The Immortal Conquistador

by Carrie Vaughn

  “How?” the Abbot asked flatly. “Just a few days a vampire and you simply murder your own progenitor who possessed centuries of power—”

  “I didn’t know it couldn’t be done,” Rick said, ducking to hide a smile. “I had luck. Planning. Help.” He’d rescued the village Fray Juan and his band preyed upon. They had been grateful. They had shown him he did not have to kill to feed and that had changed everything. “Perhaps you can tell me why it seems to happen so often that men of the cloth become . . . what we are? Or is it the other way around, that vampires become men of the cloth later?”

  The Abbot leaned back. “It is easier to hide old things in the Church. Scribe?”

  The Scribe had paused, finger upon the place they left off, and now continued. “In 1620 the Master of All Spain sends Mistress Catalina to rule Ciudad de México. She does not expect to find a European vampire already living in her new territory. Ricardo de Avila y Zacatecas declines the invitation to become part of Mistress Catalina’s retinue.”

  “I’ve met Mistress Catalina. She would not have been happy about that.”

  “She was not,” Rick said.

  “And again, you destroyed one of the ancient, powerful vampires she sent to bring you to heel.”

  Rick supposed it did start to look ominous when you lined it all up like that. “Again, I had help. I gave my estancia to my human servant, Henri, so the vampires could not enter.” He had always had help. Human, mortal help. He wasn’t sure the Abbot would understand.

  “Scribe?”

  “That is in the record, reported by Mistress Catalina and her people. After, Ricardo flees north.”

  “Then, there is more than a century’s gap in our record of you, Don Ricardo,” the Abbot said.

  “When is my next appearance in your book?”

  “You were counted in the party of Pedro Vial that reached Saint Louis in 1792. That makes you one of the trackers who helped established the Santa Fe Trail.”

  The situation had been a lot more complicated than that—he had known Pedro for a long time, they ran into each other with startling frequency given the vast distances they covered. He’d only joined that particular expedition en route, when Pedro got in trouble and Rick helped him out. He hadn’t thought the episode made it into any histories at all. “I worked as a tracker and translator for many of those years, yes. You see, not so interesting.”

  “You disappear again, until 1848.”

  “I moved around a lot. After 1800 or so, after the Louisiana Purchase, things in the region changed quickly. Blink of an eye. For three hundred years Spain had tried to colonize those borderlands, and in fifty years—the Anglos claimed it all. It became American.”

  “Why is that, do you think?”

  “Spain, France, England—that land was only ever a colony to exploit. Those countries never looked on the New World as part of their own nations. Not really. But the Americans—they wanted it all. They took it. I struggled to find my place in that new country for some time.”

  “But you wouldn’t leave.”

  “No. By then, it was my home.”

  “1848,” the Abbot said.

  “What about it?”

  “Do you remember where you were, what you were doing?”

  “As I said, I traveled—”

  “Scribe?”

  “Santa Fe,” the Scribe said.

  “Ah yes.”

  “You called yourself the Master of Santa Fe—for exactly one month? And that city had never had a Master before and has never had one since.”

  “It really was just a fluke, not really that important.”

  The Abbot glared. Rick ducked his gaze, cleared his throat.

  “I want to know about Santa Fe.”

  “I keep telling you, my life, long as it has been, is not so interesting. But you, this place—I have so many questions, Abbot.”

  “In time. Right now I’m trying to understand you, Ricardo.”

  Now he did laugh. “Because there has been no one else like me? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

  The Abbot smiled harshly. “There has been at least one other vampire like you. One other who has lived for centuries alone, traveling, unconcerned with becoming Master of anywhere and thereby becoming Master of everywhere. Hearing your story, you remind me of Gaius Albinus.”

  Gaius Albinus, Dux Bellorum, was the bogeyman vampires evoked to frighten one another. Rick had met him exactly once and forced him out of Denver. The man had been hard, cold, single-minded. He promised power in exchange for obedience. It was said he would conquer the world by suborning each person in it individually. He had the time. The man carried darkness with him like a badge of honor.

