The Watcher's Stone
Chapter 4: The Score
Lara didn't know how long she spent driving in the dark wilderness, her eyes glued to the several meters of narrow dusty path ahead of her that acted for a road out here, which was the only thing keeping her from getting lost in the landscape of crops, semi-arid earth, and high flat hills. Eventually she took her eyes off the road long enough to see dark rectangular shapes not far from the road. There wasn't the twinkling of electric lights, but she thought she saw a fire, some source of light coming from a small square–a window. Buildings. A village of some sort, perhaps shops or homes for the nearby grain farmers.
Taking a chance, Lara turned off the headlights and waited for her eyes to adjust as much as they could, and carefully, and slowly, drove towards the buildings. As she neared them, it became more apparent the village was larger than she initially thought, though not likely to contain an inn of any sort. She parked, turned off the truck, and stepped out. Kurtis still slept. She'd have to look for adequate shelter on her own.
No one in the area seemed to notice her arrival, which caused a knot of anxiety in her chest to dissipate. It was always easier when people didn't ask questions or stick their nose in her business. She slunk around the exterior of the buildings along the outskirts, noting that there were sheds for grain storage close by which were unlikely to be occupied at this time of night. One of the sheds wasn't even locked, and inside she found enough floor room for a couple of people to lay down. On the walls hung a manner of farming tools and equipment, and beyond a divider were piles of unprocessed grain.
Deciding it was their best bet, Lara quietly went back to the truck and shook Kurtis until he stirred.
He blinked several times, his deep blue eyes somehow appearing almost to glow in the moonlight. The bloodstain on his robe didn't look any larger than last time Lara looked at it. The prognosis seemed less grim, she supposed.
"I found somewhere for us to sleep."
"I'll stay here," he slurred, his eyelids heavy.
"Oh no you won't," she countered, and grabbing the arm closest, slung it around her shoulders. "I've got to check out and clean that wound of yours. It might not be comfortable," she said whilst pulling him out of the truck, "but it's got to be done. I won't have you slowing me down tomorrow."
Kurtis groaned and hissed through his teeth as he shuffled along, allowing Lara to wrap an arm around his back and take some of his weight. She was surprised; she thought Kurtis, as he had back at the Strahov Fortress, would decline her help, preferring to play the macho tough guy. Apparently the wound was painful enough that he didn't care about that.
Once inside the shack she helped Kurtis lay down on the least hard section of the floor, layering some empty discarded cloth sacks to make something of a mattress, and using their robes by balling them up to form makeshift pillows.
Kurtis was wide awake from all the moving, and when she reached for the hem of his shirt his fingers gripped her hand tightly, preventing her from lifting. She met his eyes with a hard stare.
"Let me see," she commanded.
A sigh escaped his lips, and Kurtis released her hand. She lifted his dark shirt up to reveal his wound. A red shiny circular scar the size of a salad plate was just below where his ribs ended. The edges were damp and gooey looking, having torn and wept blood from vigorous activity. Lara didn't bother to withhold the gasp of surprise. She clasped her other hand over her mouth and knitted her brows together, allowing herself to feel a slight, brief hint of sympathy for the strange man. How had he even been able to stand and move and breathe with such a wound?
Then Kurtis gingerly sat up and leaned forward, allowing her to see his back. The wound on that side was even wider around. Though it somehow seemed less irritated and the scabbing along the edges thicker, the layer of skin over the circle was still bright pink and thin.
"Have you lost an organ?" she asked in an incredulous tone. She slung off her backpack and set to opening a large medical kit, wondering whether her first aid knowledge would be enough for him. Surely he'd had surgery at some point? But even in the dark, with nothing but a flashlight perched against the wall to act as a lamp, she could tell there had been no stitches or staples. Somehow it had closed on its own.
"No," Kurtis said as he warily eyed Lara's kit. "Least, not any I've missed."
The clink of the scalpel hitting the bottle of liquid analgesic startled them both, and Lara sighed. She bore her eyes into his, waiting to speak until she had his full attention.
"Kurtis, tell me plainly: How are you alive?"
"Self-regeneration," he answered, to his credit, plainly. "I didn't get the time I needed. I should be in a self-induced coma, but the Cabal hasn't allowed me that luxury."
"Because of the artifact?"
"Yeah. Boaz–that mutant hag–I thought I killed her but she snuck up on me when my back was turned. Skewered me right through. My fault for letting my guard down. I was gonna sleep the worst of it off, but I woke up after a couple weeks, sent my feelers out to see if you'd held up your end of our deal… and well, here we are."
And Lara had been about to steal his motorbike and psychic weapon. She hardly ever felt shame, but how quickly she gave up on finding Kurtis elicited a sense of regret. Pushing the feeling aside, she began to apply disinfectant to the wound and work on wrapping it up.
