Chapter 10: Moment de vérité
"You okay?" a hoarse voice asked somewhere above Lara. The woman's eyelids fluttered up, and she saw a familiar Frenchman standing over her with a concerned look on his face.
"Bouchard? What are you doing here?" Lara said as she sat up on the cold asphalt. She had no idea how long she had been slumbering in the alley, but the guy who had stolen her painting was nowhere to be seen. A weird, dagger-like crystal shard lay on the spot where she'd found him laying unconscious earlier. Vaguely curious, Lara snatched the shard and stood.
"No time now," Bouchard replied to her groggy question. "Quickly!"
"Was anyone around when you got here?" Lara said while pocketing the shard, which had apparently been left behind by the telekinetic stranger.
Bouchard shook his head. "No, no one. Come on!"
Lara followed Bouchard out of the alley to a wider street. "Bouchard, I must get back to Von Croy's apartment. There's something I have to check out there," she said, remembering how the five Obscura engravings were said to contain encrypted maps of the paintings' locations. Maybe she'd find the engravings in the professor's home, or at least some kind of clue as to her next destination. Revisiting the crime scene might even lead her to remember more about the night of the murder …
"Your friend's place, of course. Where is it?" Bouchard said.
"Rue Valise, the Chantell building," Lara informed. "Do you know it?"
"My driver will." Bouchard pointed to a limo parked farther down the road. A skilled chauffeur stood next to the open door, gesturing for them to get in.
Lara and Bouchard sat down on the backseat, and the driver sped off. Glancing at Bouchard's Rolex, Lara found that it was half past midnight now. She stared out the window at the dim, distant outline of Napoleon's famous triumphal arch. "What were you doing at the Louvre?" she asked Bouchard.
"Trawling police short wave. You were attracting a lot of attention in there. I figured you might need some help."
"Thanks."
"Wouldn't you prefer somewhere safer than your friend's apartment?" Bouchard's clammy palm moved up to rest on Lara's thigh.
Ignoring his query, Lara took the groping hand, lifted it off her leg and back to its owner's lap. "I found some leads in the Louvre that may link to his death. I have to check out his apartment."
"We're almost there," Bouchard grumbled. "There's something you should know. The police bands were full of details of another Monstrum killing – in Prague."
"Prague?" Lara cocked her eye at Bouchard. Von Croy had mentioned that city in his notebook. 'Mathias Vasiley in Prague has sent me four Obscura Engravings.' "Not a dealer named Vasiley?" Lara said, putting two and two together. "Mathias Vasiley?"
"Yes. You knew him?" Bouchard asked, surprised.
"He's connected with what I need to find at Von Croy's apartment." The car was parked on Rue Valise and Lara opened the door to step onto the sidewalk. Icy rain poured over her. Bouchard made as if to get out as well, but Lara cut him off: "I need to go in alone."
"Okay, I'll wait here." Bouchard leaned back in his seat.
"Appreciate it, Bouchard." Lara pivoted and walked across the sidewalk. Bouchard watched her step into the apartment building. He then produced a Nokia from his leather-coat pocket and dialled a Parisian number.
"She's inside now," he told the man on the other end. "You can send in the Cleaner."
---
The Chantell didn't seem to have changed at all since that bleak night when Werner Von Croy died. It was still the same dark, dreary apartment building with rain constantly pounding the windows. Lara wandered down the carpeted corridor, getting an eerily profound déjà vu feeling as she approached Werner's flat.
The door was thinly concealed behind yellow police tape with black letters proclaiming 'RESTREINTE ZONE'. Lara ignored the warning, ripped the tape aside and opened the door. The yellowish glow seeped in from the corridor to light up the short hall on the other side. Lara stood on the threshold and closed her eyes, memories returning to her weary mind.
'Afraid of uninvited guests, are we?'
'Y-yes. Afraid of one particular uninvited guest.'
'The Monstrum.'
