W&T: The Raiders Chronicles - Ch.17 of NEW STORY 04/12/14

[Katharyn]

Title: The Raiders Chronicles – Tomb of the Vampire Prince – Chapter Six
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Absolutely, yes please. That’s why I write for this place, to engage in the discussion about the story.
Spoiler warning: Nope. All new. All original. Set in a universe where Willow Rosenberg takes the place of Indiana Jones. What can I spoil?
Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. No conversion to eBook or other formats please. Enjoy it here.
Summary: They’re heading east on a train. You people watch movies. It’s obvious what’s going to happen… Right?
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS or Indiana Jones. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property. There may be occasional use of ‘classic lines’ from the source series/movies or others for which full credit is given to the original writers.
Rating: Occasional, tasteful, adult situations and contextual bad language.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever. 100% FAQ compliant, 100% of the time. Look it up if you don’t know what that means.
Text convention: Use of italics denotes either special emphasis if used for a single or a few words in a sentence OR first person thoughts if used for a whole sentence.
Physics: I’ll say it here… It’s Movie Physics, people. Someone Willow’s size and weight can punch out big, big guys… If you don’t like it, don’t read it. (But please read it)
Notes: So, from the very beginning, this story teased the ‘mystical’ because of the title. Of course I didn’t HAVE to go there, it could’ve just been a myth but the source movies obviously touch on the mystical without being BTVS type supernatural in their nature. I’ve been going for something a little more ‘supernatural’ in this story but definitely not at the BTVS level. So – to be clear - these things aren’t vampires like we got on the show. They aren’t – actually – anything like we got on the show. But mostly the world is just plain, old fashioned, humans and anything different is therefore VERY different.
I also liked to touch on the idea that Tara has spent some of her time – since Raiders – doing work that’s kind of a cross of X-Files with the idea of a vast warehouse holding things like the Ark. (By the way, I’ve never watched a certain show that steals that premise from Raiders, but I am aware it exists).
Kind of the 1930’s version of Scully (if you like!) That’s probably not even been 30% of her time, but somehow she just keeps ending up on those kinds of jobs because – after all – Hitler ‘is a nut’ on the subject of the occult, must be opposed and many of the ‘things’ may have military applications… Maybe it’s always Tara because she can ‘borrow’ Willow as an expert to help and hook up in interesting places… After all, someone has to do it!
Thanks to: The people in my life who let me write. You know who you are. And I know how aggravating it can sometimes be. But you do like the peace and quiet too, I know you do.




It wasn’t that Rosenberg didn’t believe her about the ghouls, more that she just didn’t know how to react to the news. Willow wanted to believe her but had no context for it. No understanding of what they were even talking about.

Those were things she was going to have to provide.

“You know all about the occult,” Tara said. “But, even when you’ve been consulting with us, you’ve rarely had to fight it. Just Nazi’s. Like we told you a while back though, Hitler’s a nut for anything and everything he things exists or might exist.

“And Ilse – on occasion – has had his ear.”

“Really?”

“Some like to suggest she was in his bed, but we don’t actually think so.” For some reason there had been a suggestion that should be highly classified information.

Why? She had no idea, but given all the other highly classified information Rosenberg was already privy to and was about to find out about… Yeah, she’d let that one go. Hitler’s personal life was… not something she thought needed to be a big secret.

“Ilse’s into girls,” Dottie said unnecessarily. “Just girls. Trust me.”

“What? You and her?” Willow asked. “You have been busy.”

Dottie’s face dropped and Tara was pleased to hear the denial. She really would’ve hoped that if that was true Dottie would’ve told her. “No!”

“Good, because, there’s something wrong there - ”

“Actually I was going to say that Hitler isn’t,” Tara interrupted. “Into girls.”

“Really?” Willow asked. “Doesn’t seem the type but I guess it takes all sorts - ”

Once again she had to interrupt. “No. As best as anyone can tell, he’s completely self-absorbed and doesn’t have any time for personal relationships with anyone except his dogs. And no, I don’t mean like that.”

“Oh. Gotcha. Doll.” Rosenberg winked. As if that made it better. “So… a ghoul? What is that? What can it do?”

“Not die, for a start,” Tara revealed. This really was highly classified, but Willow had fought them and it seemed likely she’d have to do so again. It could easily be that they all needed to understand what they were up against to get through this.

“Everything dies,” Rosenberg said.

“Not these, you saw them. Not unless you destroy the brains. They’re strong, fast and you can tear them apart and they just keep coming until they’re entirely immobilised. Even if you shoot them in the head – you know, in and out without too much damage - we think maybe they can come back from that.”

“You think?”

“It’s not like we had one to experiment on. Until the club – we hadn’t actually seen one. Let alone experimented.”

“You knew they were there?”

Tara shook her head. If she had, she’d have made other arrangements. Had more back up than Dottie. But she’d known what she was looking into. Just hadn’t expected to find it in the heart of Paris. In that kind of venue.

Certainly not in Ilse.

Silence for a moment.

“You really can’t kill them?”

“Like I said, we’ve not had one we can study,” Tara said. “But… anecdotal evidence – as well as legends – say not.”

“I have a question,” Dottie said with her hand up.

Rosenberg waved for her to put it down. They didn’t do ‘hands up’.

“Go ahead, Dottie.”

“Why is Tara the one who knows this?”

Rosenberg pulled a face, pondering it for herself. “Because I guess I’m the archaeologist and she’s the…”

“What?”

“Nazi monster fighter, I suppose,” Rosenberg said, looking at her.

“Oh.”

“The government has a legitimate interest - ” she started to explain.

“And fear,” Willow said.

The United States Government – and certainly not the Navy – didn’t admit to ‘fear’ but… Yes. That was probably one definition of ‘legitimate interest’. Those few who knew and could cope with the knowledge, understand it, were afraid of what it might mean.

In the wrong hands.

Nazi hands.

“We can’t let this get out of control.”

“So it’s in control now?” Rosenberg asked.

“Not… exactly.”

“Lots of people working on this?”

“Three.”

“Uhuh,” Willow said, deliberately counting the three of them off. “Okay, I do have one more question, Navy. You couldn’t have brought the marines with you?”

------------------

More comfortable now that she was in her travelling clothes, Willow was very aware that she didn’t fit in on the train. She should’ve kept to the tux – damaged as it was by the fight. Because right now, she was just drawing attention to herself.

The express from Paris through to Munich was mostly filled with well-dressed, well-to-do men and women of varying nationalities. Heading from the heart of European culture to the heart of European darkness.

Birthplace of Nazism.

No one else seemed as concerned about crossing the German border as they were. But the chances were that no one else had a three lesbian party, one of whom was Jewish, one an enemy agent – from the Nazi point of view – and one a bright girl who still giggled every time she saw something funny from the window.

On the other hand, if you were worried about crossing the border you shouldn’t have gotten on the train.

Tara thought they’d make it. She was prepared to go with that assessment. As much as they’d had chance to speak so far, it sounded like this wasn’t the first time for Commander Maclay heading into Germany.

Seriously? A Gestapo party? She was taking those kinds of risks?

I had no idea. I’m not sure I want to.

Caring was… not wanting someone else to get into the sorts of danger that you did. Just in case…

The difference, this trip, was that war was getting closer. Everyone felt it and the papers were full of it, but someone as in the know as Tara understood it in a very different way. To her it was a certainty. A matter of ‘when’, not ‘if’.

But here on the train, French men mingled with German women with little pins on their dresses. Ones matched by the German men whose suits were almost uniforms. A few children played together. Some clearly members of the Nazi youth organisations designed to eventually breed soldiers – one way or another. Others sounded Spanish.

In this company her sweat stained – though clean as it would get – shirt and trousers weren’t exactly up to the dress code of the dining car and so she made a point to pass through there more than once. Yes, that was how highly she thought of their disapproval.

Could’ve been worse, she could’ve been carrying her gun. Not everyone’s was as mysteriously discretely as Tara’s and there was certainly nowhere she could’ve kept it hidden.

On the other hand… it might not have been technically worse. The gun might well have been exactly what she needed.

It was just as the train got going again after stopping to take on water that she realised they were there.

More suit wearing men. Four of them, moving in pairs. But unlike all the other passengers these were cheap suits and identical too. So that when they moved as a group – like they were – their intent was unmistakable.

They were looking for something.

Or someone.

Maybe several someones.

Someones that she knew and was part of?

Was it them they were after? Did someone know they were on the train? None of them was dead in the eyes like the so-called ghouls that Tara had warned her about after. None of them had those weird eyes like Ilse either…

If the supply of ghouls – unlike goons – wasn’t infinite then perhaps this was ‘just’ a sweep of all modes of transport into the Reich?

Perhaps it was even just routine Nazi paranoid border-security? Send four guys down the train in a menacing way just to see who bolted. Flush out anyone with something to hide?

That could be it.

Or it could even be that this was unrelated to what they were doing now but still looking for them. Between them she and Tara had to have made several well placed enemies in the Nazi regime. She didn’t flatter herself that Hitler knew either of their names, but the impact they’d had on his plans wouldn’t have been missed.

And she’d certainly have embarrassed some very dangerous people.

Assholes.

But dangerous assholes.

In the end it was the combination of the goons eye-lines and their movement that convinced her that she really was their target. Even if the motive wasn’t yet clear, that fact certainly was. The ‘why’ could wait.

For now, it was enough that they were trying to box her in.

It shouldn’t have been hard, given that they were on a train travelling at more than a hundred miles an hour. Trapping her ought to have been the easiest thing in the world.

Right?

That said, they didn’t know that she’d been doing this – exactly this - since she was a kid. Just about the first – significant – trouble that she’d ever gotten into had ended in a race along a train roof at high speed. Fleeing from the owner of this hat she was still wearing, though it wasn’t the hat he’d been after. He’d given that to her later.

Along with a purpose.

That had been in the day time and on an old train, not one that was flying fast enough that everything was a blur past the windows.

Still, she’d happily trade speed and darkness for the absence of snakes… She’d trade just about anything for the absence of snakes. In addition to the hat, she’d picked up a phobia on that train. One that still plagued her.

Here, in the heart of Europe, snakes weren’t likely. Especially given that there wasn’t a circus on the train this time. She’d checked. That was part of the reason she’d been up and down the train. The locked baggage car and the locomotive were the only parts she hadn’t explored thoroughly and – through the window of the former – she couldn’t see any big boxes of snakes.

Without the snakes, it was ‘safe’ to go up onto the roof then.

Tara would’ve told her she was worrying about the wrong thing but… No. It boxes of snakes she couldn’t do.

This?

This was just her life.

