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'Advent'
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"Kurtis," she said in delayed shock.

"The one and only," he replied, looking entertained by her astonishment.

His phrasing triggered something in her mind, and all of a sudden a horrible suspicion came crashing over her. Her eyes narrowed.

The next thing Kurtis knew, he was flat on his back on a carpet of broken glass, one of her feet stamped down on his Chirugai hand, her gun jammed into his forehead.

"Prove to me you really are Kurtis," she hissed.

"Who the hell else would I be?" he replied in shocked anger.

"You tell me."

They stared at each other. Under any other circumstances, he'd have been only too happy to have her astride him.

Lara, for her part, was just thinking that this was her second deadlock of the day, when an unseen hand shoved her forcefully in the stomach, making her gasp and lose her balance.

Kurtis twisted, throwing her off him and climbing back to his feet. "Damn, my back is torn to bits here!"

Scrambling upright, Lara paused, frowning. "Turn around," she demanded, levelling her gun at him. He did so, scowling, and he was telling the truth after all, because the back of his shirt was peppered with tiny holes and tears, through which torn flesh could be glimpsed, from which spots of blood were seeping. Blood, drawn by small shards of glass, whereas high-calibre ordnance had had no effect whatsoever on...

On the real Nephili.

She sighed and lowered her weapon.

Kurtis gave her a long, hard, and not very friendly stare. "Don't do that again, will you?"

"Sorry," she muttered ungraciously.

"What's with you anyway? I thought you might be happy to see me."

She was silent for a few moments. She should have been happy, the moment spoiled by Karel's legacy of deception and mistrust.

She realised she was staring into thin air, and composed herself. Lifting her chin, she spoke more calmly. First things first. "Eckhardt is dead, Kurtis."

He nodded in grim satisfaction, blue eyes narrowing behind their fringe of dark hair. "You got him for me, Lara."

"Not me," she replied. "Karel. Karel killed him in the end."

"Joachim Karel?" said Kurtis incredulously. At Lara's nod, he said, "But he worked for Eckhardt!"

"That's what Eckhardt thought as well. But Kurtis, Karel was...is…one of the Nephilim. He can change shape at will. He killed my friend Von Croy while in Eckhardt's form - he even became you, for a few minutes. To confuse me."

Kurtis frowned. "So that's why you…" he trailed off. "Then it could have been Karel who murdered my father," he said, his voice hardening.

Lara looked at him in sympathy. "Kurtis, we may never know either way."

He closed his eyes and thudded his head against the wall. "Lux Veritatis myths always said the Nephilim were shapeshifters, but I never believed it…damn it, damn it."

"He actually asked me to join him. In a - how did he phrase it? A 'benign new world order.'"

The expression on Kurtis' face told Lara he didn't believe that any more than she had. "So he's still alive then?" he queried.

Lara shook her head slowly. "I think so," she said. "I did destroy the Sleeper, using Eckhardt's Glove together with the Sanglyph. There was an explosion, and I ran. It looked as though Karel was caught up in it, but...from what I know of the Nephilim, they're not that easy to get rid of."

"Right. Karel is still out there somewhere. That won't have been enough to kill him," said Kurtis, brows constricting ominously. "This isn't over, Lara," he added, glaring past her into the dark night.

"What isn't over?" demanded Winston from the doorway. Kurtis raised an eyebrow at the portly, striped-pyjama-clad form, and at the hearth sweeper in his hand.

"Enough of the creative weapons, Winston." Lara brushed strands of hair out of her face and adopted a formal tone - which, to Kurtis, seemed at odds with the circumstances, but then, that was the English for you, always standing on ceremony - "This is Kurtis Trent."

The butler eyed the new arrival with lingering suspicion. "I thought you might be in trouble, Miss Croft." His gaze fell onto the bodies strewn over the floor.

"That's all right, Winston. Why don't you just go downstairs and make us all a cup of tea - "

"Coffee," interjected Kurtis.

" - coffee, and then see about getting a room ready for our new guest?"

