Author's Note: Thank you very much to the following people for being kind enough to leave reviews - MayFairy, Vincenth, The Yoshinator, SophieQueenOfTheWorld, ConfusedSoAmI, Raingirlkm, MaluTyler, EmmaMarie, XxCupcakeAssassinxX, MountainLord-92, FullWolfMoonGirl, skidney, Son of Whitebeard, RandomCitizen (x 4), CallingTheMaker, JMichelleW, Imorgen (x 2), Scholar of Imagination and KatieTheBaka.

- Chapter Nine -

As soon as they arrived back at the shop, Allie began to shiver violently. She tried to stop, but she couldn't help it, deep bone-wracking shudders that shook her slender frame. Larry turned the heating up high, while the Doctor sat her down in an old rocking chair and wrapped her in a patchwork quilt he found in the window display.

"S...sorry," she mumbled, her teeth chattering madly. "I'm b...being an idiot."

"No, you're not. It's fine. It's just shock," the Doctor replied, crouching in front of her and stroking the hair out of her eyes in a comforting gesture. "The adrenaline's worn off and you're getting a delayed reaction."

She gave him a wobbly smile. "T...thanks. And thank you b...b...both. For c...coming to s...save me."

"All in a day's work for heroes like us, isn't that right, Larry?" the Doctor said buoyantly, glancing up to where the other man was leaning against the counter and giving him a grin.

"Yes. Right. Absolutely," Larry agreed. Allie couldn't help thinking that he had the slightly dazed look of someone who had been swept up by a whirlwind and dumped on an unfamiliar shore. A stab of guilt shot through her. Surely he had already been through enough, losing his sister to those Weeping Angels, without getting mixed up in her problems too. She wanted to apologise to him – to apologise to them both – for the mess she had gotten them into, but she didn't know what to say. It wasn't as if she knew how any of it had happened in the first place.

"You know what's good for shock? Tea!" the Doctor continued. "Tea with lots of sugar! Larry, how about you pop in the back and make some?"

Larry didn't argue with the suggestion. Instead, he seemed to be glad to be given a task that was both familiar and well within his abilities.

"Right, good idea," he said, and disappeared through the door into the back room with such alacrity that Allie had to wonder if he was used to Sally always telling him what to do.

As the door banged shut, the Doctor jumped to his feet. "Okay, time to get busy. Where do you keep your records, Allie?"

"There's a laptop under the c...counter. All Ch...Charlie's purchase details sh...should be on there." Allie pulled the quilt more tightly around herself, already missing the reassurance of the Time Lord's closeness. "D...Doctor, are we s...safe here? W...won't this b...be the f...first p...place Charlie will l...look for me?"

He pulled out the small silver laptop and flipped it open, propping it up on top of the counter. "Probably. But as soon as we're finished here, you and Larry are going straight back inside the TARDIS, where you'll be safe."

Allie glanced over at the corner of the room, where the police box sat, its worn blue exterior comfortably blending in with all the other various antiques and bric-a-brac in the shop, giving no clue to the wonders that lay within.

A small frown creased her brow. "Me and Larry? What about you?"

He tapped away at the keyboard without answering.

"Doctor?"

"Now, I'm no expert on the linguistic science used to animate a golem, so we need as much background information as we can get, to work out how to shut him down," he said, still ignoring her question. "Your aunt bought him two years ago, you said?"

"Yes, at an estate auction, in June or July, I think it was," she replied, relieved to find that her teeth were beginning to stop chattering. "Doctor, you're not planning to go up against those things on your own, are you?"

"If that's what it takes," he said flatly. Then, before she could argue further, he let out a jubilant cry. "AHA! Here it is! One reproduction terracotta warrior, purchased from the estate of Reuben Loew, in the village of Ditchling, on the South Downs, 17 June 2007. Of course!"

"Of course?" she queried. "Why, what does that tell us? Who's Reuben Loew? I've never heard of him before."

"Neither have I. But I have heard of Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel. A famous scholar and Jewish mystic who lived in Prague in the 1500s. He was known as the Maharal. Back then, the Jews of Prague were being persecuted by the Holy Roman Emperor of the time, and were about to be either expelled from the city or killed. According to legend, the Maharal used rituals and incantations to create the first golem on Earth, to defend his people."