  “I am nothing like him.”

  “Are you certain?”

  “You think I’m working with him. This is an interrogation.” What had Rick gotten himself into? He should not have come . . .

  The Abbot set aside his page of notes. “Don Ricardo. What is the most shocking thing you’ve ever done?”

  “And now a confession? It has been five hundred years since my last—”

  The Abbot waved him off. “The Order of Saint Lazarus of the Shadows forgives much. Given what we are.”

  “Indeed. We give God himself plausible deniability?”

  “Don’t blaspheme. Quickly now, first thing that comes to mind: the most shocking thing you’ve ever done.”

  He took the Abbot at his word, didn’t think too hard on it, and said the first memory that came to him. “All right. I offered to Turn Doctor John Holliday.”

  The Scribe’s pen stopped scratching. The Abbot stared. “The American gunman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “He refused me. I could have saved his life. He didn’t want to be saved.”

  “Well. My goodness.”

  The Scribe looked at Ricardo, and he swore their eyebrows were raised under the blindfold. Then their pen once against scratched against the parchment.

  “Abbot,” Rick asked. “What’s the most shocking thing you’ve ever done?”

  “I am not the one with the blank book that needs filling,” he said. But the man’s gaze went soft for a moment, and he frowned deeply, caught in some dark, distant memory. Rick couldn’t imagine; the possibilities defied imagination.

  Clicking steps sounded on the stone aisle, and the somber young woman approached, carrying a tray with three cut-crystal glasses on it. Their contents made them gleam ruby. She reached the screened-off apse.

  “Father, you said to bring refreshment.”

  “Yes, thank you. Set it on the desk, please.” She set the tray—it was gold, polished to a shine, and likely worth thousands even disregarding any collectible or artistic value—bowed slightly, and went away. “Please, Ricardo. Drink.”

  He could not refuse. It wasn’t just that he was hungry, that he needed to feed to stay strong and alert. This involved the most ancient rules of hospitality. When vampires invited one another to their lairs, they must provide sustenance. And the guest must accept.

  The Abbot noted the hesitation. “There are mortal families connected with the Order. They voluntarily provide for us. No more than once in a month for each one. I know such details matter to you.”

  “Some of our kind seem to enjoy blood that tastes like fear. I never understood that.”

  “You prefer your blood to taste of what, generosity?”

  “Kindness, I think.” Maybe even love. He’d been fortunate, in those who chose to help him. There had been love.

  The Abbot hauled himself from the chair. He was even taller and broader than Rick realized. In his mortal days he might have been a great warrior, swinging an ax on the battlefield, mowing down enemies. Or perhaps he had always been a monk, incongruously large in his libraries and quiet places.

  The man brought one of the glasses to the lectern. The Scribe accepted with a nod, tipped the glass to their lips, drank it all down in one go. Licked their lips a
nd took up the quill pen again. The Abbot handed a glass to Rick, then settled back in the chair with his own.

  “Ayes hugayean,” he said, glass raised, then drank.

  Rick didn’t readily recognize the language, which suggested it was very old indeed. Rick sipped. The blood was still just warm and tasted sweet, tangy. Strong. The person it had come from was healthy. It made him feel a bit better. With gratitude—it might have been a prayer—he let the borrowed strength fill him.

  “Better?” the Abbot asked. They all appeared more flush than they had a moment ago. Warmer. Brighter.

  “Yes, thank you,” Rick said.

  “Now, tell me about Santa Fe.”

  “How do you even know about Santa Fe? I only ever passed through there, I rarely stayed—”

  “Except for 1848.”

  “Well, yes.”

  “There is a footnote in the book of Catalina that says only that Elinor saw you in Santa Fe in 1848. But she was in Santa Fe to confront Gaius Albinus. Where did you fit into that affair? She was silent on the matter.”

  “By accident, I assure you.”

  “But you fled—”

  “I did a lot of fleeing, between Zacatecas and Denver.”

  “And there is a century of silence around that moment. What happened? You met someone else there, besides Elinor. Didn’t you?”