"Sorry about taking your bike," she said in a quiet voice. "If I'd known you were alive…"
But Kurtis shook his head. "Let's not lie to each other. I came to you because you're the only person who can accomplish what needs to be done. No point in pretending at sentimentality." His eyes, which sometimes seemed like scorching blue flames, at the moment felt cold and aloof like icy waters. She could barely maintain the eye contact, and the sense of guilt and regret returned and doubled.
Ouch. She didn't know why him saying so bothered her. He was correct. They were strangers, and they didn't owe each other anything. If she knew he'd been alive, she might have left the bike and Chirugai where she found them, but she wouldn't have gone out of her way to make contact again. Sentimentality, friendship, trust–none had ever been of interest to her. Not until the Bantiwa. In her line of work they were often weaknesses. She could tell from the start, from the first moment she looked deep into Kurtis' eyes at the Louvre, that he lived in the same world as her.
Still, as she wrapped his wound up with sterile gauze, she might have tugged on it a little harder than necessary to tie the ends. Kurtis clenched his jaw but said nothing. She hated that Kurtis was right, and she hated that she wished he wasn't – that she wanted to be more than allies of convenience – and she hated how vulnerable that made her feel. Despite she being whole and unharmed, she felt as though she were the one with a gaping hole in her abdomen.
"So sleeping is the only way to treat this?" she asked, trying to distract herself from looking too intently at his bare torso. The rest of his body unmarred by a hideous wound, was not such an eyesore.
"No. There's another way. A…" he hesitated, grunted when Lara tucked and taped the end of the wrap. "Bloodline Room. Hard to explain what it is but, there was one in an old castle in Germany. I went there after waking up, but someone at the Cabal must have anticipated that. Vasiley was there."
Lara paused and watched his face as he relayed their meeting.
The contraptions in this Bloodline Room resembled medieval thrones. Arranged in a circle, each chair had a mechanism erected behind it. Kurtis scanned the name plates on the floor until he found the one for his particular family line.
Approaching slowly, his breath ragged, his shirt damp – not only from sweat, but the wound in his abdomen had ripped open again and began seeping blood like an overflowing sponge – he nearly collapsed into the seat.
He had used what little strength he had left to pull himself out of the Strahov Fortress and make his way across the border to the Bavarian forest, where the Castle Kriegler ruins laid. He had no idea how he survived this long; his memory of the traversal was spotty and blurred.
He hoped to God the Bloodline Room still worked. It would be just his luck that this cobweb-filled, dusty, and bombed-out castle no longer had functioning healing devices. But even if they no longer worked, he could maybe at least find a replacement for the Chirugai which had gone missing in Prague. A weapon made of ferilium wouldn't be destroyed by any bomb. If he was correct, the Culcrys was hidden somewhere around here.
He concentrated what little psychic energy he had left inside to try to activate the chair, and closed his eyes to shut out all distractions.
And he opened them when a startling, horrid metal-crunching sound erupted from behind him. He leapt from the seat and turned around, worrying for a moment he broke the contraption, only to come face-to-face with a hideous creature.
No, not a creature. Rather a girl. A slight one, with short blonde hair, so blonde it was almost white, and black smeared around her bright clear eyes like she went a little crazy with the eyeliner. She was dressed in dark clothes that hung off her frame with an oversized trench coat, and wielded a large mallet which she, all while staring at Kurtis, lifted and smashed once more into the mechanism behind the chair.
Kurtis let out a shout in surprise, as though he was trying to ward off a wild animal. The girl bared her teeth at him like one. She swiftly smashed the mechanism once more and sparks flickered from it. Kurtis felt the energy near it dissipate.
Shit. There went his chance to heal.
But at the moment, that was the least of his worries. The girl – Morgau Vasiley, he recalled his contact mentioning her – didn't just look crazy. He was certain she was genuinely crazy. She jumped at him next, raising the mallet above her head, aimed to smash directly into his head. Kurtis reacted quickly and dove to the right, rolling with the movement to bring himself to a stand. Every muscle in his body ached from it.
Later, Kurtis would barely recall how he managed to get out of this predicament. It seemed he had no time to catch his breath. The girl would chase him, swing at him, and just barely miss his face by mere centimeters. Once the edge of the mallet caught him in the shoulder, another time on the hip, spinning and disorienting him. He stumbled and tripped over his own feet, feeling like his guts would spill from his wound each time and bewildered they hadn't.
He knew eventually she'd get a lucky hit and he'd be a goner. Kurtis evaded, weaving in and out around the other thrones, causing Morgau's hectic attacks to catch the other mechanisms, throwing sparks here and there. He would've felt bad about it, but there was no one else to use those chairs.
Just when the burst of adrenaline that kept Kurtis moving was beginning to wane and he felt himself slowing, smoke rose up. One of the sparks from the broken mechanisms caught a throne on fire, and the wood of the chair, so old and dried out as it was, was perfect kindling. The fire grew in seconds, enveloping them both in heat.