"Rituals and incantations? You mean, like...magic?"

The Doctor gave an audible sigh. "Like magic, but not magic. As I already explained to Larry, not all science is mathematically-based. There are some races in the Universe that use words rather than mathematical formula to alter reality. And I happen to know for certain that there were Carrionites on Earth at exactly that point in history. I suspect some of their linguistic technology must somehow have been passed on to humans such as the Maharal, who went on to use it for their own ends."

"So, you think Charlie's previous owner...this Reuben Loew... is a descendant of the original Rabbi, and used his family secret to create his own golem?"

"It makes sense as an explanation," the Doctor nodded.

As he spoke, the door into the back room opened and Larry backed carefully in, carrying a wooden tray with three mugs on it and a large bowl of sugar.

"But why?" Allie asked incredulously. "Why on Earth would he want to make something like that, to create a monster like some kind of modern day Dr Frankenstein? He must have been mad!"

The Doctor grabbed one of the mugs and began scooping in three generous helpings of sugar. He was about to absent-mindedly do the same for Allie's mug, but she quickly snatched it out of his reach.

"Not necessarily," he mused. "Not if he felt he needed protection for some reason. There's no better bodyguard in the Universe than a golem. And Charlie said his emet was to protect his master. Before your aunt brought him here, his master must have been Reuben Loew. When Reuben died, Charlie's emet was no longer valid and he sank into dormancy. Until the Rift energy from those artefacts roused him and he imprinted on you instead."

"Reuben Loew?" Larry spoke up, taking a noisy slurp of his tea. Allie noticed with a small twinge of amusement that he had appropriated her "THE ANGELS HAVE THE PHONE BOX" mug for himself. "You mean that old Polish collaborator guy? The one that was a virtual recluse?"

Allie's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "You've heard of him?"

"Yeah," Larry replied, a bit defensively, as they both stared at him. "He got murdered a couple of years ago. It was in all the papers. I remember, because we'd just opened the shop, and Sally said we should go to the auction of his estate, because he was a real collector, and we might be able to pick up some rare books for our stock. The books are her speciality, you see. I'm more into the DVD side of things. Anyway, something came up and we never got around to it."

"He was murdered?" Allie repeated urgently. "By who?"

Larry gave a disinterested shrug. "Dunno. Don't think they ever found out. Is it important?"

"Could be, yeah," the Doctor responded, his fingers moving over the keyboard at the speed of light. Allie didn't think she'd ever seen anybody type that fast before. She watched in fascination, guessing it must be an alien thing. There was no doubt that the Doctor knew his way around computers, that was for sure. "Ah, here it is. Larry's right, all the major newspapers carried the story at the time, it's all here in the archives. Reuben Loew was eighty seven when he died. He moved here from Poland just after the war, bought an isolated property on the South Downs, and lived there alone, apart from one, single, trusted servant named Josef Manheim. Hardly anyone else ever saw him. He was fanatical about security, apparently."

"He would have to be, if he was going around building golem bodyguards," Allie said wryly. "So what happened to him?"

The Doctor pulled out his black-rimmed glasses and perched them on the end of his nose, concentrating closely on the small screen in front of him. "It says here that on the evening of 26 May 2007, the police responded to a silent alarm which had triggered in the house, only to find both Mr Loew and his manservant dead on the library floor. Oh, and this is interesting...'Subsequent investigations revealed that Mr Loew, although a Jew by birth, had been a well-known collaborator with the Nazis during the Second World War, performing the duties of a commandant in a forced-labor camp at Gorlitz, in what later became known as East Germany. There are indications, said a spokesperson from the Wiesenthal Center, that prisoners liberated from Gorlitz began hunting for Mr. Loew in Europe and overseas shortly after the war, seeking to bring him to justice for atrocities he had committed against his own people.'"

"See, that's what I said, a collaborator," Larry interjected. "From what I heard, he wasn't the nicest of blokes, did some really terrible, blood-curdling stuff during the War. I remember now...there was a rumour that he'd been targeted by some sort of Jewish vendetta group who were determined to catch up with escaped war criminals to make them pay for what they did. Scary lot, not the sort of people you'd want to have on your trail."