Lara walked through the hall and paused in the doorway. The lights in the corridor couldn't reach the next area with their yellow beams, so the flashes of lightning from outside would have to suffice. Lara stepped into the living room and scanned her messy surroundings. It hadn't changed a bit since her last visit, with the exception of the missing corpse, which now lay in a morgue a few miles from this apartment.
The office and kitchen were located to Lara's immediate left, along with a spiral staircase to the second floor. The wall to her right had occult symbols smeared all over it with the late professor's blood. Books, teacups, dried bloodstains and fragments of glass lay scattered on the floor. Most of the furniture had been broken and overturned. Definitely what the investigators would call 'signs of struggle'.
'Take a seat, Lara. We have to talk.'
'I don't want to be here. You've got five minutes. Convince me I'm not wasting my time.'
Lara walked across the living room, but froze as a glass surface crunched under her booted foot. She quickly stepped back and glared at the framed photo on the floor. It showed a 60 years old Werner Von Croy standing next to Lara at a dig site in the South African desert. The expedition had been one of their rare displays of co-operation after the Angkor Wat incident. The rain pouring in from the broken window had soaked the photo, but Lara could still make out the thrilled looks on their faces, as they stood before the entrance to an unknown tribe's ancient temple.
That photo had been taken three years before the duo's far less friendly encounter in Egypt …
Lara picked up the photo and brushed a few glass fragments off. She walked up to a sideboard, placed the photo on the dusty wooden surface and raised her gaze to meet that of her reflection in the mirror. As if on cue, a crash of thunder sounded outside, and a bright flash of lightning illuminated her brown eyes.
'I'm tracking five Obscura paintings for a client named Eckhardt,' he says, leaning forward in his chair.
'Not my problem,' she shakes her head. 'Why should I care?'
'Because I'm being stalked! I daren't go into the streets. People are dying out there!'
'Handle it, Werner.'
'Lara, please …'
'I'm going.'
'No, wait!'
'Egypt, Werner. You walked away and …
… left me," Lara whispered, her voice full of grief. Apart from the dark days after she had fallen into the caves beneath the Great Pyramid, Lara had never felt this lonely and lost before in her entire life. Fighting back the tears, she let her mind drift back to that hellish night. "There was no pity then."
'Get out! Get out of the way!'
Four gunshots ring out, but they aren't fired at Lara. Werner is aiming for a strange man who has just entered the apartment from the hall.
"It's him," Lara mumbled out loud. "It's the man I saw leaving Rennes' pawnshop …"
The bullets don't even slow the man down, however. He grabs Lara's left shoulder and flings her into the wall. She collapses on the Persian carpet. Unconscious.
"… he's the Monstrum …"
The gun is knocked out of Werner's hand and lands under the dining table. The Monstrum grabs Werner's throat and effortlessly lifts him from the ground. The old, frail man's legs kick spasmodically for a few seconds, before finally hanging limp.
"… he's the client. Eckhardt."
Werner falls to the floor, dead. Eckhardt bends over the corpse and slits the torso open to remove the intestines. He uses the blood to daub the occult symbols across the wall.
"Pieter Van Eckhardt. The Black Alchemist."
Fifteen minutes after the killer has left the apartment, Lara awakes and stands to find Werner laying in front of the broken window across the room. She checks his pulse. Gone.
"And I was accused," Lara said, opening her eyes. "I have to find Eckhardt. I don't know how, but I'm going to make him pay."
She walked across the apartment, scanning for clues. Von Croy's pistol still lay on the floor below the dining table. Lara picked it up and gazed at the short range gun – a Rigg 09 with wooden handle and 9 shot magazine. It wasn't exactly the most powerful hardware ever made. "At least it's better than nothing," Lara thought, having been utterly disarmed in the Louvre. She pocketed the gun and proceeded into the office.
The desks were cluttered up with books and articles on the Lux Veritatis. Lara sat down and started going through the papers. According to Von Croy's research, the Lux Veritatis were a secret offshoot of the Knights Templar, established sometime in the 12th century. Their order was dedicated to suppressing evil, especially sorcery and alchemy. It said they were responsible for destroying Eckhardt in 1445.