  “Gaius Albinus wasn’t there. I didn’t meet him at all until just last year—”

  “1848 in Santa Fe, Ricardo. Tell me. Begin.”

  His mouth opened, but he hesitated. This was an interrogation. He would tell the Abbot everything—if he knew what the man wanted to hear. At the time, the chaos of his month in Santa Fe had only seemed like chaos. What did it look like to a man who had context—millennia of history stored in those books against which to judge him?

  Ricardo was five hundred years old and still managed to feel like a child much of the time. It didn’t seem fair.

  “All right, all right. Here is what happened in Santa Fe.”

  Santa Fe was on a crossroads: the road in to the mountains, to Taos, ran west. The main route of the Santa Fe Trail ran north, to the Colorado Territory and eventually to Bent’s Fort, where Ricardo and Juanito were due to meet the first of the summer traders, to serve as guides and translators as they headed south. They’d stopped in Santa Fe, at the southern edge of the Sangre de Cristos, a week ago, intending to resupply and be on their way. But Juanito had fallen ill with a fever and cough. Ricardo had rented a room without windows in the back of a small adobe inn, paid extra to be left alone. And Juanito had gotten worse.

  Juanito had been nineteen when Rick first met him, a wiry and brash kid convinced of his own worth and struggling to prove it to everyone else. The diminutive had made him bristle. He was sixty-five now, his hair a white fringe, his skin leathered, his joints swollen with arthritis, and he wouldn’t answer to anything but Juanito.

  He didn’t know he was dying, but Ricardo had seen this many times. Juanito was worn out, too many miles under his feet, not enough rest. Ricardo had worn him out.

  “We’ll be late,” Juanito said, fighting for the next breath. “They’re expecting us . . . at Bent’s.” They’d had this conversation six nights in a row.

  “It’s fine,” Ricardo said. “They can wait.”

  “I’m sure if I walk around a little, if I get in the saddle, I’ll feel much better—” He tried to sit up, but a fit of coughing interrupted him. Ricardo pressed his shoulder, urging him back to the straw mattress.

  “Rest, Juanito. You’re very tired and should rest. Please don’t worry.”

  Juanito settled, finally succumbing to the bed’s hold. Maybe, finally, resigned. “Have you eaten yet tonight? You should eat something.” He struggled to pull a sleeve back from a shaking hand, to expose his wrist.

  Ricardo tugged the sleeve back in place. “You’re too weak right now to provide.”

  “I’m not. I’m not.” A spark of that brash nineteen-year-old shone through. His breath rattled.

  Ricardo looked away, squeezed shut his eyes against tears. This feeling in his chest, where his heart would be breaking if he still had a living heart, was also familiar. Nothing to do but march forward through it.

  “Juanito. Rest.”

  The man’s breathing deepened into sleep but still rattled in a way that seemed to echo through his whole chest. Ricardo fled, just for a moment, to the courtyard at the front of the inn and then outside, to get some air that wasn’t filled with illness, to walk out some of his grief. Outside smelled of pines and piñons, and he cleared his lungs, refreshed himself.

  The matron of the house, Imelda Constance, stopped at the doorway. “How is your friend?” Ricardo shook his head, and the matron crossed herself.

  He asked, “Is there a surgeon nearby? He needs a doctor—”

  “No surgeon,” she said. “But I will bring Santa Lucinda.”

  “Santa Lucinda?” That seemed a bit presumptuous, but one didn’t argue with nicknames.

  “The curandera.”

  “I’m not sure—”

  “I trust Lucinda. I will send for her and all will be well, you’ll see.”

  “But he needs a doctor,” Ricardo murmured. Imelda was already at the gate, yelling at one of the stable boys to carry a message.

  The house was close enough to the plaza to hear traffic outside, even at night. Travelers arriving after nightfall, townsfolk out for drinks and dinner or other entertainments. A tune from an idly strummed guitar carried. This was a good place to be. A good place to rest for a while. Since he had to, he was glad it was here. He had to be at peace with this; he had no choice.

