The Immortal Conquistador Page 8

  He had fought vampires before—four of them, plus the Master, Fray Juan. He had done it by ambushing, by building traps. By believing he had nothing to lose, that he was already dead. That he had destroyed them, that he had won, still came as a shock to him sometimes.

  This coming battle was different, because now he had territory to defend. People to defend, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who had been terrorized by Fray Juan. Those he had worked with to build this small, comfortable shelter. Henri, the others—they didn’t understand what was coming for them.

  How did Ricardo prepare them? How did you build a defense against a force you knew so little about? How did you use what skills and weapons you had to defeat such a force? Well, he would have to do what he’d done before: tricks. Ambush.

  What would Catalina not expect? What would truly stop her for all time?

  Certainly not a battle.

  “Don Ricardo, what is wrong?” Henri was concerned.

  Ricardo had been staring absently, his mind elsewhere, for a long time. He had thought of something. Not a consecrated church, but . . . something.

  “Keep building the wall,” he told Henri. “I must see to something.”

  It was the next night when Catalina’s army came to the estancia’s palisade. A dozen men on horseback, all vampires, and another dozen on foot carrying wooden spears. Vampire-killing spears. On second glance, he noticed two of the riders were women, but in leather riding clothes, carrying rapiers like the men. They were old. Who could say where they had learned to fight? Ricardo didn’t doubt they could.

  Half of the army held torches as well as weapons, and a sphere of orange light engulfed them. The scent of smoke was dense. They would burn down his home.

  Catalina was not among them, and this told him something about the Masters and Mistresses among the vampires. They remained safe behind their walls, behind their followers. They relied on their followers, without whom they had little power. A useful bit of knowledge there.

  Ricardo stood alone at the open gate and faced them. He had sent everyone else inside the house for safety.

  “Don Ricardo!” One of the riders urged his mount, a handsome black beast, a few steps forward. It was Eduardo, whose voice was amiable enough, but whose frown was stern. “The most gracious Reina Catalina is saddened that you rejected her hospitality. She hopes you will reconsider and return with us to the city.”

  “It is a strange hospitality that you must force it upon me.”

  “Is this your home? Your estancia?” He gestured expansively, to take in the fence and all that lay behind it. “No wonder you feel that you don’t need our lady’s patronage.”

  “It is not my estancia,” Ricardo said, his smile easy but his stance ready. He’d hidden a bundle of spears within arm’s reach, leaning up behind the first section of fence. He waited to see how this played out.

  Eduardo pursed his lips. “Oh?”

  “Indeed,” Ricardo said, watching his toe scuff innocently at a tuft of grass.

  “Her ladyship has sent me to bring you back within her fold, as is right and just for one of our kind.”

  “I will not go,” he said.

  “Then I—we—will take you. We will take all of this and destroy it. Destroy all you have so that you’ll have no choice.”

  “You are welcome to try. But I will defend this place for its master.” He took three steps back so that he was behind the wall, across the threshold that marked the boundary of the estancia. He also picked up one of the spears, just in case this did not work. For now, he merely stood with the spear’s butt planted on the ground.

  “I thought you were wise,” Eduardo said, and his mock-friendliness seemed like a shield. “You could be strong, we’ve all felt it. We would welcome you into our fold. But now I see you wish for your true death. Is that it?”

  “I dislike being told what to do.”

  The way Eduardo’s expression hardened, the way he set his spear against the crook of his arm and kicked his horse to a run, put Ricardo in mind of a jousting knight. Eduardo looked like someone who had long experience at the sport. For a moment, Ricardo was sad that they could not be friends.

  The horse rocked back on hind feet, sprang into a ground-eating gallop, charging straight for the opening in the wall, directly at Ricardo.

  At the last moment, just as the horse’s nose touched the threshold, Eduardo reined back hard, shock drawing his features back in terror. Protesting, the horse threw its head straight up, straining against the bit. Its weight fell back, the animal kicked, and Eduardo fell off. Rolled straight off the horse’s back and slammed to the ground as the horse shook itself and raced on. Ricardo stepped out of its way. He would have to fetch the animal and bring it back; he was no horse thief.

