The Testament

Superimposed over this scene was the specter of his father's face, and then the familiar voice: "No matter how hard you try, you can't outrun the past."

Ivo Rossi, Knight of the Field, astride a powerful black and yellow K 1200 S BMW motorcycle, rendezvoused with the delivery truck Je

"According to the electronic tracker in the Aviator, they're on Timber Lane, heading due west," Rossi said.

"The cemetery." Donatella was always one step ahead of everyone. That was what made her so valuable to Rossi and so scary to everyone else. They had known each other since they were preadolescents, finding each other in the crawling filth of Rome's back alleys, exploring a sexual landscape both new and dangerous. Opportunistic to the core, they survived by feeding off the misfortune of others, which more often than not they themselves manufactured.

The moment of their first encounter was forever tattooed on his memory. Lithe and impossibly thin, she had been ru

Since then, they had been like twins, recruited into the Knights of St. Clement together, training together as Knights of the Field, whose bloody purpose they quite naturally understood. Often, they began and finished each other's sentences, thought the same thoughts, for the same reasons. They had been set loose together, stalking prey, infiltrating organizations and institutions as their orders dictated. Always, they had done what had been asked of them, willingly, happily, with a devout-almost holy-sense of purpose, for the Knights of St. Clement had become the orphans' mother and father.

"It's not logical, of course," Rossi said as they sped west. The highway was filled with cars, trucks, SUVs, limitless possibilities. With a familiar burst of exhilaration, he was aware of what his life in the Voire Dei had given him. It had legitimized his natural instincts; instead of ru

"But what would you expect of her," he said, "once you take into consideration what's on her mind every day and every night?"

"A weakness that will prove their downfall." Donatella smoothly upshifted and accelerated. On a mission, she felt the world open to her like a flower, and she was happy. In the dead spaces between, she starved herself sexually, suffered from insomnia and bit her nails until the quicks bled. At those times, there was no emotion in her but pain, and none other that she could imagine. Now, however, purpose hummed inside her like a hive of bees, and she felt that there was no pain, no deterrent capable of stopping her or even giving her pause.

The cemetery spread out all around Je

Je

As if at last making up her mind, she stopped abruptly and turned to him, engaging his eyes with her own. "Listen to me, Bravo, I need to tell you something. Your father was killed by an explosive charge."

Bravo felt something clench painfully in his belly. "But the police said that it was a gas leak." All at once he felt dizzy. "They assured me it was an accident."

"That's just what they-and you-were meant to believe." Je

"How do you know that?" He was aware that his voice was harsh, almost antagonistic. He didn't want to believe her. Of course he didn't want to believe her.

"Dexter Shaw was a member of the Haute Cour-the i

Bravo followed her account with a sense of mounting horror, and all at once a memory flooded through him. "I want to make you an offer," Dexter Shaw had said in characteristically cryptic fashion. "Remember your old training?" This bit of the last conversation he'd had with his father stuck in his mind like a moth pi

They had begun to walk again, urged by Je

"Breathe, Bravo," she said to him softly, kindly, as she observed him. "You'll feel better the more deeply you breathe."

He did as she said and in the process felt keenly a sensation of being in her hands. It was not altogether unpleasant, for he was in the midst of a dawning realization that ever since he'd awoken in the hospital his world was changed forever. Sometime during his state of utter unconsciousness he'd entered an unknown territory. Suddenly alone, he was grappling to come to terms with a new world order of which he had no knowledge.

"I need some answers," he said. "From my studies, I know that the Gnostic Observatines were a supposedly heretical sub-order of the Franciscan Observatines, who broke with both the traditionalists and the mainliners. Is it still a religious order? And what about you? I was under the impression that the Order was strictly male."

"Once it was," Je