The Cradle of Life (25 page)

There was a single agonized scream and then nothing.

“The hell with this.” Sean broke from her side and stepped forward.

“Two teams, epsilon formation. Shoot to kill,” he barked to the remaining men and separated them. “Go.”

They swarmed through the trees, spreading out, rifles at the ready.

Shadows danced around them.

One guard fired into the air, barely missing the man next to him.

“Careful!” someone shouted.

The guard on point, crouched over in combat position, turned around to Sean.

“Something in the branches over there,” he said. “Give me cover, and I'll—”

A blur of black shot through the air and literally sliced him in two. He died with a gurgle.

The guard next to him broke and ran. Another began firing at the spot where the first had stood.

Shadows were suddenly everywhere. Gunfire and screaming filled the air.

It was a slaughter.

“Poor bastards,” Kosa said.

Lara didn't share the sentiment. Those poor bastards had helped kill her friends. She didn't mind watching them die. Not in the slightest.

Sean fired into the air, screaming futilely at his men.

“Cease fire! Fall back! Cease fire!”

Reiss drew his gun and jammed it into Lara's face.

“What is this? What are you doing?” Anger distorted his features.

She smiled. “Thinning the herd.”

He gritted his teeth and spun around again.

The four of them—Sean, Reiss, Kosa, and her—were separated from the guards. Inching slowly away from the killings before them.

“The tribal leaders were right,” Kosa said. “We don't belong here.”

“If you have a way out, I'm all ears,” Lara said, backing up against one of the trees. Not that she was sorry she'd come—Reiss was going to be finished in a few more seconds and that alone was worth the price of admission—but she didn't think it right for Kosa—or Hillary and Bryce, wherever they were—to pay for her mistakes. Her arrogance.

The tribal leader's words—Gus's words—came back to her then.

Some things were never meant to be found.

And she remembered the tribal leader had had a few other things to say, as well.

“What did he say about them?” she asked Kosa. “The shadow guardians?”

Kosa nodded. “They move like the wind…”

A terrified guard came to a stop right before them and froze.

Shadows flickered nearby, hovering in the air.

“…earth and sky are meaningless.”

“Whatever walks their land dies,” Lara finished.

She stared at the guard, still frozen in fear, just as another of Reiss's men ran past.

The shadow darted away from the first man and blanketed the other. He screamed.

And Lara knew.

Whatever walks their land dies.

A black shape crossed before her eyes and stopped directly in front of her and Kosa.

She got her first look at a shadow guardian.

It ebbed and flowed before her, like a pool of dark oil spilled on the surface of a lake. Roughly the shape of a man one instant and formless the next. She glimpsed a single, dark red Orb in the center of it—an eye, a mouth—and the glinting surface of what could have been metal.

It looked like nothing on earth she'd ever seen before. Which only made sense.

The guardian flickered in the air and moved from her side to Kosa's. She felt him tense, ready to run.

“No. Don't move!”

He looked at Lara, the question on his lips, in his eyes.

“Whatever walks their land dies,” she repeated, and nodded to the fallen shape that had been one of Reiss's men on the ground before them. “They only react to movement.”

“Then we better not move.”

The voice was Reiss's. He came around the side of the tree and put his gun on her throat. Jammed it right up against her windpipe so hard that for a second, Lara thought he was going to drive it right through her neck.

From the look on his face, he wanted nothing more than to do just that.

Sean came around the other side of the tree and put a gun on Kosa.

“Who wants to see if the coast is clear?” he asked, pushing Kosa forward.

Lara looked around and saw two things.

Reiss's men were all dead.

And they had come to the end of the Petrified Forest.

Just beyond, framed by the suddenly bright light of the moon, lay the summit of Ol Doinyo Lengai. The mountain of God.

“I know it's close,” Reiss said. “I see it in your eyes. Take me to Pandora's box.”

“I don't know how,” she said.

Reiss shook his head. “Now.”

“I can't—”

“DO IT NOW!” he screamed and lifted his gun to her face, on the verge of losing control and firing.

Then he pivoted the weapon around and pointed it at Kosa.

“You're the one who wanted to go on this walk,” Reiss said. “Start walking.”

He fired the gun into the ground.

Kosa flinched, but didn't move.

“The next one will be higher up,” Reiss said, taking aim at Kosa's head.

“Don't,” Lara said. “Those things will tear him apart.”

“Of course they will.” Reiss turned to Kosa. “Start walking. Do not stop walking until Lady Croft takes me to Pandora.”

“He has nothing to do with this,” she protested. “It was my idea, the shadow guardians—”

Reiss fired a second shot, right next to Kosa's foot.

“Shadow guardians, is that what they're called? Useful information.” He raised the gun again. “Of course I won't kill him, that would ruin my bargaining position but I shall put your friend through a great deal of pain if he does not—START—WALKING!”

