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Category:
Action/Thriller
Publisher: Brendan Carroll
ISBN-10: 1449994644
Type: Fiction
Pages: 316
Copyright: Jan 23, 2010
ISBN-13: 9781449994648
Price: $3.99 (eBook)
The Chevaliere Meredith Sinclair learns a hard lesson about magick. The events she set in motion when she used the Mystery of the Wisdom of Solomon to find her daughter are still wreaking havoc on her 'Disciples'. The Order's Healer astounds his Brothers by playing a trick with deadly consequences on the unwitting Chevaliere and not only brings ruin upon his own head when the Mad Arab learns what he has done, he brings on the wrath of the Assassin by stealing her away from him. The Chevalier du Morte plots his own death as well as that of the Mad Arab and his lost love while trying to live up to his promise to help find the Golden Eagle's missing daughter.
Excerpt
Lucio Dambretti was extremely drunk. He lay on the sofa in his dusty apartment in Naples and stared at the antique light fixture above his head. He had never noticed all the pretty colors in the crystal pendants before. They twinkled and sparkled even through the fine coating of dust that had accumulated since his last visit, emitting a rainbow of colors on the elegant designs on the plastered ceiling. If he closed his eyes he could almost hear what they would sound like if the wind could blow through them. He reached haphazardly for the wine bottle on the floor by the sofa and almost knocked it over, grabbed at it, almost falling off the sofa and saved the rug. He held it up triumphantly. It was empty.
He pushed himself up and looked around the room, frowning. Someone would have to come in and clean it all up. He needed to remodel the spare bedroom for Lucia and get himself together. The place had been closed up for almost two decades and it smelled like it.
A new housekeeper… that was what he needed. One that could cook this time and one that went home every night. He knew nothing of what little girls might like in their bedrooms. He would need a new kitchen as well! The kitchen was bare except for the essentials. Refrigerator. Microwave. Antique gas stove. And he loved to cook. Why had he allowed it to become such a wreck? A complete remodel was in order. His apartment needed a new, lighter, more modern look. It had always been easier to eat at restaurants and his endless string of mistresses had possessed wide variances in housekeeping talents and tastes. He’d never given it a thought until now. Hearth and home. All that would change now, he supposed. Like everything else had already changed.
“Added responsibility!” he said aloud to the empty room. “I want to expand your areas of responsibility, Golden Eagle,” he mimicked the Grand Master’s words with a decidedly slurred, mock-French accent with an Italian flare.
Lucio had assumed wrongly that d’Brouchart was going to give him another set of scrolls to decipher or maybe a new ‘old’ manuscript found in someone’s attic to authenticate and transcribe. But this! Seneschal?! Lucio Apolonio Dambretti, Lucius of Venetia, Chevalier d’ l’Aigle d’Or, son of the Doge of Venice, now Seneschal of the Order of the Poor Knights of Solomon’s Temple, Red Cross of Gold. Basta! He would need a billboard for a business card! Ahhhhh, but he was the Golden Eagle… he could fly! He could soar! He could fall on his face.
Everything had been moving too fast for him on the one hand and too slow on the other. When were they going to tell him what he had written in the damnable notebook during Meredith’s magick circle? When were they going to allow him to go and fetch his daughter, Lucia, home? That was what he wanted to know. First things first. Retrieve Lucia. Set up his household… here. Find a cook. Find a wife and a mother for her. Then find some way to stop the Grand Master from calling him Golden Eagle!
He picked up the cell phone on the table by the sofa when it beeped again and carried it into the kitchen to the refrigerator. The Master had called again. He opened the door of the refrigerator and took out one of the two remaining bottles of wine before hitting the call button.
“Ciao?” the Grand Master answered the phone immediately… personally. Shocking.
“Your Grace,” Dambretti tried to keep the slur from his voice. “You called.”
“Golden Eagle. Good to hear from you, Brother.” There was a distinctively sarcastic tone in the man’s voice. “You may want to be here tomorrow around noon. We will discuss the contents of the book.”
“Yes, your Grace,” Lucio said carefully. He did not want to sound overjoyed though this news made him perk up immediately. “I’ll be there.”
“And Golden Eagle…”
“Your Grace?”
“Come sober.”
“Ah, si`, your Grace, of course,” Dambretti winced as the connection was cut abruptly.
“Santa Maria,” Lucio said softly and then popped the cork from the bottle with his thumbs. “I am being sober… in moderation,” he muttered as the cork flew across the room and shattered one of the panes in the window overlooking the street below. He listened quietly as the sounds of glass shattering against the balconies and stones echoed up to his ears.
“Santa Maria,” he said again and turned up the bottle before staggering across the kitchen to peer through the hole in the window down at the street. He immediately received a good cursing from a bleeding, bald-headed man on the sidewalk below. The two policemen with whom the man had been conversing in animated fashion, looked up at the Seneschal. One of them put his radio to his lips and the other started for the door of the apartment building.
Lucio turned and grabbed the phone from the table, spilling the wine on the floor and the tablecloth in his haste to punch de Bleu’s speed dial number.
“Brother!” he said when de Bleu’s answering service came on. “I’m going to need a bit of help here, Brother…” he backed up and sat down heavily in one the kitchen chairs. “Are you there? Come on, man, answer the phone! Where are you?!”
Lucio sighed as his doorbell began to ring incessantly.
“Santa Maria! I’m coming, I’m coming!” he shouted and started for the door.
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