drinking more.

Blood was pouring down my side, out of me, and was still leaking from my back, and the rest of me was shining and covered in it. Another story we have is of Blood-Clot Boy, and how I looked now is how I always saw Blood-Clot Boy in my head, the way Otter Goes Back would explain him, his voice whispering so all us children would lean in to hear better.

But Blood-Clot Boy was a hero in all the stories.

That’s not what I am.

I’m the one who killed Beaver Chief’s people. I’m the one with the Cat Man inside me. I’m the one who has to drink the blood of my people, just so I can keep drinking that blood.

And now there were seven smelly napikwan standing around me, two of them holding burning torches, one of them trying to hold his short gun steady on me, the rest of them raising their longshooter guns, three of them screaming because they didn’t know what I was.

What I am is the Indian who can’t die.

I’m the worst dream America ever had.

When that short gun finally shot, I wasn’t there anymore, so that little greased shooter went into the hip of the man behind me and he fell over, shooting before he fell. It was into the knee of a napikwan with a long beard who was standing beside the one with the short gun.

Three of the longshooter guns shot with one booming voice, one of them burning a line along my calf right here and then hitting into the ground, but I was already running into the night, naked and covered in blood, my eyes crying it too, my side open to the night right here, and the Pikuni are fast, the fastest, we always have been, especially when running for the Backbone, but this night I ran like no Pikuni had ever run, and on the way out of the light of those two torches, with longshooter guns booming behind me, their greased shooters burrowing fast into the darkness around me, I scooped up that blackhorn calf that had licked my face and held it close to my chest, because I couldn’t leave it there to have its throat cut, and it wasn’t until Sun Chief rode into the sky that I could see that this calf was dirty white.

My heart is empty now from telling this, Three-Persons.

So is my pipe.

Excerpted from THE BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER by Stephen Graham Jones. Copyright © 2025. Reprinted by permission of Saga Press at Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is on sale March 18, 2025 and is available for preorder now, wherever books are sold.