Winston nodded and departed, mumbling something about, "Blood on the carpet, always blood on the carpet..." They heard his slow progress down the stairs.

"Karel," Kurtis muttered. "I thought he was just their investment and recruitments guy."

"And their lawyer."

"Lawyer?" said Kurtis tightly. "My God, we really are dealing with evil in its purest form, aren't we."

Bloodstained and exhausted as she was, she couldn't help but laugh.

He straightened, grinning confidently. "You are pleased to see me."

x x x

"So what's your story?"

He gave her a questioning glance over the rim of his mug.

"Boaz...there was blood all over the floor. I came back for you. I thought you were injured!"

"I'll say. Bitch stabbed me right through the stomach," he said darkly.

"Then how..."

"I don't know," said Kurtis abruptly. He stood up, shoving his chair back with a screech of wood on tile. "I've got powers, Lara, you know? All the Lux have them...had them. You've seen me do things. With my mind."

He turned away, leaning heavily on the counter, his shoulder blades hunched. "I tried to get control, to stop the bleeding. But I couldn't. Just didn't have the strength. Everything went black. Next thing I knew, I was in one of the labs, right at the centre of the complex. I still don't know how I got there. I tried to call the Chirugai - " he nodded at the disk that lay on the table between them, and Lara smiled faintly.

"What happened then?"

"I blacked out again. When I came round, I was...healed." He caught her incredulous look. "Yeah, I know. Don't know else to describe it, though."

"Completely healed?" Lara said thoughtfully.

"There's not a scratch on my body," Kurtis confirmed. "Not only that, but I feel better than I have done since this whole thing started. It's like I just got back from vacation or something."

"Oh, how nice," said Lara, deadpan, remembering her own bruises. But she smiled to herself. Lara Croft and brushes with death were hardly strangers to one another, but she had already lost one friend through this Nephilim business. She was deeply thankful that Kurtis hadn't been another casualty.

"It's quite somethin', isn't it?" he said grimly.

"Something," she assented quietly. "A mystery, then."

"Yeah. Another one."

They stared at each other, barely noticing that Winston had come in and was fussing around them, gathering up plates and mugs.

"You said Eckhardt was the original Black Alchemist. How did he get like that, Kurtis?"

"He was always a headcase, but then he spent five hundred years in a big, dark pit...courtesy of the Lux Veritatis. And when he got out, well...that's when he started hunting us down."

"Your father?"

"He was one of the last. That just left Vasiley...and then me."

"Why didn't you try to stop Eckhardt earlier?"

"I was outta the picture for a good while." He broke eye contact, speaking with such finality that Lara decided against further questions - for the time being.

For a few moments there was silence, broken only by the steady tick of the kitchen clock, the creak of old wood, the lapping of water against the sides of the plunge pool, just beyond the door...the familiar nighttime voices of Croft Manor, intercut with the clinking and splashing of Winston doing the washing up.

Kurtis stretched and yawned."I've been travelling all night. I need some sleep, if that's OK."

"Go up the main stairs to the left-your room is second door on the right," she replied.

His expression changed into one she remembered very well; an uneven, cocky grin. "You mean I don't get to check out the master bedroom?"

Behind her stony glare, she was laughing at his sheer nerve, but she was damned if she'd let him see it. "Goodnight, Kurtis."

He held both hands up in mock defeat. "OK, but tomorrow, I'd like to see the rest of this place of yours." He turned back towards the kitchen table, then frowned. "Hey, where's my Chirugai?"

They looked at each other in mild alarm, then as one, turned in the butler's direction."Ahh, Winston?" called Lara. " Did you pick up something round with..."

She trailed off; too late. The lethal weapon was perched on the draining board, incongruous amid the fine bone china, scrubbed to a shine and dripping soapy water.

"Clean as a whistle," announced Winston.

Kurtis groaned and clapped a hand to his forehead.

x x x

The first thing she saw when she looked out into the morning was his Harley, crouched on the gravel just outside the gates, oblivious to the rain that lashed it from all sides. She eyed it at length, wondering whether it would be a match for her Streetfighter in a straight run. She had the feeling she'd find out soon enough.

