Lourdes: A Vampire In The Old West

24. I Will Have No King

Beneath the stars, beneath the sands, beneath the rocks, two things stand in a hollow cradle inside the earth. This passage forged into the deep by men looking for fortune was abandoned when it instead brought alcoholism, adultery, and ruin. But was it the men who dug this subterranean trail who were weak, or was it this very road cut too close to hell that poisoned them? Now, alone with nightmares in this empty womb, two monsters birthed from the mouths of snakes do battle, and the whole of the catacombs quake.

A beggar dressed as a king stares across from a king clad as a pauper. Lourdes's fragile form shakes. His gun's hot breath coils into the stony sky while Volga glows with molten metal inside an imperial veneer. Lourdes's bullets fill Volga, but they fail to fell him. Instead, Volga stands rigid with an inscrutable expression on his face. Lead leaks from his bones. The thing opposite him just confessed to being nothing less than the Son of the Vampire God, and Volga is unable to accept it. Hurt, panic, and doubt are at work inside the man's black veins, until Volga finally rejects them all, planting only disbelief across his cheeks.

"Lourdes Iscariot? Son of Loreley Iscariot?" Volga sneers. "You? You expect me to believe you are my king? Blasphemer! Do you know, Lourdes, how many mongrels and strays have claimed to be an Iscariot over the ages?" From beneath his robes, Volga produces his book. He scours its pages in an instant. He shakes his head. He clucks. He laughs as he looks over names written in faded blood. Slamming it shut, he stares into Lourdes with sharp eyes. "Do you know the heretics all now rest as ashes inside sewers and crypts? If you dare mock the Ustinov and pretend to be our sovereign, I suppose a test is in order..." Vitriol flows from Volga's fangs. "Give me your heart! Let me chew on the heart of my purported king!"

Volga's tongue, transformed into a cat o' nine tails, flicks about his abyss.

"Before you vanish, I'll give you a gift," Volga growls. The bestiary behind the slender man glimpsed before again seeps through the shadows. "It's a joke to think you're an Iscariot! It's the last resort of liars and dying dogs! I'm a pure-blooded prince, and on behalf of the Ustinov line - and all noble lines - I'll teach you about birthright! I'll show you midnight blood!" Volga pounds on his chest. He rages. The taciturn intellect previously painting the vampire's lips has run dry, and there's no longer a strategist behind his ruby eyes. "Quiver in the glory of what you'll never be!"

The dragon stomps. His feet bend rock into glass. The gentleman Volga burns away, and shimmering red, what was beneath the aristocrat saunters forth. Volga's cheeks curl. His skin shrivels and becomes tight. Candles in the pit dim as flesh and bone crack into a collection of sickles and pikes. Exuding darkness, the jagged man reveals his true face. Plate mail forms in ranks down his hide. The Wyvern. His spine extends into a snapping tail. The Naga. Boils fill and pop, spilling poison over the sand. The Yaoguai. A third eye grows in the center of his head. The Basilisk. From his skull, a crown of twisted horns. The Zilant. A hulk of teeth, claws, scales, wings, and fur. The Chimera.

Volga is a nightmare given preternatural life. His charcoal heart burns at the center of a form stitched from monsters of legend or worse, the inspiration for fables and myths. The demented thing pulverizes rock with a swing of its fat tail and incinerates stone with hot breath. Points dug deep into the earth, its claws cut a channel straight toward Lourdes.

Lourdes, however, shows no fear. Looking at his gun and sword, only one is of more use in this fight. He slides his pistol into its holster. He presses his hat down firm. Holding his ground, the cowboy grips his blade like a vice.

"I will have no king... I will be no one's king..." Lourdes rumbles as Volga comes near.

With a clap of thunder, Volga attacks.

While a brute towering above the boy and weighed down by impressive armor, spines, and tusks, Volga is a streak. Flashing through the mausoleum, he soars, roars, and dives on Lourdes, cresting at the front of an ashen wave. His knuckles sure, Lourdes meets Volga head on. A cross of white sings out. Lourdes parries and thrusts, dancing atop the hulk while the horror levels a wide swath of the cavern with a single swipe. Lourdes stabs at Volga, and his blade sinks in, but it meets a mass of scales and bone deeper than the length of the silver knife.