Eric Lustbader - The Testament

"Dad, what should I do?"

"It's your decision now, Bravo."

"I love her, I don't want her to die."

"I loved Steffi, I didn't want her to die."

"But you betrayed her, you slept with Camille."

"I'm human, Bravo, just like everyone else."

"But you're not like everyone else, Dad!"

Dexter smiled. "When you were a child, it was good for you to see me that way, it gave you comfort and security, that's the way of the world. But now you're an adult, you have to accept me as I really was, you have to provide your own comfort and security…"

Bravo, blinking away tears, found himself once again alone by the seething Cauldron, Jenny beside him. He heard her labored breathing, looked down again at the vessel that held the Quintessence.

Faith. Was his faith strong enough?

He carefully replaced the Quintessence in the chest. But it was as if the phial were alive, it was so difficult to let it go, to pull his hand away. With an extreme effort he did, closed the lid and lowered the toy chest back into the hole his father had made for it.

The buried Quintessence nevertheless beat like a telltale heart as he replaced the soil, tamped it down, replaced the bed of pine needles and forest detritus. Then, with a fervent prayer to the Virgin Mary, cradling Jenny in his arms, he began the trek back to Sumela.

Eight hours later, in the middle of the night, Jenny awoke in terrible pain. She cried out. Then Bravo had her hand, was bending over her. She could see his face in the soft lamplight.

"Where am I?"

"Macka," he said. "Next door is the clinic's surgery."

"The cache?"

"It was just where my father buried it," he said. "Breathe easy, Jenny, it's safe."

"I want to get out of here." She tried to rise, moaned. With a rattle of tubes that ran into her, carrying blood and saline, she sank back against the rough pillow.

"Tomorrow or the next day," Bravo said, "when your fever is completely gone, we'll move you to Trabzon."

"We?"

"I called Khalif. He's out of the hospital and is all too happy to come get us with an ambulance. I wasn't going to trust you to a car for the three-hour drive out of the mountains."

He gave her some water, waited a moment while she swallowed. "Go back to sleep now, you need your rest."

"And you don't?"

He laughed, but all she could muster was a smile. For the moment, it was enough.

"Bravo, what will happen now?"

"Now that I have control of the cache, you mean?" He watched her eyes, large and serious. The time had passed for joking, he saw. She needed answers, no less than he had, which was why he hadn't slept a wink since he'd brought her to the clinic at Macka. He'd been too busy thinking, then making a series of calls.

"I've spoken to my sister, Emma," he said. "She's the net-worker, in touch with all the members of the Order, at every level. They have voted. I'm the new Magister Regens."

Her eyes opened wide. "And what of the Haute Cour?"

"It will advise me, just as it advised the Magister Regens centuries ago. New members will have to be nominated, of course. The first one I'll nominate is you."

"Me?"

He laughed again, more softly.

"Then you must also nominate a Venetian nun named Arcangela."

"The Anchorite-yes, I know about her." He nodded his assent. "It's past time the valuable women of the Order were recognized, their ideas, schemes and insights brought fully into the fold."

"And where will we go from here?"

"Sleep now, Jenny. Tomorrow will be soon enough-"

"Not for me. I won't sleep until you tell me."

He sat in the semidarkness contemplating her question. It was a good one, the only one that counted, and he had pondered long and hard through the night as to what needed to be done.

"First, you and I will move the cache to a safer place. I'm going to need time to evaluate its contents, determine what our power really is. The Order needs to continue my father's work. Even as we talk here, the world is changing, and not for the better, I fear. There is a new war coming, Jenny. In fact, it's already begun. My father knew it, and now so do I. A religious war that will rock every nation unless it can be averted. The fundamentalists on each side-the Christians and the Islamics-are determined to exterminate the other, and neither cares who gets in their way. We can't let that happen, can we?"

"No," she said. "We can't."

"Then you'll help me." His excitement rushed out of him like sparks from an engine. "The first order of business is to make contact with all the elements of the Order's ancient religious network my father kept alive and running."

Jenny smiled. It was what she most wanted to hear. But she was already slipping into sleep, and she answered him only in her dreams.

Khalif did not arrive alone. With him when he drew up in the ambulance were two paramedics, who immediately jumped out with a stretcher and went to get Jenny. When Bravo was done directing them, he came out into the narrow street to greet his friend. Khalif's shoulder was bandaged and his arm was in a cast; nevertheless the Turk seemed remarkably chipper.

"Your call was manna from heaven. It's good to be back in the game."

They embraced was if they were long-lost brothers.

Khalif's face turned sober. "How is she?"

"She'll be okay, she's tough."

It was only then that he noticed another figure standing in the shadows across the street. At first, he seemed unfamiliar. Then Bravo recognized him as the old priest he had first given the coin to at the Church of l'Angelo Nicolo` in Venice. He remembered Jenny asking him if he could trust the old man. Somehow, Bravo had known that he could.

The electric blue eyes watched him as they had in the church, with a mixture of curiosity and amusement. But now there was something else in them: he no longer felt a child in the old priest's eyes.

The paramedics appeared with Jenny on the stretcher. They paused long enough for Bravo to lean over, press his lips to hers.

"I'll be right next to you," he said, "all the way home."

The paramedics put her into the rear of the ambulance, and Khalif climbed in after them. The driver sat behind the wheel, picking at his nails. A dog barked somewhere along the sun-blasted street, otherwise all was still. Not another soul in sight.

The old priest crossed the street.

"You didn't use the Quintessence, did you?"

Bravo felt the weight of the priest's solemn gaze on him. He had spoken in Trapazuntine Greek, but Bravo suspected it could just as well have been Latin, or Greek or any number of ancient languages.

"No," he replied in the same language.

"Why not?" the old priest asked. "You had cause."

"But not just cause."

The old priest's robes were black, his long, wild hair pure white. Around his neck was a short chain that held a key-a key, Bravo saw now, that was the twin to the one his father had left for him, the key that opened the original chest that had for centuries held the order's cache of secrets. It was the key held by Jon Molko, Dexter Shaw's backup. Dexter must have given it to the old priest for safekeeping.

The old priest inclined his head imperceptibly. "I've waited a long time for this moment."

Bravo took a deep breath. He knew he was looking at living history. "And if I'd opened the Quintessence?"

The old priest smiled. "It is sealed with wax, but over the centuries the seal cracked, and when your father removed the lid he found that the contents had evaporated."

Bravo waited, stunned. His heart was a trip-hammer beating in his chest. "He tried to save my mother."

"Though I counseled against it." The old priest locked his fingers together. "He wanted to be Magister Regens. His idea was correct, but he was not the one. Now you know why."