Chapter Nineteen (I'm almost at twenty chapters! Wow!)
Dralx-Oh yay. I'm glad that I made you like Riley! He's a likable person (sometimes) and I too didn't realize how much I liked Riley until I killed him off. Whoops!(Hee)
No worries, Riley's a tough kid-he'll rebound. I swear that you're the most polite reviewer I've ever had. Thank you as well for the lovely review.
Silveni-Well, technically I DID kill him, I just didn't kill him OFF. If you look back a few chapters in the story you can probably predict what's going to happen in this chapter. Haha, per your request I did make sure that Claire "got him good." She wouldn't be a Howe if she didn't go a wee bit crazy.
Crazy Little Emily-Hah, I knew you would hate the ending of that last chapter. I acknowledge that I am the most evil author ever, but at least this time I didn't make you wait two weeks for the next chapter, right? Don't die! I need the reviews! hah JK. I updated faster than planned just for you. (For Second Review-I'm a bandie too! Have fun at band camp!)
Whisperwings-(Perks up) You liked the death scene? Yay! I worked very hard on that bit, I didn't want it to be too cheesy.
Liana Elfgirl- Thank you so much for reviewing! I love new reviewers! I tired to update as quickly as possible so you wouldn't be held in suspense. Don't worry, Riley will bounce back (wink)
Classicreviewer- Hee. I guess I AM pretty sick for killing Riley, eh? Don't worry I take no offense. It was necessary for my plot development. Of course, doesn't mean I liked doing it (lugs away the five pounds of tissues used while writing the death scene.) O well. This chapter is happier. Enjoy.
Makedamnsure-New Reviewer! I would hug you, but not only would that probably freak you out, but is physically impossible at the moment. An enormous Thank You will have to do. Yay, you're the first person who has commented on the ending. I'm cranking out the rest of it as fast as I can.
Aniangelz- Ha, I wouldn't go as far as to call me a writing genius, but I'm glad you like the fic, and thank you so much for reviewing.
Kes-Ah, I hate it when cuts off my reviews. My sympathies, friend. You've no manner of luck at all. (Hah, sorry, I'm in a POTC mood after seeing the second movie.) I'm glad you liked the whumpage, and while there isn't any in this chapter there's lots of after-whumpage and a bit of revenge. Enjoy!
Miss Kitty-I accept the fact that I am evil, though I object at being put on the same level of evil as Robinson. (Though, technically we both kinda killed Riley. But I was SAD! Really!) Oooo, you'e the first person who thinks they know what cool trick I'm going to pull to get Riley back.(If, in fact, I do) Cheers! Thank you so much for the flattery, my ego is quite large now. A few people have complained. I will try to keep up the "great" work.
Sunburn Lady- Sorry! my long in-between-update-period-of-time is completely my exchange students fault. (Okay, maybe not completely, but I can't solely blame myself, I'm too conceited) She insists I learn to speak Spanish better, though I'm still concentrating on learning to speak my first language. However, before I go on a rant, I'm glad that you like my story, and thank you so much for reviewing.
Feathered Friend- Don't worry, I fully intend on leaving this chapter on a semi-happy note. I agree that leaving you at a part where I just killed off NT's most beloved character does not exactly score me any brownie points. Thanks for reviewing anyway.
elf of life-Thank you so much for reviewing! just so you wouldn't be left hanging at the dying part while I went up to Vermont for the weekend, I updated with some happy stuff
A/N- Wow, if I get that many reviews in one chapter as I did in last chapter, I should kill of Riley more often! (that was a JOKE) Thank you so much guys! And a special thanks to the people who reviewed for the first time, you made my two weeks!
Chapter Nineteen
While his grip on her arm was still viselike, Claire noticed that Lander kept her a good two feet away from his body, as if she had rabies. Normally she would have found this incredibly amusing, but her mind simply had one track at the moment.
Kill Robinson.
Her eyes were locked on the faint shadow of her target moving swiftly down the cave passageway. As soon as he was out of hearing range, she turned and grabbed Lander.
"Leave." she hissed quietly, her hands fisted in his jacket and her face pushed in his. "Get out of here."
