The Amulet of Power (29 page)

“Let me see it for a minute, Lara,” said Oliver, holding out his hand.

She shook her head. “I don’t think that would be very wise.”

“I’m not
asking
you,” he said. “I’m
telling
you.”

“And I’m telling you no. It’s affecting you already, Malcolm.”

Suddenly he pulled his Magnum out of his belt. “Don’t make me use this on you, Lara. I want that thing, and I’m going to have it!”

“What’s happened to you?” she said. “I almost don’t recognize you any more!”

“I’ll kill you if I have to!” grated Oliver. “Hand it over!”

“Then you’ll have to kill me.”

If she was counting on his innate decency to overcome the effect the Amulet had on him, she was mistaken. He pointed the gun right at her heart and pulled the trigger—

—and nothing happened.

He frowned and fired twice more. There were two more explosions of sound, and still Lara stood there facing him.

He checked the Magnum, searching for the malfunction.

“It’s not the gun, Malcolm,” she said. “As long as I’m in possession of the Amulet, you can’t kill me.”

Something snapped inside Oliver, and with a roar of rage he launched himself at her. The force of his attack knocked her over. Ordinarily she’d have pulled out her Black Demons and dispatched him, or at least defended herself with the Scalpel of Isis, but she knew she couldn’t be killed, and she had no desire to kill a friend who’d gone temporarily insane due to his proximity to the Amulet.

She tried to get up, but he threw himself on her and began pummeling her with both hands.

It hurts!
she thought, surprised.
I thought I was invulnerable.

You are immortal,
said the voice within her head.
You cannot be killed, but that is all.

“Great!” she muttered. “So I could spend the next five thousand years in a wheelchair!”
And if Malcolm hadn’t aimed those shots at vital areas, I’d have three bullet wounds now.

She tried to push Oliver off, but he was fighting with an energy born of madness, and he kept smashing his fists into her, right, left, right, left.

And then, suddenly, he was lifted high in the air and hurled against a wall of the tiny church.

Lara got to her feet and saw three of the huge, shambling sand creatures, the same that she had seen in the desert, approaching Oliver. He seemed to come out of his madness as they closed in on him, and began screaming in terror.

Two of the sand creatures grabbed his arms, and the third reached out a huge hand and closed it around his head. They each pulled, and his arms and head came away from his body.

Lara turned away in disgust, then realized that she was alone in the church with three supernatural beings that had just killed her friend. She looked to the door, but one of the creatures stood directly in front of it. There was only one window, and it was too small and too high for her to climb through it before they caught her.

She knew from past experience that bullets wouldn’t stop the creatures. Maybe the wind might, but there was no wind inside the church. She had once thought water would be effective against them, but there wasn’t any water either.

The three sand creatures approached to within ten feet of her, then eight, then five.

She pulled the Scalpel of Isis out of her boot, prepared to sell her life as dearly as possible.

“Come on!” she grated. “I’m ready for you!”

But instead of attacking her, the three creatures knelt down in front of her.

They are the Servants of the Amulet,
said a voice deep inside her head.
As they did with this man, so will they do with all our enemies.

“There are a lot of Mahdists the world could do without,” she said softly. “Not to mention the Silent Ones.”
And then,
she added mentally,
we’ll go after the murderers, the rapists, the child molesters. Then the terrorist states. And then . . .

“Hold everything!” she said aloud. “You’ve got me thinking like
you
now!”

We are bound together, you and I. My power is your power. My servants are your servants, bound to do your bidding.

“Wait a minute,” said Lara slowly. “Are you saying that I could have called these creatures off before they killed poor Malcolm?”

Yes.

“I could have saved him,” she said dully. “He didn’t bargain on being exposed to your power. He only came along to protect me, and that’s what he got for his trouble. And now I’m deciding which thousand of my enemies to kill first! Omar was right—no one can help being corrupted by you!”

She held the Amulet up and began uttering the eight words Omar had given to her.

NO!
cried the silent voice.

By the fifth word, the sand creatures were rushing toward her, reaching out for the Amulet, but she dove behind the altar and got the last three words out just as one of the creatures’ hand was inches from her face.

And suddenly the creatures were gone, replaced by three piles of sand, and in her hand, instead of the Amulet, was a fistful of ashes—and as she stared at them, even the ashes vanished.

Then came the onerous task of burying what was left of Malcolm Oliver. She dug a shallow grave with her hands, and tried not to retch as she put the various parts into it. After she had covered it up, she took the cross from the back wall of the church and planted it on the fresh mound of earth.

