Easier to run
Chapter 37
She didn't remember much of the beating, except for the first blow. And that was mostly because in the aftermath she found herself fixating on a splatter of blood in the dirt. Her mouth, her nose, her brow – she wasn't sure where it had come from. Strewn on the ground though, dark and glistening, it looked like it belonged on a Jackson Pollock canvas.
She was still staring at the blood when Dupont's fist struck a second time. And a third.
Then it all blurred together.
At some point she thought she heard Natla's drawl.
Lara's arms were released and she fell onto her knees and elbows. She managed to hold that position for all of a second before a heel slammed into her side. She collapsed face-down on the ground and just lay there.
More fists. Boots. She took them all. She had no fight left.
Once she tried to drag her shins under her body in an attempt to stand, but the response to that was a savage stomp on her kidneys. She sprawled again.
For a long time all she was aware of in the blackness was her rasped breathing, growing slower and less efficient, and her body jerking with every blow. Meanwhile Dupont grunted with a satisfaction that sounded practically sexual.
She supposed she should have found it strange that she couldn't feel anything, but it was probably for the best that way.
Her musing was interrupted by Sam's desperate voice, calling from somewhere far away.
"Stop it! Please. You're killing her… I did it. I shot Larson. Please! Look at her. She couldn't do anything."
Natla responded, "Except crash one of my vehicles and kill seven men during a very misguided escape attempt."
"I was the one who killed Larson."
No. Goddammit, Sam. Don't do this. I can't help you…
"Saaammm," Lara slurred, the words struggling to emerge from the swamp of blood, saliva and loose teeth that her mouth had become.
She couldn't open her eyes. But she could hear rubber soles striding away from her.
Followed by the muffled thwack of knuckles striking flesh and Sam's shriek of pain.
It happened again and again.
Lara couldn't even lift her head. All she could do was listen to the cruelty. It had its own special soundtrack – a dark, condemning mantra echoing inside her skull, repeated in her own voice. You have failed. You have failed Sam…
"Enough, Dupont," Natla snapped. "You've made your point."
In between Sam's shuddered breaths – Lara knew she was on the brink of sobbing – the archaeologist heard Dupont sneer, "Thank you for your honesty, mademoiselle."
Fists closed around Lara's biceps and she was hauled upright into a crucifixion pose, her arms splayed wide and useless.
Fingers clasped her jaw and raised her head. "Open your eyes, cherie."
Lara obeyed. Or she tried to. Her left eyelid was evidently too swollen to lift completely.
Dupont's satisfied grin filled her restricted field of view.
Then he stepped aside and Lara found herself facing Natla. Even with the application of make-up to gala dinner standards, the woman's face was unmistakably discoloured. Beneath a liberal coating of orange-rouge, her lips were grey. Even her eyes had lost their pinprick focus. She was exhausted; struggling.
Yet still she managed to keep her expression frosted when she murmured, "No more games, Lara."
Fine by me. The less arsing about the better at this point, even if what's waiting is a bullet.
Lara bound her words to a breath. It was the only way to get them out of her broken body. "If you kill Sam, Natla, I won't help you. You may as well kill me too."
"Disregarding everything else you've done, do you think you are in any position to negotiate after that little stunt you pulled with Stone?"
"What?"
"Where is she?"
"I don't – "
Dupont's fist swung in from nowhere.
A moment of blackness and then Lara was aware of fresh blood dripping from her chin. She shook her head in an attempt to unscramble her thoughts.
Don't worry about me. Just keep her distracted. That was what the doctor had said to her back at the Delphi base camp, before the archaeologist was hauled away.
Natla scrutinised Lara's expression. Not finding what she wanted, she threw out a few more words as bait. "The good doctor was supposed to join us here after packing up, but she vanished from the medical tent. Her boy has also disappeared from my research facility. You wouldn't happen to know where they are?"
Lara started laughing. She hadn't meant to, but the response was reflex – a fissure cracking open to vent her built-up base emotion. She couldn't even stop when Dupont loomed scowling in her peripheral vision.
