Pilgrimage Part II - Part the Horses Mane

In his semi-stoic, trained butler way, Hillary wasn't a huge fan of the British rail system. He would much rather let Lara drive than have her take a train anywhere in the British Isles. But there were times when even he couldn't avoid the local station. Occasionally something would be shipped to the manor by rail and he would have to pick it up or inspect it before arranging for it to be brought to the manor.

It was an early spring morning and a shipment of books and papers had arrived from an estate sale Lara had attended the previous week. He'd just finished putting the several small crates in the Bentley's boot when he noticed a petite, slightly familiar looking red headed woman. She delicately stepped off of the platform and joined someone he recognized as a member of the local wiccan coven. As they climbed into a small car and drove off it suddenly occurred to him where he'd seen her before.

It had been over three years since he'd given her a ride on that rainy summer day but he still remembered the aura of sadness that had seemed to seep into the air around her. Lara had mentioned recently that during her last trip to China she'd run into the redhead's blonde companion whom she'd met years ago in California. She was sure to be interested in the redhead's presence in Westbury. He wondered if the two events were a coincidence. Maybe this would be the thing to shake Lara loose from the manor and get her back out in the world where she belonged instead of moping about the estate as she had been doing for the past month.

Lara sighed in frustration. No matter how much she pretended to ignore them, the project folders Hillary had brought into her office the previous morning weren't going to go away on their own. Her last birthday had come and gone with no fanfare, none of the projects had looked enticing the last time Hillary had tried to show them to her, and she'd gotten nowhere in her pet project of trying to find any more information about those demon hunting women she occasionally ran into.

While she knew more now than she did before they'd rescued her from a potentially fatal encounter with vampires the last time she was in China, it wasn't much more than a few additional names and a shadowy organization that none of her usual sources could tell her about. They seemed to disappear whenever they weren't being watched.

The potential demon hunter she seemed to run into most often, Buffy Summers, didn't behave like she was trying to hide, but thinking back to how an entire busload of survivors from the infamous Sunnydale collapse had seemed to disappear without anyone apparently noticing, it was obvious someone was out there going to some effort to keep her and the other women Lara had met from being noticed. It was extremely puzzling and frustrating.

Having known him for a number of years, Lara had become adept at seeing past Hillary's normally cheerful and placid exterior. When he brought her lunch in her office Lara could tell that he was anxious to tell her something but she knew she would have to play along to extract it from him.

"Well? Are you going to keep me in suspense for long? Don't give an old woman a heart attack!" she scolded him, keeping her face blank and trying hard not to smile at his shock at her statement.

The age comment had obviously brought him up short. "Old woman?"

"We've been doing this for a long time Hillary." Lara grumbled. "I'm not sure I can take any more jobs where all I get is sand in my hair and a pretty bauble that belongs in a museum. What happened to all of those great adventures? The ones with great big puzzles needing to be solved." She angrily shoved the stack of project folders onto the floor, just barely missing the tray he'd placed on her desk. "Where are the real challenges? Not this nonsense!" She looked at him with angry eyes, daring him to have an answer.

He slowly bent down to pick up the folders scattered across the floor, not loosing contact with her eyes. He just looked at her expectantly as he straightened them out.

"Okay, what is it?" she ground out.

"There was a visitor to Westbury this morning."

"And...?" she asked impatiently when it didn't look like he would continue. It was a familiar game but today she didn't really want to play. He would make her work for the information she wanted. Even after all of their years together she wasn't sure if it was just an attempt to keep her interested or if he really liked frustrating her.

"I thought you would like to know." His eyes sparkled at her as if it was part of some secret joke.

"Why? People come to Westbury all the time."

He shrugged slightly. "It was a certain young woman you've expressed interest in in the past. A redhead."

Lara looked at him curiously. It could only be one person for him to behave like this and if it hadn't been for the Sunnydale collapse she might never have learned her name. "Rosenberg? Was she alone?"

"Yes, it was her. Someone from the coven met her there but other than that, yes she was alone."