  He went back to the room for the long vigil. Juanito might linger for a week or be gone in an hour. Ricardo would be by his side, however long it took. The room was smoky, too hot in the thick air. He didn’t need to breathe, so the sourness of the sick room didn’t touch him. Still, his nerves thrummed, a tension running up to him like the hoofbeats of an approaching cavalry. He did not know if it was the waiting or if Juanito was right and he needed to eat.

  Later. He could feed later.

  A commotion sounded in the courtyard, two women calling greetings and exchanging a rush of news. Her expression alight, Imelda appeared outside the sickroom a moment later.

  “Here she is, Santa Lucinda!”

  Ricardo stood to greet the woman coming up behind Imelda. She was taking off her shawl, which the matron accepted from her reverently. The curandera’s dark-colored dress was clean, simple. Her black hair lay down her back in a braid. She was young—couldn’t have been much more than twenty. Ricardo didn’t know why he’d expected an old woman, but her unlined face, shining eyes, surprised him. And she was pregnant, maybe six months along. He could hear the baby’s heartbeat.

  He caught her gaze, and they stared at one another a moment. He couldn’t see through her, couldn’t sense a thing from her. Usually, he looked in a person’s eyes, and he could drive his will into them, persuade them, speak and have them obey without effort. She was like a wall, and herlips turned in the smallest of smiles, as if she knew this. She was unafraid.

  Then her gaze broke off. She looked him up and down, shook her head. “I cannot help you. Your curse cannot be lifted.”

  “Yes, I know—” He blinked a moment, uncertain who’d been trying to cast a spell on whom. “It’s not for me, it’s my friend. Please.” He stepped aside and gestured her into the room. She gave a quick, determined nod—this, she could do.

  Pulling the strap of a canvas bag off her shoulder, she went straight to the bed and knelt. She surveyed the sick man in a businesslike manner, touching both his wrists, his throat. Using her thumbs to gently open his eyes.

  “His name is Juanito,” Ricardo said worriedly. He tried to trust her.

  Juanito’s lips worked, but he may or may not have been aware of what was happening. Lucinda drew back the blanket, exposing his too-thin frame, the worn cotton shirt hanging too loosely over it, and
watched the rise and fall of his chest.

  “I need hot water,” she said to Imelda, who lingered at the doorway. The matron rushed to the kitchen. The curandera drew out a series of items from her bag—many items. It had not seemed so full, hiding its bulk well. A copper bowl, a clay cup, a handful of kindling for a fire, a bundle of sage, a series of pouches that smelled like a garden.

  “Can you help him?” Ricardo asked, too eagerly.

  Lucinda stood, grabbed the front of his shirt, and pulled him into the hallway. Softly she said, “He is at the end of his time. I can make him more comfortable, that is all.”

  Ricardo rubbed his eyes. Even now, he had hoped. After all this time, he still hoped.

  “You must have known this,” she said, frowning. “You must have seen this before, you who stand on the threshold of death at every moment.”

  “How would you know that? What do you see, when you look at me?”

  “I see a shadow.” Her brow furrowed. “Who are you? Where exactly do you come from?”

  “I’m not sure you really want those answers.”

  Scowling, she turned back to Juanito. In moments the room was filled with wisps of burning sage. Imelda arrived with a kettle of water, just finished boiling, and set it on a side table in the room. Lucinda worked over it with quick, deft hands, reaching past her round belly to take pinches out of little bags, add them to the cup, fill it with water. Whispering words over it. Ricardo had no idea what she spoke, what any of the substances were. But Juanito drank down the liquid as he hadn’t consumed anything in days. His breath stopped rattling quite so much.

  “There, breathe, my friend,” Lucinda said, stroking back Juanito’s hair. When he seemed like he slept, she rounded her shoulders, put a hand on the small of her back, and sighed. Gave Ricardo another hard look.

  “You could save him,” she said.

  “Would that really be saving? No.”

  “Well, isn’t that something?” She worked to stand, leaning on the bed, hefting her weight upright. Ricardo was too late to help her and contritely looked at his feet while she settled into a chair in a corner and drew some knitting from her bag. Ricardo sat in his usual chair at the bedside.