The Cowboy and Vampire
Chapter 17

Funny how by daylight the madness of night seems so far away. I woke up well after noon, well rested, and tumbled Rex off the bed, stood up stretching and groaning. The pain in my ribs wasn't so bad anymore so I left the horse pills in my bag. Gradually, I was growing accustomed to the weight of the pistol under my arm and studied it under my jacket to see if it was noticeable. It wasn't.
I moseyed on down the stairs, pausing along the way to admire the various swords, guns, and vases encased behind glass along the way Last night, it had been so dark when I had been brought here, but by the light of day it was really something. The walls were covered with paintings, and not those velvet kind, either. I stopped at the window at the end of the hall. The whole thing was set in a few acres of good grass with some tall, old trees drooping around and I couldn't quite figure out how I got there since the last thing I seen was a bunch of tiny little apartments. There was a stone wall circling the grounds and beyond it, reassuring in an odd way, skyscrapers poking up like jagged teeth.
I happened upon the old man from the night before and he smiled painfully at the sight of Rex trailing beside me. "We was wondering if there was any breakfast to be had around here?"
"Of course, right this way, sir." He limped down the hall and I followed along. "I trust you slept well?"
"Yeah, except for the rodents."
"Rodents, sir?"
"Place is crawling with rats."
There was a table set next to the kitchen and a little placemat for Rex on the floor with a handsome silver bowl full of some sort of dog food. We both put away some grub, including a couple of croissants I slipped under to him, and then I figured it was time to take a look-see around town. The old man, whose name I found out to be Jenkins, led me through the front door and down a winding pathway to the stone wall. "Unlike your bosses," I said as we got close to the imposing face of it, "I can't fly So I wonder if you could let me know what you're planning on doing. Putting me up against the wall and shooting me?"
"Nothing quite that drastic, sir. Simply turning you lose into the city, may God help you both." He reached toward an otherwise blank section of the weathered marble and with a press, a door swung open into darkness. "This way." He ambled off into the darkness. Rex and me followed along with him after pausing long enough to remind each other that Vampires sleep by day and also checking the fit of the Casull under my jacket.
The passageway was narrow and damp, but short-lived. Another door stood at the end of fifteen uneasy paces and as Jenkins held it open, I walked into a surprisingly modern little apartment which was exactly what I wasn't expecting. There was a large man watching us silently from behind a row of video monitors, a particularly nasty-looking assault rifle in his lap. Jenkins acknowledged him with a nod.
"This is Mr. Tucker," he said, not offering an introduction. "He has immunity. Allow him egress at his word." The man nodded and returned to his monitors.
"And my dog as well," I added.
He ignored me and pointed at the front door. "On the other side of this door is Bay Street. 1262 East Bay Street. The apartment you need to enter is 4E Will you be back for the evening meal?"
"Couldn't say right off. But I will be back by sundown, count on that." We stepped out into the gloom and noise and stink of a New York day.
"Sir, I am to remind you of your obligation to bring Miss Vaughan back to us. Julius believes she requires our assistance."
"Will I be followed?" I asked as I walked down the stairs.
"I imagine so. One more thing, sir," Jenkins called, "there is a leash law." He pulled a leash and matching collar out of his jacket.
"Thanks, Jenkins. I appreciate that, I really do." Outside we sat down on the front step and I snuggled the collar around Rex who looked at me like I was committing a cardinal sin. Club Vampire was completely gone. Down the block both ways was nothing but apartments and the mansion was now completely hidden from sight. Neat trick. How many years, I wondered, had this compound existed? Probably since New York was just a little piss ant town wishing it was London.
Despite many mutterings to the contrary, I don't have nothing personal against big cities. 'Course, I don't have much use for them either. In my limited experience, and that based on Louis L'Amour novels, news reports about violent crime, and big city tourists turning Jackson into one big art gallery, New York City is about as big as a city can get before it turns into its own country.
Sometimes as a form of amusement on winter nights, I try to think about what all those people living cheek to cheek think about, what their lives are like. I ain't never come up with much of a picture in my head.
Near as I can figure, it all boils down to lack of space. America became the greatest country in the world by being so damn open. All our ancestors come sailing over from England, which must've seemed pretty full at the time. They landed out east and stepped off the boat and said I'll be damned, look at how many folks ain't here. And never mind them savages, they don't really count for much. Things progressed and cities grew up and some folks decided to keep on moving on account of looking for open space. The Indians, in the worst case of there goes the neighborhood, ended up on little graveyard-sized pieces of land, while the settlers eventually run out of room at the West coast. To make a long story less interesting, my kinfolks decided to stay out in Wyoming where brutal winters and intolerable summers kept out most civilized folks. Having lots of space was never a problem.
