under the water again. He gasped, taking in water, choked.
There was a restriction around his throat: Rossi's hands clamped against his windpipe. Rossi was pressing down, knees drawn up as weapons, all his weight centered on Bravo's chest. Bravo struggled, could see nothing through the churned-up water. Desperately he tried to pry Rossi's hands from his throat, but the fingers were like iron, and in his position he lacked leverage.
He began to see spots in front of his eyes, first white, then black; consciousness flickered in and out and he felt a growing lassitude in his extremities. And from this painless place a thought curled like a serpent: Why not let it all go? Why not close his eyes and just drift away?
Arms splayed out, Bravo knew that he was dying. And still, as if working of their own volition, his hands moved crabwise, the half-curled fingers scrabbling through the silt into which Rossi was in the process of burying him. It took him a moment to recognize the feeling transmitted through the fingertips of his left hand to his half- numbed brain. Then he curled his fingers, grasping the hard object, swinging his arm up and around, slamming the object as hard as he could into the orbital bone just above Rossi's left eye.
Rossi, thrashing in pain, relinquished his grip on his throat. Gathering all that remained of his strength, Bravo rose off the lake bed, gasping in a great lungful of air as he swung again. He saw what he held-Rossi's own gun, abandoned in the heat of the hand-to-hand combat-and he brought it down against the vulnerable spot just above Rossi's ear.
Rossi went down, thrashing, but one claw-fingered hand grabbed the front of Bravo's sodden shirt, took him off his feet, back under the water. Rossi struck out blindly, his fist catching Bravo on the cheek and side of the neck. Bravo staggered, felt a wave of dizziness threaten to overwhelm him. Rossi was turning, trying to reverse their positions so that he was once again on top. If he managed that, Bravo knew that he was finished. As blind as Rossi, he reached out. His nails scratched for purchase on the skull, caught at the thick hair and held on as he struck Rossi again and again with the butt of the gun. Finally, there was no more movement left.
More than anything now Bravo needed air. He rose up, but even in death Rossi kept his grip on the front of his shirt. He tried to pry the fingers loose, failed, began to frantically tear off his shirt, but the oxygen in his lungs was giving out, the silty floor of the lake was sucking him down, and he knew he wouldn't make it.
Then, at the last possible instant, hands reached down from above, plunging through the murk, grasping him, hauling with relentless strength. Bubbles streaming from between clenched teeth, he grasped the hairless forearms, female forearms, capable and powerful, and he knew that Donatella had found him and that now that he had killed her lover nothing could save him.
Chapter 6
He had the presence of mind to use the only weapon at his disposal. But in his depleted condition Rossi's gun seemed as heavy and unwieldy as a refrigerator, and even as he lifted it, a blow to the inside of his wrist defeated his wavering aim. It was not a hard blow, and he wondered at that even as he heard a voice.
'Bravo… where is Rossi?'
A female voice, Donatella. Of course she wanted to know where her lover was. If he told her… He began to fight and was restrained. A familiar voice-had he heard Donatella speak before? He could not remember, but he must have because she was shaking him now. He wanted to see her face, to look into the eyes of the woman who was going to kill him, but there was water streaming across his face, and bits of mud and debris from the lake. Still he fought, though pinned, because it was the only thing he could think of to do.
'Rossi, Bravo… Bravo!'
A hand wiped across his face, clearing his vision, and that voice-of course it was familiar. He found himself staring up into a face as familiar as the voice.
'Jenny,' he said. She was straddling him, fingers curled around each of his wrists, pinioning him to the ground. 'I saw Rossi shoot you. You fell and…'
She leaned over, her eyes fever-bright. 'Bravo, where is Rossi?'
'Dead. Rossi's dead. But you…'
'That's right, I'm bruised but unhurt.'
He stared, wide-eyed, as she opened her blouse partway so that he could see the puffy bruise, already turning livid, around her collarbone.
'I… I don't understand. The bullet should have torn you apart.'
She took Rossi's gun from his hand, ejected the ammo from the chamber, and held it out to him. 'Not if it was a rubber bullet.'
He sat up then, coughed as she scrambled off him, gave him a hand up. Taking one of the bullets from her palm, he rolled it between his fingers, as if the tactile sensation would help him to understand. 'But why would Rossi use rubber bullets?'
'I don't know,' Jenny said, 'but let's not debate the issue here. We're too exposed and Donatella can't be far away.'
Donatella! He looked around. Splashes of light drifted through the leaves of the weeping willow. He looked back up the slope toward the mausoleum, hidden by the trees and underbrush. At any moment Donatella could appear. It was a miracle that she hadn't already. He nodded, then allowed Jenny to lead him around the northern edge of the lake, through a thick copse of beech trees to a low stone wall over which they clambered. His head felt as if at any moment it was going to explode, and he could feel every blow Rossi had delivered like electric shocks running through him with each step he took.
Once on the other side of the wall, they were confronted by a narrow line of river maples beyond which was a road. They could hear the whirr and hiss of two-way traffic, reminding them of the normal world that existed all around them. For a moment, Bravo leaned back against the rough stones of the wall. He felt their age seeping into him, and he listened, as if they had a tale to tell him.
'Bravo, we have to keep moving,' Jenny said with some urgency.
He knew that, of course, but he remained where he was. It was imperative that he regain his inner equilibrium, but he was gripped by despair. He had just killed a man. Whether or not that man was also trying to kill him was, in a way, beside the point. It came to him that he had crossed some profound moral boundary, and now, belatedly, he wondered whether his father had had to kill a Knight of St. Clement to protect himself or the Order's cache of secrets. Now, an idea that would once have struck him as unthinkable did not seem in the least shocking. In fact, it seemed probable, and somehow this notion was like a beacon piercing the black despair. In his mind, this connection to the other, secret world that his father had inhabited was like a lifeline, and the moment he grabbed it he felt himself stand up straight. Seconds later, he was following Jenny through the grass and hedges, through the thin line of the flaky-barked maples to the verge of the road.
At last, Donatella emerged from the wellhead. Because of the mechanism that hermetically sealed the interior of the crypt, it had taken her far longer to get through the bronze casket door than she had estimated. Precious time when her quarry was moving farther away from her. She consoled herself with the thought that every step they took brought them closer to Rossi, but, truth be told, she didn't want Rossi to get to them first. She wanted that pleasure all to herself. She'd known it as soon as she had flirted with Braverman Shaw on the street. Drawing attention to herself had been a stupid thing to do, she'd known when she'd smiled at him, but she couldn't help herself. There had been something in him, some deeply suppressed animal part she had recognized instantly and responded to. There had been something profoundly intimate-primal-in that moment, two animals scenting each other in the forest, that she now carried around with her like a photo in a locket.
Just as she carried Ivo's essence with her wherever she went. Her isolation was what made him so vital to her existence. Nothing else mattered but Ivo-and, of course, their prey. She and Ivo had sacrificed for one another, tended one another when they were ill. They had killed together, and when they came together it was with the incandescence of the sun.
The way ahead of her sloped downward toward a veil of weeping willows beyond which was the lake. There were three sets of footprints, prey followed by hunter. She followed them down the slope until she saw something that gave her pause.
Squatting, she ran her hand over the muddy surface where, she was certain, there had been a struggle.
