“What about it?”
“Do you remember where you were, what you were doing?”
“As I said, I traveled—”
“Scribe?”
“Santa Fe,” the Scribe said.
“Ah yes.”
“You called yourself the Master of Santa Fe—for exactly one month? And that city had never had a Master before and has never had one since.”
“It really was just a fluke, not really that important.”
The Abbot glared. Rick ducked his gaze, cleared his throat.
“I want to know about Santa Fe.”
“I keep telling you, my life, long as it has been, is not so interesting. But you, this place—I have so many questions, Abbot.”
“In time. Right now I’m trying to understand you, Ricardo.”
Now he did laugh. “Because there has been no one else like me? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
The Abbot smiled harshly. “There has been at least one other vampire like you. One other who has lived for centuries alone, traveling, unconcerned with becoming Master of anywhere and thereby becoming Master of everywhere. Hearing your story, you remind me of Gaius Albinus.”
Gaius Albinus, Dux Bellorum, was the bogeyman vampires evoked to frighten one another. Rick had met him exactly once and forced him out of Denver. The man had been hard, cold, single-minded. He promised power in exchange for obedience. It was said he would conquer the world by suborning each person in it individually. He had the time. The man carried darkness with him like a badge of honor.
“I am nothing like him.”
“Are you certain?”
“You think I’m working with him. This is an interrogation.” What had Rick gotten himself into? He should not have come . . .
The Abbot set aside his page of notes. “Don Ricardo. What is the most shocking thing you’ve ever done?”
“And now a confession? It has been five hundred years since my last—”
The Abbot waved him off. “The Order of Saint Lazarus of the Shadows forgives much. Given what we are.”
“Indeed. We give God himself plausible deniability?”
“Don’t blaspheme. Quickly now, first thing that comes to mind: the most shocking thing you’ve ever done.”
He took the Abbot at his word, didn’t think too hard on it, and said the first memory that came to him. “All right. I offered to Turn Doctor John Holliday.”
The Scribe’s pen stopped scratching. The Abbot stared. “The American gunman?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“He refused me. I could have saved his life. He didn’t want to be saved.”
“Well. My goodness.”
The Scribe looked at Ricardo, and he swore their eyebrows were raised under the blindfold. Then their pen once against scratched against the parchment.