A/N: Well, that last chapter seems to have, um, gone down well… Have a less smutty one. :grin:
Revised 01/10/05
"Congratulations," Lara said grudgingly, letting her head drop onto Kurtis' chest. "I think you just bested me."
Kurtis cracked open an eye and grinned. "I was about to award that honour to you, but if you're admitting it…"
"In that case, I call a tie." A comfortable heaviness in every limb, Lara let herself relax for the first time in over an hour. "Go to sleep." Thank god we got through that without professing undying devotion and making plans to elope, she thought drowsily, listening to Kurtis' heart beat rhythmically beneath skin that radiated warmth. It was the last thought she had for some time.
Inevitably, her rest did not last long. When Lara jolted awake, reaching for her knife once again, searching out a glimpse of blonde hair and green fire as a matter of survival, sapphire eyes tinged with concern met her own. Gentle hands took away her weapon and pushed her back to a horizontal position. "Want me to stay awake and keep watch?" Kurtis asked quietly, only half-sarcastic.
"Don't start patronising," Lara warned, willing her heart to calm. Idiot. Just like a bloody child, practically afraid of the dark. Disgusted with herself for showing so much weakness, she burrowed down under the covers and sighed. Only the barely-felt touch of a calloused finger running up and down the back of her neck reassured her that his respect for her remained.
On the brink of sleep, unable to move or speak even if she had wanted to, his quiet voice filtered into her sleep-fogged mind. "I love you."
I'm still awake. The words never made it to her lips. She could only let herself smile, face hidden from his view, as she slipped into slumber.
When Kurtis woke, Lara was gone, but her warmth and unique scent lingered in the bedsheets. Her knife was also missing from the bedside table, indicating that she'd had another nightmare that had failed to wake him. Sitting up, he heard her voice coming from the adjacent room, sounding measured and thoughtful. "So the eclipse is in three days. I knew it was coming, but I had no idea the boxes could be opened then."
"The moon is a powerful factor. When it is at it's strongest, either blocking out the sun or shining with its full reflected light, the Black Angel can be called once more," André's bland tone replied as Kurtis dressed and pushed open the connecting door.
At his entrance, Lara looked up from Bryce's laptop and gave the barest of smiles – no full-on, dramatic acknowledgement of what had happened a few hours before, but enough to reassure him she would not deny it changed things for them.
"You joining History 101 too, then?" Bryce asked from the corner of the room, where he sprawled in a chair, still appearing… what was the English term? Absolutely knackered. As Kurtis looked his way, the Londoner lifted an eyebrow, smirking, in silent congratulations on his 'conquest' of Lara. Kurtis could not help but grin, and both he and Bryce received sharp, if not a little amused, glares from the conquered woman in question.
The Lux Veritatis warrior moved to her side as she returned to perusing the web pages she had brought up on the imminent eclipse. "Starts at two-oh-three in the afternoon – we're going to be hard-pressed to do this without an audience," he observed.
"They'll convince themselves they were hallucinating. People always do." Lara clicked back to a search engine and entered a string of words: 'screamer "black angel" nephilim cappadocia rosha rahil "lux veritatis"', and, as an afterthought, 'prophecy'. Unsurprisingly, no results were found, and the closest matches dealt with Turkish holiday destinations and several Gothic porn sites. Rolling her eyes, the tomb raider put down the laptop and sighed. "This is getting us nowhere. I think we know everything we're going to know. We need to work out a plan."
"Phase one – get back to the temple district undetected," Kurtis put in. "I doubt it'd be that hard, since Karel needs what we have. It's getting to the Nephilia Veritas that's going to be tricky. That's where he'll be waiting for us."
"Nephilia Veritas?" Bryce looked completely bemused.
"It's the temple we need to be in when we open the boxes," Lara supplied, before continuing, "Would it be possible for us to just walk in with the boxes at the exact moment of the total eclipse, and open them immediately?"
"It'd be a challenge, but that would be the best way…" Andre agreed slowly. "What you have to think about is the hordes of human cult members he'll have as backup, ready to shoot you the instant you appear. Whether the boxes are open or not, you'll still be vulnerable to bullets, and if you die, he's won."
