Blood & Rust Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  RAVEN

  PART ONE - PREMATURE BURIAL

  PART TWO - DESCENT INTO THE MAELSTRÖM

  PART THREE - THE CONQUEROR WORM

  THE FLESH, THE BLOOD, AND THE FIRE

  BOOK ONE

  BOOK TWO

  BOOK THREE

  BOOK FOUR

  Author’s Note

  C.S. Friedman

  Tanya Huff

  Tad Williams

  Praise for RAVEN:

  “Raven is a detective novel gussied up with a nasty collection of creepy satanic/noferatu types ... it plunges the reader into the seamier side of vampiric politics, but has at its core Kane Tyler—former police officer and general all-around decent human being ... moves swiftly from one mystery to the next.... Swiniarski does a good job creating some particularly nasty tortures and satanic rituals, but skips much of the usual vampire-as-sex-symbol stuff. It shows how an everyman with a good-if-no-longer-beating heart can still triumph, even in a world filled with apathy and bloody fangs.”

  —Locus

  “Swiniarski, who has written several worthwhile SF novels as S. Andrew Swann, turns his hand to a subset of horror fiction here, the virtuous vampire. An agreeable variant of this story, with a good mystery.”

  —Science Fiction Chronicle

  Praise for THE FLESH, THE BLOOD,

  AND THE FIRE:

  “Fans of historical fiction, historical mysteries and supernatural mysteries will enjoy this terrific tale.”

  —Bookbrowser

  “For those who find P.N. Elrod’s vampire detective too upbeat, this is the perfect antidote, a powerful, dark, even harsh, horror novel of vampires and serial murder in Depression-era Cleveland. Swiniarski builds on actual historical facts, including a series of unsolved ‘torso’ murders, and the attempts of famed G-man Eliot Ness to clean up the corrupt Cleveland police force. This is definitely horror, with a strong feeling, early on, that no one remotely sympathetic is going to escape the carnage ... There’s lots of grisly stage setting, even a rather flashy vampire ‘exorcism,’ but the real interest is the picture of the city that brings the story to life.”

  —Locus

  RAVEN

  Copyright © 1996 by S. A. Swiniarski.

  THE FLESH, THE BLOOD, AND THE FIRE

  Copyright © 1998 by S. A. Swiniarski.

  BLOOD AND RUST

  Copyright © 2007 by S. A. Swiniarski.

  All Rights Reserved.

  DAW Bopk Collectors No. 1394.

  DAW books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  All charcters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  First Omnibus Printing, March 2007

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  S.A.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-12681-3

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  RAVEN

  The literate parts of this are dedicated to

  Robert E. McDonough.

  The bloodthirsty parts of this are dedicated to

  Susie Kretschmer.

  Acknowledgments to

  Astrid, Susie, Charlie, Levin, Mary, Bonnie, Geoff, and

  Paula for doing their best to eviscerate this novel in the

  manuscript. I also give thanks to Mr. Poe

  for the obvious reasons.

  PART ONE

  PREMATURE BURIAL

  Thank Heaven! the crisis—

  The danger is past.

  And the lingering illness

  Is over at last—

  And the fever called “Living”

  Is conquered at last.

  —“For Annie”

  1

  I dreamed of blood, and I awoke in a frozen darkness, wondering why I was not yet dead. As my blood-red dreams faded, cold wrapped my body in a grip severe enough to tear flesh from bone.

  “Shit.”

  My painful whisper was loud enough to frighten me down to my soul.

  My back pressed against a wall of curving concrete. Water rushed over me, up to my waist. I opened my eyes, and could barely see a darker shadow where the rest of my body was. The water numbed my body, and my frozen hands couldn’t feel the ice on the walls.

  My senseless hands slid over the concrete as I tried to push myself upright. When I finally stood, I heard the rip of my clothing tearing from where it had frozen to the wall. When the wall released me, my head slammed into the low ceiling, and dizziness overcame me. I had to crouch and dry-heave until my gut ached and my eyes stopped watering.

  I was so cold.

  My mind flew in chaotic tumbles, the cold and the vertigo making it easy to lose my concentration. My thoughts took a supreme effort to retain, and it was some minutes—too many minutes in this icy tomb—before I had overcome my disorientation long enough to think about where I had awoken.

  Once I could concentrate, it was obvious that I stood in a storm sewer somewhere. But I had no idea where it was, no memory of how I got here.

  The more I tried to force my memory, the more traitor my mind became. As I groped for some impression, some image of my life before this icy hell, my mind was gripped by a headache that shot sparks of color before my eyes.

  I was in serious trouble. I had no memory. Everything before my awakening, and a sense of a dream, was a void. I felt a sick impression of what was there, like sensing the definition of a forgotten word, but the substance of my memory was gone.

  Not only couldn’t I remember how I had come to this place, but I couldn’t remember who I was.

  I put a hand to my head, and while I couldn’t find an injury—all parts of my skull throbbed equally—my hair was clotted with frozen blood.

