The Machiavelli Covenant by Allan Folsom

Author:Allan Folsom [Folsom, Allan]
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 2009-12-04T07:43:15+00:00

84

• 11:55 A.M.

Demi put out a hand to steady herself as the white Monasterio Benedictino Montserrat van made a sharp turn up the long, winding mountain road leading to the monastery. High above her and in the distance she could see the structure itself. It looked like a medieval fortress in miniature, a tiny city built into the cliffs.

Now she shifted her gaze and looked back inside the van. Raphael, the driver, was intent on the road and a large tour bus directly in front of them. Behind him, Beck and Luciana were silent, intent on something they were reading.

Demi looked at Luciana more closely. She was dressed in black and had a large black purse on the seat beside her. It was essentially the same thing she'd worn yesterday when Demi first met her. It made her wonder if it was a uniform of sorts, a classic costume for a classic witch, if there was such a thing.

Demi had told Marten and the president she had no idea who Luciana was. It was a lie. Luciana had been the center of her attention for years and was the wellspring of everything. For the last two decades she had been the sacerdotessa, the high priestess of the secret Aldebaran boschetto, the coven. As such she had mastered the intricate skills of her craft, most specifically those of ritual and psychic influence, and it meant she had authority over all of the coven's followers and that included Reverend Beck and Merriman Foxx.

A widow with piercing green eyes and striking black hair and still remarkably handsome at sixty-six, Luciana owned Pensione Madonnella, a small hotel on the Italian island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples where she had been born. Further research—in the form of a hired private investigator—had established that she left the island two or three times a year for ten days or so at a time to visit small towns and villages in north and central Italy where she would meet with others of the coven, men and women alike, who carried the tattoo of Aldebaran on their left thumb. Immediately afterward she returned to Ischia to oversee her business.

Then, and always at this same time of year, she came to the monastery at Montserrat, where she would check into the Hotel Abat Cisneros and spend the greater part of a week. What she did there or even if it involved the boschetto, Demi had not been able to discover. But whatever it was, it apparently involved Reverend Beck and probably had for some time, because for the last dozen years he had taken his vacation and gone to Europe during the same period. Yet it had not been until yesterday when Demi came to Beck's suite at the Regente Majestic and found the sacerdotessa seated on a couch and having coffee with him that she put Beck's excursions to Europe together with Luciana's sojourns to Montserrat. In retrospect it was a moment of revelation she might well

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