"It begins with L and ends with D," the old sailor warns them. "D for Death and Death for ye all."

But it is already too late.

The year is 1587.

Elizabeth Paine and her family are headed to the New World in search of religious freedom and prosperity. They are part of a group of nearly 120 people crossing the angry Atlantic on their way to America—their new home.

But a darkness is aboard the ship, a monstrous darkness that is also in search of a new home. And new blood.

Soon after their arrival in North America, an evil stowaway begins to unleash hell upon the small colony of Roanoke. Settlers start dying from a mysterious epidemic. And then the bodies start disappearing from their graves.

Elizabeth Paine is just 15 years old. But she will have to grow up fast if she has any hope of surviving the looming apocalypse at her door. Will she find the strength and courage to become the first vampire hunter in America? Or is she, along with the rest of the colony, doomed to succumb under the fangs of evil?

Recently discovered on a small island off the coast of North Carolina, the tattered diary of young Elizabeth Paine sheds new light on an ancient malevolence and the 400-year-old mystery of the Lost Colony of Roanoke.