She allowed both pairs of men to catch up to her at the connection between two cars. She’d given a moment’s thought to warning Tara and Dottie, but trusted that the naval officer would be able to take care of herself and Dottie was already off in another compartment, anticipating the border. Besides, she couldn’t help either of them without getting past these goons. So…

“Something I can help you boys with?” she asked when they closed on her but then didn’t wait for the answer. Instead she swung the door open into one of them and grabbed the ladder that went up to the roof of the car as he fell. As she swung out, her foot narrowly missed some sort of construction by the side of the line. Another few inches and Tara would’ve been right.

Except she wouldn’t have been worrying about anything anymore…

Even over the rush of the air past her ears, their shouts of alarm revealed them to be Frenchmen, rather than Germans. Someone smarter could worry about what that meant later, but right now it really didn’t matter did it?

Bad guys were bad guys. French. German. Whatever.

And at least these were entirely alive and human…

The sort that would stay down.

Pushing with her legs rather than pulling with her hands, she was soon up on the roof and anchored long enough to dodge flailing arms that tried to drag her back. Then she was running along the top of the train. As she went, jumping from one to another, she counted the carriages and dropped to her belly just in time to miss a low bridge that would’ve probably ended things there and then.

She had to count; she had to make sure she knew where Tara would be. Their compartment was eight up, right? Or was it nine?

All four of the thugs followed her the same way, if they’d been smart then two of them would’ve dashed through the carriage and made a grab for her as she tried to cross to the next one, but if they’d been smart they wouldn’t have been up on top of a speeding train anyway. This definitely wasn’t the place for smart people.

Evidence? Tara Maclay wouldn’t have been found up here. Not unless there was absolutely no other choice.

Tara did things like this when every other option was exhausted. She, on the other hand, did them because they felt like good ideas at the time.

So far… things had worked out.

Having to look back so that she didn’t get hit by another bridge or tunnel entrance, she could see the wariness in at least one of them, fear of heights or possibly great speed. Deserved wariness, since she had to lean into the airflow just to make progress and it felt like she could be whipped from her feet at any moment by a stray gust of wind from a slightly different angle.

One carriage. Then another. They still hadn’t even started to gain on her substantially but by the middle of the next, they were definitely making faster progress until one – the one who’d been wary of all this – slipped and fell from the roof and…

Smear on the unfortunately timed bridge he had the bad luck to collapse into.

Probably.

Those were the stakes here. No matter what they actually wanted with her, it was life and death just by virtue of where they were.

One down, three to go and she’d not even thrown a punch. But those other three did learn the lesson of their smushed comrade and actually started to chase her down. They had the greater mass and were better able to apply it to keep their footing in the rush of air. The distance was closing, and more rapidly than she could be comfortable with.

The next time she glanced back, they weren’t far away and so she leapt over the gap between the carriages but then turned to face them. The gap was a division they either had to leap over or climb down into and then up again.

Either way, I can use that.

Also, there was only space for two of them at a time to come at her and neither of the two in the lead looked like they quite trusted the other enough to try that. Instead the bolder one took a flying leap that she was able to deflect. It left him scrabbling for a hand hold and ultimately dangling from the side of the train when he didn’t quite make it.

That one was out of it, for now. By the time he got back up here it might all be over.

One way or another.
The second of the front two landed on her side of the divide a few seconds later, while she was still following through with deflecting move on. He made a grab for her that was successful enough that she was held in place while the third caught up and crossed the gap in a more leisurely fashion.

Not that she was just letting them grab her, but there came a point when mass and raw strength had their benefits and besides, she didn’t want to throw all of them over the side of the train.

And neither of them seemed bothered about their dangling comrade, so she couldn’t rely on that to help her either.

Then, weighing about half as much as either of them, there wasn’t a lot that she could do with her mass to inconvenience them and she took a number of punches to the stomach just to illustrate how inconvenient she wasn’t being to them.

But when Scarface – the man punching her – made to hit her in the face rather than the body she pushed back, using her feet as leverage and got her jaw out of the way so that he hit his friend and – for a moment – the grip on her relaxed.

A moment was enough.

More than enough.

It was what she needed and with the freedom she was given in that instant she was able to lash out again, kicking Scarface in the chest and shoving then back against him to overbalance the guy that was still holding onto her. They both collapsed to the roof of the train and she took the opportunity to elbow him in the face while she was still searching for her footing.

So long as there was something more solid than air under her then everything was just fine. Or at least recoverable.

Once on her feet she brought the heel of her boot down in his stomach. Hard. It left him clutching at it while she rounded on Scarface. Now, at least for a few seconds, they were one on one since his buddy was still trying to drag himself back onto the roof of the carriage.

Scarface threw up a boxers stance, trading blows with her – none of which landed as they were buffeted by the air. She was faster, but he had a decent block to him as he demonstrated twice in a row. He gave her a gap toothed grin, triumphant and certain she couldn’t hit him. But as was usual in these situations, she was willing to do what was necessary to stay alive.

Something that didn’t usually occur to the men she was fighting.

Feinting as if to deliver a knee to the groin, he hunched defensively. His thighs came together to prevent the painful blow he instinctively feared. Anyone would think she had a reputation. So instead she brought her foot down on top of one of his with all her might. Scarface yelped, lifting the injured foot even though it left him precariously balanced on top of a speeding train.

It was then she punched him in the jaw, satisfied to see him go flying back and impact the raised embankment the train was passing through at that moment. Maybe he’d even lived, but he wouldn’t be reporting in to anyone any time soon.

Turning her attention to the one she’d kicked in the stomach, she followed through with another. This time to the jaw.

Out cold.

Which left… One had been clinging to the side of the carriage but…?

Oh… he wasn’t there anymore. He’d either backed off or had fallen to an uncertain – but not very hopeful - fate.

Taking stock she had to conclude she hadn’t done badly. Four bad guys. Three gone. One more was out cold and she wasn’t about to bring him inside with her. These guys were local hires, remarkable only in that they’d been paid enough to get up on top of the train with her.

They wouldn’t know anything.

So no, not bad at all.

She took the next ladder down into the gap between carriages and made her way through, tidying her clothes as she went until eventually she came to the compartment she was sharing with Tara, just as they entered a tunnel.

Which reminded her that her last glimpse of the one she’d left up there had been him sitting up. Recovered.

Just as the train entered the previous tunnel.

Somehow she thought she’d heard him scream, but probably that had just been the air being pushed out past her ears.

He wouldn’t have had chance.

Pausing just outside their compartment, she checked her hat and pushed aside a strand of hair that had worked loose. Had to look good for her woman.

Tara frowned as she came in, recognising something was different or perhaps smelling the fresh-air on her. “Something wrong?”

“I ran into some… old friends.”

“Are you okay?”

Beyond Tara, outside the window, Willow saw the face of the man she’d assumed had fallen from the train. He was wide-eyed, panicked, wanting to come in as he clutched onto something that seemed to be giving way.

Wrong compartment for that. She just reached past Tara and drew the curtain. “I’m fine. What makes you ask?”

“Really?”

“Maybe a little stiff… A little painful.”

Memories were probably what made Tara smile. They’d had a similar conversation before and they both knew where it went. “Well, you don’t have to do anything…”

Yes. That.

But it seemed to be on Tara’s mind too. “Here?”

“Well, Dottie’s gone…”

Yeah, there was that. “I don’t know if I can make it up to the bunk.” Of course she could but a little sympathy played to Tara’s natural tendency… And she couldn’t say she didn’t enjoy it.

Every. Single. Time.

“Don’t worry, there’s no need for you to do anything.”

“Oh.”

********************

[zampsa19752001]

Dibs-y goodness...

Yay for excellent update-y goodness... So a typical Rosenberg-Maclay train ride...

[loislane1]

Yeah update!
Thank you for the fantastic reference to Young IJ and the train chase in the circus train. I wish that series had taken off as I loved getting the back story including where the hat came from. Speaking of the hat, you gotta love movie physics allowing for a hat to stay on a person's head while, in this case, as she jumped across the tops of train cars going 100 kph and fighting big bad guys. You have a nice fast movie style pace on humor, action, and information going on in this update. It is enjoyable to read your story as you play in this particular genre/style. There are certain tropes, patterns, and expectations when reading an action story along the IJ line and so you have been nailing the pace, style, and action.

I have to admit I laughed at Willow fixing her hat and hair before walking back into their berth and then nonchalantly closing the blind to hide the guy still hanging on to the side of the train.

Tara frowned as she came in, recognizing something was different or perhaps smelling the fresh-air on her. “Something wrong?”

Cracked me up. Tara just expects the unexpected with Willow and goes with the flow. I love the sympathy play Willow is using at the end which Tara knows she is playing up a bit but again it is almost expected and part of their quirky relationship.

So great update - looking forward to seeing the next chapter of (mis)adventure they get into as they try to cross the border and get closer to dealing with the ghouls while trying to figure out what else is going on.

-H.

[kimmy_s]

Hi Katharyn

If you go back you'll see I've finally caught up with feedback on chapter 5. Now for this one...

I love this line and think it sums their situation up brilliantly:

But the chances were that no one else had a three lesbian party, one of whom was Jewish, one an enemy agent – from the Nazi point of view – and one a bright girl who still giggled every time she saw something funny from the window.

A great fight scene very descriptive as if I was watching it on a movie screen. I know I've said it before but I love your writing especially the humorous undertone. Can't wait for more.

Thanks
Kim

[Katharyn]

Zampsa - yeah, I suppose this is pretty much what happens when they public transport at the same time Thanks

loislane - I have to say, I wasn't actually referencing the TV show YIJ because I don't think I ever saw more than 10 minutes of it. The circus train was in one of the movies when I saw it

And yes, certainly, if Willow Rosenberg can punch out Nazi body-builder mechanics who look like professional (not acting!) wrestlers then her hat can stay on her head in unlikely circumstances

Pace is essential in a story like this. You may have realised that given a free hand and a couple of years to write I like to... elaborate more. But in this story that would just be death. When I do elaborate here, it's not whole chapters - just a couple of paragraphs usually. I can't quite stop myself from doing the 'what's in her head between punches' thing, but I do try to keep it brief LOL.

I may be wrong as to the source, but I am pretty sure that the 'closing the blind on the bad guy on a train' came from James Bond. But it's a long time since I saw one of those. So long that I think Roger Moore was actually the Bond at the time!

Tara and Willow's relationship is a very fine line here so I am pleased it seems to be working for you. They know each other so well and - of course - they'd love to live in the same house and cook meals and sleep together all the time etc. But... neither of them is about to give up who they are and neither of them is unhappy with what they have now. I think if I showed any doubt about that, from either of them, it would read very differently and you'd start to feel they weren't in a good place.

Oh, I think I said it before, there's no great mystery in this story. Like Raiders where they said the Ark was in the ground and they dug it up, the story is more about the ride than the mystery

Thanks so much.

Kimmy
Chapter 5 first - You have to figure that Willow's not going to let Dottie's presence go uninvestigated. Some 'playful' questioning will follow because she's just like that, even though her belief and trust in Tara is total. And yeah, Dottie is more use than Shortround!

