Author's Notes: And I now have 30 reviews. I'm so excited. Twelve more and I'll have more reviews on a story than I've ever had before.
~edited to shift notes around to remove spoilery things from the top~
Chapter 9
Heavy Burdens
Diego was in his father's office, a box containing some of his great grandfather Alejandro's papers open in front of him on the desk. It was a very curious collection of items. He hadn't realized that his great grandfather had been such a student of supernatural phenomena. Of course, studies like that tended to be kept quiet unless the student wanted to run afoul of the Inquisition. It wasn't very bad now as when they were at their height, but in his great grandfather's day, there still was a danger of being accused of practicing dark arts.
Not that the papers he'd read so far indicated that he was interested in the occult except in an academic way. There was a list of books on the subject, some of which were marked with symbols whose significance he didn't understand. They might indicate books his great-grandfather owned or ones he thought valuable or something else entirely. He didn't see the title of the book on the list. As he continued shifting through the papers, he saw references to a journal in which the elder Alejandro had recorded his studies and experiences, but no indication as to what had happened to it.
He finally found a curious letter written to his grandfather that might have something to do with his search:
My son Sebastian,
I know you will wonder at my entrusting to you this particular trunk, since the secrets contained within would seem to fall more naturally to Teodoro who has chosen to follow the calling that was once mine. A calling that he and young Solomon have embraced— a calling that I know both you and the young man's father believe has little merit. I regret that this has been a point of contention, though I am grateful that you have been spared the sight of the things which I have seen and which I pray you may never see, especially as you have your wife and sons depending upon you.
However skeptical you may be, I know that I can trust you to treat this request with the proper respect even if you do not understand or agree with the reasons behind it. I know you will find it difficult to believe but simply trust me when I say the contents of this box are of themselves singular and dangerous, and if Teodoro were to fall to those forces which often threaten, they would do far more harm than any good that he could ever have derived from them.
This is a family trust, for good or for ill, and you are my eldest son. I have seen that the new world is calling to you and Everardo, that you both wish to seek your destinies there. I only beseech that you take this with you and find a place of proper concealment for it. I do not exaggerate when I say that the farther it is from our shores the safer it will be. There is one who if he were to become aware of the existence of one item in this trunk would go to any lengths to acquire it, and he bears our family no good will and is served by those who bear us active ill. I will not write his name, as names have power, but you will know to whom I refer. Be careful. Be wary. Though you do not believe, protect this as though you did.
Your affectionate father,
Alejandro Salvador Reinaldo de la Vega
Diego reread the letter a couple of times. It did not specifically refer to any books or even names, but if there was something valuable enough that Dracula would cross two oceans for, it would most likely be in this trunk. He wondered at the reference to his great uncle Teodoro and young Solomon, recalling another Solomon, one of the most truly intimidating men he had ever met. He continued to search to see if there was any other mention of the trunk in the papers but found nothing else. He put everything but the letter back in the box. There was another box with his grandfather's papers, but as it was getting late, he decided to leave searching that until the morning.
Checking the front door to be sure it was locked, Diego was about to go to his room, when he heard a loud commotion outside the house. Hurrying outside, he was shocked to see Pablo, one of the de la Vega vaqueros, stumbling off his horse, helped by Miguel.
"What's happened?" he asked, running up to them.
"Patrón, Zorro— he attacked the men; I managed to get to a horse, but..." Pablo passed out and Diego helped Miguel keep him from hitting the ground.
"Let's get him inside," Diego said, stunned by Pablo's assertion that Zorro attacked them. They got him inside to the sofa, where Diego started looking at his wounds. Maria came running out. He told her to bring some bandages, before turning back to Miguel. "Get as many men together as you can. Send someone to the cuartel to get the lancers. Have someone load the wagon with blankets and medical supplies, we may need them." He closed his eyes for a moment, in the certainty that they would do no good. "Hurry."
Miguel ran out the door, while Diego took care of Pablo's wounds. A couple more vaqueros came in and Diego left them with Pablo while he went and got one of his father's swords, since there was no way for him to get down to the cave, and secret or no, he wasn't going out tonight without a sword.
Pablo had managed to tell Miguel exactly where the men had been attacked. Diego mounted Esperanza and rode with the men to face the unknown.
~Z~Z~Z~
It was late afternoon when Diego was able to return home for more than a few minutes, and he was feeling very sick and very tired and wishing he could put everything out of his mind. He hoped that he would never live through another day such as this one again, and never before had he wished so strongly for the presence of his father and Felipe.
His feelings of foreboding had been right. No one had been left alive. Like the bandits of the previous day, they were all marked with Z's carved into their flesh. However, now Diego realized that whoever did this was either trying to frame Zorro or trying to use him to cover their own activities. It was almost unbelievable: three men dead and one man wounded now and just before this four men killed. Why was this happening?
