Eric Lustbader - The Testament

The Old City was dense with tourists, slowing their trek through its packed streets, but at last they caught sight of the main gate.

"Now's the time to be on our guard," Jenny said.

Bravo nodded and began to walk toward the gate, but he swung around as her hand gripped his arm.

"I'm going first," she said and almost at once raised a hand to stop his intended protest. "It won't matter what argument you use, the outcome will be the same." Her gaze was as steady as it was serious. "You think I'm not up to it, but I promise you I am."

"You did a helluva job protecting me and Camille on the motorway," Bravo said, matching her serious tone. "I guess I didn't tell you that before."

"No," Jenny said, "you didn't."

She let go of him and strode purposefully past. He followed her as she snaked her way through the throng of sightseers streaming through the gate and out onto the cobbled road beyond which stretched the bus-filled car park.

They had to pause, waiting for a gap in the slow crawl of cars backed up along the road. The air was stifling with the accumulation of sun, baking stone and exhaust emissions. People were everywhere: tourists in twos, fours, and larger groups; bicyclists on errands or just out for exercise; children laughing, crying or screaming; exasperated parents tugging at their little hands. Sweet scents came to them of ice cream, sticky candy and cheap cologne. Jenny turned, saw coming toward them a group of perhaps fifteen children between the ages of eight and nine. They were accompanied by three adults, one at their head, one behind, and the third walking alongside.

A gap was opening up in the traffic flow and she was turning away when she saw movement in the corner of her eye. The third adult had broken into a lope, leaving the group of children behind. The other two adult supervisors were paying him no mind, which told Jenny they didn't know him, he'd been using the children as camouflage.

Grabbing Bravo, she plunged headlong into the gap in the traffic, but they were no more than halfway across the blisteringly hot road when she saw the bicyclist bearing down on them. It was a two-pronged attack.

There was no more time for speculation. The cyclist had a length of wicked-looking polished wood in his hand and was lifting it in preparation of delivering a blow. She had to act now.

Pushing Bravo aside, she stood tall, waited for the downswing of the stick and, moving her arm in parallel to its arc, grabbed it and, at the same time, drove the cocked elbow of her other arm into the cyclist's throat. She kicked the front wheel and the bicycle went over, taking its rider with it.

"Run!" she shouted to Bravo. "Run!"

Together, they took off along the road in the same direction as the traffic flow. Horns blared and voices were raised in outrage as they darted in and out between the cars. Risking a glance behind them, Jenny saw the first man had grabbed the fallen bicycle. He swung aboard and took off after them. In one hand he brandished a large gun.

They ran as fast as they could, but because they had to watch out for the lurching cars, stopping and starting as they brushed against them, it was slow and perilous going. The cyclist was gaining on them rapidly. Jenny looked around for alternate escape routes, but the crowd pressed in at every direction. They'd be sitting ducks for the cyclist, unless… She moved them into the thickest part of the throng, using the people around them as a shield.

But at that moment, another, even greater danger presented itself. A silver BMW X5 SUV appeared in the carpark, racing toward them from the opposite direction.

"The vise is complete," Bravo said without rancor.

There was no time for evasive manuevers-the oncoming BMW was upon them. In a moment, Jenny thought, they'd be dead meat, and there wasn't a thing she could do about it.

Jenny, tensed and determined to do what she could to protect Bravo from the Knights' attack, saw the driver's head pop out of the side window.

"Get in!" he shouted.

Even while she was wondering what Anthony Rule was doing here, Bravo called out, "Uncle Tony!"

Rule risked a quick glance at the cyclist and at once saw the raised gun. "Get in, the two of you! Hurry!"

Jenny opened the SUV's door, placing her body as a shield between Bravo and the gunman. A shot rang out, piercing the window, shattering the glass. Jenny pushed Bravo's head down behind the metal as she bundled him into the backseat. The instant she jumped in, Rule took off. With a fierce blare of his horn he stopped two oncoming cars in their tracks and caused a minor fender bender as the vehicle behind them couldn't stop in time. He turned the wheel over, they jumped the low concrete divider between the road and the car park and, with more room to maneuver, he accelerated into the vast cobbled apron behind the line of tour buses. By this time they'd left the gunman far behind, a fact remarked on by Rule as he checked the rearview mirror.

"I'd have run over the bastard if I'd been alone," he said. Then he chuckled low in his throat. "But if I'd been alone he never would have been here, would he?"

"Speaking of which," Jenny said tartly, "what are you doing here?"

"Wait a minute," Bravo said, "you two know each other?"

"You're welcome," Rule said to Jenny as if Bravo hadn't asked the question. Then, when he saw her frown, his eyes flicked to Bravo in the mirror. "What was I thinking? She's the Ice Goddess, after all."

"The Ice Goddess. That's what the other Guardians call me," Jenny muttered darkly.

"You give them sufficient cause," Rule said.

"Oh, yes," she said, rising to the bait, "it's always my fault, isn't it?"

"And here's a newsflash for you, kiddo, it isn't only the Guardians."

"Why should I give a crap?"

Rule shrugged, as if to say that if she didn't want to take his advice, it was of no moment to him.

Bravo observed this dialog with a growing sense of astonishment. Not only did his father have a life kept secret from him, so did Uncle Tony.

"Shaken up, Bravo?" Rule said, as if reading his thoughts.

"Give me a minute."

Rule drove them out of the rear of the car park and into the new city, turning this way and that as if he were in a video game, making sure their enemies couldn't follow them. Of course, it made perfect sense that Uncle Tony was a Gnostic Observatine. Bravo had always called him Uncle Tony not because he was related but because he was so close with Bravo's father.

"You still haven't told us what you're doing here," Jenny pursued doggedly. "It can't be coincidence."

"Coincidence doesn't exist in the Voire Dei, does it, kiddo?" Rule shook his head. "No, I was following the trail of the second key."

"The second key?" Bravo said.

Uncle Tony nodded. "There are two keys to the cache. Your father had one, Molko had the other. Molko was taken by the Knights, tortured and killed. We have to assume they have the second key."

"So it has turned into a race," Bravo said.

"In a sense," Uncle Tony said. "Except that the Knights don't yet know the location of the cache. Only your father knew it."

"That's why I was being tailed all the way from New York to Washington," Bravo said. He thought of Rossi making sure they wouldn't be shot when they fled Jenny's house, the rubber bullet with which Jenny had been shot at the cemetery. Now he had confirmation of his theory that the Knights hadn't been sent to kill them; they needed to find out the location of the cache. "But Jenny and I took care of that before we came here."

"What you need to understand," Rule said, "is that the Knights of St. Clement are like a hydra-lop off two heads and four more take their place."

"They can't have a bug on Bravo," Jenny said. "He's got nothing on him he had in Washington, not even his clothes."