Half an hour later, Kurtis met her on the landing, bright-eyed, freshly showered, but unshaven. It had been a couple of years since she'd had a houseguest, and even longer since a houseguest was a potential...

What? Not boyfriend; that sounded adolescent. At any rate, she wasn't completely sure how to proceed. He had got the better of her in more ways than one on their first encounter, depriving her not only of her weapons, but also of her composure. In Prague, she had neatly turned the tables on him. Of course, that was before they had become allies...

Still, nothing wrong with a little healthy competition, she told herself. And they were on her home territory now, which gave her the tactical advantage...

Kurtis broke into her thoughts."What are you grinning at?"

"Oh, nothing..."

As they headed for the Library, the butler shuffled purposefully towards them, carrying a bundle of brightly coloured dusters. If Lara was honest with herself, she knew that most of the heavier household tasks were beyond him, but he was happy enough pottering round, like a contented old cat who was too old and stiff to do anything serious about the mice anymore, but who no-one would ever dream of getting rid of.

Kurtis tossed off a casual salute as they passed. "Yo, Winston!"

"Yo, young sir."

"I'm glad you're not holding a grudge from last night," said Lara.

Kurtis patted the Chirugai protectively. "I'll just make sure to keep it with me at all times from now on."

"At least it's clean now."

"It's eight hundred years old," he said darkly. "It's never been washed up before."

He didn't seem overly enthusiastic about the Library - probably not the bookish type, thought Lara, although he did show some interest in the first editions of her own books, displayed in pride of place…by Winston, of course.

Kurtis picked Slaying Bigfoot off the shelf. "I've actually read this one. Once, to pass the time when I was on leave…kinda sensationalist, isn't it?" He grinned to show he was teasing.

"That's the idea. It sells. But wait - 'on leave'? Were you in the military?"

"French Foreign Legion. Now that's a story…"

He was more impressed by the swimming pool with its frolicking, frescoed dolphins. The quad bike track met with his approval as well, and he had challenged her to a race round the assault course by the time they reached the second tower:

"And no planting your butler to trip me up, either…"

"As if I'd need to!" she had scoffed, but it had been a close thing, only her intimate knowledge of the leaps and turns giving her the final edge.

By the time they came back into the house, faces flushed from the exercise and the keen wind, he was frowning again as he looked all around him.

"All of this is great, but I got a feeling you're holding out on me."

"Excuse me?"

He winked at her. "Where do you keep your loot, Lara?"

x x x

She pulled down on the lever, but even as she turned, tensing herself for the dash across the hall, her ears missed the familiar rumble of the door's descent. Then she saw him, standing nonchalantly a few feet from the newly-created entrance, one hand raised in the air.

"In a hurry, Lara?"

"Fine," she said flatly. "Spoil my fun."

He released his mental hold on the heavy oak as they stepped down into the hidden room, and it closed, sealing them into a cool, dark sanctuary.

It was almost like being underwater, with the marine light playing over the walls and ceiling. The vivid blue of the display cases drew the eye, but most of the illumination was coming from the centre of the room, from an open-front case where five artefacts reclined on perspex stands of differing height.

Lara looked around her, face grave, at the rest of her neglected children: the shattered pieces of the Scion; the Mask of Tornarsuk, the Iris, suspended in pale blue liquid as its various parts spun endlessly around each other. Before Egypt she used to come in here every day just to stand and stare, a mother hovering proudly over her precious, sleeping infants. It had been a while.

She came to the last case, drawing her fingers lightly over the cool hard glass. The most beautiful? Perhaps not. Her favourite? Definitely. The Dagger of Xian; she never tired of watching it tumble serenely, end over end in its captive miniature ocean.

Kurtis, moving round the perimeter of the room, paused in front of the Philosopher's Stone, mounted on the wall beneath the massive jaws of Tyrannosaurus Rex. "Bet our late friend Eckhardt would have loved to get his hands on this one..."

She glanced at him, amused. "Not many people have seen inside this room. The ones that have usually mention the dinosaur first."

"I've seen things with way bigger teeth than that in my time."

"Have you, now?"

He joined her, looking around him with enthusiasm. "Great collection!"

"The showpiece isn't even here any more," she commented ruefully.

He looked at her, raising heavy dark brows.

"The Ark of the Covenant."

He let out a low whistle. "The Lux once spent nearly a hundred years looking for that…they thought its legendary power might help them overcome the Cabal."

A smile touched the corners of her mouth. "Well, apparently they were digging in the wrong place."

"What happened to it?"

"It's on permanent loan to an Israeli museum. I would have loved to have kept it here, but…well. Cultural heritage. It was important to them."

He nodded, then wandered over to the centerpiece, drawn by the subtle greenish radiance. "Kryptonite?" he asked jokingly.

"You're not far off, actually."

He stretched out a hand. "Can I?"

"Be my guest."

She watched with interest as he reached out. Bet he goes for-yes! It looks a lot like…

"It reminds me of my Periapt Shard," he said, giving voice to her thoughts.

"It's called the Ora Dagger," Lara said softly. "It's very old..."

His eyebrows rose slightly at the unfamiliar name. "It's beautiful. Neat." He grinned at her over his shoulder, turning the artefact over with care. Translucent, crystalline, it glowed mutedly in his hands, illuminating the hard contours of his face with dappled aquamarine.

Finally, he replaced it on its pedestal. "Awesome," he said.

"But I like this one best," she said, picking up lizard-shaped Element 115. "It's the closest I come to having a pet."

"What about those fish down in the basement?"

"They don't count."

He grinned. "Tell you what, if we get through this Nephilim thing...I won't need the Chirugai any more, and I'll donate it to your collection."

"Thank you. I'll commission a little plaque with your name on it."

x x x

Thirty minutes later, they had settled in the dining room, staring at one another across the mahogany wood of the long table, preparing for the conversation that they had been putting off all day.

Kurtis leaned forward, holding her gaze.

"Lara, there were three Sleepers. Three that my father and Vasiley, that the last Lux Veritatis, knew about. You've killed one of them. Karel, he's probably still out there, somewhere. He may have been weakened, but he'll recover in time." Kurtis paused. "That still leaves one more."

Silence. His brow furrowed in apprehension. Watching him, she realised that deep down, she'd been hoping that he'd have some kind of plan, would know what to do next, but she could see now that he was just as afraid and confused as she is. Not that either of them would openly admit to it. Suddenly, she felt very tired.

"The Periapt Shards?" she said.

He thought it over, and nodded. "What happened to them?"

"They were in the Lab when it exploded.The whole thing came down."

Kurtis sucked in his breath. "We need to get them back. If we can…"

Somehow, they'd meshed into a team again, their paths merging as if it were the most natural thing in the world. To her own slight surprise, Lara found that she didn't resent this at all. He'd better watch out, though…

Aloud, she said, "And the Sanglyph? Karel probably took it with him, if he got out of there. It was meant to revive the Nephilim, wasn't it?"

Kurtis leaned his head into his hand, half-covering his eyes, rubbing at his forehead.

The rain flung itself at the window, the wind howled. Looking out through the darkened glass, Lara caught a glimpse of the cold outside, the black branches of her own hedge seeming alien and menacing as they threshed up and down in the wind, leaves flattened.

"We need to get the Shards," Kurtis repeated. "It's our only option. We're not safe here, Lara. We're not safe anywhere..."

Another silence, this one more uneasy than the last, until he spoke again, softly: "By the way...thanks."

Lara frowned, trying to place his words in the context of their conversation."For what?"

The blue eyes were open and guileless. "Coming back for me."

She opened her mouth to reply, then closed it again. He had effectively disarmed her. Round three to him.

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Hi everyone! Hope you enjoyed that...the next chapter won't be as long coming. Anyone get the Indy ref.?

Thanks, as usual, to everyone who left a review, it makes me squee with delight every time one appears in my inbox...