Lander had drawn his gun and ripped himself out of her grip, backing up until his back hit the cavern wall. "Stay away from me, you crazy bitch." he warned.
Claire laughed hysterically. "You're calling me the crazy one?" she sneered, "What about Darth Psycho down there, you think he's not a few tacos short of a combo platter?"
Lander chose not to respond, his wary glance down the passageway revealing his feelings about his boss' sanity.
"Start running, Lander." Claire instructed. " If you begin now, you can escape with your life."
"Yeah?" Lander replied, his shaking hands betraying the steady voice. "Why's that?"
"Well, I figured that a smart guy like you would have figured it out already. Why do you think Robinson has let you come this far? He certainly has no trouble detaining me, I'm half his size. So why would he bring a muscleman into a plot when he needs to conceal his identity? You're obviously going to want some of the loot, and who knows who you'll tell. Come on Lander, the answer's simple." Claire mocked. "Has he told you about his precious Alter of Sangre? His plans to resurrect Blackbeard?"
Lander scoffed. "You're raving. That thing's fake."
"Robinson believes it's real. He's also done his research. You need a human blood sacrifice to use the Alter. That's why he hired you."
Claire could see Lander pale even the dimness of the cave. In the small piece of her mind still connected to reality, she marveled over the lies pouring out of her mouth.(And they were lies-for one, Robinson couldn't resurrect Blackbeard without his body present.) It was as if someone else had taken over her body, and the slowly shrinking sane part of her brain could only watch as a disembodied spectator.
"He'll kill you to resurrect Blackbeard-you know he has a gun. So I'm offering you another option. Leave now."
He hesitated. "What about Robinson?"
Claire allowed herself a fleeting look back at the mouth of the passageway where Riley's body was.
"I'll take care of Robinson." she stated flatly, turning her back on the opening and glaring down into the cavern. She heard a faint pounding and looked up, surprised, as she realized that Lander had already left. The bastard hadn't left her anything to kill him with, though. You think he could spare one tiny knife.
Claire shrugged and brushed the thought off, starting to walk down the passageway into the darkness. She didn't really need a weapon. In fact, killing Robinson with her bare hands was beginning to grow on her.
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The water was freezing. ROTC training had certainly dulled Ben's vulnerability to cold water, but at the moment his mind was too frantic to block out the chills.
Riley could probably give him a detailed explanation on why exactly the water was cold, Ben thought, if Riley was swimming next to him instead of on the other side of the lake, possibly bleeding heavily.
In a crazy way, this swimming would have been almost enjoyable if Riley was here. The kid would complain endlessly, of course, but Riley always managed to tough it out.
Ben turned around and checked on Abbie behind him, swallowing a mouthful of water in the process. In doing so, he missed seeing a shadowy figure emerge faintly on the far side of the lake. When a large splash sounded, Ben assumed it was from his wife behind him.
In fact, he wasn't aware of another presence until he reached a rowboat upside down about halfway across the lake and there was another man clinging to it, trying to flip it back over again.
Ben's pulse speeded. "Riley?" he called out hopefully, doubling his efforts to get to the boat. He could hear Abbie also calling behind him.
As their cries reached the shadowed figure, his head jerked toward them and began to struggle faster than before, trying to climb onto the rowboat.
"Riley?" Ben shouted one last time before catching a glimpse of the man's face.
It was definitely not Riley.
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Ian stepped out onto the tarmac, his hair blowing messily around his face and the heat collapsing down on him in an oppressing burden. Shrugging out of his jacket, he strode out from beneath the still-whirling blades to the tan car waiting for him.
Sliding into the passenger seat, he was faced with a tall, dark-skinned man in large black sunglasses and a black suit. Ian immediately thought that he looked like an older Will Smith in MIB, and then cursed Claire for making him watch horrendous movies just because she loved anything with a conspiracy theory.
"Agent Micheals" the man introduced himself shortly. "I just got here about an hour before you. We already have agents going to your sister's hotel."