Everyone around being queer... I think I pretty much did that to rip on myself. In Coulda Woulda Shoulda it seemed to turn out that the entire gang (and people around them) were some variation of LBQT (not sure I covered G) or at least willing to be flexible (which comes under those letters of course). So when I came to this and made Dottie a not so shy, but very sheltered lesbian that was there. And of course, ghouls are close enough to vampires that... obviously. And then the club... I promise, the queer headcount is going down (and I don't mean through death!)

And ghouls? Yes... I think I was avoiding vampires because of how disposable they are in BTVS canon. These are something else entirely...

[u]Chapter 6[/b] - I regret now, not covering the border crossing in detail. I could've played on the themes in the lines you quoted a little more. But it would've slowed things down. As you will see crossing the border is - and in IJ should be - just part of the travel montage. Instead I used reflection on it to make some other points...

Pleased that you liked the fight! I am never sure. People often tell me (like everything else) that they like the fight scenes I am least sure about! But this one did benefit from some pre-posting beefing up.

Thanks!

More shortly...

Katharyn

[Katharyn]

Title: The Raiders Chronicles – Tomb of the Vampire Prince - Chapter Seven
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Absolutely, yes please. That’s why I write for this place, to engage in the discussion about the story.
Spoiler warning: Nope. All new. All original. Set in a universe where Willow Rosenberg takes the place of Indiana Jones. What can I possibly spoil?
Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. No conversion to eBook or other formats please. Enjoy it here.
Summary: Reaching the destination. Kind of like the big, red dot at the end of the red line on the map… Yes, it’s all about the travel montage.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS or Indiana Jones. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property. There may be occasional use of ‘classic lines’ from the source series/movies or others for which full credit is given to the original writers.
Rating: Occasional, tasteful, adult situations and contextual bad language.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever. 100% FAQ compliant, 100% of the time. Look it up if you don’t know what that means.
Text convention: Use of italics denotes either special emphasis if used for a single or a few words in a sentence OR first person thoughts if used for a whole sentence.
Physics: I’ll say it here… It’s Movie Physics, people. Someone Willow’s size and weight can punch out big, big guys… If you don’t like it, don’t read it. (But please read it)
Notes: So, for those who read my earlier fic you will have appreciated that the Raiders parts are shorter than usual. I try to get to a minimum length but doesn’t always work. Prior to redrafting this part is somewhat shorter than the last few. But that’s the price you pay for where the last part ended (cos that’s a great place to end) and where this one needs to… Let’s see if I can’t add so much in redraft that this note makes no sense (about 25% in parts so far)
As in the last part – and in the movies – things do move along without showing it on screen. Much more noticeably than in my long fic (where it does happen but I often rehash it later), but the movie style is thus that you can move most of the way around the world with barely more than a line on the map.
I do take the opportunity to put a little of the historical context into this part. I don’t claim it’s accurate or fair, this is just the version of the world as Tara sees it from her position. I do clash a little with myself here… I’ve said that Mister Maclay is actually (still) a Marine but then I say that Tara comes from somewhere very like Dottie when – if he had been a Marine – she’d probably have lived much closer to a base. But hey, live with it.
Thanks to: My girl… who’s still a girl at heart and has the heart to let me keep doing things like this. Though I did promise no more big fic for a little while(!), I didn’t say anything about more than one small one… No, I really didn’t.




“I still can’t believe we got past that border check so easily,” Tara said. Professionally she had to doubt it could possibly be that simple.

Not after the trouble that had materialised on the train (and then fallen off it.)

It all suggested that those men hadn’t been – exactly – what you’d call ‘government employees.’ Or at least not from the government of their more obvious enemy.

Hers was a murky world where allies and enemies could often switch places in a heart-beat and trust was hard-earned but easily lost.

Except for this woman.

“Nor can I,” Rosenberg agreed. “Either of them, actually.”

It wasn’t that her usual border crossings were necessarily all that elaborate – the simpler the better was a good rule of thumb as it meant there was less to go wrong – but even so…

On Rosenberg’s own passport? On a train?

It wasn’t exactly ‘covert.’

“You two are all doom and gloom and cynicism! Why do you want to look a gift horse in the mouth?” Dottie asked.

Five minutes getting into trouble in the world’s most notorious lesbian club and the girl thought she was an expert? No… actually, she just thought they should look on the bright side. That was what she did. She got afraid – as anyone would – but somehow turned it into excitement.

This was all new and fresh to her. Just as most things were.

Maybe Dottie had a point but… it was hard after so many years of things – generally – going wrong whenever she and Rosenberg were working together.

Sure, they came good in the end but getting to that point was usually a long – often painful – road that took plenty of detours through circumstances that they’d never have chosen.

Could she say she regretted anything they’d done? No. But she could certainly wish that some of their escapades (and yes, that was a word that had to be used when Rosenberg was involved because it was better than ‘adventures’) had been easier.

This time, the border had snuck up on them and not left too much time for her and Rosenberg to ‘reconnect’. Not wanting to get ‘inspected’ while they doing that, they’d kept things brief and – largely – clothed. And once they were past the border Dottie had come back to their compartment, no longer having to hide the fact they were travelling together.

And that had been that for their reconnection. Okay, so Dottie probably wouldn’t have minded if they had gotten down to it (discretely). The girl took altogether too much interest in their love life and they’d been almost required to tell her about it – without the intimate details – simply to pass the time.

For Dottie it was a major topic of conversation. Not them, so much, as the wider topic with their love lives as the ready example. Not that they were a good example of anything.

And what else would she talk about? Corn husking?

Classified projects and missions?

Just how innocent and naïve Dottie really was?

Oh yes, she’d embraced her sexuality in Paris and particularly in that establishment they’d seen evacuated, but outside of that nugget of real life… Dottie really had no idea how the world really worked – or didn’t. That wasn’t a reflection on her. Most people were just like her.

And if they found out, it wasn’t just a shock to most people. No, they’d actively deny it.

They’d suppose reason and understanding. They’d ‘know’ somewhere inside themselves that their thoughts and ideals were really, at heart, shared by everyone they considered to be basically the same as them.

Not the case.

Everyone was different.

It was groups demanding the ‘sameness’ of everyone around them – ignoring individuality – that led to the worst expressions of nationhood. And she didn’t except any country from that.

Some were just more obviously worse than others.

But how did you tell an idealistic young woman that? The finer points of international relations would have to wait until she’d gained some cynicism.

So… aside from corn husking (Dottie’s area of expertise surely) or a prurient interest in what the girl had been doing on her ‘dates’ what else were they supposed to do but let her question them? They’d played cards until the new pack was dog-eared. Tried to talk about plans that they couldn’t make because they didn’t know what they were facing and – after locking the door - cleaned their weapons fastidiously, as well as giving Dottie a lesson in basic firearms safety and maintenance.

Right now she’d trust the girl with a shotgun (an advantage of her home life on the farm) and reloading a pistol for her. Not much further than that until she could show some calm under fire. Which was fine, she didn’t intend that Dottie be under fire at all. That would represent failure.

Ideally she hoped none of them would be. Hoping wasn’t the same as expecting though.

She was with Willow Rosenberg after all.

Somehow though, the topic always came back to either their love life – which newly minted expert Dottie just didn’t believe could be so ‘occasional’ and still be satisfying after her three consecutive nights of passion – or the miracle of how they’d crossed the German borders.

Twice.

The border crossings had certainly been way easier than they should’ve been – easier than some of Dottie’s more personal questions for sure.

Ilse, for whatever reason, hadn’t called ahead. It seemed like a significant oversight and should’ve been well within her capabilities to arrange at least some local harassment. After dealing with them for almost as many years as Hitler had been in power, she’d never come across a Nazi that couldn’t organise some local harassment if not outright trouble. It was like a perk of party membership, she was sure.

And since they were so organised – usually – it probably came with harassment coupons.

The German border guards could’ve stopped the entire train for hours. Gone through everything – and everyone – with a fine toothcomb. But… No.

She and Dottie both had only fake – French - papers available to them, they couldn’t even easily hide being Americans. Dottie’s language skills weren’t up to it for one thing, so it’d seemed easier to work at the club under their own nationalities. This while Willow only had her own United States passport.

One in the name of ‘Rosenberg’.

There was no hiding the significance of that either.

If anything though, the German border guards had seemed to be scrupulously fair-minded towards Americans. Or at least giving the appearance of it.

Perhaps the order was out? After all, the United States wasn’t the country Germany seemed to be looking to a war with. In fact she’d seen intelligence digests that seemed to suggest Hitler was going out of his way to avoid bringing America into a conflict that was seeming inevitable, for all the diplomacy that the Europeans were trying to use to keep things from spiralling out of control.

It felt like Hitler had decided that European war was inevitable and even desirable – possibly he wasn’t the only one on this continent thinking that - but it also seemed like he was warier of provoking the US.

Ultimately though, if the Nazi’s kept grabbing land, territory and whole countries then conflict was as inevitable as it would’ve been in similar circumstances a hundred years or so ago. And eventually the US would have to pick sides, especially with the Japanese as Nazi allies and making their own moves in the Pacific.

Co-existence was much easier when someone was ‘over there’ and not ‘right outside your door. Banging.’

But whatever the reason was, they’d got past the borders and perhaps that had been to avoid offending a government that would – if caught – disavow them rather than provoke anything themselves.

Sure, an eyebrow had been raised at Rosenberg’s obvious heritage, but the American part seemed to count for more and they’d been allowed into Germany. Or perhaps it had been because the border guards seemed to be a professional body in their own right, rather than simply a bunch of Nazi thugs. They took orders, but didn’t obey them over-zealously.

Could be that the Nazi’s were more worried about who left than who came into the country – but that hadn’t been her previous experience.

After the German border they’d been from city to city, snaking their way across Germany until they’d changed train in Berlin and headed towards the Romanian border.

The change hadn’t been one for the better. This new train was much more rickety. Old stock that had been impressive once, but had seen – much - better days. A sleeping compartment, like they’re requested, was just four seats where you could fall asleep if you were able to. When there were three of them that didn’t leave much space for stretching out.

In terms of sleep, mostly that had been Dottie. The girl was almost perpetually dozing, often with her head in her lap. She and Willow had found a little shut eye, but mostly had been keeping an eye out. The middle of Germany would’ve been a really, really bad place to be jumped again.

Talk about the middle of a hornets nest.

Except there the hornets had been armed with Lugers and machine-pistols.

If anything though, it was perfectly possible that their prospects in their current location were even worse. Once into Romania, the railway line into the Carpathians rarely bothered with difficult to engineer tunnels and instead cut it’s away along valleys in the main with steep mountains rising to either side. Nowhere to go except along the valley.

You wouldn’t want to try escape and evasion here. Far too predictable. The mountains weren’t necessarily high so much as brutal and largely impassable. When the train had stopped she’d spent some time looking at one, trying to plot a route. Just for practice.

