The Immortal Conquistador Page 10

  Holliday read him right. He’d probably seen a dozen of these young hotheads in his time. Ricardo hoped Holliday would stay seated, tell the kid to simmer down. Maybe buy him a drink. Not egg him on, because something about this didn’t feel right. But alas.

  “Your ploy is weak, sir,” Holliday said carefully, directing the words like gunfire. “If your intention is to get me out on that street to challenge me on some point of honor—well, my honor’s not worth so much. You want to try against me you just need to ask.”

  “Doctor,” Ricardo warned, moving close. The young cowboy had a kind of madness that told him that challenging Doc Holliday was a good idea. He wanted to be famous.

  There were easier ways. Write a novel. Invade a country.

  Holliday stilled his warning with a hand and a smile. He had his own madness—the fearlessness of a man who was already dying. “I want to see what he’s going to do with his fine guns there, and his heap of pride.”

  “All right then. I challenge you.” He spoke calmly, but a sheen of sweat glowed on his brow.

  While the two men faced each other down, Ricardo glanced at the crowd. Everyone wanted to watch—this was a story they’d tell their grandchildren, for certain. But most of them didn’t want to get too close. Most held back—except for two other men, nondescript white men wearing respectable coats and laundered shirts with neat ties, boots that had seen miles, and holsters tucked away under coats. When the excitable gentleman challenged Holliday, these two each took half a step forward.

  This was a trap, Ricardo was sure of it. The cowboy wouldn’t be so confident if he had come here alone.

  Holliday pushed back from the table. “Not even a glove to throw down. These are fallen times, aren’t they?” When he flipped back the edge of his coat, a casual move meant to look like he was only straightening the garment after standing, he flashed a glimpse of his revolver. Everyone murmured. There was going to be a show.

  The other two men had already left the room, ducking out by some other door in the commotion.

  Holliday and his challenger marched together toward the front door like gladiators entering the arena. Not so far off, really. Ricardo took Holliday’s arm and pulled him aside. “He has two friends waiting outside for you. This won’t be a fair fight.”

  He clicked his tongue, as if disappointed but not surprised. “They never are.”

  “But you’re still going.”

  “I have a reputation to maintain.”

  Ricardo blinked at him. “A reputation for what?”

  “Surviving.” He tipped his hat and winked at Ricardo, who decided he liked the man immensely.

  Time was, a duelist would need a second, and Ricardo almost asked Holliday for that honor. But the lanky man marched to the middle of the street before he had a chance. Life in a young country was not so formal.

  Didn’t mean Ricardo couldn’t do his part. He walked a little way down the street, steps crunching on dirt, and studied the surroundings. The tops of buildings, the hidden alleyways. For all his time in the West, in some of the roughest places one could ever tell tales about, Ricardo had never seen an actual gunfight. Not like this, with two faced off, hands at their sides, waiting for the draw. His heart, if he’d had one, would have been racing.

  Few souls came out to watch. Most stayed indoors, crowded at windows. No one wanted to get in the way of a stray bullet. Almost no one, anyway.

  He used his nose, his eyes, his other senses, listening for every heartbeat, every spot of heat moving through the world around him. And there they were, easy to spot for someone like him: one of the men had climbed to the roof of the saloon and lay flat, invisible in the darkness. He aimed down the barrel of a rifle, right at Holliday.

  The other was in an alley across the street, pressed into the shadows like his compatriot. His pistol was still holstered—he was backup, then. Holliday had three men gunning for him, not one, and it stood to reason that the one on the roof wouldn’t wait for a polite count of three to fire.

  The gunfighters’ breath fogged in the chill night air. Ricardo’s did not.

  He focused everything he could feel, everything he’d learned, all that power he’d struggled to understand and fed with blood. Blood was the price for what he was, and there were rewards he’d resisted in the early days. But he’d learned to use them well.