"She won't be there." Ian replied curtly. "Agent Dawes should have informed you about the phone call I received from Robinson. He said he was going to take my sister. Right now she's with him."
Micheals gunned the engine of the car and sped out of the tarmac. "And where is he?"
"Where the treasure is."
The agent sighed "And where is the treasure?"
"No bloody idea. First we have to find Ben Gates."
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Claire edged down the damp passageway, alone except for a flickering light far away that bounced off the walls of the cave and alerted her of Robinson's presence. But for all intents and purposes, she was alone. Claire was trapped unaccompanied in the memory of Riley rasping his last request to her with dying eyes. She closed her eyes, trying to block out the image, but it was burned onto the back of her eyelids, pounding in her head like a dull drill boring through her skull.
The only thought that survived through that image was the way to make it stop. Robinson. Killing him would make it better. The burning in the back of her throat would stop and she could finally cut the ongoing loop of Riley's blood dripping onto the ground.
A grinding noise echoed down the passageway and Claire quickened her pace. Robinson's light disappeared, and she was cloaked in complete darkness. She barely noticed, and simply stretched out a hand in front of her to guide her way.
Then her hand hit a wall and Claire stopped. Frowning, she ran her hand across the rock until she came to a crack. Digging her fingernails into it, she pushed as hard as she could sideways, feeling he skin on her fingers break and bleed.
The door gave way easier that expected, and slid to the left, creating a large sliver of light. Claire's hands stung as dirt entered the cuts in her skin, but she barely noticed. Reaching into the crack in the door, she squeezed herself in and stumbled into the other side.
The room was lit with a few sparse torches on the rock wall, but most of the dim light came from cracks in the high ceiling that stretched to outside. Claire hypothesized that by now they were probably under some deserted beach near the museum.
Robinson stood, Lander's gun still in hand, staring out into the room. To him, it must have been like glimpsing heaven. The giant chamber was glittering with mountains of gold, stretching to the ceiling and cascading down again with peaks of precious jewels and bronze statues. Old wood chests lined the walls, their tarnished gold locks gleaming appealingly through the rust.
"Amazing……" he whispered, staggering forward. "It's amazing….."
Claire stared blackly at the piles of gold and jewels, not a single burst of euphoria produced inside her. She imagined what it would be like to have found this treasure with Riley and the others-she would be squealing like a giddy schoolgirl and hugging Riley before venturing out to examine the ancient artifacts.
Instead, she found herself standing in front of the treasure she had dreamed of with a man she intended to kill in this very room. Claire felt a stab of anger at Robinson for, after everything else he had done, now ruining what was supposed to be the most triumphal moment of her life.
"Robinson." she choked past her fury.
He turned around, an elated smile on his face. "Claire! There you are! My God, will you look at this! It's just what we dreamed of, Claire, isn't it extraoadinary?"
Claire met his gaze, her face contorted to disbelief. "You think-" she started roughly; "You think we can just pretend the last few hours never happened? That we're buddies again, teacher and student?"
Robinson glanced around the room warily. "Clare, where's Lander?"
"He's gone now." Claire sneered. "It's just you and me, just like you always wanted it, Professor. No one to get in the way."
Robinson swung up his gun, pointing it at her head. "Don't even start Claire. You know you'll never do it, you're not the killing type."
She took a step back and dropped her gaze to the gold-covered floor, her face cloudy with conflict. As Robinson relaxed his grip on the gun, Claire's hand shot out and twisted his wrist, dropping the gun to the floor. Using the same hand, she pulled him toward her, and in age-old tradition kneed him viciously in the balls.
Robinson howled in pain and surprise and fell to his knees. "You bitch!"
Claire grinned violently and brought her foot up to kick him under his chin, snapping his head back.
"I became the killing type the minute you pulled that trigger, Professor. Time to pay up."
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"Lander." Ben growled as he swam the last few feet to the rowboat.
Lander let go of the boat and took a few strokes back. " Hey, I had nothing to do with it, I left, I swear-"
His less-than-believable protests were cut off as Ben grabbed his throat and shoved him under the water. Lander flailed under the water for his closest gun strapped to his belt, but found that it, along with his other gun, it had become completely waterlogged. Cursing his bad gun luck in the last 24 hours, he referred to old way of fighting and puched ben in the stomach.