And then gave up because – even from here – it just didn’t seem likely that anyone had taken the effort to conquer them. You’d call that lack of ambition ‘good sense.’

Every so often the railway was clinging to the sides of those same mountains. Surely the engineering in those places was even more extreme? But by silent agreement they’d decided there’d be no repeat of Willow’s last fight.

No one was going outside until the train stopped at their destination. The train might be slow but their luck – Rosenberg’s actually - was always of the kind that would see any train-top fight happening while there was a thousand foot sheer drop to greet them.

It might look stunning but there’d be no time to stop and appreciate the view until you were falling into it.

So… no.

The other difference was in the country itself. Romania was like another world compared to both the industrial heart of Germany and its greener, more rural areas. Here, in this country, you could imagine the whole landscape being virtually uninhabited once you got outside the towns (better described as villages). The land was instead ruled by the wolves they’d heard howling during a water stop last night.

Real, honest to goodness wolf packs. Roaming wild and hunting where they liked.

Hunting whatever they liked. It was easy to imagine being stalked by them, through utter blackness or just under starlight.

Not something she ever wanted to experience. That was her own idea of hell.

But probably a short lived one; she didn’t delude herself about the prospects of surviving anything about this landscape. No matter how good her training had been.

The deserts of Egypt seemed preferable to that.

Best not to get into that kind of trouble at all.

Taking in the landscape and musing on the fact that neither of them knew very much about the country they were in helped keep them awake. Or at least it would have if sharing knowing looks over the dozing girl’s head hadn’t been enough to re-invigorate both of them.

Willow had actually asked her - just once and only a quarter seriously - whether there was or might be something between she and Dottie. What was that supposed to be? American lesbians in Paris? Aside from the fact the girl was barely out of her teens, she had the impression Rosenberg hadn’t actually been asking about Dottie at all.

It wasn’t even that Willow didn’t trust her. Just that – somehow – she couldn’t believe that they could go for months and not need a little something from someone else. It was curious, for a woman who went toe to toe with Nazi’s on the roof of a train and with ghouls in underground clubs in Paris, the insecurity around that one topic was…

Different.

And kind of cute, because she was very certain that Doctor Willow Rosenberg hadn’t had a girlfriend since the last time they’d met. That wasn’t who she was, just as certainly as the need to ask and check whether she had was part of her too.

A little insecurity. A little self-doubt.

And if Rosenberg hadn’t had those moments, those touches that made her less and more than she projected to the world, she wouldn’t have been half as attractive.

She was considering that for the fourth or fifth time when the brakes squealed and the old train clanked to a halt again.

“Are we there yet?” Dottie asked, jerked out of her sleep. Just as she had every other time the train had stopped – seemingly for nothing on most occasions.

“Wherever ‘there’ is,” Willow replied, peering out of the window. Evidently they’d actually reached their destination.

“I’ll get out stuff,” Tara said, helping the girl sit up so she could free herself.

------------------

“Don’t need to speak the language when there’s only one place to go,” Willow said. That was one worry out of the way. For all the languages and large proportion of the lands of the world that she and Tara could get by in, this wasn’t one of them.

But the driver of the cart, waiting for the train to arrive and gesturing they should take a ride along with all the goods that had been offloaded, didn’t seem in any doubt where they’d be going.

The ‘station’ and the train line were behind them in the bottom of the valley, alongside a river that would run much heavier in spring as the snows melted. Ahead of them, up the hill, was their destination. The village that clung to the foot of a mountain.

Another mountain, more accurately.

And around them? The sorts of sharp, jutting peaks that would send experienced Alpine climbers to their beds shaking and promising that they were never coming out again.

The land itself seemed to be hostile to anything human. Tara had said the same thing, on the train, and now she really did see it.

How did people come to live here?

“I feel bad all the same,” Tara replied. He seemed like a nice man, driving the cart that was taking them up there to the village. He’d refused to let them help either load the goods that had come off the train or even their own bags

And he wasn’t a young man.

“You would. For a secret agent, you’re just so… nice.”

“I’m not a secret agent,” Tara said.

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Okay, why don’t we test this,” Willow said. “Are you or are you not an agent of the United States Navy and Government?”

She glanced at the uncomprehending driver before she answered. He wasn’t faking it, she was sure of that. “Well – yes - ”

“And is everything that you do, and your very status, actually classified secret?” she followed up.

“That’s not fair. You know I can’t talk about that.”

“And so, I rest my case.”

“I’m not a secret officer. I’m just a naval officer.”

“Doll, you aren’t just anything.” That one earned her a smile. Sometimes that side of her still came out. Often, around Tara, she felt like a kid. Like someone just down off the farm.

Like Dottie.

Tara Maclay did that to her. All the swagger and assurance that she’d been – a little – renowned for could just vanish. And in it’s place? ‘Gosh, I’m one lucky girl she even notices me. Let alone the rest.’

That was the Tara Maclay effect.

As dusk was already falling they could see candle and firelight appeared to be the only power sources in evidence here. Given the remoteness, that was understandable. This wasn’t a rich country, despite the strategic importance to the Nazi’s. Besides, look deep enough into France, Germany and even the US and you’d still find the same thing. Not everywhere was like New York.

Old things, old ways of living. She was comfortable around them because she understood them. About the most modern thing she used with any regularity was her gun.

And the occasional car. But otherwise…

Up the front of the cart, Dottie was still trying to engage the driver in conversation which – she’d already determined - was typical of her. The girl liked to talk, even when she was talking to someone who wasn’t able to understand what she was saying. Chattering away to him, she simply took any small look or noise – even confused ones – as a sign she should continue in her mission.

Fortunately Dottie also knew when – and about what - to keep her mouth closed, otherwise she was sure Tara would never have trusted her to come along and not get into trouble. But everything was still an adventure to her.

People who’d had real adventures didn’t relish them quite so much. Even if were still drawn to seek them out.

“Were we ever like her?” she asked, determined not to make it a bad thing.

“I know I was,” Tara revealed and even that much made her smile. Imagining it. “You know that I came from the same sort of place she did. I probably left for similar reasons too.”

The question was there, but Tara didn’t actually ask. Instead she volunteered ithe information. “We moved around so much, life was always an adventure,” she said. “And when it wasn’t, I sort of made my own. All this is – really it’s just what I do.”

“Remember, Rosenberg, I’ve seen you teach.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you could settle down. You could enjoy a life that saw you nowhere more dangerous than inside a classroom.”

“Are you asking - ?”

“No! No. No…”

“Really? No. Three no’s? One of them very emphatic?”

“No – I mean - I’m just saying, you could. You’d be good at it too. You already are. That’s all.”

“Well, good. Because, if I settled down somewhere I’d stop running into you.”

Actually, she didn’t believe that. Somehow it seemed like they were fated to run into each other. They were way beyond coincidence now. After all, what were the odds? Time after time? If she had a job purely on campus, it’d be a campus with an unfortunate Nazi spy problem the Navy would want to root out.

So, in that light, settling down was just likely to make her responsible for those Nazi problems as fate shaped the world around them.

The responsible thing to do was keep going. Right?

She could see that Tara was about to object, to tell her that she’d not gotten the point. But they both knew very well what they’d been saying – what they’d almost said. Just not quite.

And it was something she’d wondered about. If they just lived in a city somewhere, sharing a house and a bed all the time… What would that have meant for them? Nazi’s aside.

Now, they saw each other only when they passed through the same places at the same time. A few snatched days here, a few there. Some of them punctuated with danger and…

What are we when there’s no danger to be fought? When we’re simply… together?

She liked to think the answer would be ‘good’, but there was no one to really tell. Not unless they tried it.

And who had time for that? The world was getting more dangerous every day and she frequently had her part to play in making sure that the right side won – Tara saw to that. If war started, how long could it last this time?

No one would believe – like they had the last time – that it would all be done in a few months. ‘Home by Christmas’, the Brits had thought.

Christmas 1914.

Four years later they’d still been fighting…

Will we be as late to the party this time? Or will Tara be in the front line from day one?

Actually, she already is. It’s just not official yet. Not in the books as an actual war.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Just thinking.”

“Well, stop it. It makes you frown. And that – one day – will give you lines.”

Tara smiled. “Okay, no more thinking. This place – it’s actually very pretty. Look at it – with the sun?”

“Like any number of villages I’ve seen.” She shrugged. She could see what Tara meant, but… special?

“But the mountains, the setting?”

“You do remember India, right?”

“How could I forget? Doesn’t mean this isn’t pretty though.”

“Okay, okay…”

“Switch with me, Commander?” Dottie asked from up front.

Tara agreed and they – only a little awkwardly - switched places on the move. As she departed, Tara gave her one of those looks. A ‘be nice’ look.

“No luck?” she asked the girl.

“He doesn’t speak French either,” Dottie said. “But I guess there’s no reason he should.”

“That’s right,” Willow confirmed. “You’re going to find there’s plenty of places in the world where you can’t speak the language and what too many of us forget is that they don’t have to. They do perfectly well without understanding what we say. It’s an English failing and we’re as bad – if not worse.”

“I can see that. Like in Paris, how they refuse to speak English?”

“And why should they?” she agreed, but a little reluctantly because she knew exactly what Dottie was talking about. “But Paris is a special case. There are plenty of people who do speak English, but they choose not to. They’re as proud of their language as we are of ours. So, what makes you come back here to talk to me, kid?”

“Umm – I just wanted to – the Commander knows, but I thought I should mention that, I’m just a typist.”

Ah… Now Dottie was starting to worry. Or maybe her reputation had preceded her. The one for getting into trouble… Maybe Tara had warned her about that.

It wasn’t unjustified – just not as bad as Tara said it was – so she didn’t mind.

“Like me, you’re not ‘just’ anything,” Tara said from up front. “And as for being a typist, officially, so am I. That’s what I do if anyone asks. To be honest with you, I don’t even like typewriters.”

“Oh, that’s what I mean though – I really am a typist. And I like seeing the words popping up on the paper as I type them. It just seems – I don’t know what I can do for you both?”

Tara knew all this, of course. Dottie wanted to make sure that she did too.

“Don’t worry, the Commander won’t let me forget you need looking after,” she said. “And, hey, listen to me. I’ve known plenty of big, tough guys who would’ve sat crying in the corner after they saw what you saw. But here you are anyway.”

Dottie grinned, pleased with the praise – obviously. Then she asked her next question with a straighter face. “This is going to be dangerous – I mean, more dangerous, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Yes, it probably is.”

************************

[zampsa19752001]

Dibs-y goodness...

Yay for great update-y goodness... Little quiet before the storm I guess... I hope Dottie is able to keep up to the lovebirds and gently guide them towards more stable and permanent relationship...

[kimmy_s]

Hi Katharyn

First of all I'm loving the regular updates, I know I've said it before but it means I don't have to re-read previous chapters to remember what's going on and it has a nice flow.

