Hero Dust

By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Bram understands the importance of stories. After all, he convinced Stoker to write Dracula to frighten the world. 

One of the original vampire hunters, Bram has seen vampires in action. But he grows weary of the job. He needs a replacement. Only the world of the 21st century doesn't lend itself to heroes—not of the kind he needs anyway.

Until he realizes that perhaps he should look for a heroine instead.

Like early Ray Bradbury, Rusch has the ability to switch on a universal dark.

—the Times of London

[Rusch's horror stories are] horror in the same way that Robert Bloch's Psycho is—horror of the soul.

—Locus

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Mar 22, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386158578

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

USA Today bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in almost every genre. Generally, she uses her real name (Rusch) for most of her writing. Under that name, she publishes bestselling science fiction and fantasy, award-winning mysteries, acclaimed mainstream fiction, controversial nonfiction, and the occasional romance. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov’s Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award. Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award. She writes goofy romance novels as award-winner Kristine Grayson, romantic suspense as Kristine Dexter, and futuristic sf as Kris DeLake.  She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own. To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com). She lives and occasionally sleeps in Oregon.

Book preview

Hero Dust

Hero Dust

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

WMG Publishing

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

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Also by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

About the Author

Weigh’d in the balance, hero dust

Is vile as vulgar clay

—Lord Byron

Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte

1

The weather that summer was frightful. Much later—nearly 200 years later—he learned that the amazing storms with their torrential downpours and terrifying lightning shows occurred as a meteorological reaction to the eruption of the volcano Tambora in Indonesia.

But on those nights in 1816, which he spent leaning against the wall of the villa listening to the voices echo from the veranda, the weather seemed like some special gift from hell. The rain was warm and powerful, the worst he had seen in his young life, hitting the bare flesh of his arms so hard that he sometimes worried the water would bruise him; and the lightning so bright that he sometimes had to scuttle backwards to avoid being seen by the storytellers gathered in a circle on the stone tiles.

Bram was not supposed to be there: George Gordon Noel Byron, the 6 th Baron Byron, had his doctor, John Polidori, rent the villa so no one would know that the famous poet planned to spend the summer on the shore of Lake Geneva. But Bram wasn’t there to see Lord Byron—he had never heard of the man before that May. Bram had come because his mentor ordered it.

His mentor, a man whose name Bram never spoke, not even now, because heroes, Bram had been taught, worked in silence and were not—should not—ever be remembered.

The stars say a power will emerge near the summer solstice, his mentor had said. I have heard from two other sources as well. The world shall change at the Villa Diodoti on