  The man on the roof breathed slow and steady, his muscles tense, and Ricardo could just about feel the tension in his trigger finger, a muscle contracting, pulling on a tendon. The man in the alley was calmer, just there to clean up whatever mess the others made. Ricardo would have to deal with him, but not first thing. With his eyes, he watched the tableau before him, Holliday and the cowboy who hadn’t even had the decency to introduce himself—he likely expected to live, to be able to tell everybody the name of the man who’d shot Doc Holliday. They were a good fifty paces apart, hands at their sides, each waiting for the other to flinch. The young one looked like he stood at the edge of a volcano; Doc Holliday smiled, his skin pale with illness until it almost glowed.

  Once this started, it would go quickly, but Ricardo could move faster than any of them, and he wasn’t afraid. Another reward for the price he’d paid.

  That trigger finger on the roof squeezed, and Ricardo stepped into the street. To observers he would look like a blur, a shadow that had detached itself from the night and somehow appeared to suddenly stand in front of Holliday. When they thought back on the moment, they would say that he had always been there—he must have come out to the street with Holliday, or maybe he had run to warn him. Something. However it happened, he was there, and the bullet from the rifle struck him.

  The shot pounded into his chest and he stumbled. Three more shots fired, cracks of thunder in his ears, pounding waves of force that struck the air and brushed against his skin. Three shots, and he looked to where they came from, where he must stand so that the bullets would strike him instead of Holliday.

  But all three shots had come from behind him, from Holliday.

  First, the cowboy standing in front of them fell. He’d drawn, he’d gotten that far as soon as the shot rang out, but for all his bluster he was too late.

  The man on the roof was next. He’d been aiming down the rifle for a second shot, probably wondering how the first had gone so far awry—obviously it had, since Holliday was still standing. But Holliday was at just the right angle to get him first. He slumped over his weapon and lay splayed on the roof as if he had dropped there from the sky.

  Holliday had shot the cowboy, the man on the roof, and the one from the alley had just stepped out and raised his revolver when the last shot fired, and the man fell. He lay groaning for a short time, a strangled attempt to cry for help through blood bubbling up his throat. The sound a dying horse might make. Then he died, and that was that.

  Holliday hadn’t moved, merely pivoted his arm, and killed them all in less time than it took to inhale.

  Ricardo touched the place on his shirt that now had a hole in it, where a little bit of blood had stained the fabric. Then he adjusted his coat to hide the spot. Holliday, replacing his gun in its holster, saw him do this but made no mention of it.

  “Hey! Hey, are you all right?”

  A stout man with a bushy gray mustache came running up the street. He was the sheriff, a temperance man who never set foot in the saloon, but someone must have gone to get him when trouble broke out. He grabbed Ricardo’s shoulder, as if he expected him to fall over any minute now.

  “I’m fine,” Ricardo said. “Thank you.”

  “I could have sworn you got hit!”

  “Just a bad angle,” Ricardo said. “He missed.”

  “Thank goodness for that,” Holliday said.

  The sheriff seemed both nervous and thrilled. “I’ve got a dozen witnesses say that man threatened you, Holliday. Not a person here would blame you for this. If I could just get a statement—from both of you—we’ll call this all finished.”

  Holliday ha
d clearly done this dance before. “I’m obliged to you, sir.”

  They followed the sheriff back to his office.

  A couple of hours later, Ricardo offered to buy Holliday a drink. They sat at a table in the corner, and after a round of excited congratulations and well wishes from the onlookers who’d witnessed the fight—and more than a few who wished they had—they were left alone.

  Holliday looked exhausted. Usually, he could spend all night dealing cards and nothing more. But that little bit of effort on the street had taken a great deal out of him, and his handkerchief was spotted with blood.

  “I thank you again,” Holliday said. “I underestimated those jokers, and you did not.”

  “They thought killing you would make them famous.”

  “I never did get the boy’s name,” he said, chuckling. The sound turned to coughing, and the handkerchief covered his mouth again.

  Ricardo took a deep breath and said, “I could cure you. You would live ageless, forever. There is a price. A difficult one. But you would live.”