A sombre silence followed his statement. Lara hesitated before asking, "Is it necessary for the temple to be standing when we're…" She stopped, tried to articulate what she was about to suggest in a way that wouldn't seem too sacrilegious.
"What she means is, can we blow up the temple, eliminating the human competition, and still activate the boxes?" Kurtis cut in, grinning at Lara's discomfort.
"You want to blow up an ancient monument?" André asked, perplexed.
"No," Lara hastened to explain, "I'd rather leave it standing – it's absolutely beautiful. But if it's a choice between keeping the temple and saving the world…"
André nodded, appearing thoughtful. "I've read that the rubble of a holy building will keep a dilution of its enchantments for a number of years afterwards – but how would you avoid the attention of the police then?"
No one had any ideas. Lara, Kurtis and André threw possible strategies around for the next half-hour, but nothing came to fruition. Bryce stayed strangely quiet.
"How about the roof?" Kurtis put forward. "I know it's not exactly in the temple, but–"
"A-ha!" Bryce interrupted triumphantly. "I've got it!"
"Eureka," Lara said wryly. "Go on, Archimedes."
"It's about what you said about blowing up the temple," the Londoner began, reaching for his laptop. He pointed a finger at André. "You said the rubble of a holy building stays magical for years. That got me thinking about if we could be nearby and have the stones fly around us, but that's too risky." He brought up a blank spreadsheet and began to enter equations, talking all the while. "Then I thought, if only we could just have the energy but not the stones and stuff."
"I like where you're heading with this," Andre said, nodding. "Go on."
"There's a lesser-known nineteenth century magician-scientist guy called Phillips… I came across his stuff when I was looking up that Infada stone for you; it's similar in principle – magical rock. It wasn't relevant to the Infada case, but Phillips tried to measure how far a mystical energy would travel when its source was destroyed, before it dispersed. His results were sketchy, but he managed to work out this formula."
He showed them a web page filled with, to Lara's mind, incomprehensible gibberish. "So, what you're saying is… we blow up the temple and it creates an outward shock wave of the enchantment we need to open the boxes," she summed up.
"Exactly! All we need to do is stand at minimum safe distance, and open the boxes as the energy comes at us!" Bryce agreed enthusiastically.
"Will it be concentrated enough?" Kurtis wanted to know.
"Give me a few hours with my laptop and I'll let you know."
"I thought it was common knowledge that those things will send you to an early grave?" Lara stepped up beside Kurtis on the balcony and eyed his cigarette with extreme distaste.
"If I'm going through cold turkey when we're chasing around after Karel, there's a much earlier grave waiting for all of us," Kurtis rationalised, and took a deep drag for effect.
Lara snorted. "Junkie." The pinkened sky from the setting sun cast a warm glow against her face, highlighting her features and accentuating the beauty that lingered even through her irony.
"Yeah… but I'm your junkie."
"Over the past two years, I've become famous for my bad judgement," Lara said blandly, injecting no implication into the statement. Her eyes revealed nothing to him, either.
Oh, I knew it. She's just too damn stubborn to accept what we did without a fight. "Regrets?" he asked, matching her in tone.
"Not yet, dearest. Give it time." Now there was an edge to her voice, and she stared out into the distance as though he didn't exist. Irritation flared through Kurtis.
"Ooh, that hurt. Call an ambulance…" he mocked. "You know, sometimes you can be a real…" There was no word in his vocabulary that would fit, and he trailed off, gesturing frustratedly.
She shot him a sideways glance that was both pissed off and entertained. "Believe the word you're after there is 'prat'. Learn it. I'll be using it a lot," she taunted mildly.
Oh, no. You don't lead me off-topic that easily. "I have a feeling I will, too. For someone who's not having any regrets, you're acting very… whatever the adjective for 'prat' is." Kurtis fixed her with a stare that demanded answers. Inwardly, he couldn't bear the implication that the pleasure they had shared hours before would be the only time for them. Outwardly, he just wanted to slap her.