  Not good. Possible head injury, nausea, dizziness, amnesia, nightmares—and I was probably going to die of exposure and hypothermia down here. The thought of dying down here, with no memory of who I was, terrified me.

  I started downstream, hoping for an exit before the cold finally claimed me. As I duckwalked through the knee-deep current I tried to force a memory of how I’d gotten into this mess.

  Had I fallen through an open manhole? Had I collapsed into a drainage ditch to be washed underground? I could not focus on what had happened. Nothing emerged from my memory beyond the impression of violence done to me.

  However I had come here, I could not imagine it happening more than a quarter-hour ago. The cold was deadly. It was a miracle that I had not yet died from it. However long I’d been submerged in this icy water, any longer, I felt, and I never would have woken up.

  For a moment I took some comfort in being able to think clearly now. That comfort brought an unbidden thought, If I am brain damaged, would I know I was thinking like mushy cabbage? I pushed away the idea.

  I slogged downstream, the rushing water cold, deep, and painful. I felt sick that I might have survived whatever accident brought me here only to die of hypothermia, or lose my legs to frostbite.

  For some reason, that brought an involuntary laugh which made me dizzy and surprised me by showing me my own breath. My eyes had adjusted to what little light there was, and I could see my misty laughter before me. I hugged myself for warmth—gaining little from it—and slogged on.

  The laugh had been for the word “accident.”

  The word was soaked with irony despite the fact I could remember nothing of what had happened. My subconscious knew, however, that “accident” was the last word to describe what had occurred. What had happened to me was violent, purposeful, and intentional. This had been done to me. N
o faces, no memory of the act itself, only the certainty that some asshole had tried to kill me.

  My anger made me a little warmer. So did the movement, the effort easing some of the chill. It helped when I finally walked into a chamber tall enough for me to stand upright.

  By now I could nearly see, and I was fighting to stand upright against the current pushing me. The water was up to my chest before I found a ledge lining the tunnel that was high enough for me to stand out of the water. I climbed up on it and stood, shaking, cold, and wet. Sensation, searing cold, returned to my numbed lower body.

  I don’t know how long I’d walked down that sewer pipe, or how long my legs had been submerged, but when my legs were exposed to the air, cold as it was, it felt as if someone were torching them. The pain was bad enough to make me gasp and nearly pitch headfirst into the torrent below.

  Looking down at the water, I couldn’t believe I had fought my way out. Now that my eyes could make out this gray subterranean world, I saw how close to death I’d been. The water roared, carrying logs the size of my thigh and battering them against the walls. As I watched, one slime-blackened log slammed into a swamped shopping cart that was wedged against the walls. The sound of the impact echoed through the sewer, and the cart was dented and knocked loose, to clatter along the wall and out of my sight. If I’d been struck by that log, it would have cost me some ribs or possibly my spine.

  I must have been unconscious and swept down the sewer by this torrent. Miraculously I hadn’t drowned or had parts of me bashed to pulp against the walls.

  I felt my head again. Maybe part of me had been pulped.

  I suddenly realized that I had stopped breathing.

  Panic gripped me, slamming the headache back into my skull. I thought I was having a stroke. But once I thought about it, my chest shuddered and I started breathing again. I sucked air in great gulps that had to originate from psychological rather than physical need. I hadn’t been consciously holding my breath, and I hadn’t stopped long enough for it to cause any pain or discomfort.

  It scared me.

  It scared me worse than amnesia or possible brain damage. It scared me because I hadn’t realized it was happening. I was terribly conscious of my own breathing as I made my way down the storm sewer.

  I inched along that concrete ledge, sliding along walls of brick, concrete, and eventually corrugated steel. I managed to avoid immersing myself again.

  It seemed an aeon before I finally made it out of that frigid little hell. Logic told me that the time I spent underground must have been subjective. Had I actually spent the hours down there that I felt I had, I would have been a frozen corpse long before I reached the sewer’s outflow.

  The outflow I came to emerged from underneath a highway. The echo of traffic reached me through corrugated steel long before I saw the opening. The exit itself was hidden around a bend until I stepped in front of it.

  It opened onto a swollen river that snaked away into a frosted ravine. Snow-covered ice began a few feet from the opening, an unbroken blue plain, shimmering in the moonlight.

  I inched out of the sewer opening, stepping on rocks and downed trees, trying to avoid dunking myself again. It was colder out here, under a clear black sky, the air sharp enough to shave with.

  I pulled myself onto ice that could support my weight, holding on to a tree growing out from the lip of the ravine, and looked up the wall from which I had just emerged. The storm sewer outlet was set into a sloping hillside that went up for maybe a dozen or twenty feet, topped by a guardrail. As I watched, a lonely car sped out of the darkness, passed me, and disappeared back into the darkness, chased by its own bloody taillights.

  I moved to the edge of the ravine, holding on to the branch above me until I was certain that I was on firm ground rather than snow-covered ice. Seeing the highway lifted something in me, as if it was a confirmation of my survival. I was going to make it through the snow and the cold. I was going to live, however unlikely that was. I shook in the cold and told myself that I had, finally, made it. I had gotten out of the pit alive.