Great to see the unsure, vulnerable side of Willow when she's around Tara, it brings a healthy dose of reality to the world of Willow that involves ghouls, Nazis and rooftop train fights.

I loved Willow's teasing of Tara being a secret agent and the continuing use of 'Doll'. I know she does it to piss Tara off because she knows how much it annoys her but its still cute.

Really great job again, can't wait for the next instalment.

Kim

[Katharyn]

Zampsa - Thanks! And well done on dibs

Yeah, this is the quiet before the action picks up. As for the permanent relationship? They're okay where they are... and it is permanent. It's just not always sleeping next to each other

Kimmy - Regular updates... Umm, yeah... I just ran out of parts I had ready to post LOL. Ben a crazy few days and now I ran out. Next part will go up when I get it read through again But still a few years faster than some stories LOL

The vulnerability in Willow is one of those things that has to be done to make it, still, Willow... Otherwise she's just a small, red-headed, Indiana Jones with boobs.

And yeah, if Tara had never objected to 'doll', Willow probably wouldn't still be doing it LOL

Thanks!

Katharyn

[Katharyn]

Title: The Raiders Chronicles – Tomb of the Vampire Prince - Chapter Eight
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Absolutely, yes please. That’s why I write for this place, to engage in the discussion about the story.
Spoiler warning: Nope. All new. All original. Set in a universe where Willow Rosenberg takes the place of Indiana Jones. What can I spoil?
Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. No conversion to eBook or other formats please. Enjoy it here.
Summary: The village… (No, not the movie…)
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS or Indiana Jones. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property. There may be occasional use of ‘classic lines’ from the source series/movies or others for which full credit is given to the original writers.
Rating: Occasional, tasteful, adult situations and contextual bad language.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever. 100% FAQ compliant, 100% of the time. Look it up if you don’t know what that means.
Text convention: Use of italics denotes either special emphasis if used for a single or a few words in a sentence OR first person thoughts if used for a whole sentence.
Physics: I’ll say it here… It’s Movie Physics, people. Someone Willow’s size and weight can punch out big, big guys… If you don’t like it, don’t read it. (But please read it)
Notes: So, this is really kind of a lull before we get to pretty much non-stop action through to the end. Even in an Indiana Jones inspired story, there’s a spot you want to slow down, take stock and just get into who the characters are a little. Tara’s view was last time. Now we get a little more of Dottie. Some of Willow and her – irrational – fears that make her a little less Indiana Jones and a little more Willow Rosenberg. And some Tara character moments along with it. I could’ve raced past, but honestly I think that I need to do this stuff. For me.
Though it’s undoubtedly fun to write the girls in this sort of story, it’s not – as I’ve said many times – as obviously (or actually) the girls. I’ve always been a little uncomfortable with that. I mean, canon Willow Rosenberg fighting on the top of a train? Um, no. So while I might insist on movie physics… Actually still no. I need to take these moments, this lull, to make the girls who I think they need to be to be… The girls. Another time, another reality, based on a character whose adventures really aren’t Willow’s. Yeah, I need to do this so that – to that extent – it IS still the girls and not just someone with their names and faces. Hopefully you need me to do this too.
Thanks to: You who are still there. You’re there right?




“This place is like going back in time,” Willow said, whistling between her front teeth as she took it all in. Trying to anyway. She wasn’t really one for managing that, let alone a jaunty tune.

And if she had, it wouldn’t have been in tune.

All in all, she was tune and whistle-less.

“Not exactly ancient history.”

Ah, no. Tara had mistaken what she meant.

Old? Not from a professional perspective. No, not at all – though she had colleagues who might’ve found it fascinating all the same. What she’d been reflecting on was more personal in nature.

“No, I’ve lived in places like this. My Dad…” she shrugged. At the time she’d enjoyed all the positives without appreciating them for what they were. And complained about every negative because... Kids.

I wouldn’t have been the easiest to bring up. If I’d been around enough to be brought up.

The old man had done the best he could in the circumstances and Tara might’ve argued that she’d turned out pretty well. These days she had nothing but good feelings about the way she’d been raised.

And places like this – albeit usually warmer – had been a big part of that while Ira Rosenberg followed his own career and idea of how a daughter should be raised.

No, she couldn’t fault that at all. Otherwise she might’ve ended up stuck in an office, waiting for the right person to sweep her off her feet.

But this place? This was the sort of place that could breed people like her. Unless you were stuck here your whole, young life and knew nothing different. Then… maybe not so much.

After looking around some more, their suspicion appeared to be correct. The village seemed to be entirely devoid of electricity. Same for internal combustion. Running water was limited to the effect of gravity – as cleverly utilised as any long term settlement was likely to develop - which also powered a waterwheel at the mill.

Sure, the railway came here – or at least close enough for a cart ride up into the foothills of the mountain – but otherwise, the people who lived in this town were still probably engaged in a way of life that their grandparents wouldn’t quite recognise. It’d be close but not quite the same.

Time did move on, after all and it was a fallacy that nothing changed even in the civilisations labelled ‘primitive’ without being anything such. Even in the middle of the Amazon, things still changed. The human mind demanded it just as much as the rest of nature.

Rural Romania too.

No one from today’s - ‘civilised’ - New York could probably have survived here without help for any length of time though.

Not these days.

Change just came a little slower to some places that were more isolated and she didn’t mind that. She didn’t mind that at all. But then she was lucky enough to get the choice about where she wanted to be in the world.

After sizing up the (lack of) options, they’re returned to where they’d been dropped off and after some communication problems determined that there had only been two rooms at the inn.

They’d taken both of them even though they could’ve gotten by with the one. Even three to the room it still would’ve been more comfortable than the trains they’d used to get here. But for some reason Dottie had already decided the sleeping arrangements and immediately took the key to the smaller of the two rooms for herself.

Like Tara had said, she was a good kid. She got it. Sheltered as she might’ve been until she got to Paris.

“It’s nice,” she said. “Homely - I guess that’s the word.”

“Fifty years ago, there would’ve been plenty of places back home that really were like this,” Tara commented.

“I know. We didn’t see everything, but it looked like they have a market square, school house. There are at least four churches which seems kind of excessive, don’t you think?”

But was it really any different from home?

“Are these a religious people?” Tara asked, curious.

“No more so than most other places in Eastern Europe which is to say ‘quite’ to ‘very’. Just not unusually so. I guess it’s you typical mix of Christian sects, the two Orthodox religions being the largest, the others substantially smaller. For the size of the town though… four churches? That’s what I meant.”

Unless of course the dominant religion(s) here in town had swung back and forth over the years? This was Europe, they had real – visible - history here. Four churches (and counting) didn’t mean that they were all still in use now did it? Just that, at one point, that had been the religion that needed a new, better place of worship. Justified by the number of people in the town and the surrounding area.

Or maybe just with a rich or powerful benefactor who wanted to demonstrate his piety. It was usually a ‘he’ when it came to buildings with big towers being a symbol of status.

Funny that.

“I suppose,” Tara said. “Do you think the icon could be in one of them?”

She had actually considered it but… basically it seemed too easy. If you could just walk into a church and take it then…

No. That wasn’t why they’d been brought into this. Or at least not why she’d been brought into it.

Tara? Commander Maclay was playing in a much bigger game than she was. Playing a part in the fate of the world – or so it seemed from the outside.

Were their quests were related? Maybe.

But the question still deserved an answer.

“It wouldn’t hurt to look, but no, I don’t. We know that there’s supposed to be a castle and that’s where we were sent.” Peering out of the window, she couldn’t see one but it was already getting dark and mist had closed in around the village much earlier. It was hardly surprising that this castle, wherever it was, would be hidden from them.

From a historical perspective, the town had most likely only come into being because of the castle. It had probably been founded – first of all – to support the builders and their families. It might have taken years to build something worthy of the name. Especially here. If someone thought this was a strategic route (and the railway suggested it might be) the castle could’ve been established to guard – or tax – it.

The town would’ve followed.

And then it would’ve lingered, providing the workers and levies to maintain the point of the fortification.

It would’ve been interesting to ask someone local about it, but the language barrier was one that they were stuck with until they found someone who could translate. That wasn’t unreasonable or unexpected in an isolated place like this where learning other languages wasn’t a priority. Nor were there many immigrants, she was willing to bet.

Who’d come here?

They were going to have to – try to – talk to a lot of people until they found someone who could help them. And one way of doing that was to go out – or at least downstairs - to dinner a little later. Not only was she hungry, but they weren’t going to find someone who spoke any of the twenty-some languages that she and Tara could get by in sat in this room.

“But we have to find the castle first,” Tara said.

“There’s probably no point until daylight,” she replied. “Look at that mist. Get out on the mountain and the first thing you’d see was the ground hitting you when you fell off a cliff.”

“And last thing. I know.”

“Even without the mist, this is real dark. Not like in a city.”

“I know, in that way it’s a little like the ocean,” Tara agreed.

“Well, this ocean has rocky teeth. Before we go exploring I’d want to take a look at it in the daylight and find the best route inside.”

“I know,” Tara said again, giving her a little smile.

“Sorry. I’m a teacher – like you said - sometimes… Sometimes I feel I have to explain stuff.” And aside from teaching, until Tara Maclay had come along, most people she’d met on these kinds of trips had needed saving or been out to kill her.

Tara, on the other hand, was another professional. A fellow.

But one in a different field with a different skill set.

No. Not quite ‘different’. It was better described as a complimentary skill set. So far, there wasn’t anything they hadn’t been able to handle between them.

Or at least get out of without being too scathed.

“Say what you like,” Tara reassured her. “And while we’re planning. We need more suitable clothes for Dottie. Those and supplies. And anything we can find out about this castle. Also anything that the locals can tell us about who might be up there.”

“And if they know anything about Ilse. That’s already quite a list.”

“I guess it is,” Tara agreed, starting to undress. It was as an alluring a sight as it had ever been. They were both a little older, a little more beat up and scarred, but fundamentally still the people they’d been when they first met.

The spark of attraction between them had been far from instant, but once she’d recovered from the poison she’d been tricked into ingesting - that was what had distracted her - it’d certainly been there.

And was still.

“Sleepy?” she wondered.

“Not at all,” Tara replied.

“I’m – it’s traditional that when I’m beat up, you need to take care of me,” she said. That was how they often started out ‘in the field’, though in the days after that – back in places with real beds – she’d more than made up for it.

“But you’re feeling fine?”

“A few bruises, but nothing too serious.”

“Then I can enjoy you whole and intact for once,” Tara said.

“That you can.”

“So?”

Tara had very definite ideas about how she was going to get that enjoyment.

Even though her stomach was rumbling, dinner could wait.

----------------

“You look refreshed, Doctor Rosenberg. You both do,” Dottie said as they came down to see what breakfast might be. “Even more refreshed than you did at dinner.”