For a fleeting moment, she looked cornered, but recovered well. "Prattish. And I'm not having regrets. I'm just…" She shook her head, her own anger beginning to peak. Although the danger signs for a major blow-up were present, Kurtis just couldn't leave it.
"What? Mourning the loss of a world record for abstinence? Coming to terms with the newfound realisation that you're a lesbian? What?"
Her dark look could have withered the nearby plant life. Her syllables bit into the dusk with precision. "Trying to find a door in the walls I love to build up after I let myself close to anyone. All right?" She pushed off the railing and stalked into her own suite, slamming the door behind her.
"Well, at least I found a window," Kurtis muttered to himself, staring after her. Shaking his head in angry confusion, he fidgeted, torn between following to continue the argument and leaving her well alone. The latter held considerably more logic at that moment, and Kurtis retreated back to the room where Bryce was calculating furiously. "André back yet?"
"Nope," Bryce answered, looking up. "Wish he'd hurry up though. I'm bloody starved." He set aside his laptop and nodded towards the door that led through to Lara's room. "Trouble in paradise?"
Kurtis snorted in reply. The words for what was going on between them were too hard to find.
"Give her time, mate. From what I gather, most of the men after her want her body and her money. There're only a few she's let herself trust, and they've all double-crossed her, or died." He gave a bittersweet smile, and shrugged. "Can't be easy."
"All of them?"
"All of them. Three, four? Not more than five." He shot a shrewd glance Kurtis' way. "Truthfully, you've done well to get as far as you have."
Kurtis nodded; Bryce had given him food for thought. "Thanks." Bryce shrugged and returned to his work. Faintly, through the connecting door, Lara's voice made them both glance up again.
"Thanks, Bryce. Appreciate it." Her tone was thick with insincerity.
"Hey, I could do worse. Names, dates, events and places…" Bryce threatened teasingly.
The door opened just enough to admit Lara's viciously scowling face. "Do it and die," she told him ominously, not sparing a glance for Kurtis. The door slammed behind her as Bryce grinned and greeted a bemused André, who had arrived back with food, and a mysterious briefcase.
"Champion!" he exclaimed, snatching a carton of Chinese food from the pile. "You've saved my life. I was wasting away!"
"What's in the briefcase?" Kurtis asked. The mysterious non-human had been away two hours; it had obviously been difficult to procure, whatever it was.
"Plastic explosives," came the matter of fact reply. Kurtis shook his head appreciatively. The guy pulled more surprises out of his hat every day.
The food had almost disappeared, with Lara's being chipped into by a still-ravenous Bryce, when the tomb raider made her next appearance. "I will, I promise," she said into the phone, smiling. "You watch your back, too. Egypt's more hostile than you think, even when you're in the open." She paused, halting in front of Bryce as she listened to the reply. "Will do. Take care. Here's Bryce." She held out the phone. "Kosa."
Bryce's eyes lit up, and he took the phone. "Alright, mate?"
Lara deftly snatched the packet of prawn crackers from his lap and made for her carton of cooling food. Without preamble, she opened André's briefcase and regarded the explosives within with a critical eye. "Nice work," she judged finally. "The hard part will be getting them into the temple."
"I'll do it," Kurtis volunteered, his mind already mulling over possibilities.
"The hell you will," Lara retorted immediately. "You're the one who needs to come out of this alive. I'll do it."
"Neither of you will," André cut in, surprisingly authoritative. "If one of you dies, the other doesn't stand a chance. I'm going tonight."
"How can I possibly help?" Lara asked, a little bitterly. "Kurtis gets hold of the Angel, and destroys the Nephilim. The humans are going to be blown up before we even get in range. I may as well not be there."
"I've seen what's going to happen." Kurtis turned his stare from Lara to André in disbelief as the man spoke. "No, I can't tell you, or it won't happen as I've seen it. But you have a strong part to play," he reassured Lara.
"I'll take your word for it," she muttered, returning to her meal.
Apologies for the exposition… I know this one wasn't one of my best…