“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.”
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