Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire is a 2007 illustrated novel written by Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden, and illustrated by Mignola. It follows the quest of Lord Henry Baltimore, a British officer during World War I who inadvertently changes the course of the war, and his own life, by wounding a vampire on the battlefield.
The book was expanded into a comic book series, published by Dark Horse Comics, which also publishes Mignola's Hellboy series.
Plot
Each chapter begins with a quote from Hans Christian Andersen's, "The Steadfast Tin Soldier". In the original book, years were stylized as "19__". When the series was expanded in comic form, the dates were specified.
Prelude: Requiem
November, 1914: Captain Henry Baltimore leads a night attack across the No Man's Land of a battlefield in the Ardennes Forest. His entire battalion is killed by Hessian fire. Baltimore's leg is wounded, and he is left for dead. He awakes some hours later to see giant bat-like creatures feeding on his dead men. When one attempts to feed on him, he slashes at it with his bayonet, slicing its face. The giant creature in return wounds Baltimore, infesting his leg with unnatural gangrene. Baltimore is saved when the bat-like creatures flee the light of dawn.
Arrival: Kyrie
November 30, 1919: While a mysterious plague is sweeping all of Europe, three men - Sea captain Demetrius Aischros, English nobleman Thomas Childress, Jr., and surgeon Dr. Lemuel Rose - meet in a London pub, The Ugly Muse, each having received a summons from Lord Baltimore. While they are waiting, each man recounts his encounter with Baltimore, and also an experience from his own life which made him ready to accept Baltimore's supernatural explanation for the plague.
The Surgeon's Tale: Offertorio
December, 1914: Dr. Rose amputates Baltimore's leg following the failed mission in the Ardennes. While recovering in hospital, Baltimore is visited by a man with a deep scar on his face and missing his right eye. Baltimore instinctively knew this man was the same creature he'd wounded. (In the novel, the vampire is never named, but in the comics he is called Haigus.) The vampire informs Baltimore that his kind were content to scavenge the corpses of the Great War, but by cutting his face, Baltimore has declared a war between them and humanity. The first victims of this war are the other soldiers from the field hospital, now infected with vampirism.
Dr. Rose recounts that, in the fall of 1914, before he met Lord Baltimore, he encountered a soldier who had been infected with some kind of malevolent spirit that caused him to shapeshift into a bear. Deciding he was a danger to his comrades, the soldier deliberately let himself be captured by the Germans, then shifted and began wreaking havoc behind their lines, leaving behind his human skin, still dressed in his uniform.
The Sailor's Tale: Sanctus
Summer, 1915: Aischros captains the boat that transports Baltimore to London. The two become friends on the journey and Aischros agrees to assist Baltimore on his way home to Trevelyan Island on the Cornish Coast. While in London, Baltimore has a masterfully crafted, hinged wooden leg made. He and Aischros noticed the plague spreading. When Baltimore arrives home, he learns that his entire family except his wife, Elowen, have been claimed by the plague, and falls into a delirious fever.
A few months later, Aischros returns to the island and meets a mysterious monk, who relates that when Baltimore finally recovered from his fever, the vampire visited the island and attacked Elowen, turning her into a vampire and forcing Baltimore to kill her. The monk visited Baltimore in his despair and described a vision he had experienced months before, of a towering red figure with a crown of flame, which the monk believes was a premonition of a greater evil that is coming. The monk told Baltimore that God used Baltimore's pain and suffering to forge him into a weapon against the evil.
Aischros recounts an encounter he had in his youth in Cicagne, an Italian town haunted by supernatural puppets carved from a tree that had grown in a cemetery for criminals and suicides.
The Soldier's Tale: Agnus Dei
December, 1915: Childress, a childhood friend of Baltimore, last saw him in 1915. The Great War had come to an early end as the plague swept Europe. Childress returned home to Trevelyan Island and found Baltimore sitting outside the burning remains of his family home, admitting that he had killed all the remaining vampires on the island, including his entire family. Childress felt as though his friend's heart and soul had died, yet still he continued to live.