Doubling up, Ben released his hold on Lander's throat, giving Lander a chance to break to the surface, gasping for breath.
Once his vision cleared of little black fuzzies, Lander look around him in surpise. Ben wasn't anywhere to be seen.
Then he felt a strong jerk on his foot and was again pulled down into the water. Coughing and sputtering, he floundered, hitting anywhere he could blindly find on Ben. He felt Ben's hands closing in on his throat again and head butted him square in the forehead, wasting more air in his lungs as he exerted himself. Hell, how long could this guy Gates hold his breath?
Another pair of smaller hands closed down on him in a chokehold from behind, squeezing the last of his air out and surrendering his to blackness.
Ben emerged from the water sucking in air, helping Abbie pull Lander back up to the surface.
"Nice job." he gasped. "Dump him in the rowboat and let's keep on going to shore."
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Robinson rebounded quicker than she had expected, tackling her in the stomach and sending her sprawling into one of the mountains of gold. Claire winced as her head hit a ruby-adorned chalice and scrabbled up the giant pile, Robinson grabbing at her heels.
As she grabbed a small pewter statue to pull herself up farther, it gave way and sent her sliding down into Robinson. He grabbed her throat and pushed her against the gold with surprising strength.
"You aren't worthy of the treasure" he snarled, his face red and his eyes bulging. "You will never understand."
Claire opened her mouth, straining for air, and swung the statue in her hand into his temple. Robinson released her, clutching his bleeding head in pain, and Claire rolled sideways, continuing her climb upward over priceless treasures.
As she reached the top, Claire stopped to catch her breath, hanging onto a throne perched at the peak of the pile. She glanced down at Robinson, who was still trying to stem the bleeding in his head and climb at the same time.
From here she could see the entire room; it was a magnificent view, really, the sort of thing she would have enjoyed if she wasn't focused on killing a madman. She spared only a few admiring glimpses before scrounging around for a weapon to kill Robinson with.
It only took one glimpse for Claire to notice something stowed in the corner, an ethereal light shining down on it from one of the cracks in the ceiling.
It really looked like nothing more than an oversized stone box, but a closer look showed markings on the sides, carvings of pictures and writing that was indiscernible from far away.
But Claire had seen pictures, and knew that it was no oversized box.
"The Alter" she whispered, floored. Through all of Robinson's ramblings and lectures, she had never really believed that it existed. But there was no mistaking it, perched only feet from the gold pile she was standing on.
This completely changed things. Despite her best efforts, she felt the small strands of hope begin to tug on her mind, forcing an idea into her head.
Riley…………It could work.
Jumping down the other side of the gold hill, Claire slid on her back, wincing as she hit items with pointy edges. Gold sledding was obviously not the most practical sports.
Landing on her butt with many more bruises accumulated, Claire jumped to her feet and ran around to the other side, just as Robinson managed to stagger to the top.
She spotted Lander's gun over by the door and ran over, turning off the safety. Now all she needed was to get Robinson to the Altar. Thus, she needed a plan….
Circling around the pile, Claire spotted Robinson descending down and ventured over to the Altar, putting it between herself and him and being careful to conceal the weapon.
"The fact is, Professor, that you're a complete fraud." she yelled over, eliciting his immediate attention. "You claim that you're 'meant' to find the treasure, but it's nothing more than the deluded rambling of your own mind. You know the academic world would never take you seriously."
Robinson glared at her murderously while wiping the blood from his forehead and advancing toward her slowly. "You're just a pawn Claire. A pawn that is going to die slowly."
"Shut up." she sneered. "So far you've done nothing for yourself. You've done nothing to prove that you're worthy of the treasure. Everything you did to get ahead you used someone else for it. So I think you're the pawn, Professor. You're the one who's going to die."
Now only the altar was left between her and Robinson. While she'd distracted him enough to keep him from noticing the altar, she had to make him come closer.
"You know, I don't even believe that shit story about being an ancestor."