"You're buggered, Natla. We're both of us buggered."
The blonde, at least in appearance, took the insubordination in her stride. She sighed, "This is exactly why I hate relying on people. You've always struck me as someone who feels the same, Lara. After all, I think you've enjoyed the greatest success alone; without the complication of useless sidekicks." She glanced to her right; then let her ice-cold irises flit back to Lara's face.
The Englishwoman knew what was waiting for her in that direction. The sight of Sam, bedraggled and bleeding – but trying to be strong – stifled Lara's laughter as effectively as a lid over a flaming pan.
"I was going to kill her," Natla explained matter of factly. "As punishment for whatever little scheme you and the doctor came up with. Or at least shoot her so you have some real urgency to motivate you. But I have a better idea. Remember my original offer, Lara? Disobey me and she suffers the consequences? You have three hours. After that, my men take turns with her. Thirty minutes each to do whatever they want. Beatings, torture, rape; I don't really care. Their instructions are to make her suffer."
The businesswoman paused to relish the look of horror settling over Lara's features like a shroud. The archaeologist knew exactly what the blonde would pick up on; what would please her most: when once there had been a layer of fury beneath Lara's fear, now there was simply defeat. Physically, the younger woman didn't have anything left for defiance… or obedience for that matter.
Natla added, "Afterwards, you can decide what is more humane: Getting her to a hospital or putting a bullet in her head after everything they've put her through."
Focus on your options, Lara. Don't look at Sam. Focus on what you can still do to get out of this.
The archaeologist grumbled, "Three hours. Three hours for what?"
"Well, my dear Lady Croft, we're here."
Lara couldn't believe it. For the first time she attempted to assess her new surroundings properly. The place didn't look any different from the forest she had fled through. Pine. Dirt. Chunks of rock.
They were standing in a gulley between a tree-studded hill slope and a cliff face. The former was unremarkable; the latter… atypical at closer inspection.
Despite her physical exhaustion, Lara felt her mind shift into a higher gear. The boulders that fronted the cliff had been hewn. It was rough work but definitely man-handled as it were. Though the space between them was filled with solid limestone, slabs of rock had been hauled into an obvious post and lintel frame. She thought instantly of Mycenae. There was even a monolithic pediment above the lintel – but so weather-battered it was impossible to discern the carving that had once fronted it.
Lara swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry from gaping. Though at that stage there was a part of her that couldn't give a rat's arse about the Aegis anymore, another part of her was enthralled.
Natla had found it – the hiding place of a mythological treasure – or, far more credibly, an undiscovered, undisturbed construction from the Bronze Age.
Lara tried to keep interest from tinting her voice when she responded, "Well, cheers, Jaqueline. Now you can let us go."
"Not quite. For one thing, I can't risk you running off to the authorities and interrupting what I'm trying to do. Not until I have the Aegis in my hands."
Sam blurted, "We won't say anything. We swear. Just dump us in the fucking woods somewhere. Lara's half-dead; we'll take forever to get out."
"I am aware of that, Samantha, but I'm out of time; more so now thanks to the good doctor's desertion." Natla traced her index finger along Lara's jawline as she continued to address the filmmaker. "I still need your lover, half-dead as she may be."
Lara glared at her captor. "What do you want me to do?"
Sam snapped, "Lara, don't help her. You know you can't trust her. Jesus, she'll kill us as soon as she has what she wants!"
"Perhaps," Natla smirked. "Or perhaps I'll no longer care about such trivial things as two baby dykes once I'm well, and practically a god."
Lara hissed back, "A mad god."
"Who you are going to help."
"I got you here. What else do you expect of me? I haven't quite perfected walking through walls yet."
The smugness of Natla's smile achieved a new incandescence. Her gaze flicked to the men restraining Lara, and they immediately followed the unsaid order, marching toward the archway with the archaeologist strung between them like a rack of freshly caught trout.