  Ricardo considered that keeping alive such a man—prone to violence, expert at killing, with an attitude to suit—was perhaps not wise. Giving him the powers that came with his so-called cure was absolutely not wise, not wise at all. But more than either of those things, he thought what a shame it would be to lose him. In three hundred fifty odd years, Ricardo had never made this offer to anyone. Not even those he loved best. He wouldn’t curse anyone he loved.

  But this man? This man could survive very well with such a curse.

  Holliday also seemed to consider, leaning back, stroking his mustache once. Ricardo couldn’t guess what he was thinking. Holliday’s reddened eyes gazed flatly, his expression didn’t flinch—that famous poker face revealed nothing. He brought his handkerchief to his mouth and coughed, as if to emphasize his own stake in the matter.

  When he drew his hand from his face, he was smiling. “I do thank you for the courtesy, sir. But to live forever in this sad world? I do not see that as a blessing.”

  Ricardo could be forgiven for feeling relieved.

  “No, I expect to die on my feet, boots on. I’m almost looking forward to it. Better, don’t you think?”

  “I hadn’t given it much thought,” Ricardo admitted.

  “What, boots?”

  “Death,” he said. Holliday coughed.

  “You’ll be off to Denver soon, then.”

  “Yes.” He knew of a couple of bolt-holes he could use along the way. He wasn’t worried. “Tomorrow night. It’s time.”

  “I have heard—there are others like you in the city. Most of your kind stay in cities, as I understand.”

  “And how have you heard of such things?”

  “You know of a man named Wyatt Earp?”

  Ricardo smiled. “Yes. Of course I do. Just like I’ve heard of Doc Holliday.”

  Holliday tipped his hat in thanks. “Let’s just say if you ever run into Mr. Earp, you watch yourself. He’ll know what you are just by looking. And he doesn’t much like your kind.”

  “Perhaps when you see him again you’ll put in a good word for me.”

  “I don’t much expect to see him again.” He sounded sad. Immensely sad.

  “I’m sorry. I’ll watch out.”

  “Good.”

  They both looked out the window then. The reflections in the glass had faded, and the sky outside was gray.

  Holliday held out his hand. “I may not see you come evening, so I’ll say farewell now. You take care, sir.”

  Ricardo suspected that Holliday didn’t much like good byes. Ricardo was used to them. “You as well. I’ll remember you.”

  “That, sir, will be a kindness I do not deserve.”

  Holliday was dead two years later. Ricardo read about it in the papers, and that the gambler had died in bed, boots off. Ricardo mourned him and kept the story of their meeting to himself, because who would believe it? But he remembered.

  EL CONQUISTADOR

  DEL TIEMPO

  FOR THE FIRST TIME in five hundred years, Rick stepped into a church. A real, actual, church-looking church with stone walls, stained-glass windows, carved wood statues of Mary and Joseph, cracked and age-darkened paintings of Saint Sebastian full of arrows, Saint Augustine writing his book, Daniel in the den of lions, a bearded man walking on water. But no crosses.

  Vaulted ceilings arced overhead. The heart was meant to rise up, the soul filling the space as it contemplated heaven. Rick imagined that what was left of his heart and soul did so, even though this place was underground, the stained-glass windows dark, muted as a cave. He inhaled to find the air rich with stone, wax, incense, and the breath of centuries.

  He didn’t know the name of this church, when it had been built, why it was now buried and hidden under the Vatican. When it had been deconsecrated, to allow him and his kind to enter. He was too lost in the wonder of the moment to ask. He had never thought to return to Europe at all, and now he had seen Rome and had finally come to this ancient cathedral full of secrets.

  “The Abbot is this way.” The somberly dressed young woman who had guided him down the aisle gestured ahead to the transept, waiting patiently while Rick’s steps slowed and his gaze traveled up and around. Young—she was at least a century old.

  “Thank you,” he murmured, and she left him to continue on his own. Her shoes clicked on the stone, and she disappeared into the darkness at the front of the nave.

  The transept, choir, and apse had been made into a library, shelves filled with books, thousands of books, with ladders to climb to the highest of them. Scrolls filled racks, folios rested on lecterns, lying open to parchment pages only slightly yellowed with age and otherwise pristine. As in any useful library, there were desks, tables, chairs arranged for study. Enough for dozens of scholars to work here, and Rick could almost hear the rustle of turning pages, soft whispers echoing, pens scratching. A wondrous space.