That's why it never made sense to me how people live all cramped up in tiny little apartments looking out at more tiny apartments and breathing in smog while they hurry up and get in a traffic jam on their way to a job they don't like anyway. Give me sagebrush and clear skies any day of the week. 'Course, if everybody thought that-a-way they'd all move to LonePine and things would be no better off.
First order of business was getting a cup of coffee and losing the skinny fellow in the cheap suit that Julius had stuck on to me.
I'd watched him trying hard not to look at me and didn't expect losing him to be much trouble. I detoured into a little shop with a neon sign out front flickering coffee, coffee - then left out the back door, circled around front, and went back in the front door.
That seemed to do the trick. I watched him running down the back alley looking this way and that. Just like in the movies. Now, time for a cup of coffee.
There was a big old chalkboard behind the counter with all these strange names I couldn't hardly pronounce and prices ranging from too expensive to intolerable. The girl at the cash register had a shaved head and a ring in her nose like the kind we use on bulls we can't control. She smiled and asked what I'd like.
I said a cup of coffee, black, which seemed pretty straightforward and she give me about sixteen different choices, all of which sounded nothing at all like what I normally buy at the supermarket.
"Just coffee," I said again, "and whatever kind tastes like it's been sitting around the longest."
She poured me up a cupful and I reluctantly give her the two dollars she asked for, and I'll be damned if that coffee didn't taste exactly like Hazel's. And they had to fly theirs all the way from Ethiopia.
Coffee in hand, I walked out onto the sidewalk and was immediately swept up by a crowd of people all mumbling and shoving and walking with their heads down. I just stood in the middle of this human river and wondered how in the hell I was going to find Lizzie in the middle of it.
Across the way, bells chimed on the hour. Church bells ringing out deep and clear above the crowd, the traffic, the cursing, and struggling. I looked up and seen a flock of pigeons on wing as if borne up by the message of the bells and the commotion around me dissolved away It seemed as if a shaft of sunlight touched those birds, lighting up the soft grays and whites and time stopped for a heartbeat. Church bells. The church where her father was buried. Her sanctuary. Now what the hell was the name of that church?
There was a phone booth nearby and Rex and me fought our way over to it, but there was no phone book. Nor at the next one nor the next after that. Finally I went back into the coffee shop and asked the girl with no hair if she had a phone book and she said yes and pulled out this monstrous old thing the size of a small car. I sat down at the window, Rex under the chair, wondering whether maybe alpacas wasn't so bad compared to Vampires and New York City I found churches in the back and there must've been ten thousand of them so I got a refill and something called a biscotti which I think is Italian for really hard, old bread with chocolate on it.
Down the list I drug my finger, hoping to find something familiar. Synagogues, Zen Buddhists, Catholics, Jehovah's and other churches I had never heard of such as Dr. Dingle's Church of the Blue Light and the Church of Elvis. All righty Down toward the bottom of the first page, my finger stopped and my heart skipped a beat. The Church of the Holy Trinity on 73rd.
I run back up to the counter and egghead must have thought I was some kind of crazy man. "How do you get to this here church?" I asked, pointing.
"The cross street up the block is 42nd so you got to go up to 73rd and take a left and it's about six blocks down from there."
"Thank you very much," I said. "By the way, I really like that earring in your nose," I said.
"Thanks. My girlfriend really likes the one in my nipple." She smiled sweetly and I reckoned I must have blushed. "Are you a real cowboy?"
"Naw," I said, backing out with Rex. "I play one on TV."
It was a long walk but I figured we could use the exercise, so we took off down the street toward 73rd. It took about an hour, and Lord Almighty the characters I seen. There was ratty old women pushing shopping carts full of useless junk, talking to themselves, and old men sucking bottles of wine in the alleys. Nervous looking young toughs in leather and chains and all kinds of fat, pale men in suits, carrying briefcases. On 73rd we hooked a left and there it was, the Church of the Holy Trinity. It was tall and gray, with a dozen spires all pointed and tipped with crosses. Arching windows looked down onto the street and there was a considerable amount of greenery around it.
Rex and me scouted around the bottom of it and found a back way in. The inside was quiet and mostly empty and we took a seat in the back pew. Sun was streaming in through the stained glass and in each corner was a bunch of candles. Directly I got up, bidding Rex to stay, and lit me one of them candles and said a few words in my head directed at God concerning Lizzie's state of health. Every little bit helps. When I come back, Rex had found a tattered old piece of something to chew on which turned out to be the remains of a rat. I give him a look and kicked it under the pew in front of us.
I sat down and watched people come and go, hoping one of them might be Lizzie, but they wasn't. Like when I was a kid, eventually my ass got tired of sitting on them hard old pews and Rex got kind of fidgety and had to go pee, so we went outside, and while he was looking for the perfect bush to pee on, I stewed in my own disappointment. As he was sniffing around, his butt started twitching like it wished there was a tail to wag and he come dashing over to me, then back to the bush and back to me.
He had her scent, I was sure of it.
There was a sign that said "Catacombs," with an arrow pointing down. The door was old and rusty, braced over with iron ribs and padlocked. I looked to make sure I was alone, then hammered it open with a rock. The door gave a groan as I pushed it open and musty air rushed out and mixed in with it was a familiar scent, almost lost in the mildew. Almost without thought, the Casull was in my hand and cocked. Steeling myself for the worst, I called Rex close and started down the slick stone steps leading away into the darkness below.
I'm not sure what a catacomb is exactly. Near as I could tell it means a really narrow, dark place that smells funny, probably from people sneaking in to have sex and drink cheap wine. Rex was sniffling out loud, his uncanny senses working overtime, and I let him race on ahead and tried to keep up. We got deeper and deeper, and the city scent was replaced by a musty smell of old clothes or something. Whoever built these tunnels must not have believed in electricity because try as I might I couldn't find a light, so we just groped and stumbled and cursed our way deeper into the bowels of the church. There was a book of matches in my jacket, probably left over from having Lizzie out, and it filled me with sadness to pull one out and light it up.
It filled me with even more sadness that my match failed to light up much of anything at all. We stood there, me looking at the feeble circle of light and Rex looking at me. I sighed and petted him. "Think she's here, boy?" I asked. He sat down and sniffed the air with gentle motions of indecision. The match burned out.
Seemed like the tunnel went on forever. Now and again I'd stop to light a match but it only revealed more of the same old stone, so mostly I just stumbled along in the dark with one hand against the cold surface, slowly making my way deeper through the twists and turns of the catacomb. Along the way was all these little nooks and crannies that I eventually realized must've been for burying folks in. I lit another of my dwindling supply of matches and held it up to reveal a crumbling archway with a little brass plaque badly tarnished by age that must've bore names of the dead. There was bigger rooms too, like them little houses from graveyards with bench-like shelves around the walls where I reckoned coffins was supposed to sit and occasionally saw some stone ones with lids sealed tight.
Before long, my matches was down to one and so we continued in the dark, hoping we were making progress and not just walking around in dark circles. The only thing I was counting on was Rex's nose which I could hear working and also the click of his claws on the stone surface. It was like sleepwalking in a way and soon there was nothing more than the rise and fall of footsteps, the certainty of motion and the gritty feel of progress as the wall slipped away under my palms.
Lulled by the sameness, when my hand slipped off into empty space I almost fell over. Rex gave a bark of sorts as I stumbled in and dropped down to my knee. I crawled forward until I felt a door of sorts. There was a padlock on it too, but Rex kept sniffling and barking, so I jammed my knife in it and pried it open as well. There was an even smaller room, one I had to hunch over to get into. I got to feeling around it, and there was a little ledge of crumbling wood running the length of the wall. I felt my way around the room until I was at the back wall, patting along like I was making biscuits and hoping not to find some rotten old coffin. All of a sudden, my searching fingers come upon hair. It curled around my finger like wire and twined up to my wrist.
"Goddamn," I hollered, dropping the gun altogether and, scooting backwards on my ass, hit the wall with my back and dust and decay dumped down my collar.
There ain't much I'm scared of. After facing down Vampires, not much can hold a candle. But I've always had a thing about bodies. It ain't logical. Dead is dead, at least that's what I used to think, but damn, they give me the creeps anyway. They say the hair keeps growing after death and I feared I'd just put my hand into a big pile of it. I imagined some old damn monk covered in hair with dead fingernails a foot long rotting inside and out into nothing but teeth and dust.
In spite of myself, I had to know I flicked that last match to life, preparing for the worst. It was more worse than anything I could
have prepared for. It was Lizzie that was dead, not some old priest. Dead and cold, and curled up on the ledge like a baby.
A scream ripped loose from me involuntarily, a scream heavy with pent-up hopes now dashed to bits and all the hope I'd been holding back and holding on to all these last days and all my life. It was a scream both loud and long, and the catacombs took it and echoed it and that old church shook and rattled all the way up to heaven itself. It was a scream that served notice to God Himself that I was through with Him. That I could never forgive Him for the sight of Lizzie lying before me in the dim light of my last match.
I had enough sense to cast about for something flammable so as not to be lost altogether in the darkness. There was a long piece of splintery wood on the casket behind and I ripped it loose and set the tip ablaze. By the light of that bit of wood, I could see a flaky old candle set into an iron cup just outside the door and I lit it up and placed it by her beautiful head, kneeling down to cradle her in my arms. Rex was beside himself with grief, whining as I took her cold and stiff in my arms. The tears came out and I swore and gritted my teeth because this ain't the way it's supposed to end. The cowboy always saves the girl before the credits roll. The cowboy always wins, even if only to ride off alone into the sunset. But that's by choice and here I was sitting in the middle of the last sunset with a whole movie full of mistakes playing in my head. The cowboy is supposed to win and I had just lost everything.
