Robert McCammon: Last Train from Perdition

Last Train from Perdition Copyright © 2016

by The McCammon Corporation.

All rights reserved.

Dust jacket and interior illustration Copyright © 2016

by Michael Whelan. All rights reserved.

Interior design Copyright © 2016

by Desert Isle Design, LLC. All rights reserved.

Electronic Edition

ISBN

978-1-59606-739-4

Subterranean Press

PO Box 190106

Burton, MI 48519

subterraneanpress.com

Table of Contents

Cover

What Has Gone Before...

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Six.

Seven.

Eight.

Nine.

Ten.

What Has Gone Before…

In the year 1886, in his lair of the Hotel Sanctuaire in New Orleans, the adventurer and gun-for-hire Trevor Lawson lets his services be known by a card that reads All Matters Handled and, below that, I Travel By Night .

On a night in July, he receives a visitor from Shreveport. The wealthy lumber merchant David Kingsley has brought Lawson a letter from a man he’s never met, named Christian Melchoir. In that letter, Melchoir states Your daughter is very beautiful, Mr. Kingsley. And worth money to you, I’m sure. To return her to you, I require gold pieces in the amount of six hundred and sixty-six dollars. She is being held in the town of Nocturne, which is reached from the hamlet of St. Benedicta. Inform only one man of this, and send him to me with the gold. His name is Trevor Lawson.

Kingsley wants to know what connection Lawson has with the abduction of his youngest daughter Eva, but Lawson doesn’t know any man named Melchoir…though he does believe Melchoir wants him and is using the girl as a device. Lawson agrees to take the job, and tells Kingsley he will do his best to “return your daughter in a whole state”.

Outside the hotel, Lawson discovers that Kingsley is being followed by a spindly figure in a black top hat and duster…and the chase is on.

Trevor Lawson is not only an adventurer and a gun-for-hire, but is also a vampire. He has taken the hard path of resistance to the forces that compel him to drink human blood and he subsists for the most part on the blood of animals…but he realizes that the vampiric Dark Society considers him a danger and desires him to be either fully in their fold or destroyed, and thus they send spies to watch him and—in the case of Kingsley’s daughter Eva—use an innocent to lure him into what he knows must be a trap.

After a furious chase, Lawson confronts his quarry on the rooftops of the Vieux Carre and is stunned when the spindly vampire demonstrates an ability to shapechange into something more spiderlike than human. Lawson kills the creature with a silver bullet to the head, but not before taking damage himself. One benefit Lawson has discovered to his condition is that the injuries of broken bones and damaged internals will quickly heal. The only way he understands to destroy a vampire is with a silver bullet, consecrated with holy water, and delivered to the skull; thus a blood-hungry creature of the night breaks apart and burns, and is scattered in ashes by the unforgiving winds.

As dawn is about to break, Lawson visits his friend Father John Deale, who supplies him with both the animal blood and the silver bullets and is his compatriot in Lawson’s battle against the Dark Society. Lawson tells the priest his experience of the night before, and confides that he believes as vampires age they become faster and stronger and some adapt the shapechanging abilities. He tells Father Deale he knows he’s walking into a trap, and that Eva Kingsley may have already been “turned”, but he has to go. The priest listens intently, for he’s had his own experience with the Dark Society: in 1838, before he took the priesthood, his hometown of Blancmortain was visited by vampires who claimed ten victims, including his wife Emily. Blancmortain is now abandoned and forgotten, but Father Deale knows the creature that used to be his wife is still out there, somewhere.

The town of Nocturne is on no map, but St. Benedicta is a logging town at the edge of the swamp and to there Lawson must travel by night on his horse Phoenix. On the journey, he reflects on the horror of how he was taken by vampires from the dying and wounded on the battlefield of Shiloh, where he fought as a captain for the Confederacy. He was fallen upon by a ragged hoard of them, all eager to bite throat, shoulders, chest…wherever their fangs could find purchase. They were upon him like ants on a piece of sugar candy, but before they could consume him they were thrown aside by a stronger and more dangerous presence…that of a beautiful black-haired female in red who calls herself LaRouge, and it is she who over a period of time drains Lawson of his lifeblood and “turns” him to the life of the restless and ever-thirsty undead.

In the darkness of a root cellar prison, Lawson had heard from a legless Confederate vampire the tale that if one could consume the ichor from the body of the creature who had turned you, there was a chance of recovery to the state of being fully human. Was it truth or a myth? There was no way of knowing. But emboldened by this, Lawson was able to escape his prison…and now his search is for LaRouge, to test the tale…truth or a myth?

In the meantime, his condition worsens and turns him away from the sunlight further into the world of night, yet he continues his profession as a way to keep his connection with human beings, and also as a way to find his path to the throat of LaRouge.

In a barroom in St. Benedicta, Lawson exposes a cheating gambler by the use of his “Eye”, a psychic power that allows him to roam through the often-twisted hallways of the human mind, learning the secrets that are hidden there, and also to manipulate human thought. An attempt on his life is stopped by a bullet from the dark, yet no gunman steps forth to lay claim to a truly extraordinary shot.

St. Benedicta’s dockmaster tells Lawson everything he knows about Nocturne: a town of mansions, opera house and concert hall built deep in the swamp to rival New Orleans, but destroyed by a vicious hurricane in the year 1870 and long abandoned. The builder of that town? A possibly deranged young man from a rich family. His name…Christian Melchoir.

Lawson sets out in a rowboat but dawn catches him. He has brought along a black canvas shroud he is able to sleep in during the day, provided he can find shade, and it is in this state of vampiric repose that he hears another rowboat coming.

The young woman who has followed him tells Lawson her name is Annie Remington, but Lawson quickly realizes she is Ann Kingsley, Eva’s older sister. As Annie Remington, she travels with a show for the Remington Firearms Company performing trick shots, and it was her bullet that put an end to the attempt on his life the night before. She tells Lawson she couldn’t allow him to be shot, for she’s determined to follow him to Nocturne to make sure her sister is released and that Lawson himself is not behind the kidnapping.

Lawson wants no part of Ann accompanying him to Nocturne, but she’s adamant and unrelenting in her desire to go with him. Lawson says he can’t explain about his sleeping in the shroud just yet, but if she will wait until nightfall he’ll tell her why and then she can make up her own mind about continuing on to Nocturne…but he would much rather she turn her boat around right now and head back to the relative safety of St. Benedicta.

At nightfall, Trevor Lawson emerges from his protective shroud and goes to great lengths to explain to Ann just who he is, what he is, and what he’s fighting against. He tells Ann that Christian Melchoir, most likely on the command of LaRouge, has taken her sister to draw him to the Dark Society because they consider him a traitor and a threat and they wish to destroy him, so what he’s rowing his boat toward is definitely a trap…one that will ensnare Ann as well, if she joins him.