Yeah… where ‘refreshed’ was definitely being used as a euphemism.

And it was certainly true that Dottie was a good judge of ‘refreshment’ because they’d certainly – umm – done just that. Meaning ‘refreshed’ themselves.

It may not have been the most comfortable bed they’d ever been in. But it was a bed and considering the sorts of places they usually met up around the world that was something to be cherished.

She saw Tara give the young woman a look. Reward for her observations - and their accuracy.

Even when Tara was giving her ‘the look’ that had probably withered plenty of young officers, Dottie’s grin – and the fact they’d had adjoining rooms – said that the girl knew exactly what had been going on.

As for breakfast - well, after last night, just about anything would be just fine.

They’d taken enough time to work up an appetite and by the time they’d got up, cloud had engulfed the mountain again. Mist at night. Mist in the morning. So far there was nothing to see of the castle that – apart from their time together – had been dominating their thoughts since they got here.

It was where they had to go and all they knew was that it was in the direction of the mountain, higher than the village.

“You’re looking pretty refreshed yourself,” she said to Dottie, going to check the contents of the table that was apparently there to offer them something to eat. She’d been hoping for coffee. It was probably a forlorn hope since she couldn’t smell any. It probably wasn’t on the priority list for shipping out here. But only because not enough people here would’ve gotten to try it.

Bet your life if they had then they’d have made sure they had some.

Tea then, perhaps?

“I didn’t – umm – It’s just sleep,” Dottie promised.

“No one here who’s your type then?” she teased. The girl was just like one of her students. Just as eager to please and so full of life. Qualities that hadn’t been drowned in cynicism about the world just yet.

I just hope she can keep it that way through all this. If it happens, I don’t want to see it.

“Give me a chance, Doc! We didn’t arrive until late on!” The girl’s eyes did flicker, very briefly, to Tara.

Well, well…

She couldn’t the only one who had young people crushing on her. Tara hadn’t been exaggerating when she’d accused her of having half the female members of her class lusting after her.

Not much, anyway.

And Dottie was a nice kid. Who wouldn’t like and be impressed by Tara? It was practically impossible to imagine. Especially if you liked uniforms. Then she was pretty impossible to resist – just remembering the uniform was a powerful though. And if you were like minded then… yeah, why not a little crush?

It wasn’t like it was going anywhere and it didn’t sound like Dottie had been pining over her boss either. To hear her tell it she’d been embracing the opportunities Paris had offered her.

All of them.

And embracing not a few girls, she was willing to bet.

“Hey, kid,” Willow said, gesturing to her. “Come over here.”

“Doctor?”

She drew Dottie even further away, but only made it very obvious to Tara that she was wanting that private word. “So tell me honestly, just between us girls, do you have a little crush on Tara? Just a tiny one?”

It was the flare of embarrassment, at being caught – and by her of all people – that gave Dottie away. The words, somehow, wouldn’t have. Not on their own.

“Tara? No – I mean, Commander Maclay – she’s a professional and she’s in love with you. Right?”

“I didn’t ask you about what she thinks,” Willow pointed out, not at all unhappy to hear that from someone else. Their relationship was one carried out over ever-changing distances and times apart. They might go a while seeing each other a few times a week and then be parted for months.

Someone else, someone who had been talking to Tara, calling it ‘in love’ wasn’t a bad thing. “I asked whether you were crushing on her. Its okay, kid, I don’t mind. In fact I get it.”

“I… a little, maybe, but I don’t hope or expect - I know that she’ll never see me like that and I don’t look at her like – Do you want the truth?”

“Sure, kid. Go for it.”

“I – maybe it’s more about the idea. How she does it – with you, I mean?”

“You’re asking for details?” Willow asked. Surely this girl had some imagination. Not that it sounded like she was lacking in (recent) experience or would need it.

“No – sorry, that came out wrong. I mean – You two go for months without seeing each other, but when you do? It’s like you never parted. It must be… intense, I guess?”

“Funny,” Willow said. “That’s not how it feels to me. Because we were parted, it’s all the more – yeah, ‘intense’ is a good word for it.”

“But you go right back to where you were, and there’s no one else – for either of you. Right?”

She had to smile; this kid was now challenging to admit whether she’d betrayed her boss? A boss she was crushing on? That took some stones. “You’re right, there’s been no one else.”

Dottie sighed. “I think that’s why – I mean - It’s very romantic. I probably project that on her. It’s not her I want. It’s all that -

“I… want to travel, I want to see the world. I want to do things – I won’t ever do what she does or what you do, but I want to keep moving around and… I want to find someone too. I think maybe I look up to Tara – and you – because she manages to do that and live a great life too.”

“Not the worst answer, kid. Not the worst answer by a long shot.”

“I’d never say anything to her, I swear.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Willow said.

“You really don’t mind?”

“The heart feels what the heart feels,” Willow said, feeling wiser than her years saying something like that. “One day you’ll meet the right girl and maybe you can be apart from her for months at a time and still want to be with her every night you get in your empty bed.

“Plus, I can’t argue with your taste when it comes to people to look up to.”

Dottie grinned.

--------------------

“Hey, you two. Come look at this,” Tara said when she heard Willow and Dottie coming up the stairs. “Hurry, before the mist closes again.”

“You can see it?” Rosenberg asked but was nearly able to see for herself.

The sight meant there was no need to say anything about that, both the other women came into the room she and Willow were sharing and shivered because of the cold air that filled it now she’d thrown open the windows. After last night it had needed a little airing.

Even here in the village though, they were already at altitude and the air temperature reflected it. Plus it didn’t look like being a warm day either.

“There.”

“Wow… that’s some view,” Dottie said. “My room – my room looks out over the privy. The outdoor privy.”

That was all they had here. It’d taken a bit of getting used to after Paris.

But Dottie was right, when the mist cleared that really was some view.

“It looms,” Rosenberg said, obviously approving. “A good castle should loom.”

Considering they were already on the side of a mountain, the positioning of the castle seemed all the more unlikely but nevertheless, there it was. Situated atop a ridge, quite high above them, the castle was – necessarily – built up out of that living rock with stonework and rock meshing unevenly along the line of the foundations.

“Yup. It really does that alright,” Dottie said. “It’s got the looming down just fine. Looks like it’s had a lot of practice.”

Tara, who’d had a few moments to absorb it already, was past the looming part and looking at it with a professional eye. Naturally there was going to be a road leading up there, there would have to be just to have moved the material used to build it. But they couldn’t see the route it took from here.

Plus, walking up and knocking on the front door? Maybe not the best option since they had larceny on the mind.

Larceny at the very least.

They’d need a more covert way in. Hopefully Rosenberg would know – or at least suspect – something based on her previous experience or academic studies. Not that European castles in the last five hundred years were her particular area of expertise but Willow would undoubtedly know more about them – or at least the times they were built in – than she would.

Right?

All war-college had taught her on the subject was the theory behind why you placed fortifications where you did. Of course she’d learned other things, including the importance of not being obvious in out-shining Army brats who’d arrived via the Point. Not when you were supposed to be on career path ‘typist’.

“Do you know much about castles?” Dottie asked, as if on cue. It was what she wanted to know as well.

“In the abstract,” Rosenberg said. “I usually turn up when fortifications or cities have fallen into disrepair, been buried by the sand or swallowed by jungle. But sure, I studied them a little. More the Crusader castles in the Holy Land than this – my Dad, well, you know - but… the principles are the same.

“I assume. I mean, as they got more experienced and refined they should’ve used the good ideas and dumped the bad ones.”

Plus a little experimenting with new good ideas.

“That’s good enough,” she agreed. And not that it was a shock, but “You’re our resident expert.”

“This will be my first,” Dottie told them. “Castle, I mean – not – umm. It is my first castle – that I really saw, I mean.”

“Congratulations,” Rosenberg ignored the lapse or what she could have teased the girl about. “So what do you think?”

“Are they all so imposing?”

“Actually, that’s kind of the idea. Yeah. But what we’re looking for is the practical side. You can make something impregnable, but the chances are you then can’t use it – especially in a siege. So what we’ll need to find are the little weaknesses, the trade-offs they had to make to get it built or keep it supplied. That sort of thing.”

“Such as?”

“How should I know?” Willow asked. “Like I said, it’s not my field. But I suppose we can figure it out as we go along.”

Just because they could see the castle didn’t mean they were ready to charge up the mountain and force their way in.

“I think we still need to talk to someone,” she concluded.

——————

“Are those what I think they are?” Tara asked.

“Could very well be,” she replied. Just a little vague about it.

“Why? What do we think they are?” Dottie asked.

Dotted along the sides of the road that wound its way up to the castle were – well, it was tough to describe them as anything but ‘giant, inverted stakes’. Every one of them was different, they certainly hadn’t been mass produced. But all were at least seven feet long with sharpened tips that pointed straight up towards the sky.

Closer examination of the castle through binoculars had revealed the route up towards it, but also gave them a better idea the geography that it lay within. Cliffs effectively to three sides, the other – where the road came up – loomed over a lake and below that the village…

One door. At least so far as they could see.

That wasn’t such good news.

Though they had no intention of approaching anywhere near as close as the door – or giving their presence away – but both of them wanted to see what they were dealing with and for lack of anything else to do right now that had seemed like the best plan.

“It’s old wood,” Tara noted about the stakes. “Would it last up here?”

“Not that long,” Willow replied. Cold air, but plenty of damp from the mist, cloud, rain and snow.”

“So… not centuries old then. What do we think they are then?”

“Well, they’re not brand new but someone’s got an interest in maintaining the old fears.” She prodded one.

“Yeah, fears that say ‘don’t come this way’,” Tara said.

“It’s a classic. Happens everywhere. I saw something worse in Peru.”

“Worse than this?” Tara asked doubtfully. And yes, what this was supposed to bring to mind was pretty terrible.

“Didn’t leave anything to the imagination,” she explained. “This does.” After all, Dottie plainly didn’t know what these were. She’d have had no doubt in Peru.

“Oh.”

“Will someone tell me what we’re looking at?” Dottie asked. “I mean, they’re just fence posts… right?”

“They’re stakes.”

“I can see that.”

“There are legends around this part of the world about one of the rulers, a long time ago,” Tara started.

“Not that long, really,” Willow said, “by local standards.”

“Well, long before anyone here was born,” Tara corrected. “This guy used to stake his enemies. And I don’t mean stabbing them with a stick.”

Dottie’s face dropped as she looked at the tall stakes, driven deep into the ground. Each of them was least six inches around.

“We think someone’s playing up to those legends,” Tara completed. “This wood doesn’t date back to those days, it would’ve rotted away by now.”

“It was an art, really,” she said when the girl was horribly fascinated. Because… why not? “The whole point was that they should be alive for as long as possible, not just to kill them. They – umm – put them on the stake, carefully, and carefully impaled so no vital organs were damaged.”