  Eduardo lurched to his feet, unhurt but furious, gripping his wooden spear in both hands as if preparing to drive it through a boar. But he stopped outside the wall, trapped against the threshold.

  Ricardo smiled thinly. “I told you, this place is not mine, and you will need an invitation to enter.”

  “Then how are you—”

  “I have an invitation,” Ricardo said.

  Eduardo threw his spear. It sailed through, and Ricardo deflected it with his own.

  The horses were restless, their riders’ anxiety spreading. The vampires’ human mercenary force seemed young but ready, and Ricardo thought back a hundred years ago to all those naive young men Coronado had brought north with him. Did these men know whom they served?

  Eduardo shouted, losing his composure, his warrior’s calm. He wasn’t used to losing, Ricardo thought. “I have another army to send against you!”

  “I am ready for them,” Ricardo said, hefting his own spear, swinging it in an arc. He tensed, ready to run, faster than a shadow, unseen and deadly to these poor men.

  Catalina’s lieutenant raised his hand, the squad of riders parted, and the human soldiers marched, spears and swords at the ready. Across the wide space, in the flickering torchlight, Ricardo tried to catch each of their gazes. To impart to them the assurance that death awaited if they moved any closer.

  “Do not look at him!” Eduardo commanded. “He is but one man! He is only one—”

  With a slap and a hiss, a crossbow bolt shot through the air and struck Eduardo through the heart. Ricardo remained calm, but it was an effort. This wasn’t part of the plan. He’d told Henri and the others to stay out of it. But there behind the palisade, hidden in the shadows, Suerte crouched holding a crossbow. The vampires had been so focused on Ricardo that they hadn’t noticed the heartbeat, the boy’s scent of living blood. Or they had discounted him as weak prey.

  Suerte remained hidden, and Ricardo didn’t look at him, to avoid drawing attention. He gazed out calmly, as if he had willed the crossbow bolt to appear and strike Eduardo dead. And he was now, absolutely, dead. He clutched at the bolt protruding from his chest, sputtered as if he really did have breath and blood to spit from his mouth. Before he could fall, he turned to dust, limbs and extremities going gray, his whole body crumbling into desiccated flesh. The surprised glare in his eyes seemed to be the last part of him to fade.

  Ricardo met the gazes of every man who stood before the gate with a weapon in his hand, and he whispered to them, Go, you cannot win here.

  The soldiers all dropped their spears and fled. The mounted vampires seemed ready to follow them, but Ricardo called out to one of them, whom he recognized from his brief stay in the capital. The woman, Elinor, now looking very different from her painted, elegant self.

  “My Lady Elinor,” he called. “Will you take a message to Doña Catalina for me?”

  She hesitated, perhaps wondering if this was some trick. “Yes,” she said finally. “You did not have to kill him.”

  “Apparently I did.” He spared a quick smile for Suerte. “Tell Catalina this: this estancia is protected. I would ask that she leave it alone, now and forever. In return, I will leave. She can have Mexico. All
of it, as she was promised, as she expected. I will leave this country, and she’ll never see me again.”

  “Where will you go? Back to Spain? To France?”

  He imagined a country filled with vampires, with Masters and Mistresses all like Catalina, and himself trying to move among them, keeping to himself, convincing them he was no danger. He shook his head.

  “No. I will go north to the borderlands. That is all you need to know, and you will never hear of me again.”

  Strangely, the woman smiled. “Never is a very long time, Don Ricardo. I think we may hear of each other again someday. You will tell me stories of what you have seen.”

  He offered her a respectful bow, and for just a moment regretted that he could not spend more time here.

  “We will deliver your message.”

  “Gracias.”

  She wheeled her horse around, and the others followed. The riders trotted away after the soldiers who’d fled before.