Lara also found a bloodstained fax from Margot Carvier: 'Dear Werner, heard from Vasiley again. He could have all five engravings. He has sent me his website address: SHADOWWHISTORIES.PR – the codeword to access the restricted area is ---' The lower part of the paper was torn off there, but Lara didn't need that codeword at the moment.
A book on the Sanglyph rested on the desk next to the faxes. Apparently, the Sanglyph was created by the Black Alchemist in the 1400's. It was made in five metallic parts and hidden. "Perhaps those are the symbols in the Obscura paintings. Didn't Werner write more about it in his notebook?" Lara produced the book and read on, slowly piecing this dark history together.
Lux Veritatis tried to suppress the Cabal from the 1300's onwards. Lux Veritatis – links to Nephilim?
Nephilim: Cursed offspring of angels and humans. Related prophecy: 'Through the Golden Lion, the Nephilim will enslave the sons of man and inherit the Earth.' Golden Lion Eckhardt?
The Sleeper or Cubiculum Nephili – literally 'sleeping cask' or 'chamber'. Thought to be the last intact specimen of the Nephilim race. Supposedly buried in Anatolia, Turkey.
The Sanglyph – some artifact of alchemic power? Details scarce.
The Lux Veritatis order possesed 'Weapons of Light', the Periapt Shards. These were looted from underground cities in ancient Turkey. The Lux Veritatis were said to have destroyed the last of the Nephilim Sleepers.
Called Lara again. She's agreed to come to Paris and visit me. If she doesn't help me with the paintings and Eckhardt, I don't know what I'm going to do.
There were no more entries after that. Lara tucked the notebook back into her pocket and left the office. Following the spiral staircase next to the kitchen, she entered a large bedroom with a blue double bed. A book on the Cabal lay on a mahogany desk here. Lara sat down and leafed through the yellow pages.
The Cabal was a powerful alliance of five alchemists and sorcerers in the 13- and 1400's. Eckhardt was said to have betrayed and murdered almost all of them to control their secrets. "Now that is interesting!" The Cabal and the Lux Veritatis battled constantly, even after the disappearance of the Black Alchemist in 1445.
Lara walked back down the spiral staircase to the living room. She was about to leave the flat when she spotted a walking stick on the floor in front of the circular, broken window – where she had found Von Croy's corpse.
Lara crouched down and took the thin cane. It had a golden jackal-like head at one end. Lara immediately recognized it as the head of Seth, the Lucifer-esque Egyptian god she had imprisoned at the turn of the century – only to be buried alive in the very same temple afterwards. "I can't believe he kept that walking stick …"
Today, the physical form of Seth is simply called the "Seth animal", because it is not otherwise identifiable. The nose resembles that of a camel or an ass, and some scholars think it might be some desert animal that was hunted to extinction at an early period. Others identify it with an aarvark or canine. But in truth, it doesn't look quite like any animal we know today. Lara stared into its crimson eyes and remembered how the power this animal represented had once possesed Werner.
'My weak brother has returned to the stars, and it is I who will rule over this world once more. Come forth, so you may bow before your god before he extinguishes your worthless life.'
The sounds of a door opening and quick footsteps tore Lara out of her flashback. She jerked her head around in time to see a strange, middle-aged man running in from the hall. He wore a pitchblack military uniform, and a square of red fabric was pulled over his crown. Sunglasses and a grey goatee adorned his weather-beaten face. He clutched a sleek Viper SMG in his gloved hands.
Lara stood and produced her small Rigg 09. The Cleaner gave a triumphant grin and aimed his large automatic weapon. The woman cursed and leapt sideways before the bullets sprayed from the SMG, shattering the last remaining fragments of glass in the already broken window. Lara raised her weak pistol to train it on the rapidly moving target. This was going to be a very unfair fight …
But then again, was life ever fair to her these days?
---
A/N: Yes, I changed the tense on purpose. I thought it would be an original (albeit clumsy) way to describe major flashbacks. Oh, and that paragraph on the Seth animal was not fiction. I got it from Robert Armour's "Gods and Myths of Ancient Egypt". Excellent book by the way …