Kosa turned to her and attempted a smile.

“I am not worried, Lara. Don't—”

“Enough already.” Sean whacked him across the face with his pistol. “Shut up and walk.”

Kosa turned to the forest. Hesitated a moment.

“Now!” Reiss screamed, and fired.

Lara's heart leapt into her chest—Reiss really was out of control, he had said he wouldn't kill Kosa and then he fired anyway—but then she saw the bullet had missed and relaxed.

Only for a second, though.

The bullet had missed because Kosa had started walking forward.

And the second he'd taken his first step, shadows began gathering in the forest. A low-pitched rumbling noise reached her ears.

What to do?

Her gaze fell on an oddly shaped rock formation just ahead of her. A small cone of volcanic rock, no more than three feet high.

And suddenly she saw there were at least half a dozen other, similarly shaped rock formations all around her.

Lara flashed back to this morning, when she'd stood aboard the Chinese junk, holding the Orb in her hands. This was the landscape she had seen then—with one difference.

She cast her eyes about the rocky summit, searching for the final image the Orb had shown her.

“I don't like his chances.”

That was Sean.

Lara looked up, her concentration broken, and saw Kosa still walking toward the forest, his face impassive.

The shadow guardians were waiting for him—blurring and swirling behind the slender tree trunks, moving faster than the eye could follow.

Her friend was going to die any second, unless she made something happen.

And then she saw it.

A cone of pitch-black ash, dark ooze gurgling out of the top of it.

A cone identical to the one the Orb had shown her this morning.

Identical to the one she'd seen in the Luna Temple, a lifetime ago.

She turned to Reiss.

“Give me the Orb.”

He took it out of the pack and held it. “Why? Why do you want it?”

She looked toward Kosa. The shadow guardians were coming out of the trees now. He continued to walk forward, seemingly oblivious.

Damn it.

Lara took a step toward Reiss and the Orb.

“You want to get out of this alive?” she asked. “You want to find the cradle of life—then
give me the Orb
.”

He stared at her a moment then, and she could see his mind working, weighing his options.

“I don't think so.” Reiss smiled. “Tell
me
what to do with it.”

Lara met his gaze head on.

“No,” she said.

Reiss frowned and hesitated.

Lara didn't.

She snatched the Orb from Reiss's hand and leapt forward, running toward the black cone. Behind her, the guardians' low-pitched rumbling literally doubled in intensity.

Lara had no doubt she was now their primary target.

But Sean had moved, as well.

He caught her from behind and grabbed hold of one arm. Lara tried to twist away and fumbled the Orb in her hands—

And then she caught it again and swung it behind her, toward Sean, using its weight to regain her balance. She continued her spin, moving like a discus thrower, moving through a full three hundred-sixty-degree turn, ending up with her right fist connecting squarely with Sean's jaw.

He rolled with the blow and came up on his feet, gun in hand.

And then the shadow guardians were on him.

He had no time to react, no time to do anything other than utter a wordless exclamation of surprise—and then he was jerked into the air and literally snapped in two.

The guardians slammed him down on the ground with such force that he disappeared into the earth.

Reiss stood motionless, shocked into silence.

Lara gathered herself and the Orb—and ran again for the black cone.

“Stop!” Reiss shouted. She glanced over her shoulder and saw him take aim.

Kosa blindsided the doctor, knocking him to the ground.

The shadow guardians flowed over them, leaving the two men untouched, coming straight for her.

Lara gritted her teeth and ran harder.

Two meters away from the black cone, she saw a series of smaller rock formations, arranged like stepping-stones. She jumped for the first and used it to reach the second, each formation taking her higher than the one before, until she stood opposite the top of the black cone.

She heard shadow guardians behind her and yelling that sounded like Reiss, and she set the Orb down on top of the cone, duplicating the arrangement she'd found back in the Luna Temple.

The second the two touched, both disintegrated into a fine black ash.

The rumbling of the shadow guardians behind her disappeared.

As Lara turned, the entire cone crumbled, giving way underneath her. She fell to the ground, only it was black ash, too, and she continued to fall.

She looked up and saw Reiss jumping down after her.

Then the earth swallowed them both.

All at once, the tracking device he'd put on Croft's pack stopped working.

Terry jiggled the GPS display. Nothing.

“Something the matter?”

That was Bryce, in the copilot's chair next to him.

“Don't know,” Terry said.

They'd been tracking Lara and Reiss rather easily up until now, staying well behind them so as to keep their presence a secret. Then this. Terry frowned. He couldn't take a chance on losing them now—not when they were so close to the box.

He decided to move closer.

“Hang on,” he told Bryce and Hillary and gunned the copter forward.