At the frame's base, Lara realised as she drew nearer, was a stone dais. It just wasn't obvious until you practically stood on top of it, given the centuries of earth shift that had sucked it down into the soil and smeared moss across its surface.
Natla's mercenaries released their hold and Lara tumbled into the disc. On all fours she found herself facing a pair of thickly engraved spirals, sandwiched between geometric patterning. Smaller swirls wafted off to the sides of the central image like tendrils of smoke.
Lara ran her fingertips over the spirals, which were grainy and darkened through two millennia of exposure. Her brain took a little longer to identify what the shapes represented. Eyes. Around them, feathers. And then wings stretching out. It was an owl. The emblem of Athena.
Her head shot up as the men stepped off the dais.
Before her, the apparently solid rock between post and lintel shuddered. A grating sound was followed by ticking, and then the limestone began to retreat into the cliff.
Lara stared down the lightless tunnel left in the stone's wake. How…?
Natla explained, "That only happens when a woman stands on it, alone. So now you see why I still require your skills."
The pair of mercs stepped back onto the dais and seized Lara's arms. No sooner did their boots scrape across the rock than the door rushed back towards them and slammed shut – as airtight in its frame as if it had never been disturbed.
The men hauled Lara backwards off the dais. She was still fixated on the secret structure – the possibilities of how it was made; what it contained – when a watch was tightened around her wrist, and a pack slipped over her shoulders. The latter was fastened with a strap across her chest.
As before, an LED light was attached to the front of the pack. Lodged into a pocket on the other strap was a two-way communicator. Clearly the impromptu nature of the camp move meant they were using budget-conscious communications technology this time around. That or Natla had no interest in tracking or talking to her "employee" anymore. All the businesswoman cared about was the prize placed at her feet. And Lara was certain, as far as Natla was concerned, that should require nothing more than an occasional blunt threat.
The merc adjusting Lara's pack prattled off a list of its contents. "Glow sticks, compass, notebook, rope, chalk…"
"No weapons," Natla was quick to add. "Lady Croft is notorious for her ingenuity. I'm sure she can make do with whatever she finds down there."
Lara scowled at the blonde. And then hissed when a hypodermic needle was jabbed into her right arm. The bloke kitting her out certainly didn't have Stone's bedside manner, even if he had inherited her comprehensive bag of medical supplies.
Natla chuckled at Lara's reaction. "Relax. It's just a little energy to keep you on your feet."
"Until you get what you want."
"Of course. But if you pull this off, then so too will you." The businesswoman's gaze tracked deliberately in Sam's direction. She jeered, "That is what you want most?"
So much so I'm agreeing to deals offered by the Devil.
As soon as the hypodermic was removed, Lara shrugged out of the merc's grip. She addressed Natla before the second gun-for-hire could clout her.
"I need to do something first."
Natla nodded and the man let the archaeologist go.
With dangerously unstable legs, Lara staggered towards Sam and the single guard keeping her immobilised. The Englishwoman tried to ignore the latter's presence; tried to imagine she and Sam were back in the forest alcove, huddled together and hidden from the world's many complications.
Most of all, Lara tried to ignore Sam's split bottom lip, which looked as angry as her cheek.
It was easy to be snarky to Natla. With the love of her life, though, Lara's tongue snagged on every word as if she was wading through brambles. "Sam… If…. If I don't…"
She didn't expect it – she didn't deserve it after everything – but she received a soft smile in response. "Lara, you've got this. I trust you. See you in a bit."
The Englishwoman seized Sam's face in her hands and kissed her.
I may never get to do this again.
"Enough."
The filmmaker and archaeologist were yanked apart.
Lara was restrained in a full nelson and driven across the clearing. She was shoved onto the dais with enough force that she stumbled to her knees. Before her, the doorway opened again, offering its pitch-black path to… what? Lara's personal Hades?
The archaeologist looked back over her shoulder at Sam for one final reassurance.
But Natla was there; positioned directly between the young women.
The blonde smiled with saccharine sweetness, "Three hours, Lara. I suggest you hurry."