Well, that definitely worked. Robinson was actually growling like an animal and launched himself over the alter at her, a knife he had miraculously procured in hand.
Claire felt herself swing the gun up, and it exploded in her hands, sending her reeling back onto her butt.
Robinson jerked as the bulled hit him in midair was blown back as if pushed by an imaginary hand .
Claire blinked, slightly stunned, as the sound echoed in her ears. Robinson wasn't moving-from what she could see of him (which were his legs) he was just lying half on the alter.
The gun was two feet from her hand, and she snatched it up quickly, her eyes still on Robinson, waiting for him to move. Slowly, she picked herself up off the ground and crept forward, the gun carefully trained on him.
As she neared, Claire could see that she had shot him in the chest, slightly off center, but not on the same side as his heart. Blood was pooling on his shirt and beginning to run down the side onto the altar.
As the first drop fell onto the surface, Claire gasped as gold sparks jumped from the drop of blood. As more blood accumulated, the sparks grew into a translucent gold bubble that swelled from the pool, growing as blood continued to flow.
Claire winced and put her hands in front of her face as the surface of the bubble passed by her as it continued to fill the room. But it did her no harm-she felt essentially the same.
But the blood flow from Robinson's wound was sluggish, and the sparking gold material could only barely fill the room. In Claire's exhausted, stressed mind it seemed almost logical that the Altar of Sangre would spew forth shiny gold stuff. The real problem was getting it to Riley. Claire remembered her previous conversation with him.
"But you need copious amounts of blood. Like, pints."
There wasn't enough blood.
Claire steeled herself and stepped forward until she was looming over Robinson. Lifting the gun up with a surprisingly steady hand, she placed the muzzle against his neck.
Robinson's eyes shot open.
Claire gasped and started to pull away, but he didn't move, just stared at her with bloodshot eyes as he slowly bled to death.
"You won't do it…" he rasped softly, challenging her with his eyes. "You can't do it…I know you, Claire."
"That was your first mistake, Professor. " Claire whispered back. "You don't know me."
Turning her head away, Claire squeezed her eyes shut and pulled the trigger.
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As soon as the bottom of the lake was in view, Ben was out of the rowboat and wading to shore, with Abbie following close behind.
"Riley!" he called raggedly, searching the shore for anyone.
Abbie put a hand to his shoulder and pointed, and Ben finally spotted the body.
"No…." he started, running over and dropping to his knees. "No, no, no, no."
Riley was lying spread-eagle on the ground, the blood seeping from his three bullet wounds already starting to thicken and harden. His eyes were blank and empty, and devoid of the mischievous sparkle he always had in his eye.
Abbie put her arm around him, quietly sobbing, but Ben's eyes stayed dry as he still stared at Riley in disbelief, unwilling to comprehend that Riley was gone.
"Riley!" he yelled, pounding on his best friend's chest in some sort of diluted CPR. "Riley!"
"Ben, stop!"
"It's only been thirty minutes! I can bring him back!"
"Ben-"
"No, he's going to be ok!"
"Ben," Abbie choked "He's dead."
Ben finally felt the tears begin to push against his eyes, and stream down his cheeks in trails, dripping on Riley's chest.
"I shouldn't have let him go as me."
"Ben, there was nothing you could do." Abbie protested.
"I let him go with Deachat! I let him put his life on the line to save my own ass!"
"Ben." Abbie stated, looking over at him. "You would have done the exact same thing for him."
"I know."
That was when a gigantic gold cloud came bursting through the open door in the wall and engulfed all three of them. Ben threw his arms around Abbie, trying to protect her from whatever the stuff was, but as it swirled around them, it didn't seem to be doing anything.
And then it was gone. Disapeared, in a blink of an eye.
Ben lifted his head and looked at his wife. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine. What was that?"
A groan sounded from behind them. "Ugh, my head kills. Ben, I swear, if we ever go out partying again, you are cutting me off on my fifth beer."
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A/N-okay, so I took my sweet time getting this one up. I'm sorry. My exchange student left to go back home today (sob) so I could use some happy reviews to cheer me up!