They flew up the side of Ol Doinyo Lengai, passing from jungle into a narrow, rocky canyon. The wind currents were tricky—Terry had to stay focused on the instrumentation, on holding the copter steady as they climbed.

So he missed the exact moment the canyon ended and the forest began. All he knew was that one minute he was flying over rock and the next…

“That's the weirdest-looking jungle I've ever seen,” Bryce said, his nose pressed to the window.

Terry looked down. It didn't look like jungle to him—even in the dark, he could tell there was nothing green growing down there. The trees below looked as if they'd been covered with a thick coat of gray ash.

Terry glanced at the GPS display and realized they'd come to the exact spot where the signal from the tracking device had stopped working. He flicked on the copter's spotlight and shone it down on the ground below.

Bodies—no, make that parts of bodies—were scattered everywhere. Hanging in the trees at the edge of the forest, strewn across the sandy ground directly beneath them.

There was blood, too, wherever he looked.

“Ugh,” Bryce said.

There was no sign of Lara, or Reiss, or any living thing, for that matter.

Terry frowned and set the copter to hover.

“Take over,” he told Bryce. “I'm going to see what the hell happened down there.”

 

Lara slammed into the ground and lay there a second, stunned.

She was in some sort of cavern. The walls, the floor, the ceiling above her—all were a dull, mottled shade of black. Anthracite.

That was all she had time to notice before Reiss plummeted to the ground next to her. His gun went skittering across the floor.

She dove for it, but Reiss was closer. He grabbed the gun and then dragged her to her feet, holding the weapon to her head.

“You took us through them on purpose!”

“Wouldn't you?”

He cocked the gun and pressed it harder into her head. His eyes blazed and she could tell he was using every bit of self-control he had not to shoot her right then and there.

Reiss took a deep breath. He eased the gun away from her head, still keeping it cocked and pointed directly at her.

“Do you have any other surprises for me, Lara?”

“No. What happens from here on out is a mystery to me.”

“Then let's explore, shall we?” He looked around. Lara saw what he did—the cavern was closed on one end, but at the other, someone—something?—had carved rough steps, leading down, directly into the rock face.

Reiss waved his weapon in that direction. “You first. And don't think you'll be able to outsmart me.”

Lara bit back her reply and started walking.

There was a small opening in the cavern above them—the one they'd made falling through to the chamber. Beams of moonlight shone down through that opening, just as they had through the trees in the Petrified Forest. Only here, the effect was different—not light and darkness, but light and shadow. As they descended, Lara noticed that shadow seemed to change texture, becoming almost solid one minute, transparent the next.

She brushed up against what she thought was a cavern wall and her arm went right through it.

Reiss noticed and frowned.

“Keep moving,” he said.

But the farther down they went, the more pronounced the effect got. The more confusing the chamber around them became—what was solid, what was illusion.

Lara walked smack into a wall and Reiss ran into her.

She swung for him and he danced back out of the way, just out of her reach.

“Don't do that again,” he cautioned. “Or I'll shoot you where you stand.”

She turned without a word and started down the stairs again.

Except she was heading upward.

Lara stopped where she stood. Clearly this was no ordinary cave. Just as clearly, whatever sort of technology (or magic, if you wanted to call it that) had produced Pandora and created the shadow warriors as its first line of defense, had set up another obstacle between the box and whoever desired its power.

Reiss, on the step beneath her now, was shaking his head.

“What sort of place is this?” he asked out loud.

A place that was never meant to be found, Lara thought.

They continued onward. Lara began to lose her sense of direction—where the steps had turned, which way they'd come from. She had to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other, on pushing her body through what at times felt like an amusement park attraction—the Incredible Chamber of Optical Illusions, where down is up, left is right, and nothing is what it seems.

All at once the steps ended and they were on level ground.

“There it is,” Reiss whispered.

Lara looked around. The chamber they'd entered was empty, save for a small, star-shaped pool at the far end. The pool was filled with a thick, viscous, tarlike-looking substance—the same black goo, she realized, that had been oozing forth from the cone above.

In the middle of the pool floated a small box.

“Pandora.”

She couldn't tell what the box was made of—stone? meal? It looked ancient, primordial.

Next to her, Reiss laughed out loud.

“Perfect, isn't it? All that power in such a small container. The gods don't need fire and brimstone to kill.”

Neither did she, Lara suddenly realized.

She'd forgotten all about the blade hidden in the small of her back. All she needed to do was get close enough to use it.

Reiss pushed her forward.

“Let's have a closer look, shall we?”

 

Terry sat in the open door of the copter and lowered a rope to the ground.

He was about to follow it down when he noticed a sinkhole at the edge of the forest. He shone a light on the rim and saw flashlights scattered on the ground nearby.

He turned to Bryce, who had the helicopter in a hover, and motioned him to bring the copter closer to the hole. He saw scuffmarks on the ground near the hole.