  Whether or not I was in one piece, that was debatable.

  I felt around my head again, now that it wasn’t throbbing constantly. My hair was a tangled mass of frozen blood. No dangling flaps of skin, no bumps, no holes, no abrasions. I was comforted until I thought that I might have suffered an injury that had frozen under the mat of hair I was prodding. It was cold enough out here to numb anything, and I’d been in the water way too long.

  I had to get inside and warm myself up. My legs felt asleep. I thought my pants had dried, but when I felt them with my numbed hand, I found them frozen stiff.

  I scrambled up the slope toward the highway, putting my share of bruises on my numbed shins as I started a dozen mini-avalanches. When I got to the top, I had to scramble over the guardrail and six feet of snowplow ejecta. I rolled into the breakdown lane.

  I got up and started walking.

  As I walked, I searched myself for clues to where I was, what had happened to me, and who I was. I felt desperate for some item my ragged brain could hang a memory on.

  I wore well-worn steel-toed work boots—if they didn’t have to chop off my toes it was thanks to them—a pair of terribly abused blue jeans, a denim work shirt that, like my hair, was ruined with frozen blood—mostly on the chest and collar—and a black, fleece-lined trenchcoat that would probably never be usable again. Everything had been soaked and frozen stiff. I made cracking and grinding noises when I moved.

  My wallet, if I’d had one, had either been stolen or had been lost in the sewer. Same for a watch, or keys. No rings, or any jewelry for that matter. My pockets were almost completely empty.

  For a time I felt as if I had been robbed. But something in my void of a memory made me feel that what had happened had been more than a simple mugging.

  My hands were clumsy and numb, and found it difficult to manipulate my frozen clothes, which is why one of the last things I discovered was the empty holster. It was clipped to the rear of my belt, hidden from view. I didn’t know what I had found until I’d uncipped it and looked at the thing.

  It gave me my first memory of something before the icy sewer. I could see the gun that belonged in the holster, a mental image of a blue steel Colt Police .38. It was more than an image. I felt how much it should weigh, how it should fit in my hand. I knew what it was like to load it, by hand and with a speed-loader. The shock of the impressions made me drop the holster.

  What had I been doing with a gun?

  I bent slowly, my frozen clothes abrading my skin, and fished the holster out of the slush in the breakdown lane. I shoved it in a pocket, for the first time suspecting that I might not be an innocent victim.

  No one is innocent, I thought.

  I resumed my stumbling progress toward the lights of what I hoped was civilization. I continued examining my pockets, my search taking on an edge of desperation.

  I found only one other thing, besides the holster. I felt something in the breast pocket of my shirt. The pocket was buttoned shut and gummed with blood, but I tore it open. Inside was a small plastic card. At first I thought it was a credit card, but there was nothing embossed on the surface.

  It took a moment for me to realize that it was a key. The print identified the place as the Woodstar Motel. The key carried a weak visual impression with it. A view of a garish neon sign that could have been as much my imagination as memory.

  There was an address on the card and that cheered me, but only for a moment. I had no idea where I was, much less how to find this motel. I looked up and stared down the four lanes of unused asphalt. How did I know I was going in the right direction?

  I had yet to pass so much as a sign identifying this road. I pushed my way along the shoulder, leaning into a wind that cut like a razor, dragging my feet through dirty brown snow.

  By now, on top of the cold, I was feeling pretty damn weak. I had lost even the pins and needles that reminded me that I still ha
d legs. My fatigue was a dangerous sign. I felt as if I could lie down upon the snowbank and take a nap; the idea was tempting even though I knew I’d never awake from such a nap.

  I forced myself to march along the breakdown lane, my boots growing heavier with each step. I had gone maybe another dozen yards when I saw the trees lighten in front of me. I saw my shadow reach out ahead of me, and I turned to see a pair of headlights bright enough to make my eyes water.

  Incredibly, my first instinct was to hide from the approaching car. It was an insane impulse, since I was certain to die if I spent much longer out in this cold.

  Instead, I gathered my coat about me to hide the bloody shirt I wore, and waved the car down. The car passed me and rolled to a stop on the shoulder. I watched the narrow brake lights ease back toward me as my eyes recovered their night vision. The nearer the car came, the more I was gripped by an insane ambivalence.

  I was frightened of being discovered, and I had no memory of why I should be.

  The car was a late model Cadillac, black or dark blue in color. It had Ohio plates, Cuyahoga County, up-to-date tags, and a five-digit number. I also noticed the small Enterprise Rent-A-Car logo. I was cataloging all these items by rote before I realized that I was doing it. By then the plate number was fixed in my head.

  The Cadillac came to a stop about ten feet away from me. For a few moments I was unable to force myself to move. My hesitation was brief. The wind picked up, driving needles into my exposed skin. If nothing else, the cold pushed me toward the car.

  I walked up and opened the passenger door, letting out a blast of heat and the sound of Creedence Clearwater Revival. The driver turned to face me. He was an old Asian gentleman with snow-white hair that contrasted with a very dark face. He wore a dark blue suit that was conservative enough to be three or thirty years old.