  Now, though, only two people were present. The curved apse was screened off to make a sort of office, lit with shaded electric lights, which seemed incongruous. The place ought to be filled with candles. Rick came to the screen, cautiously looked to the other side. Here sat a large, brown man in an enveloping monastic robe, cowl thrown back, rope belt tied loosely. His chair was upholstered in leather, padded, worn and patched many times. He did not rise but sat at the edge, hands steepled, and intently watched Rick’s arrival. He was a vampire, chilled, without a heartbeat. No telling how old.

  “Come forward, my son,” he said.

  Rick did so, glancing at the second figure present. Another vampire, this one—indeterminate, ambiguous—perched on a stool at a tall lectern, inkwell ready along with a collection of quills. They wore rather threadbare monastic robes in washed-out gray. Their head was shaved, making their jaw seem even more narrow and cheekbones even more refined. They wore an undyed silk bandage over their eyes. Rick tried not to stare, to study the mystery.

  The Abbot consulted a sheet of paper, which seemed modern enough, and frowned. “You are Don Ricardo de Avila y Zacatecas, the last surviving member of Coronado’s company, Conquistador de la Noche, once the Master of Santa Fe, and until last week the Master of Denver. Also called Rick.” His voice was calm, his accent English, touched with unidentifiable notes.

  Stunned, uncertain, Rick, Ricardo, fell back on very old habit and enacted a gesture he had not made in some three hundred years, planting his right foot, stepping back, and bending over, his hand on his heart, in a courtly bow. The movements came naturally; his body had not forgotten how to be elegant, however strange it might be to make such a bow in a modern trench coat.

  “Ah,” said the vampire priest. “You are one of the older ones, to be able to do that without looking like you’re playacting. But you should know that here you’re just a child. Welcome to the Order of Saint Lazarus of the Shadows, Don Ricardo.”

  “Just Rick, please.”

  “We have been watching you, Ricardo.”

&
nbsp; “So I gathered. When I came here I’d hoped to learn more.”

  “So do we.” The Abbot gestured to the figure at the lectern. The Scribe, who turned, drew a book off the shelf behind them, set it on the stand, flipped pages to the front, and smoothed out the parchment. “We have your history. We gave you your own book some time ago, when news of you started to reach us. We weren’t sure at first you’d need it—most of our kind are never more than footnotes in their Masters’ books, you see. But you . . . were always an odd one.”

  “My own book?” Rick said, wanting to laugh. “All for me? There isn’t that much to tell, surely.” He was staring at the shelf behind the Scribe, at all the other heavy, leather-bound books lined up. Dozens of them. Who else was written up there? Mercedes? Arturo? Alette? Yes, of course. Elinor, Catalina, Edward Alleyn, Anastasia . . . and Gaius Albinus. That was why Rick was here.

  “There are some gaps we’d like to fill,” the Abbot said. “You have been very mysterious, Don Ricardo.”

  Rick, he started to insist again, and didn’t. He felt out of place here, his sense of time slipping. Maybe he shouldn’t have left Denver. “I mostly tried to keep to myself.”

  “Please, take off your coat and sit. This may take some time. Scribe?”

  Rick lay his coat over the back of a straight wooden chair and sat.

  The Scribe read. Blindfolded, and they still read. Perhaps their fingers that brushed over the page were sensitive enough to feel the ink. Perhaps they had the book, and all the other books, all the histories of all vampires, memorized.

  Their voice was a neutral alto, the accent flat enough to almost be American. “In 1522 Ricardo is born in Avila, Spain, to minor nobility. Arrives in the colony of New Spain at the age of seventeen to seek his fortune, participates in Coronado’s expedition to the northernmost reaches of Spanish territory. After, stays in Mexico to work as a government courier. He is thirty years old when the vampire Fray Juan finds him and turns him against his will. Ricardo manages to destroy him and his entire band.”