Lourdes: A Vampire In The Old West

23. The Shapeless King of the Night

Lourdes's horse flies above the sand. Its muscles swell and strain. It tears through an old road at ungodly speed. It pants. It shrieks. Pouring over a cactus patch, the animal doesn't slow, hooves going straight through needles rather than around. Quills pierce its flesh. Its tongue hangs out. The animal tramples barbs and spines. Possessed by its rider, the horse breaks boulders and blows dirt devils apart. The animal's at the center of a tempest. But then the distant hills just before it, the steed becomes still. Stars shine here on the sand, and no amount of beckoning will incite the beast further. The steed stands before the shore of a lake in the deepest desert. The vampire stands before the liminal gate separating the mountains from the wasteland.

Here, black sands meet a fallen sky, and beyond it, the natural world ends. Lourdes whispers to his familiar, but words fail to bewitch its spirit. The horse kicks the dirt bordering the silver mirror. Desert water and possessed land. Lourdes gives a sharp tug on his animal's reins. A world that is not right. Lourdes's boots drive into the steed's side. The horse bucks. Its nostrils flare. Still, it remains at the edge of the glassy abyss. The horse looks into the deep water and lets out a cry.

After one last kick into the animal's flank brings blood but not movement, Lourdes dismounts. The boy's eyes look into the lake and back to his pet. Its hooves are stone. Lourdes pulls the horse's reins taut. It remains a statue. His vision again coming to the crystal, Lourdes studies the water. He stares into the thing that's so spooked his mount. A thin breath. A wrinkle on his brow. And as the lake overflows from his eyes, Lourdes comes again to his ride. He strokes his horse. He caresses its side. He rubs its head.

"Be free," he whispers.

A thunderclap. The horse, at once, gallops into the desert. Lourdes watches his ride until its whinnies become no more than the wind and its mane is made invisible on the edge of the world's shell. And after a moment more and a gust from a sable storm, its tracks also cease to be anything but imaginary. The animal's free from the boy's spell, and he - alone - refocuses his vision on what waits ahead. A moat surrounding a black rock castle. Lourdes looks into the lake and the currents both brilliant and inky swirling within. Lourdes looks into the water and the moon and faraway worlds contained beneath a surface limned with stardust. Torrents and comets. The vampire's vision contemplates this second sky, charting out the heavens underfoot. But this road leads to Volga, and Lourdes knows it. But this road leads to Katterina, and Lourdes must walk it. The resolute boy kicks the dirt from his heels. He straightens his jacket. He tightens his belt.

"I offer myself to you to be your sword," the boy speaks into the starlight. Lourdes looks to the true sky with peculiar eyes. He lifts his boot. The black waters bubble. Lourdes sets his heel down atop the reversed sky.

The vampire at the water's edge takes a step forward. A ripple. Saint Brendan pardons him. His foot rests on the lake's surface, suspended over midnight blue. He takes another step. Saint Andrew supports him. Lourdes walks on water. Another step. The moon beneath him and his gold eyes staring straight ahead, the vampire floats above the desert sea. Saint Nicholas blesses him. Only the shallowest of circles expand out from the child's steps, and in his wake, kingfisher feathers sleep. Saint Nepomucene steers him. A final footfall leaves Lourdes standing at the fortress's gate.

A single star far away fades.

Intercession alone carried the boy's feet over the ring of water to Volga's mountain, but here, no heavenly host waits to lift him to its peak. Instead, beyond the moat, Lourdes now rests against a palisade of the hardest, blackest rock. Craning his neck, the cowboy spies fires flickering in the ages above, and only he can get himself there. There's a sheer and shadowy climb to the summit, should Lourdes aim to scale the citadel directly, and up the side of the mountain, a narrow path crisscrosses the granite, but it's the opposite of direct and surely booby trapped. Making certain of this theory - or, rather, expectation - Lourdes picks up a pebble. He tosses it along the meandering path. A rumble. A gnashing. A boulder grinds down the trail. Lourdes shifts his attention back to the towering bastion protecting the peak. He runs his hands over a slate wall. His fingers wide and eyes wider, he punches into the rock. Cracks. Fissures. Shadows. Another thrust. Another hole, this one higher. A third as Lourdes begins to climb. The cavalier could carve a straight path to the mountain's heights and the mine buried within, taking on the full slope inch by inch.