"You know that doesn't tell us much. They aren't going to tell us anything about her or why she's here. They don't exactly approve of the things we do." she shook her head and grinned at him. "They frown on disturbing old tombs."

"No..." he answered. "They won't say anything. But they don't have to."

She could tell by the twinkle in his eyes that he'd already thought of some way of getting more of the information she wanted. Behind that calm exterior was a keen mind and a dry wit that had been used in the past to remind her that she really didn't go out into the field alone. Her most successful ventures had worked because of her association with Hillary and Bryce. They rarely travelled with her but they did what was needed so she was free to do her thing in some of the most taxing and dangerous locations in the world. "Out with it!"

"I've asked Bryce to set up several of those tiny cameras he likes so much around the station." He paused for a second as if to give her a chance to object. "When she leaves we should know what train she's on."

"And if she leaves another way?" Lara asked.

"We're still working on that." He shrugged. "She came by train, she'll probably leave that way."

"What's your plan once she's on the train?" she asked him.

"We've arranged for someone to follow her if she gets off the train in London." He finished sorting through the folders he'd picked up and put them back on her desk before continuing. "It might not get us much but it'll be more than you have now."

"Okay." Sighing again, she looked at the project pile once more. She was tempted to shove it back off of her desk but managed to restrain herself. "Let me know what you find out."

The next day, just before tea, Hillary brought her a folder. Inside were several photographs of Willow Rosenberg.

"When did she leave Westbury?" she asked him, gazing closely at the pictures.

"Yesterday. She took the last train to London."

"Do we know where she is now?" She asked curiously.

"She took a train to Paris earlier today. She didn't stop to buy tickets at the station so she must have had them already." Lara could tell he was vaguely disappointed. "We lost her after that."

"Where's this?" She held up several photographs of her entering and then leaving a large building.

"That is part of an office complex that seems to be owned by a multinational company that specializes in research." He pointed out another photograph to her. "There's something odd about that part of London. That's the best satellite photo Bryce could find. Notice how blurry it is."

"This wouldn't happen to be the same people we've run into before would it?" She asked.

"We think it might be. But it isn't definite." He smiled at her. "On the other hand, Bryce did find something interesting when he was looking them up."

"What?" she asked impatiently.

"Do you remember that museum reception you went to last October? The one where you ran into Buffy Summers?"

"Yes..." she answered thoughtfully.

"That reception was sponsored by the same people who own those buildings." He looked at her with as close to a smug look as he ever got. "We're checking into them now."

The brief excitement of the past two days had abated somewhat and Lara was once more staring impending boredom in the eye. It was raining so she couldn't even go for a ride to clear her mind. And the gray sky was more depressing than normal.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock on her office door. "Yes?" she asked Hillary as he stuck his head in the doorway.

"There are several people to see you."

"Who?" she asked shortly.

"They are from the local coven." Hillary told her. "I've put them in the drawing room."

"Really?" Lara raised an eyebrow at him. "Did they say why they were here?"

"No, but they do seem a bit nervous."

"Thank you Hillary. Tell them I'll be with them in a couple minutes."

The two women were sitting nervously on the small leather couch when Lara casually strolled into the drawing room.

"What can I do for you?" She asked with a small frown, look from one to the other.

"Lady Croft, our coven needs your help." The elder of the two said nervously.

"What kind of help, Miss..?" Lara prompted them for their names.

"Wildewood" the elder told her.

"Horne" said the shorter, younger woman. "Well..." she looked at her companion as if looking for support. "We need help retrieving a holy object that belongs to our coven."

"Why me?" Lara asked.

"From everything we've heard about you it's the kind of thing you do." Miss Wildewood told her.

Lara looked at them. "What do you mean?"

"You know how to enter ancient places." she said. "There's an ancient temple hidden in the Pyrenees. It protects a mystical object we need."

"Are you sure this thing is in this temple?" Lara asked looking at them curiously.

