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After becoming a vampire, Javier did not return to Pizarro’s army for long. Instead, he took to the mountains like a bandit, hiding in caves for the day and hunting among the villages for prey. He was not troubled by killing. The Incan people were the enemy; and it seemed to him that in doing this he was simply continuing La Conquista in a different fashion.
His nemesis chased him through the mountains. As they had fought in life, so they fought in unlife—an eternal battle that, it was obvious, could end only in the true death of one or the other, if not both. Javier did not believe that it was what their maker had intended; but she was not his true Maker, after all. He had never been a godly man; but he was as good a Catholic as most conquistadores. His duty lay with the God of his own people (for all he’d broken most of the commandments one way or another). It must have been God’s will that he was intercepted in the hills by the Incan warrior, God’s light that led the feather-caped vampire to them, God’s aid that allowed him to elude his pursuer; God’s mercy upon these lands that they be conquered for Spain and the Church. Javier trusted more in God than he did in man—or vampire, for that matter. God moved in mysterious ways. God’s will be done.
The highlands reminded him of the hills of home. Jungle lay to the east, the sea to the west. He drifted north, flying high in the thin air above the mountains. Far below were terraced farms; on higher ground were herds of long-necked Incan sheep. A road curled along the heights, lit brightly by the moon: it ran for miles; and he traced its line as he flew. Each new ayllu became a hunting ground, one that he left only when the Inca tracked him down yet again, or the villagers became suspicious of the deaths and disappearances and roused a posse to hunt him. From the blood of his victims he learned their speech, though he rarely used it. He drank their words; and they became his own—familiar in his head, though strange on his tongue. He knew the lives of these speakers of Quechua … their beliefs, their habits, their food, their families … better than his own. False memories etched themselves in his blood; underneath remained only the ghost of his own truth. He did not track the years. He knew his prey better than he knew himself: Tahuantinsuyu became his home; Spain was strange to him.
Always he was wary. At the faintest rustle he whirled. At a moving shadow he was off. His first impulse as a vampire had been to slay his brother, as Cain slew Abel. He felt no guilt: the two had fought to the death; that they had risen to unlife was beside the point: of course, Javier tried to kill him when he could! (Of course, the Inca did the same.) His shame was that he failed: the Inca lived. Now, his brother hunted him.
Ciudad de México had long since been rebuilt and Christianized by the time Javier’s travels took him out of the Land of the Four Quarters, across the isthmus, and into Nueva España. Here he drank back his mother tongue, remembered his own people, and learned once again to live as a man among men. Only as a man; but that was enough to give him back a semblance of humanity. He could sit once again with his fellows, and toss back—or feign to toss back—a tankard of wine. He could pass for mortal, as long as he avoided holy water and communion.
He remained in Mexico City for a long time, as these things go. For a while, he thought it could last forever—but, after all, it took centuries before he learned how long “forever” truly lasts. He loved his life. He loved life. (He brought death; but he loved life, and saw no contradiction.) He was young, and consorted with beauty and courage, and fed well.
It had to end.
The blow came unseen from a stone-headed chaska chiqui wielded by a shadow. Some faint shift in light was his only warning. Reflex saved him. By the time a human might have feared robbery, his instincts had already taken him into the air and he was flying high above the church towers. He could feel the presence of the vampire, and knew his Incan nemesis had found him yet again. He turned mid-air, hovering. With the crisp clarity of vampire vision, he could see—far, far below—his befuddled human friends gawping and shouting. He knew that his flight had betrayed his true nature. There was no returning now. His time here was over. He would have to move on.
He raised his eyes to search the sky, and twirled in place, swivelling his head from side to side as his eyes searched the quadrants. They had danced this duel before. The Inca was too canny to cross the moon, but there might be a moment when he occluded the stars. A quick downward glance showed no dark shape against the glow of lamps in the buildings below. Javier looked left, to the enormous square in the centre of the city. The ruins of the Great Temple, razed by Cortés after the siege of Tenochtitlan, were being used to finish the plaza; and a church was being built to the glory of God. At this hour, the site was empty … and dark. Javier peered hard, in the hope of pinning down a shift of shadow against shadow. Then suddenly—
—yaaaghhhhhh!
He choked the scream into silence even as the force of the blow knocked him in a hard fast arc toward the ground. Pain crushed his shoulder. He looked wildly round as he tried to slow his fall; but he could not see his assailant. The momentum of the attack must have carried the Inca for blocks, his flight yawing with the swing of his chaska chiqui.
The wound Javier had received was was not a fatal, nor even a crippling wound—not for a vampire—but the mace had struck his left shoulder with all the Inca’s strength. He knew too little of anatomy to describe the injury with any accuracy; but, whatever the damage, he was sure there were broken bones. He tried to raise the arm, but stopped almost instantly, tight-lipped in agony. He could try to fight one-handed, but knew that it would be better to flee. It galled him; but even vampires do not heal instantly. His wound was more than sufficient to impede self-defence. Without attempting to draw his sword, he sped his flight, turning from the centre of the capital and aiming for the outer quarters and the countryside beyond.
Then, the Inca struck again. The mace was a close-range weapon; but he also bore a spear. Usually, he thrust it as a lance, fearing to lose it were his Spanish foe to spot the move and dodge. This time, though, he came from above, unseen; and his aim was true. The spear took Javier in the back; and he tumbled out of the sky to the roofs below.
He woke in darkness, and smelled corn and beans cooking. The scent wafted from elsewhere; and he realized after a while that he was indoors, lying on a pallet on the floor of a shuttered room. There was a motion of air; and he turned towards it, his eyes adjusting faster than his mind. Part of him still thought he must be dead—surely must be dead after such a fall! But the lingering ache in his shoulder and back suggested otherwise. Indeed, he must be nearly healed, he supposed, though he had no idea how much time had passed. It might be today or tomorrow, or even more days later.
Not that it mattered. Cross-legged opposite him sat the Inca. Why his enemy had brought him here … well, that, Javier supposed, was what he was about to discover. There had to be a reason. He himself would have left the man to smoke into death in the sun; whyever the Inca had saved him, it could not be a good reason.
He firmed his lips and steadied his glare. He would not ask.
After a while, the Inca spoke. Although by now he must have fed many times in Mexico, he did not use either Spanish nor Nahuatl, but his native Quechua. It had been months since Javier had flown out of the southern continent; but he had drunk the blood of the villagers and soldiers of Tahuantinsuyu for years, and the words had not faded yet. So he could understand what the Inca said.
“Ama sua, ama lulla, ama chella.”
Do not steal; do not lie; do not be lazy: it was the Incan creed. Javier narrowed his eyes.
“You take, but do not earn,” said his enemy. “She gave you orders; and you ignore them. You have a duty, as do we all.” At Javier’s continued silence, the Inca sighed. “She saved you from an eternity in the underworld, even you, as evil as you Spanish are. She kept me from an afterlife in the warmth of the sun, one I should have earned with my service. She gave us a new duty, a new service: to stop senseless killing in the world. Those that treasure life should live, and those that don’t, should die.”
Javier remembered. The instructions had been … obscure to say the least.
“You do not weigh the balance of their lives, the virtue of their actions, their industry and duty.”
“I’m not a priest,” said Javier finally.
“Am I?” asked the Inca. “I am no one, I never have been—just a man doing his duty. She did not choose us for our sanctity. We were chosen as warriors.”
That much Javier had understood, even as she’d drunk his blood.
“I kill as she ordered. You kill as you please,” the Inca pointed out. “Such killing is senseless.”
“We kill to live,” said Javier simply. He lurched up to a sitting position His sword hilt dug into his side; and he realized, to his surprise, that his enemy had not bothered to disarm him.
“Blood is life,” agreed the Inca. “But not all blood is equal in terms of our duty.”
“Whatever that means.”
“I kill those who do not treasure life,” said the Inca soberly.
“I treasure my life,” said Javier dryly. “If you want to talk of senseless killing, to me that would mean slaughter for the joy of it. I kill to live.”
The Inca looked frustrated. “You do not understand. I do not know if it is even in you to understand.” He shook his head. “It should be: after all, she chose you. She could not have been mistaken in her trust. I am the defender; you the invader: that is balance. In balance is how she chose to bring us over. Now we must do our duty.” He sighed. “How do I find the words to convince you?”
You can’t, thought Javier; but he had sense enough not to say it aloud. “I do see what you mean,” he told the Inca, trying his best to sound sincere. “I must kill only the right victims.”
“Yes!” cried the Inca. “You do see! You must weigh their hearts!”
“I shall,” said Javier, and looked his enemy straight in the eye. “I tell you, now and forever, I shall do my duty.” He swore by no saints, nor on the Bible: it was no true oath: he remained unbound. Would the Inca see that? Could he tell?
For a long moment the other man stared searchingly into Javier’s face. He nodded, once. And then, he was gone.
An hour or more Javier stayed seated on the pallet, scarcely daring to move. Finally, he rose stiffly (for his injuries still had not quite healed), went to the window and cracked the shutters, and found it was dark outside. He could not sense the Inca nearby: it was safe to leave. And leave fast: the Spanish soldiers with whom he had shared fellowship now knew his nature; nor could he risk the Inca returning to accuse him of being forsworn.
He lost no time wondering where to go. Spanish lands stretched far north of Mexico. Ahead of him was a whole new world to explore. It was time to fly.