I’ve had it,
she thought wearily as she walked to the car.
No more running, no more killing, no more artifacts that are never what they seem, no more watching people I care for lose their lives or their souls simply because they’re somehow connected to me. Just no more—not now, not ever.

PART V

FRANCE

35

The only direct flight to Europe was the Air France jumbo jet, and Lara soon found herself in Paris.

For months she avoided her usual hangouts. In the past she’d always stayed at the Ritz or the Plaza-Athenee, but she didn’t want to run into anyone she knew, anyone from what she considered her former life, the life she wanted nothing to do with ever again.

She lived at the small but charming Hotel Brighton, directly across the street of the Tuileries, those mile-long gardens behind the Louvre. It wasn’t quite the luxury she was used to, but it was far from unpleasant. Her suite on the fifth floor—it was the top floor, but she didn’t consider it high enough to think of it as a penthouse—possessed a pair of small balconies, and when she stood on either of them, she could not only see the Louvre and its glass pyramidal entrance, but also the d’Orsay, the Orangerie, the Place de la Concorde, and, far off to her right, the Arc de Triomphe. Not for nothing was Paris called the City of Light; at night the museums and government buildings were so bright that she could have read a book on one of the balconies.

It was an empty life, devoid of meaning or excitement. Whenever she saw someone she knew she would turn away and head off in an opposite direction. She never ate at Taillevant or Maxim’s or Arpege, those $200-a-plate restaurants that she used to frequent. Instead she went to local bistros like the Bar de l’x or Carr’s or Le Sablier.

When she ate she ate alone; when she shopped she shopped alone; even when she went to the opera, she went alone. There would be no more adventure for her, no more world traveling, no more hidden treasures that were never what they seemed—and no more friends dying simply because they had the misfortune to know her. She made no plans for the future. She lived her life one unhappy day at a time. Paris was as good as any other city; when it wasn’t, she’d move on.

One afternoon she took the tiny elevator down to the lobby of the Brighton, picked up her daily copy of
Le Figaro
from the desk, went out the door, turned to her right, walked about forty yards up the rue de Rivoli, and entered Angelina’s. It had become her daily ritual.

“
Bonjour, mademoiselle,
” the hostess greeted her. “I will take you to your usual table.”

“
Merci,
” Lara replied, falling into step behind her.

She sat down, ordered the
espresso
that had replaced tea in her affections, opened
Le Figaro
, and began scanning the various articles.

Then a name caught her eye, and she paused and read more carefully. One of the society columnists mentioned that Von Croy was in town. It was the one bright spot in her months of bitterness and isolation. Maybe she would pay him a visit. If anyone could assuage the pain and disillusionment she felt, could convince her that she was not responsible for her friend’s fall from grace, it was Von Croy. Yes, she’d definitely see him tonight.

She was just about to put the paper down when something else attracted her attention and she began reading avidly. It was an interview with Dr. Kevin Mason, the famed archaeologist. Toward the end he was questioned about the strange Circassian who had, for a time at least, masqueraded as his dead son. The man had walked boldly into the Seychelles Airport, claimed to be the reincarnation of the Mahdi, announced that nothing could kill him, demanded that he be supplied with a plane to the Sudan, and had actually wounded two of the guards who tried to subdue him before he was shot and killed. They later determined that he had killed more than a dozen men on Praslin Island that morning. Dr. Mason expressed his astonishment at the story, but knew no more details than the reporter did.

She placed a few euros on the table, folded the paper in half, and stood up. Suddenly she felt the need to visit with friends, to go to the theater, even to get out in the field again. Somehow the belated news of el-Shakir’s death had finally brought closure to her self-doubt, her crisis of faith. Yes, friends had died, and yes, friends would probably die again—but wasn’t that what soldiers had been doing for eons, to make the world a better and safer place?

“Pardonez-moi, madamoiselle,”
said a Frenchman at a nearby table. “If you are through with your newspaper, I wonder if you might consider leaving it with me?”

“Help yourself,” she said, handing it to him.

“Is there anything interesting in it?” he asked.

“Not a thing,” said Lara, walking out into the humid Paris afternoon with a new spring to her stride.

Yes,
she thought, feeling as if a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders,
it was time to rejoin the world.
Tonight she would take Von Croy out for the best dinner he’d ever had, and later, as he sipped his sherry, she would tell him a tale of intrigue and magic and murder that had begun more than a century ago.

By Mike Resnick
Published by Ballantine Books

KIRINYAGA

LARA CROFT: TOMB RAIDER: THE AMULET OF POWER

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider: The Amulet of Power
is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

A Del Rey
^®
Book

Published by The Random House Publishing Group

Copyright © 2003 by Core Design Limited

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

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eISBN: 978-0-345-46973-1

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