  Now he could deal with Suerte. “I would have managed them,” he said.

  The boy—not so much a boy anymore, he was sixteen and sure of himself—picked himself off the ground. He slung the crossbow easily over his shoulder.

  “Of course. But a little help never hurt, eh?”

  Together, they returned to the manor.

  The house’s main sitting room was directly through the front doors, across the courtyard. Comfortable chairs were gathered around a fireplace, tables held vases of flowers, and borders had been painted on the stucco walls over the years by anyone with talent and a desire. Blue and yellow flowers looped around each other in a vine-like pattern near the ceiling, and a geometric pattern in red lines framed the hearth. The room was warm, lived in, and Ricardo spent most of his time here when he wasn’t working or sleeping. Originally, this had been the main part of the church Fray Juan was supposedly presiding over. Ricardo had taken it over, knocked down walls, expanded it, made it a home. In the next room, a trapdoor led to his cellar bed-room—windowless, forever dark. That was the only room of Fray Juan’s he had kept.

  He wondered what Henri would do with that room when he was gone. Turn it into a root cellar perhaps. Or seal it up.

  The whole family had gathered. Henri, his wife Madalena, their oldest son Tomas and his wife Juana, Suerte, and several of their other children. A large, contented family who’d built this place into a village. Ricardo was proud of what they’d done here.

  He sat in a large cushioned chair, his hand resting on a bundle of papers on the table. “All that remains is to file the papers with the provincial governor’s office in Zacatecas. You are now my heir, and this is all yours.”

  Henri looked stricken. The others were uncertain, looking to him for how to respond.

  “This is only a paper,” he said. “A fiction—”

  “No, it is not. It is all yours. It’s the only way to keep the vampires out, and to keep you all safe, as I promised your grandparents I would. So you will be Don Henri, and I will leave.”

  As soon as he said the words aloud, his heart lifted. At least, what was left of his heart lifted. Facing this change, this upheaval—he could no longer see into the future, and it felt good. He felt like he had when he had boarded the ship in Spain a century before.

  He didn’t know if he’d ever be able to convince them this was truly what he wanted to do. Madalena rushed forward, kneeling at his feet, clasping his hands. “Ricardo, no, this is your home! Haven’t we always taken care of you? Doesn’t our blood run through your veins?”

  He squeezed her hands in return. “I will miss you all, truly. But I feel the need to seek out an adventure. Go north and light a candle for my old commander.”

  “I will go with you,” Suerte said, stepping forward.

  Both Madalena and Henri started, “No—”

  “You’ll need someone to look after you.” Suerte spoke only to Ricardo; he knew whom he had to convince here.

  And, Ricardo realized, he would need someone. Certainly he could attempt to travel and survive on his own. But how much easier his existence would be with someone to seal the doors during the day. Someone to provide a cupful of blood every few days. And Suerte would not need coercing. He felt a gratitude for the young man he’d never be able to express.

  He expected the parents to argue further, but Madalena went to embrace her son, proud and sad all at once.

  Ricardo looked around at his home and his family that he had fought hard for, that he had enjoyed for decades longer than any man could expect to enjoy home and family. Yes, he would always remember this place fondly. But it was time to go.

  In the early years of the border town of Santa Fe, people of all sorts came and went, all the time. Missionaries and traders from the south, the soldiers defending them, native peoples from every direction. Settlers, families, and all the people who followed to carve homes out of the desert land. The place was becoming a crossroads.

  In a certain tavern where travelers often stopped before setting out to press even farther west and north, a man could be found with a cup sitting before him that he never drank from. He was obviously of good breeding, with an elegant bearing and an old-fashioned way of speaking. He had a servant, a rough-looking Mexicano of around thirty whom the man treated more as a friend, which was odd, but one could make allowances for the eccentric. The pair acted as translators and guides—they were friendly with many of the Pueblo people and had even successfully negotiated with some Apache. Strangely, though, if you wanted to hire this man for your caravan or as a scout, you had to understand that he only worked at night.