"Mmmm, an extremist splinter group known as the Sicarii, or 'the dagger men', according to the confidential police files," the Doctor confirmed. "A group of highly-trained assassins allegedly established in 1945 for the sole purpose of avenging the Holocaust. Nothing has ever been proven though."

"Confidential police files?" Allie put her mug down on the small table beside her with a sharp clack. "What confidential police files? You can't go around hacking into police records, just like that!"

The Doctor flicked her a laughing look over the top of his glasses and her voice trailed away in embarrassment as she remembered who she was talking to.

He gave her a cheeky wink. "Of course I can," he returned unconcernedly. "Come on, Allie, keep up! I'm the Doctor! There's not much I can't do."

He dropped his eyes back to the keyboard and tapped some more keys. "So now at least we know why he was desperate enough to create Charlie. He was a war criminal, who'd been in hiding from a group of dedicated assassins for over fifty years. He must have been as paranoid as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs."

"It's not paranoia if someone's really after you," Allie corrected softly. "So Charlie was meant to protect him. Then what happened? If golems are the best bodyguards in the Universe, how did Reuben Loew get himself killed?"

"The one way from which Charlie couldn't protect him," the Doctor replied, his expression solemn. "Poison. Nicotine poisoning, to be precise. The autopsy result revealed an unusually large build up in his body. My guess is, someone injected a lethal dose for a human into one of his cigarettes, he smoked it, and then he dropped dead of heart failure."

Larry frowned and rubbed distractedly at the stubble on his chin. "But the murderer must have got really close to him to have access to his personal stuff - how could any intruder get past Charlie and into the house? Not to mention all the other security Reuben Loew would have had in place – dogs, alarms, whatever."

"He didn't. He was already there."

Allie's grey eyes widened in sudden understanding. "Friends betray. Friends kill. So that's what Charlie meant!"

"Oh my god," Larry said excitedly. "The butler did it. The butler with the poison in the library! Hang on a minute, though – he was killed as well, wasn't he?"

"Ye-p!" the Doctor nodded. "Which is why the police were forced to leave the case open. They suspected that he was the one who killed Loew, but they were never able to work out what happened next. They thought he might have had an accomplice who turned on him, but the locks and other forms of security were still in place, so no-one had left the house after the murders. And yet the autopsy reports show that Josef Manheim was brutally battered to death with a blunt instrument. They never found the murder weapon."

"Brutally battered to death," Allie echoed, her mind going back to her interview with DCI Bell. "Just like Terry was battered to death. Charlie killed Manheim, didn't he? In revenge for Manheim killing his master. No wonder the police never figured it out. Who would suspect a statue?"

"But why would Manheim kill his employer? If he had been with him for long enough to become a trusted friend, why suddenly up and murder him?" Larry asked.

"Good question." The Doctor snapped the lid of the laptop shut and whipped his glasses off, stowing them safely in his top pocket. "Maybe he was somehow recruited by these Sicarii. Maybe he only just discovered what his boss got up to during the War. Or maybe it was a personal grudge and had nothing to do with the War at all. We'll probably never know. The point is, Manheim betrayed Loew and killed him, and Charlie saw it all happen, but couldn't do anything to stop it. He'd failed his emet, his truth, his purpose, to protect his master. Loew was dying on the ground, so Charlie did the only thing he could do for him, which was to destroy his murderer. Then, when Loew finally died from the poison, Charlie's emet died with him. He lost all purpose and sank into dormancy. Until the Rift energy floating around Allie's shop woke him again and he fixated on her as his new master. But somehow Loew's murder has twisted Charlie's interpretation of his emet. Now he thinks he has to protect Allie from the rest of humanity, so she doesn't end up like Loew."

Allie felt tears prickling her eyes, seeing it all unfolding in her mind's eye as he spoke. "That's so sad," she murmured.

"Why?" Larry asked, finishing his tea and putting his mug back on the tray. "If he really did do all that bad stuff during the War, I reckon Loew deserved all he got. Sounds like he was lucky to make it as far as eighty seven without being killed."

"I wasn't talking about Loew!" she snapped. "I was talking about Charlie. Seeing his master horribly killed like that by someone he trusted, and not being able to stop it. Feeling like he'd failed his only purpose in life. No wonder he's messed up."

"Don't waste your sympathy, Allie," the Doctor told her. "Charlie's not human, he's a golem. He's not even alive in the true sense. He has no feelings and no soul. He was created to be a tool, nothing more."