They both glanced at it. Morgau threw off her coat then, revealing a metal corset-like device encasing her entire torso, with tubing and wires and metal clasps, all seemingly holding her broken body together. Kurtis couldn't recall if he gasped aloud or simply stared. That was Pieter van Eckhardt's handiwork if he'd ever seen it.
What the hell happened to this girl?
Why did he care?
Morgau didn't seem bothered. As if bored of the cat and mouse game and ready to move on to other things, Morgau pulled out a pistol from her back pocket.
So it was like that, then. A duel between the remaining Lux Veritatis. Kurtis was about to reach for his own gun when something in the fire popped, and a small chip of ashy wood flew and nearly struck Morgau. Kurtis seized the brief moment of distraction and rushed at Morgau, barrelling his head into her waist and shoving her right towards the flames. She fell onto the chair, shrieked, and flopped off and onto the nearby floor like a fish searching for water. Kurtis turned towards the nearest exit. He probably wouldn't be able to outrun her in his state, but maybe he could get enough of a head start, could hide somewhere. Castle Kriegler had corridors and winding paths that seemed to lead nowhere, one could easily get lost.
But he didn't have to. As Morgau was still putting herself out, the fire caused a chain reaction. The mechanisms began to pop and crackle, and the nearest one exploded. The heat and gust of wind knocked Kurtis back. Spread the fire about, catching Morgau.
His head felt fuzzy and he was disoriented as he stood, but he could tell so was Morgau. She was fighting to put herself out. The ends of her hair, already wild, were singed, and red welts were erupting on her exposed skin. His vision jerked and bobbed as he watched her, and wondered how much blood he lost with all that moving around. Then he realized it was the castle itself that was shaking. Did the destruction in the Bloodline Room cause the floor they were on to become destabilized? He didn't have time to find out or question his good fortune. He turned and ran out while Morgau avoided being burned alive.
He didn't get far before he heard her let out an enraged scream. Kurtis didn't have time to find a proper exit, so he made his own. At the nearest exit he jumped through the window, creating a brief shield to keep the glass shards from slicing him to ribbons. As soon as his feet touched the ground he sprinted off at the fastest speed he could manage, feeling with every step his stomach tear and spill more blood, cold sweat pebbling his skin. The woods were just there, and he knew how to make himself lost in the trees.
Careful not to break any branches or step on any twigs, he trekked deeper into the woods under the cover of darkness. Night had fully set in, but that didn't mean Morgau wouldn't still be able to track him. He walked as silently as he could, checking now and again that he wasn't leaving a blood trail behind him, until he found a good spot with lots of dead leaves and shrubs. Made sure nothing dangerous had already made the place its home, and then with his hands dug a shallow ditch. He laid down in it and covered himself with the dirt and dried leaves, and with closed eyes waited for morning.
He feared he'd never wake. At any moment the sleep could've turned into a full-blown coma and then he'd be more likely to die from exposure or hypothermia than from the wound. With the Bloodline Room gone and hospitals not an option, he had no other choice.
Somehow the sun shined through the dense trees and into his eyes, rousing him awake. His muscles were frozen stiff, his body running on fumes, but he oddly felt a slight refreshment from the sleep. He'd survived an almost certain death a second time. What luck, he mused, and slowly pushed himself to a stand. As much as he wished he could find a warm bed and sleep it off for a few months, he knew his work wasn't done.
But in his state it was impossible to do it alone. He'd have to track down the one person that could help him. He needed Lara Croft.
Lara took the information in, feeling like she was playing on the losing team. "Was that the only 'Bloodline Room'?"
"No, but it was the only one I know the location of. And Vasiley–" he let out a ragged sigh. "Almost feel sorry for her. She's practically a kid."
"She tried to kill us."
"I said 'almost'."
"Sounds like you're lucky to have made it out alive."
"Lucky…hmm, maybe." He stared off at the middle distance, then looked at Lara. "You done? You've been tucking that wrap in for a while now."
Lara quickly retracted her hands.
With the impalement wound bandaged again, she sat back on her haunches and inspected her work. The gauze remained white and unblemished, testament to Kurtis' incredible so-called self-regeneration. Lara shook her head minutely–what trouble would she get herself into if she had such powers? In her peripheral vision she saw Kurtis arch an eyebrow, waiting on her to say something, but she didn't feel ready to meet his eyes again. She wandered her gaze across his chest, flickering down to his navel and his waistband, spying the very edges of his underwear peeking out from beneath.
Lara turned away and leaned her back against the shed wall, grabbing and bunching up a cloth sack. She felt warm all over as she adjusted it behind her head, though the night chill seeped in under the shed doors. Closing her eyes, she thought about their next step and tried to avoid thinking about Kurtis.
"Get some rest," she ordered quietly.
"Goodnight," his voice came in a murmur, then a minute later, his breathing fell into the slow, steady rhythm of slumber.