“I think we've found them,” he said.

He pulled the rope back up and let it down again. It passed through the hole and into the darkness beyond.

Then he grabbed his rifle and a pack full of supplies.

“I'll be back,” he said to Bryce and Hillary, and jumped.

“With Lara?” a voice called after him.

He saw no sense in answering—whatever reply he made would have been lost in the roar of the chopper's blades.

 

Reiss stopped at the pool's edge and stared at the black liquid bubbling within.

“I don't like the looks of that,” he said and took hold of Lara's wrist with his free hand. He turned her so she was facing directly toward the pool.

“I see no reason to break with tradition. I think a woman should collect the box.”

Before Lara could tell him what to do with his tradition, he kicked her legs out from under her, sending her falling face forward toward the pool.

Only the fact that he hadn't let go of her wrist saved Lara from plunging in.

“Go on…” Reiss said, the gun in one hand pressed to her head, his other hand holding her up, dangling her over the bubbling, black liquid.

He lowered her closer to the pool.

Lara made a show of stretching out with her free arm, letting her hand dangle inches away from the box. In truth, she could have grabbed it from where she was right now. But she couldn't just give it to Reiss—he would kill her the second he had it.

He lowered her closer to the pool and a few loose strands of her hair brushed the surface of the black liquid.

They dissolved instantly.

Lara flinched and drew back.

“Go on!” Reiss repeated. “Take the box.”

Her fingers touched the box and Lara knew she was out of time.

If ever she was going to make a move, this was the moment.

 

Terry landed softly on the cavern floor and unhitched the rope from his belt.

For some reason, his heart was going a mile a minute. He'd actually been apprehensive—all right, scared—sliding down toward the sinkhole, as if something was trying to get to him before he disappeared beneath the surface.

Ridiculous. There hadn't been a single living creature above within miles.

Terry let his eyes adjust to the dim light and got his bearings.

There was Croft's pack, on the ground in front of him.

So she was here. No surprise—there was no place in the world Croft wouldn't go if it meant an adventure. Glory. And the money that went with it, of course.

All right, for her it might not have been so much about the money—only because Lady Croft didn't need it. She was fabulously, independently wealthy—to the manor born. Unlike some of us, Terry thought.

We need every dollar we can get.

The cavern was closed on one end, so Terry set off toward the other. Found steps going down and took them.

A minute on, he walked straight into a brick wall. He'd taken a wrong turn somehow. So he went back to the cavern he'd landed in and tried again.

The same thing happened.

He turned to start back up—

And stepped down instead.

He froze a moment and looked around.

The walls seemed to literally be changing shape.

“What sort of place is this?” Terry whispered, shaking his head.

 

Lara had decided. Reiss was not going to get his hands on Pandora, no matter what. Even if it cost her life.

Of course, she hoped it wouldn't come to that.

He pressed the gun closer to the back of her head. He lowered her closer to the pool.

“Pandora,” he whispered. “Give it to me.”

“I'll give it to you, all right,” she snapped.

She swung her free arm behind her then and grabbed the knife from the small of her back. Then she did the last thing in the world that Reiss could have expected.

She stabbed him in the arm—the arm that held her wrist, the arm that was keeping her from falling into the acid.

Reiss cried out in pain and let her go. She released the knife and dropped toward the pool. Reiss fired as she fell. The bullet passed close enough to literally part her hair.

Lara twisted in midair and kicked out.

Her foot found Reiss's chin and connected squarely, sending him flying backward through the air.

Her hands found the edge of the pool. She landed in a push-up stance, her face the width of a finger away from the acid.

She scrambled to her feet. Reiss did the same, picked up his gun again, and fired.

The bullet passed by her shoulder and smashed into the chamber wall.

Lara somersaulted through the air, landed on her feet, and ran back the way they came.

Reiss fired again and agony exploded across the back of her right thigh.

She stumbled, bit her lip to keep from screaming, and kept running.

 

Finally.

Reiss could just kill her and be done with it.

No more threats to Croft or her friends, no more false promises of wealth and power. He didn't need her to share some secret about the Orb, or to lead him to where Pandora had been hidden. He knew exactly where the chamber was now, where the box floated, and so he was free to hunt her down, shoot her like the dog she was, and feed her body to the acid. He would call for assistance then—have the box removed from the pool, brought to the lab in Yemen, whatever lay within it analyzed, the antiserum created, and Pandora itself passed on to his buyers.

Reiss could picture every step of the process in his mind right now and the part he was going to enjoy most was seeing Croft's body dissolve into nothingness.

The hunt was off to a good start. He had got her with that last shot—she'd been visibly limping as she ran. Reiss smiled and jogged after her, heading back up the steps.

The path widened suddenly and he looked up to find that he was teetering on the edge of a twenty-foot drop down to solid rock.