“They didn’t die?” Dottie asked, even more horrified as she considered how that might have been done.

“Like I said, that was the whole point. Eventually infection or exposure would finish them off – depending on the time of year, I guess. Blood loss perhaps.”

“And they did that here? Right here?”

“This part of the country,” she confirmed. “Or we’re supposed to think so – probably does a good job of keeping out the uninvited.”

“Aren’t we the uninvited?” Dottie asked.

No one said anything for a long moment, just looking at the stakes.

“So what do you want to do?” Tara asked eventually.

“Back door,” she said immediately.

“Oh, have you tried that?” Dottie asked, sounding surprised. “Ohh. Right. You meant the castle?”

*********************

[kimmy_s]

DIBS

Willow attempting and failing to whistle was priceless!

Was nice to see Willow talking a little about her dad. On one hand it's a little sad to think she was dragged about to cities that leave a lot to be desired, on the other hand she wouldn't be the adventurer she is or wouldn't have met Tara so it worked out for her in the end.

Four churches in one tiny town? Can't be good can it?

And Dottie's "have you tried that?" response to Willow's "back door" made me seriously LOL (I think my girlfriend thinks I've gone mad haha).

See you in the next part...

Kim

[zampsa19752001]

Yay for great update-y goodness... I really liked the Willow - Dottie conversation... So the castle exploration begins...

[loislane1]

Still here and still enjoying your creation. This just would not be one of your stories unless you took some time to dig into the characters at least a little bit so I was quite happy to read the lull before the action storm. So the girls are about to enter Vlad the Impaler's castle or at least what someone wants everyone to think is his castle. I know the pace is about to explode and will prepare my 5 point mental safety harness for the next portion of this verbal ride.
As always your writing is a pleasure to read.
-H.

[Katharyn]

Kimmy - There you go with that dibsiness again...

Yeah, you expect Willow to be all cool and casual about her whistling cos Indy would be but... no.

I don't think Willow has any issues with traveling the world when she was a kid. Especially at that time, where travel for most people was such an impossible thing. She knows what it made her and what it got her.

And yes, you're right, four churches would suggest a lot of need for religion.

Or cemeteries and consecrated ground...

In her own mind Dottie is playing catch-up to the girl she would've been if she'd not been from that small town. I don't think that's necessarily true, but it's almost how she sees it. She's had a taste of the lady-loving, found out that it's quite nice thank you very much and now... Yeah, she's up for everything I just like the idea of a girl who may not know it all but definitely WANTS to. And why not?!

Thanks!

Zampsa - They have to get to the castle first... which will take them a little effort Thanks

Loislane - Still glad your here and still glad you're enjoying it You're right, I don't think I could've NOT done the character stuff. That's just me, not my stories LOL. The pace isn't 'quite' ready to explode... but we're not in actual 'lull' so much in the next few parts. Rather we're climbing and getting ready for the rollercoaster...

Thanks so much!

Katharyn

[Katharyn]

Title: The Raiders Chronicles – Tomb of the Vampire Prince - Chapter Nine
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Absolutely, yes please. That’s why I write for this place, to engage in the discussion about the story.
Spoiler warning: Nope. All new. All original. Set in a universe where Willow Rosenberg takes the place of Indiana Jones. What can I spoil?
Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. No conversion to eBook or other formats please. Enjoy it here.
Summary: Doctor Rosenberg and Commander Maclay find out what you’ve known since the beginning…
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS or Indiana Jones. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property. There may be occasional use of ‘classic lines’ from the source series/movies or others for which full credit is given to the original writers.
Rating: Occasional, tasteful, adult situations and contextual bad language.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever. 100% FAQ compliant, 100% of the time. Look it up if you don’t know what that means.
Text convention: Use of italics denotes either special emphasis if used for a single or a few words in a sentence OR first person thoughts if used for a whole sentence.
Physics: I’ll say it here… It’s Movie Physics, people. Someone Willow’s size and weight can punch out big, big guys… If you don’t like it, don’t read it. (But please read it)
Notes: So, in hindsight, the title of the story (‘Tomb of the Vampire Prince’) was perhaps a bit of a giveaway about what this story was about. Maybe I should’ve been more ‘Temple of Doom’-y LOL. But… I only said it was the TOMB OF. Not that there WAS a vampire prince. Course, there might be. Or not. However… what I think I want to say is that – very firmly – we’re not in the Buffy world here. Back in S1 of BTVS vampires still seemed badass. They seemed dangerous and not at all funny or cuddly. Then due to certain characters that devalued the currency (i.e any vampire that wasn’t the Master, Luke or Drusilla) they got a bit… meh. They became nothing more than light relief and ‘boring’ until the real bad guy came along.
We’re not in that world.
IF there was a vampire in this world then there aren’t millions of others stumbling around waiting for a Slayer to stab them. (There isn’t a ‘Slayer’ either) IF there’s a vampire in this world then they aren’t tortured souls who just want a girlfriend they can boink and turn evil. They aren’t peroxide comedy turns with duff accents. They’re not even the BTVS canon ‘Dracula’ (totally comedy). If they’re anything from the actual show then such a rare creature would be much more ‘The Master’ and without the quips. That’s the sort of world the setting (hopefully) demands.
You know. IF they exist. Or ever did. Which I’m not saying yet.
It’s the difference between Indiana Jones and BTVS… Each has their style and we’re in the Jones world where (until film 4) the ‘twist’ was religious/spiritual rather than sci-fi/fantasy… You’ll see where I’m going with that.
Wait. Did I just spoil the story? Guess you’d have to read on and see ☺Cos of how I only said ‘IF’.
Thanks to: If you can ignore my mistakes and errors, I thank you. As I write this I’m approaching the end of another T/W story. In that longer fic ‘Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda’ I’ve been alternating points of view between Tara and Willow for YEARS. My natural inclination here is to do the same (and was when I was doing the first draft.) Trouble is it’s not always the right choice (or the ‘write’ one) and this SHOULD really be Willow’s story, she’s the main character (unusually for me). So I’ve been changing PoV around as I redraft quite a lot, making some stuff sit with Willow that was written for Tara on pure instinct. Some mistakes may have slipped through in that…



“I can’t help thinking we should’ve come to the priest right away,” Tara said.

Yes. In hindsight, it seemed somewhat obvious.

“I know. I didn’t think about it,” Willow admitted.

Absolutely, they could expect a priest to speak Latin and – or – Greek. Instead they’d been talking to various people in the village over the course of the morning and without much luck except through pointing and offering money when they needed something.

But having found the priest - the only one who seemed resident for the four churches here in the village - they’d discovered a man who absolutely feared the castle and fear wasn’t something that priests readily admitted to.

With their confidence in their God and their creator, they usually carried an air of… acceptance of whatever would happen. They knew and understood that if death claimed them then they were going somewhere better and that their works would endure.

That sort of confidence was often… a little unnerving to be around. Not that she’d ever have admitted it.

Nor to the problem she had with clowns.

At least there were no clowns here… But the priest? Well, the man was afraid. They’d both noticed it, both been able to see it in his eyes as well as hearing his words.

It had seemed, though, that the fear was on their behalf once he understood their intention.

“No good will come of disturbing those in the castle,” he said. “No good has ever come of it.”

“Nazi’s?” Tara asked, almost before he’d added the final part of his warning. The one that cast it in a different light.

Ever?

“I don’t know. People have always come here, outsiders. This we are told, you are not the first. Most of my life I have been here and it has always been this way. They come – bad things happen.”

“Who came here last?” Tara asked.

“Germans.” For a priest, his vitriol over the word was… strong. “More than three years ago. There were many of them – dozens – is that the word?”

Tara nodded to confirm his vocabulary. “And these Germans, they left? Or are they still up there?”

“No one has seen anyone from the castle - well, except for one of them…”

“A woman,” Willow guessed. Because… obviously.

“Yes, yes it was.”

She didn’t even bother to describe her because neither of them was in any doubt that was Ilse.

Ilse who had been wanting them to come here until… What had even gone wrong at the club? She wasn’t certain that she knew what the trigger for that fight had really been? Asking the wrong questions of the German woman’s hostage, Catherine Traithe? Was that all?

If so why leave her alone with her? Why not get someone else to sort out the problem that had called her away? And after all the effort to get her there?

Why had it all fallen apart then?

Or had it been something else?

Ilse had tried to send her here, hire her for that – to recover an icon from a castle that… She’d already been in.

Why the subtlety? Why not do it herself?

Nazi archaeology wasn’t usually all that complicated. You could do a lot with a few sticks of dynamite. Amateurs could prosper under those rules… So why had Ilse been trying to send her…

Exactly where she’d already come from?

And what did she find in there?

“We have to go up there,” she said. Absolutely convinced of it. It wasn’t a question of ‘being here so why not?’.

No, it was important… Maybe very important. Stopping Nazi’s getting what they wanted was definitely important work and a big part of her overlap with Tara. “Is there another way in? One that the people in the castle may not know about?”

“Please - I would not have you go there. It is not safe. For you. For anyone.”

When challenged though, he couldn’t put his finger on the reason why. Not beyond the fact that ‘a great evil’ was said to reside up there above the village.

“But we will go anyway,” Tara assured him eventually. “Because we must and someone has to.”

She agreed and told him as much, partly by checking the ammunition in her pistol and holstering it again. That’s right, we can deal with pretty much anything that happens.

Funnily enough, he didn’t even look at the weapon. Not offended. Not reassured. Nor worried. It just didn’t register for him.

“This, this is not my – I do not know the word, but I have not always been here,” he said. “When I was sent here – many years ago - I was sent in my orders to a chapel high in the mountains. Up above even the castle. In the vaults of that place lie the bones of warriors who put Darkness to the sword and trapped him within the castle.”

“Him?”

“Him.”

They looked at each other, unsure what that really meant. Between the beliefs of the priest and the lack of a single, common language they al spoke it was a struggle to know. Right now they were getting by in a mixture of Greek, Russian and Latin.

“If you are determined to enter the castle, then it was always said that there was a passage from the vaults of the chapel, through to the castle. I do not know if it is true or not.”

“An underground water course,” Willow reasoned, nodding. It was about the only way that could happen short of spending years with a hammer and chisel to dig such a tunnel by hand. And this region had never had the vast pools of labour that made that kind of exercise as attractive as it would’ve been - say - in Egypt.

“You knew?”

“Basic geology, doll. That lake by the castle is getting fed from somewhere, millions of years of rock water draining through these mountains? Stands to reason some of it would go to creating caves.” She turned back to the priest. “Have you taken this passage?”

“I’ve never even seen it,” the priest told them. “I visit the mountain chapel twice a year, to check for damage from the – ah – the rain and snow the – the weather? Yes, the weather. There are no people there; my – my people - are here, in the village. Not the mountain.”

“But…?”

“I was told of it by – ah – the word, the one who came before me. He had been here more than fifty years and remembered much of what he was told first hand. The passage is there. He was certain and I believed him.”