  Late at night this man would tell old stories of conquistadors so vividly that he might have been there himself—which was impossible, of course. He was a young man in his prime. When pressed, he said his great-grandfather had been part of Coronado’s company, a true conquistador. Much debate went on about whether to believe this.

  In the end, he was so comfortable in the border towns, and he gazed over the plains with such appreciation—love, even—everyone felt he must have at least part of the soul of one of those old soldiers.

  Dead Men

  in Central City

  HORSES WERE THE MOST UNRELIABLE, most unfortunate creatures ever to walk the earth. And yet, Ricardo was immensely sad that his was gone. He and his pretty tamed Mustang mare, Bandita, had been back and forth across the West for six years, and now she’d taken a bad step—a hole, a sharp rock, he hadn’t been able to figure out which—fallen down a hillside, and broken not one but two legs.

  Traveling on horseback through the Rockies at night, accidents happened. His own neck had snapped in the fall, twisting wrong when Bandita came down on top of him. He’d heard the crack. Half an hour of lying still and staring at treetops healed him well enough. But she was mortal. The whole time, he’d listened to Bandita groan in pain, working herself into a sweat as she struggled to stand and fell back again, her broken legs unable to support her. Once he was upright, he’d done the only kind thing he could and ended it for her with his .45. He lay next to her for a time, taking in her last warmth and working to remember her, because she deserved to be remembered. Coiled up a couple strands of hair from her tail because he wasn’t sure why. Just that he had a braided band made up of tail hairs from all the horses he’d cared about over the centuries.

  He gathered what gear he could carry, saddlebags and blankets, left her to the scavengers and moved on. The sky was turning gray, dawn was close, and he desperately needed a place to bed down for the day. He was in the middle of forest, miles from the next town with no sign of shelter anywhere.

  He did not panic. He’d lasted this long and been caught in more unlikely situations than this. He could always find some place out of the sun if he just took a moment and looked. Around here, plenty of mine shafts were dug into the rock, out of the light, if he could find one. The fall had turned him around a bit, but if he remembered right, there were plenty of small towns between here and Denver. Maybe not much more than miners�
�� cabins and a general store, but they’d do.

  Finding high ground, he paused and took a deep breath, tasting every scent that came to him. Felt eddies in the air, sensed creatures that had passed this way, and knew what might be waiting for him over the next hill. He found prey, a concentration of warm human blood rising. More than blood, he smelled the smoke of wood and coal fires, masonry and painted wood. The collected smell of horses and livestock kept in corrals. There was a whole town nearby.

  Central City. Had to be. If he could get there in time, he might even be able to spend the day in a bed instead of a dank mine shaft. He tasted another breath, checked the direction, murmured a quiet prayer to the gray sky—he still prayed, taking it on faith that He was listening—and ran.

  Trees blurred; the air turned to wind around him. He drew on some other force, a demonish power that flowed into him from some unknown source. From the first he’d been suspicious of it—but he would use it when he had to. It meant he could run. A shadow in the night. If only it were night.

  His last bit of borrowed blood turned sluggish in the growing light. He didn’t have long. He kept to shaded gulches and gullies—away from the hilltops that would get the first rays of morning sun.

  He could smell the town, sense people waking up with the dawn. He might or might not make it. At this moment the only creature more unfortunate than his horse was very likely him.

  Then, coming around the next gulch, down the next slope, he found a road. Not much of one—dirt packed down by wagon wheels and dozens of horses. Not a main route, this probably went up to mining claims in the hills. But the way opened up. Just a few more minutes, a few more yards of speed—

  And there it was. The mining boomtown of Central City, tucked in the mountains above Denver and looking to Ricardo’s eyes like a beacon of civilization. Two main streets intersected each other; another dozen side streets ran off from them. Solid rows of buildings three and four stories tall lined up. Maybe not pretty, not sturdy—the town had grown from nothing in just a few years after all—but it made a good showing.