Mendoza had come bringing with him Padre Benites and a group of lancers. Diego told them what Pablo had said but added that he thought it more likely that someone was trying to take advantage of Zorro's disappearance, an idea that Mendoza seemed to agree with. It was too dark to be able to track anything. There had been no need to make any more than a cursory examination of the bodies. It was the same as before. They were carefully loaded on the wagons, and Padre Benites rode with them.
Realizing that there was nothing more that he could do at the site, Diego had returned with a couple of men to inform the families, a duty he wished more than anything he could have avoided, but he did it as gently as he could and tried not to think about how much better his father would have done it. Or how reassuring his presence would have been. Diego had been hiding behind a mask too long to have earned the respect of the vaqueros beyond his doctoring skills.
The fact that it was Saturday meant they'd need to have the burial in the afternoon. Diego delegated as much of the work as he decently could, so that once the sun had risen he could return and see what he could discover for himself, and that's when he missed Felipe the most. The young man had become nearly as good a tracker as himself, and it would have been good to have a second pair of eyes and someone he could trust.
He hadn't been surprised to see a trail leading back towards Diablo Canyon. He had however been surprised to see Mendoza and some lancers already there, as well as evidence of yet another explosion, centered on the rock slide. Mendoza held a torn piece of black silk in his hands.
"Do you know what happened here, Sergeant?" he asked.
"Not really. Some of the lancers were told about some red sparks in the sky and some others about an explosion, so we came. I don't know what to make of this though. Do you, Don Diego?"
"I'm afraid not, Sergeant. I wish I did," he said.
Looking around didn't make anything clearer to him. He couldn't look for long; he had other responsibilities. Diego just managed as the rest of the day became a blur as exhaustion started catching up with him. Almost mechanically he did everything he was supposed to, everything his father would expect him to. Victoria had heard the news and came for the funerals. While he welcomed her presence, he was a bit concerned for her safety and insisted that she not go back alone. She refused his offer to escort her as she said he looked exhausted, so he got Miguel to see that she made it home safely.
Almost asleep on his feet, Diego made his way to his bedroom. He barely had the energy to change into a nightshirt before collapsing into his bed. Tired though he was, his mind was still restless.
For a long while, he replayed in his mind everything he had seen and done for the past couple of days. Over and over, he imagined how he might have done things differently, how he could have done things better, more particularly how his father would have handled things.
He rubbed his sore, dry eyes, trying to wipe away the images of the families of the vaqueros but it was no use. Worst of all were the blank, uncomprehending looks of the children who didn't realize their father wouldn't be coming home. They only knew that something was very wrong and Diego was haunted by the idea that they would think Zorro did it.
As he finally drifted off into an uneasy sleep, his last waking thoughts were about how much he felt like a failure. Someone was pretending to be Zorro, to be him, and had killed men that were under his charge, men for whom he was responsible, and he had failed them. He had failed their families. He had failed his father. He felt he had failed everyone and couldn't help but wonder who else might yet be hurt or worse because of him.
~TBC~
Friday: Chapter 10 - Blood and Wine
End Notes: I'm not Catholic, and I don't know much about funeral rituals in Spanish California, but the brief research I did indicated that funerals tend to happen quickly and usually not on Sunday, which is why I have the burials happen that afternoon and not just because it makes things tougher on Diego. So please forgive any lapses there.
I don't know why DietMJ's review about how I'm describing evil made me smile so much, but it did. I think I must have a darker side than I thought. I was rather partial to the "it was more personal" line myself; it seemed to capture Boris's personality.
jkl88: I will say this, while this is darker than I usually write, and Diego is not getting through this completely unscathed, I do have a policy of not killing off the main characters, unless the show actually killed them off (i.e. Luis Ramone). I have no problems with making them suffer, however.
CrazyJan57: I'm actually pretty pleased with how Boris has turned out, in the sense that I think he's the perfect match for Dracula in evil. As for the tavern visit, that's the next chapter.
~Moved from the top~
There's a little more information about the book (indirectly) in this chapter in a letter written by Diego's great-grandfather, who I've named Alejandro with the idea that Diego's father was named after him. And I've given his grandfather Sebastian two brothers— Everardo and Teodoro. If the name Everardo seems familiar, I've mentioned him in passing as Diego's deceased great uncle in Love Has No Rhyme and No Reason (if I go to the trouble of inventing a relative I have the tendency to keep them even if the genre shifts radically, less trouble that way).
I also need to give credit to Ghetto Outlaw for the last three paragraphs of the chapter. I had trouble expressing what I thought Diego would be feeling at this point, and he found the right words.