"Yeah, a tool that's killed at least three people that we know about," Larry added.

Allie sighed. "You don't need to remind me about that, I haven't forgotten. But it's still not his fault, is it? And he has a point about the potential for violence inside human beings. I mean, look at Loew and all the terrible things he did. He was the evil one, not Charlie. And it sounds like Manheim wasn't much better, whatever his motivation."

"Maybe not. But the fact remains, unless we stop him, Charlie will see every human being you interact with as a threat, and he will keep on killing," the Doctor said gravely. "Even worse, he seems to have got proactive. He's been creating more golems, inferior copies of himself, but still extremely dangerous. It looks like he's intending to wipe out the human race before they have a chance to become a threat to you."

Larry scratched his head, a puzzled look on his face. "There's one thing I don't get, Doctor. If Allie's his master now, why can't she just tell Charlie to stop? Why did he disobey her back at the house when she told him not to attack me? I thought you said golems were all about obedience."

"They are. Charlie will obey everything Allie tells him to do, to the absolute letter. Except when he believes her orders contradict his emet. The instruction to protect her overrides everything else."

Allie's throat tightened in dismay. "So I can tell him not to kill until I'm blue in the face, and it won't make a speck of difference, as long as he believes other people are an ongoing threat to me."

The Doctor nodded. "Exactly."

"So...so how are we going to stop him then?" she demanded. "We can, can't we? I mean, there has to be a way!"

"Oh yeah," he said calmly. "There's a way, all right. I'm going to have to resort to using my secret weapon."

Larry whooped and punched the air in delight like a small boy. "I knew it, a secret weapon! Gotta love a secret weapon! This is gonna be great! What is it? A plasma beam? A laser cannon? Some sort of alien energy blaster? Are we allowed to see it?"

"Okay," the Doctor agreed reluctantly. "I suppose so, just this once." He put his hand into his pocket and withdrew a long, slim canister. Larry was nearly dancing on the spot with anticipation as he held it up for them to inspect. "Here it is."

As soon as he saw what it was, Larry's jaw dropped in utter shock and Allie stared in bewilderment.

"Doctor," she said hesitantly, sure he had made some kind of mistake. "That's a can of Polyfilla."

She had never actually used the stuff, but she had seen the same sort of can a hundred times before, on television ads, on the shelves in hardware stores . Expanding foam Polyfilla, used for sealing and filling gaps in walls, prior to sanding and painting. Nothing dangerous. Nothing alien. Nothing but an everyday substance people used for their DIY home repairs.

"Yes," the Doctor agreed with a cheerful grin. "Yes, it is."

"That's your secret weapon?" Larry spluttered incredulously. "How can that stop a golem?"

"I told you, Charlie is a product of word-based technology," the Doctor replied. "When Loew created Charlie, he etched an activation word on his forehead. 'EMET', which means 'truth' in Ancient Hebrew. To counteract that, or to deactivate him, we need to remove the aleph, or first letter, in the activation word. If I can manage to use the Polyfilla to erase the 'E' in 'EMET', we'll be left with the word 'MET'."

"And what does that mean?" Allie asked, struggling to keep up with his rapid-fire explanation.

"In Ancient Hebrew, the word 'MET' means 'dead'," the Doctor replied bluntly. "Which, without his emet, is exactly what Charlie will be. And without him to animate them, all the other golems will crumble into dust as well."

"Okay. Okay, I get that. But how are you planning to get close enough to him to use the Polyfilla on him without him killing you first?"

The Doctor rubbed thoughtfully at the back of his neck. "Yeah, well, that part of plan still needs a bit of work."

"You'd better figure it out quickly, then, Doctor," Larry said urgently, his eyes locked on the front window, his voice suddenly taut with fear. "Because I think we just ran out of time."

Both Allie and the Doctor glanced sharply around, following his line of sight. Outside in the snowy street, piercing through the gathering gloom of the approaching winter's evening, dozens of red eyes glowed, all of them fixed relentlessly on Allie's shop.

Another Author's Note: Okay, there it is, hope it was all right. It took me ages to write, because I hate writing explanation chapters, so I'm hoping it all made sense and wasn't too boring. Fingers crossed X)