"We know it's there but it's been almost a thousand years since someone from one of the covens has been able to get past the locks and booby-traps protecting it." She shifted nervously on the couch. "We don't have anyone with the right skills to go after it."

"If it's been there for a thousand years why do you want it now?" Lara asked them.

"We need it for a ceremony in a few months or the world could end." the elder wiccan told her.

"The world could end?" Lara looked at them in disbelief.

"Y..yes.." the other, younger, woman stuttered. "If we don't get this object bad things will happen. We r..rreally need your help!"

"Telling me you want me to find some mystical object hidden in a temple won't take me very far." Lara told them. "If I agree to this I'll need a lot more information."

"We brought everything we have about the temple and what's in it with us." Miss Wildewood told her, standing up and handing Lara a thick brown envelope. "Everything you need should be in there."

"Okay, assuming I've said yes." Lara murmured "How long do I have to get it?"

"We need it before the end of the month." The elder woman told her.

"And you need it here?" They both nodded. "Okay. I'll get it for you." Lara noticed how relieved they seemed to be and wondered what the object really was. "I'll let you know when I have it."

"Thank you." they both said at the same time.

"If you don't need anything else, Hillary will show you out." she told them with a slight smile.

"Hillary. Remind me again why I agreed to do this?" Lara grumbled as she went over the information they'd been given by the coven representatives, for the third time.

"Because you want to impress them so they'll tell you all about Willow Rosenberg." he told her again as he watched Bryce assembling several tools Lara thought she would need for this trip.

"Right." she said with a grimace. She hoped she hadn't been so transparent to the wiccans she'd spoken to.

"And this looks more interesting than any of the things I've tried to get you to do this month." Hillary told her with a slight smile.

"I don't think we have as much time as they claimed." Lara told them, looking at the descriptions of the known traps around the temple. "It looks like several of the traps are disabled for the next week. And those are the ones no one has been able to get past."

"We've done harder things than this with less planning." Hillary reminded her.

"Yes we have. But we've been lucky. Okay guys." She smiled at their sudden attention. They really were the best team a tomb raider could have. "It looks like I need to get on the road by the end of the week. Let's go over that equipment list again."

"Do you think she'll suspect that we've tricked her?" the shorter woman quietly asked the other.

"No. You saw her aura. She's very bored and we've asked her to do something different." She smiled slightly. "You did that nervous stutter very nicely."

"Thanks." she said, smiling back. "So you really think she'll do what we want?"

"Yes." Miss Wildewood told her.

"Couldn't we have just asked her to help Willow?"

"You know we can't interfere directly with this." She shook her head. "Even though we'll benefit from the results, this isn't about us. It's about them. And don't forget what the seers have been telling us. There is some kind of connection between them. It isn't clear where the connection comes from but their meeting at the temple was pre-ordained from the moment Lara Croft saw Willow Rosenberg."

"Soul mates?" She asked the taller woman in surprise. "Wouldn't that cause problems given their preferences in partners?"

"No." the other woman chuckled. "Not that kind of connection. The seers couldn't agree on much regarding any relationship between those two but they are definite that it isn't that kind of connection."

"What about the prophecy?" the short woman asked.

"You mean the one we aren't telling anyone outside of the coven about?"

"Yes, that one. There are really too many prophecies floating around about this." She grumbled. "It seems to mention soul mates."

"Yes it does. But there are five other people mentioned in that particular prophecy." She looked up at the clear sky as if in search of inspiration. "The other prophecies don't mention that at all."

"Oh. So we won't know until they are all together will we."

"No. And even then we might not know until it is all over." She looked back at the shorter woman. "We need to get moving. The rest are going to want to know what happened."

"Okay."

And quickening their pace, they disappeared into the evening mist.

• Lara centric
• The meeting between Lara and the wiccan elders needs more something
• More details of the contents of that envelope they gave Lara would be nice...
• Not another prophecy! Don't worry. That's the last one. And they're all really just different versions of the same thing.

© Copyright 2009 Andy Stoffel. Last update: 7/19/09; 10:54:28 PM. This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme.