The Immortal Conquistador (Kitty Norville 15)

“That’s Navajo,” Lucinda said. “Do you know it?”

He shook his head and tried a couple of languages he did know. Pueblo, and the man shook his head. Then, Apache. “I don’t speak your tongue. Can you understand me?”

“Yes,” the man answered in Apache. “I’m looking for El Conquistador. Are you him?”

Ricardo felt a vague foreboding. He tried so hard to remain unnoticed, to avoid attention. Didn’t seem to be working. “Yes, I suppose I am.”

“You’re in danger. You and everyone around you.”

He supposed he should have expected that.

“How many languages do you speak?” the Abbot interrupted.

Rick needed a moment to respond, his narrative disrupted; his memories had taken him to a far-off place. “How many do I speak now? Or how many have I ever spoken? Spanish, of course, a bit of Latin and French. Some Nahuatl. I’ve lost much of the Apache, I’m afraid, and the Pueblo, though I’m picking it back up again. The Internet has been wonderful for practicing languages. I never did learn much Navajo, but I spoke passable Lakota Sioux. The English came relatively recently.” One of those vast, quick changes. In only a hundred years, English became the language he spoke most.

“But it’s such an odd smattering,” the Abbot said. “All of it so . . . local.”

“It was what I needed. I was a guide and translator on the Santa Fe Trail. What else was I supposed to speak?”

“Is it true that you never once returned to Europe?”

“It’s true. I never even went east of the Mississippi, except for a trip to New Orleans.”

“Why did you stay in that part of the world?” the Abbot asked, and the Scribe’s pen scratched.

Rick said, “Have you studied what modern medicine has discovered about human blood?”

“Science has little to do with our kind,” the Abbot said, sniffing.

“At higher altitudes, the air is thinner. The blood develops more blood cells, to better carry oxygen. Some athletes train at high altitude, to strengthen their blood’s efficiency. The blood there becomes richer. So. In the Rocky Mountains and high desert in the southwest of the North American continent, our kind requires less blood to survive.”

The Scribe’s pen stopped, and they stared at Rick. The Abbot’s mouth opened, disbelieving.

“You’re making that up,” he said.

Ricardo shrugged. “I also like the scenery. There’s enough space to hide.”

They exchanged names,

or tried to. The Navajo man said, “Call me John.”

Ricardo chuckled. “Is that really your name?”

“It’s what you can call me.” He was a medicine man, he said. A monster slayer, though Ricardo wasn’t sure he understood the concept correctly. There was a term in there that didn’t translate, he suspected. Maybe what he meant was closer to a spy? Whatever he was, he had one foot in the supernatural world and kept track of the dangers lurking there. Like vampires.

Lucinda offered the man a drink. He accepted water, and they sat on a wooden bench in the courtyard, among pots of herbs and flowers, under the stars.

“What exactly is going to happen?” Ricardo asked John.

“Santa Fe is at a crossroads,” he said.

“Yes, I know—”

“Not just in space but in time. If I knew exactly what would happen I would stop it myself.”

“What do you expect me to do?”

“Not sure. But it’s your people who bring the threat. You know them, the rest of us don’t.”