A/N: Thanks for all your comments, it's very encouraging to read. Thought I'd warn you that things get a little morbid in this chapter. I hope you can stomach it …

Chapter 5: Bouchard

Lara walked down the Rue Dominique to the seventeenth entrance in a grey wooden wall to her left. She punched in the code 15328 and opened the door to enter a narrow courtyard. A rusty, faded red truck was parked in the middle. Lara walked up a staircase and stepped into Francine's flat.

The place had a cozy look reminiscent of Carvier's home, although the art wasn't nearly as exquisite. Lara walked past a cloth-covered dinner table and greeted the owner standing leaned against a china cabinet at the back. Francine was a tanned brunette with bright green eyes and coal-black clothes. Lara couldn't quite comprehend how this woman and Pierre had ever ended up together.

"Bonsoir. Pierre said to expect you. Bouchard is in the old church; you need to find the mausoleum in the churchyard. It leads down into the church basement," Francine explained.

"Is this the best way?"

"It's the only way past the Doorman," Francine referred to the vexing bodyguard who had threatened to let out the Doberman Pinscher. "Watch out for the ledges – they are dangerous," she added.

"Where isn't these days?" Lara asked, not expecting a satisfying answer.

"Welcome to Paris," Francine grinned and pointed to a large window to Lara's right. "You can reach the graveyard through there. Good luck."

"Thanks." Lara stepped through to the balcony overlooking St Aicard's cemetary, an L-shaped yard filled with gloomy crypts and lush weed. "How can that woman stand living at a place like this?" Lara pondered, climbing a wobbly drainpipe to the roof of Francine's home.

The view of the urban maze of backstreets right next to the beautifully Gothic church complex was spectacular to say the least. Lara regretted she hadn't brought a camera.

Suddenly, Francine's warning went into effect. The treachorously solid-looking ledge collapsed under Lara's feet as she ran across the crumbling stone and took off from the edge, sailing through the smoky rooftop air. Four storeys below, a statue of St Peter stood with outstretched arms as if ready to catch her if gravity should pull her away from life. Turning down the saint's offer for the time being, Lara grabbed a red cable and travelled about ten feet before dropping to a safe balcony.

From here, she traversed her way along another cable, descending towards the cemetary. Before dropping to the yard, Lara noticed the Doorman's infamous Doberman patrolling around the tombs.

"God, that man was a boaster. I've seen rats bigger than this cur," Lara thought, dropping to a mausoleum roof instead of the lawn – after all, there was no need to have a hostile dog chasing her, no matter how small and weak it looked.

She gracefully hopped across the crypt tops to reach a fenced-in area at the back corner of the L-shaped yard. A tomb with a statue of an angel and yet another mausoleum were situated inside the fence. Red vines grew on the walls, whispering softly in the breezes. The mausoleum looked slightly larger and better ornamented than the rest, leading Lara to assume this was the one Francine had mentioned.

Lara hopped into the enclosure and smirked at the bloodthirsty dog's pathetic attempts to leap over the fence. She then kicked the mausoleum door open, but didn't find any entrance to any church basement. There was nothing but dust and emptiness inside the tiny stone building. 'AMEN IN NOMINE JESU' was carved in the back wall.

"Great," Lara said, trudging off through the shrubs and weed. She sighed and leaned back against the statue of a mournful angel holding a cross over a rectangular, one meter high grave. "Maybe Werner's notes will help me," Lara thought, opening the notebook on the page where she had left off:

Mathias Vasiley in Prague has sent me four Obscura Engravings. He kept the fifth engraving back; wants more money.

Deciphered the encrypted map in Vasiley's engravings. One of the Paintings is beneath the Louvre, where the latest archaeological digs are.

"The Louvre digs? Maybe I should check that out …"

Her train of thought came to an abrupt halt when the statue suddenly gave behind her. Lara burst away and pivoted in time to see the angelic figure fall down on the grave, crashing the lid to pieces. "This must be my lucky day," Lara grumbled, sarcasm pervading her voice. Vandalising a cemetary was now added to her long list of crimes comitted whilst in Paris.

But as she approached the grave and looked through the broken lid, it turned out there was nothing inside. A rusty ladder led down through a hole in the bottom to a narrow basement corridor far beneath the churchyard. Flashing an apologetic look to the overturned angel, Lara climbed down through the tomb.

The slippery, damp tunnels at the bottom looked ready to collapse. Lara's only companions on her journey towards Bouchard's hideout were some obese rats lazily nibbling on her feet. The irritated woman kicked them back into the heaps of rubble and rocks from which they had crept out. "Ugh, call Rentakill. This has got to be the absolute pits …"

After wandering through the rodent-infested tunnels for a couple of minutes, Lara reached a brighter area with four storage cells adjacent to a wide hallway. Cardboard boxes, lockers and coffins lay everywhere in a dusty mess. A metal door was located at the end of the hallway.

The moment Lara stepped into the cell to the left of the metal door, she winced at the putrid stench attacking her nostrils. Her eyes soon fell on the source of the reek, and she instantly regretted entering the cell.

For in the far corner of the room was a man who should obviously be dead and gone, and yet still lay squirming on a filthy cot. He was a skinny caucasian man in his late thirties, wearing black socks and blue jeans. The ribs pressing up under the skin of his bare upper body indicated that he hadn't eaten for days. The torso was severely mangled and his entire left forearm missing.

The most disgusting part was undoubtedly the gleamy, grey slime that seemed to grow out from his wounds, slowly spreading across his pale skin. The mercury-like mass had already glued his left arm and torso together and was now sliding towards his bottom lip. The man tried to rise from his deathbed, but the goo growing on his limbs pinned him to the gross mattress. He let out an inarticulate moan and fell back down into a pool of his own saliva, blood and faeces.

Filled with both pity and nausea, Lara recoiled out of the cell and slumped to her knees. Her breathing came out in ragged gasps and her stomach felt like someone was whirling her bowels around with a whisk. "Think happy thoughts, think happy thoughts, think happy thoughts," an earnest voice droned in her mind as she struggled to keep the vomit down.

After two minutes of thinking happy thoughts, Lara shakily stood and opened the metal door to Bouchard's messy office. It was a dusty room illuminated by a single bulb hanging from the cracked ceiling. A few skinny kittens slumbered next to a heap of cardboard boxes in the far right corner. The occupant was a stout 50-year-old with dark brown hair slowly receding from his thick head. He wore a reddish brown leather jacket over a green chequered shirt. When Lara entered the room, he was sitting in a shabby armchair, lighting a cigar. He swiftly got up to greet his uninvited guest.

"What happened to your man in the room out there, Bouchard?" Lara asked.

"To Arnaud? You've got something to say about that?" he said, displaying a dark yellow set of teeth that had clearly been discoloured by years of smoking. His voice sounded low and hoarse, supplementing his air of authority.

"Maybe," Lara said. "It might be linked to what happened to a friend of mine."

Bouchard shook his head. "I doubt it. Get out of here."

"Do you know the name Eckhardt?"

"Never heard of him."

"Okay … You helped a friend of mine a while back. Werner Von Croy."

"Names don't mean a lot here," the kingpin said. "Even real ones. What did he want?"

"Maps and information, on the Louvre," Lara guessed.

"I remember. Four weeks ago … Wanted to take a coach load of Japanese tourists to see the Mona Lisa."

Lara's hands curled up to form fists. "I lost that friend yesterday, Bouchard. Don't jerk me around."

"You better watch your mouth, lady."

"I'll watch nothing. I'm sick of your Parisian lowlife ways; I need results!"

"Careful, vixen. You don't need things to get any worse."

"And how will that happen? You'll set these pussycats on me, right?"

"Wrong. I'll take care of this myself. Welcome to Paris," Bouchard growled, producing a 9mm from his coat pocket and taking aim at Lara's chest.

Lara's foot immediately shot up and kicked the pistol out of Bouchard's grip. The gun flew across the room and landed in a box of cigars. Lara then pulled out her own M-V9 and shoved the muzzle against Bouchard's right eye. The blue orb's lid was clenched shut under the pressure of the cold steel. "Cut the bullshit and tell me what Von Croy was up to!"

"He wanted access to the archaeological digs inside the Louvre. I gave him a contact. You want the same?"

"And more. I need 9mm protection, backpack, plastic explosive, stun packs … Paris isn't safe these days," Lara said, slowly withdrawing her pistol from Bouchard's face.

"Who for?" Bouchard asked. "You can obviously take care of yourself."

"Do you have what I need?"

"I know who does. Daniel Rennes. Works out of the pawnbrokers on the corner of Rue St. Mark and Cours la Seine."

Lara recalled the messy shop where she had pawned the diamond ring. "A front, obviously."

Bouchard nodded. "Rennes needs careful handling. But he can get you what you need, if you know how to make the right approach."

"What would you suggest?"

"A trade. I have to get certain things into his hands. Passports. You could deliver them for me."

"Passports!" Lara exclaimed.

"Czech passports; nothing to dirty your hands with. It's a business arrangement."

"For which he would give me what I need?"

"For the right price. The passports will prove you come through me," Bouchard said.

"What happened to your man in the sickroom back there?" Lara shuddered. "Was he delivering packages for you, too?"

"Poor Arnaud," Bouchard shook his head slowly. "One of my toughest. The only survivor of four attacks so far."

"Attacks? By who?"

"An interesting question. We don't know for sure, yet," Bouchard said as he started rummaging through a cardboard box inside one of the lockers.

"The Paris Monstrum perhaps," Lara remarked.

Bouchard winced slightly at hearing the serial killer's nickname. "We're looking into that. You should take care."

"An automatic would help. You sold my friend Von Croy some hardware, and I need the same."

"That was then. We need all the firepower we can get. Rennes is your man," Bouchard said as he pulled a wad of fake passports out of the box. "Is it a deal?"

"OK. Deal."

"Make sure Rennes gets this," Bouchard handed Lara the passports. "And be sure it is Rennes."

"Why? Who else could it be?" Lara asked, tucking the wad into her pocket.

"I'd like to ask poor Arnaud that," Bouchard sighed. "But he can't talk anymore. Just take care."

---

Lara followed a spiral staircase up from the basement to St. Aicard's church, which had apparently been turned into a gym. A tall statue of Jesus Christ loomed behind the altar, watching two muscular guys fight in the boxing ring in the middle of the hall. Lara stole out of the church and made her way back to the Cours la Seine. The ghetto district was still abandoned like a ghost town. "Hey, did you find Bouchard?" Janice said as Lara passed by.

"Yeah. Didn't tell me much, but I think I'm on the right track," Lara replied and proceeded down the street, entering Rennes' pawnshop on her right.

The narrow hall was pervaded by the same stink of death and decay that had settled in Arnaud's sickroom like a thick fog. Lara slowly prowled down the corridor. A pale, 60-year-old man suddenly stepped out from the shop to her left. He wore an old-fashioned grey suit and crescent-shaped glasses.

As the strange man marched down the hallway, his broad right shoulder bumped against Lara. He shot her a brief, menacing look that seemed to pierce right into her soul. Lara shivered and looked down to catch a glimpse of scarlet blood dripping from his right hand, which was also covered by a brownish, metallic glove.

Then, the man stepped out the door behind Lara and walked down the street. The afternoon wind soon blew the door shut, rendering the stale reek of the pawnshop undisturbed by any healthy fresh air. "Who was that guy?" Lara pondered, walking down the corridor and into the shop he had emerged from.

The place looked even more decrepit and messy than Lara remembered it from her last visit. Furniture and other pawned items had been roughly shoved aside to clear a path from the entrance to the counter. Even the chandelier swinging back and forth under the ceiling was bent out of shape. A large section of the counter had been crushed to rubble. The door behind the counter had somehow been torn off its hinges. "What the hell happened to this place? Looks like a little tornado whirled right through the shop," Lara observed as she walked past the cleaved counter and through the doorway to the owner's back room.

Daniel Rennes lay at the wall, his glazed eyes locked onto the ceiling. A circular, occult-looking symbol had been daubed on the wooden floor with the victim's own blood. His face was contorted in an expression of pure terror, and his torso looked like someone had simply reached in there and ripped the intestines out. An orange mix of blood and urine pooled from the corpse.

"So he's the nineteenth Monstrum victim … Did that old man in the hall have something to do with this?" Lara briefly considered rushing back to the street to find the strange guy, but he'd probably be over the hills and far away by now. Shielding her nose with her left hand, Lara stooped down to take a brown leather wallet that seemed to have fallen from Rennes' pocket. Examining the wallet, she found a scrap of paper with the code 14521 scribbled on it. Lara slipped the wallet into her pocket and proceeded farther into the pawnbroker's lair.

Ominious-looking black wires ran along the walls. A steel box seated on an armchair in the far corner beeped softly and flashed red on the small screen in its top. Lara suspected it was some kind of ingenious booby trap, but she had no idea what would set it off.

Across the room, a quadratic trapdoor was situated in the floor opposite the beeping box. It looked approximately one metre wide and would be a good choice if she needed to make a fast getaway. A heavy metal door was located in the wall between the box and the trapdoor. Lara walked up to the door and punched 14521 into the number plate. The door swung open to reveal a small hardware storeroom behind it.

Maps and weapons filled the bottom shelf opposite the entrance. "Werner obviously never had a chance to collect it," Lara thought and stepped into the storeroom, snatching a black backpack from the upper shelf. She then crammed the goods into the backpack – a Dart SS pistol, K2 Impactor, black hip holsters, explosives … "It's like Christmas Eve," Lara grinned as she grabbed two maps of the Louvre sewers and archaeological digs and donned the present-stuffed backpack.

Suddenly, the door slammed shut in front of her and twenty laser-rays shot out from the walls, trapping her like a fly in their bright red cobweb. Lara heard the armed box to her left start to beep faster and louder. "Dammit! I must have triggered the sensor …"

She pushed a button in the left wall, and the door opened again. The panicky woman ran out, but skid to a halt when she saw even more rays guarding the exit to the pawnshop. "You've gotta be shitting me."

Lara pivoted 90 degrees and rushed to her left, ripping the hatch up from the floor. She didn't hesitate for a splitsecond before dropping into the cellar hallway beneath. Behind her, the beeping sounds stopped and were replaced by the deafening noise of a detonation.

Lara sprinted through the hallway and dropped through another hole to a round, sewer-like tunnel. The explosion roared after her and sent a billow of flames washing through the tunnel. Lara tried to ignore the menacing tongues of fire caressing her back. Clenching her eyes shut against the smoky heat, she focused all her energy on the round exit at the tunnel's end and getting to the heavenly river that shimmered beyond it. Her feet frantically pounded against the slippery ground, but suddenly there wasn't any more ground underneath them – there was only fiery air, which she fell through like the lost angel she had become …

---

Kurtis Trent sat crouched down at the edge of the river, staring at the drab buildings' reflections in the water surface twelve feet below. Fishing vessels were tied along the opposite side of the river. A family of ducks paddled across the mild waves. Kurtis lit a cigarette and let the familiar smoke drain from the white paper into his throat.

The unmistakeable boom of an exploding bomb resounded from the opposite side of the river, causing the ducks to fly off, quacking in horror. A female figure leapt out from a round tunnel opening in one of the decrepit buildings and swan-dove through the air, closely followed by a brief tidal wave of billowing flames. Vaguely intrigued, Kurtis tilted his head to let an annoying brown strand fall out of his right eye, giving him a better view of the woman landing safely on the wooden deck of a fishing vessel.

Sure enough, it was Ms. Lara Croft herself. "God knows what she's been messing with to trigger that explosion," Kurtis thought as he flicked the cigarette away and stood. The cigarette whirled into the river, where the cold waters effortlessly quenched the red glow and left no trace of fire behind.

Lara slowly stood from the boat's deck and scanned both sides of the river for any witnesses to the explosion. She found none, apart from the brown-haired man on the opposite shore, whom she instantly recognized as the biker from Cours la Seine and Pierre's inquisitive customer. Lara shot him an irritated glare that seemed to say "Who the hell are you and whose side are you on?"

Kurtis merely gave a faint smile, walked off to his motorcycle and sped down an alley.

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A/N: We'll get to the Cabal meeting next chapter. Until then, have a merry christmas!