Hard to say how much time I spent down on my knees that way. Could've been hours or seconds or days. A whole lifetime of hurt give way and I knew my life was over, just like hers. She looked so peaceful, so calm and sure and it was mighty tempting to join her there. I let go of her just long enough to find the pistol discarded behind me and place the barrel up against my temple.
I cocked the hammer back and all I lacked was an eighth of an inch of resolve, but it was close. Mighty close.
Something stayed my hand, and that something was vengeance. A terrible and fierce vengeance swept through me like a thunderstorm of fire and rage, gradually eclipsing the hurt until nothing seemed more important than balancing the scales, in laying waste to the whole rats nest of Vampires. Blotting them from the face of the earth and making one tiny detour into right from this freeway of wrong. Nothing else seemed to matter, not even my sorrow or the salvation that me joining her offered. I would set things right. Then I would join her.
But that was spare comfort now. I gathered her close to my heart and buried my face into the cold, sweet stretch of her throat.
Rex kept edging up to sniff and lick at us as if the effects of his tongue might change the course of nature, then, failing each time, would retreat into the shadows with a whimper. At last I stretched out beside her and imagined us back up at Widow Woman creek that last night with the sun setting and her in the firelight, so alive and lovely. Now, in my arms she felt so cold and forgotten. I reckon I must've cried myself to sleep in childlike fashion.
When I woke, for the barest of instants my mind convinced me it had all been but a terrible and long dream and that Lizzie was sleeping in my arms. But as I brushed the hair back from her face and pressed my lips to hers, they were cold and that terrible numbness came running back to me. She was dead as my heart.
Out of the depths of this tragedy, the oddest thing happened. My hand was splayed out over her chest and I felt a tiny stutter, faint as distant thunder. A bare and halting echo of a rhythm that struggled and lapsed and fell back on itself, only to start over. I drew back in absolute alarm and fear as her eyes fluttered open. There was life in there, an empty kind of life that was unsure of itself. Hungry life, but life just the same.
Her lips parted and she struggled to form words. "I knew you'd come," she whispered. "I knew it."
PART TWO
Resurrection
SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO
October 11, 2001, 10:07 P.M.
He stood at the window, resting his hands on the cool adobe, the sweet smell of sagebrush and night washing over his face. A shooting star fell, blazing fiercely, then disappearing. The silver glow of the moon lit up the hills and twisted juniper silhouetted there. It brought a smile to his weathered face.
There was movement behind him. He turned too late to see who it was, but on the table was a tray with a steaming mug of coffee.
"Thank you," he called into the air and pulled up a chair. He took a sip and continued to look out the window. A coyote howled.
There was a knock at the door and a tall, youthful man with wise eyes and pale skin stood in the shadows under the arch. He was dressed simply in blue jeans and a plain cotton shirt.
"Carlos. Come in."
Carlos bowed respectfully and pulled up another chair. "It's a beautiful night." The older man nodded. Carlos continued. "Any news?"
"According to Jenkins, the turning has taken place. Shortly thereafter, she escaped. Elita believes it was by her doing."
"We should be there," Carlos said.
"We must not allow impulse to rule. Every action taken now will have serious implications."
"He will try to get her back," Carlos said.
"Of course he will."
"What if he is successful?"
"It is a distinct possibility. New York is his element. The more important question, however, is can he convince her to follow him?"
"Julius can be quite persuasive. Naturally, she will be confused at this early stage."
The older man sighed. "If she believes him, chooses to follow him, then she will have chosen her destiny, as well as that of billions of Adamites. But the choice must be hers and we will wait." Smiling benevolently at his young friend, he added, "After all, what meaning has time to us?"
Carlos rested his elbows on the table and cradled his head in his hands. "I can't help but fear for her," he said sorrowfully. "I remember my own turning well. If you had left me to my own devices, I would have lost my mind."
The old man contemplated his cup, harkening back to his past. "There are worse things than the turning." His eyes clouded darkly like the shadowy cave that still, after so long, made up the bulk of his memories. He pushed his chair back and stood, returning to the windowsill, leaning against it.
"Her lover is alive and seeking her in New York. He is aware, to a limited degree, of what he is up against and yet has gone anyway."
"He is either very brave or very stupid."
The old man shook his head. "He is in love, that is all."
"What will that mean to us?" Carlos asked.
"He loves her, and she him. That is all I know. Who can predict the effects of love, even with the unique historical perspective that you and I enjoy?"
Both men were silent for a time, the softness of their words barely missed by the wind outside. At last the old man turned from the window. "We have seen much together, yet I believe our proudest moments still lie ahead."
Carlos stood and made for the door, pausing long enough to say, "I hope so, Lazarus. I truly hope so."