“Sound basis for an infiltration?” she asked Tara.

It wasn’t that she didn’t believe him or that she suspected he had any reason to lie (she did and he didn’t) but… these were their lives they were putting on the line. It was right to ask for a second opinion. A second opinion much more qualified to be the first opinion, in this case.

“A vague, second-hand tale of a passage that might run from an abandoned mountain chapel through to this castle?” Tara checked.

“Yeah. When you put it like that…”

“Sounds like as good as we’re going to get.”

“That’s just what I was thinking,” she agreed. “But I don’t know if you’ve ever been down mountain caves?”

Tara shook her head.

“Well, if it is water cut then it’s possible some sections of the route are entirely underwater or might flood in the event of heavy rain. Possibly in seconds. We’d need specialist equipment to have a shot at getting through if that was the case.”

Tara pursed her lips, making them very kissable. Now wasn’t the time though. “It was known, to the old priest, that there was a connection between the two buildings – right?”

“Right?” She liked the sound of the logic. It was just that relying on it was… It could get them into trouble.

But hey, trouble tended to find them anyway.

“So if he was right about that, then there really had to be one. Maybe as a way out from the castle?”

“Stands to reason there’d need to be one, no one likes to get caught in a siege,” Willow agreed.

“So… Wouldn’t the route usually be dry and navigable?” Tara suggested.

“‘Usually’ works for me.”

They turned back to the priest. “Okay, where is this chapel? How do we get up there?”

The priest looks stricken, perhaps even guilty, that he hadn’t put them off. “I ask you, again, please, do not go there. The chapel itself is a sanctuary, but the passage you want will only deliver you to hell.”

------------------

“Well,” Dottie said. “That was scary… Hell?” The girl was clearly anxious. Listening to priests and the like had probably been a big part of her life when she was growing up.

Now listening to one sounded less comforting and more dangerous - even through translation - probably hadn’t been the best thing for her confidence.

“Not literally,” Tara promised.

Surely, not actually literally. Right? She’d seen enough in her career – enough that was unexplainable – not to doubt the existence of something some people would call ‘God’. That – by implication – meant that she had to believe in something some people might call ‘heaven’.

And ‘Hell’ followed by implication.

So, no. What was in the castle couldn’t literally be hell. Right?

“And what was all of that he was saying that you never translated? Afterwards?” the girl asked.

“Ah, that.”

Rosenberg glanced at her. Asking the question silently. Did Dottie need to hear all that the priest refused to discuss in front of her? The girl had some latin, but he’d not wanted her to hear it.

Actually, perhaps Dottie did need to know. She was here, right here with them. In the shadow of the castle. So maybe she did need to understand the supposed dangers.

“Just a story,” Rosenberg revealed. “It’s about the supposed inhabitant of the castle.”

“Supposed? They don’t know? Why? Who is it?”

“A vampire. A vampire prince,” she said.

Dottie laughed for just a second and then noticed she was being serious. “Like from that book? Dracula? Are you serious?”

“They are, yes,” Rosenberg said. “Myself, I’m a scientist. I believe in what I can see. Right, Tara?”

She didn’t exactly feel reassuring in that moment. “There might be more here than science can explain,” she said.

“What?”

“Well, we know that there are things that science just can’t explain, right?” Tara said, hoping Willow knew what she was talking about. She had to.

After all, their lives had been saved by the Holy Spirit (if you wanted to call it that) which had wiped out an island full of Nazi troops without leaving a trace of them behind… Explain that, science.

“Science is immature but learning,” Rosenberg said, getting it but not quite agreeing. “So that’s one thing, but vampires?”

“I’ve seen things,” she said. “You’re – you’re not always with me. I don’t want to make that sound - Look, it’s not an accusation. Sometimes you’re just not there.”

“I wasn’t there, so you saw other things?”

Rosenberg made it into a joke, playing on their relationship rather than the experiences she was really talking about. But she could hear the curiosity there. Willow Rosenberg always wanted to know.

Unfortunately, there were plenty of things she just wasn’t allowed to talk about.

“I did - Sorry. But there were things that make me question whether there are other – umm – other things in the world,” she admitted, wishing she could come up with more descriptive terms without giving too much away.

“I don’t even know what some of them are, but when Hitler and his goons are chasing after them, trying to take advantage of them, I’ve learned that I have to have an open mind at least to the extent of what they believe, otherwise how can I anticipate and track them?

“So… what is it, doll?” Rosenberg asked. “You believe in monsters now?”

“I’ve fought them. And stop calling me that.”

Willow and Dottie were both looking at her, almost as if for the first time. But this was who she’d become. The Nazi’s – and others – were after anything they considered could give them an advantage when the world descended into the storm that by now seemed inevitable.

And – when dealing with the Nazi’s - if that ‘thing’ was mystical then that gave it some sort of pedigree that captured the eye of the powers that be in their hierarchy. It left the people she ran up against undoubtedly wanting to please their Fuhrer. To aggrandise themselves. Make themselves look better.

She liked to think of it as the ‘shiny’ factor. The pedigree, the roots in mythology or history seemed the most important factor. More than once she’d wanted to call Rosenberg, to ask for an opinion on something that had to remain classified and didn’t – technically – require her assistance.

Then there were the times that she actually had tracked her down. For exactly that.

And in no way had her libido had anything to do with that.

“You’re a monster fighter?” Dottie asked. “That’s what you do?”

“These days, well, mostly I’m there to frustrate Nazi plans but… sometimes that involves things I wouldn’t have ordinarily have believed in.”

“Wow,” Dottie exclaimed. “I had no idea I was helping with that.”

Or even that it existed. Lucky kid.

“And so you actually believe this is a vampire?” Rosenberg asked.

She considered for a moment. All those things she’d seen… But vampires? Willow was right, that did seem a step too far. “I believe that the Nazi’s thought it was. I believe that whatever it really is, it stopped at least eleven men and women leaving that castle. And so… I believe there’s something there that requires respect.”

Even if it was the castle itself that had defeated the Germans, not some ‘vampire’, it would deserve respect. They’d both been plenty of places littered with deadly traps – in fact it was Rosenberg’s forte, getting through that.

“Well, okay then,” the other woman said. “That’s fine. Vampires – no. But I can… go with that. That they believed it.”

And that was why she’d explained it that way. Experience had given her an open mind. Willow wasn’t always so quick to step away from the science.

“I think Dottie should stay here,” she said.

Rosenberg nodded and agreed.

Dottie didn’t… “No way! I don’t want - ”

“You’ve already done more than you signed up for,” Tara said. “Much more. I asked you to be a coat-check girl and hold a bag for me. You’ve been brilliant but… this is too much.”

Rosenberg agreed with her. “Yeah, we’ll be heading up there tomorrow and sidekicks… don’t always do that great in these situations. So, tell you what. Why don’t you see if you can find some local girl and – Well, just see if you can find some local girl.”

“Really? That will help?” Dottie asked, not seeming quite so let down now someone had given her something to do.

No matter what it was.

“It’ll probably help her,” Rosenberg said. “But watch out, around here her father will probably have a pitchfork.”

“Just like home,” Dottie shrugged.

She had a sly grin.

Somehow it didn’t seem like a good thing. But the genie was already out of the bottle. All she could ask now was that Dottie was… careful.

“No angry mobs,” she said. “Please. For me.”

“I’ll be careful,” Dottie promised.

------------------

“I still can’t believe what you said to Dottie,” Tara protested as she pulled herself up to join her on the lip of rock that was their pathway.

This again? “That’s getting old, doll. Will you just leave it? She’s down there and we’re up here.”

“Rosenberg, you practically told her to find herself a girlfriend! Here! And don’t call me ‘doll’!”

“So?”

“So – so you already mentioned the pitchforks. Pitchforks will probably be the least of her worries!”

“I’m sure she’ll be discrete. You said she could be discrete, didn’t you?”

“Well… Yes, I did. But you think it’s that easy? She doesn’t even speak the language.”

“None of us do, but I like to think I could find a girl virtually anywhere. You know, if I wanted to. Or I needed to. Watch that step, it’s slippery.”

They were taking an old pathway up the mountain, having been pointed towards it by the priest. In some places along the route, rocks had fallen or the path had fallen away and they sometimes had to hunt for the route again. But even with a path to follow it was hard going and they were well past the point of no return.

There was no way they could get back to safer ground before darkness fell. They had to push on because the alternative was far too treacherous.

In the dark they could lose their footing with too great an ease, or even lose the path entirely. And that could send them plunging down sheer rock walls to their deaths.

Or worse.

It’d be an ignominious end and probably no one would ever know about it or find their bodies. Not if Dottie succumbed to angry-village-father-pitchforking anyway.

“You really think you could get a girl here, huh?” Tara asked.

“I did say, ‘if I wanted to’.”

“Is this the part where I’m supposed to ask you if there’s been anyone else?” Tara followed up both in her movements and her question.

“No,” she lied.

“Oh, come on, Rosenberg. You and I both know you love it when I do.”

This woman knows me too well. But that’s fine, I know her too. I knew who she was by the first time in that hotel in India…

“Why would I love that?” she asked.

“Because of who you are, Doctor. You love credit when you do something right. And so I know that you want the credit for their being no one else.”

Too well. She knows me too well.

“How do you know there’s not been anyone else?” she asked, pausing to glance back.

“Because I know you. Even if you didn’t have feelings for me,” Tara said, “you still need to do things right. Finding some other girl who’d swoon and fall into your arms really would be oh so easy for you. You just said it. Basically you just have to stand up in front of your class and there’d be two or three. But ‘easy’ isn’t what you do.”

“So you’re saying I’m hard work?”

“No, not especially. You’re Doctor Willow Rosenberg, but I bet you were the same as a girl. You just do the hard work. And waiting to be with someone until we’d meet again, that’d be the hard work. Giving up and finding someone who’d just sit home waiting for you to come back from some adventure, that’d be too easy and wrong.”

She grinned. “You’re right – you are. I can’t deny it, Tara. I have to do things the hard way. But you always liked it when I did you the hard way.”

Tara didn’t answer right away, hauling herself up a rocky outcrop that she’d already climbed. And deliberately hadn’t offered her a hand. “Thanks.”

“My pleasure. All of it. At least I don’t have to ask you the same question.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’re not the typical sailor, Commander Maclay. You don’t have a girl in every port. You don’t have a girl in one port. You’d feel bad, leaving them.”

“Plus I have you.”

“And Dottie.”

“Don’t. Just don’t do that. Okay?”

“I’m telling you, the girl has a crush on you, we both know it. She’s as much as admitted it.”

“She’s not interested in me like that,” Tara insisted.

“She would be if you gave her even one sign of encouragement,” she said. “I can see it. But… you’re right. She’s really not looking at you romantically. For now, she sees you as this great shining light on the hill.

“A beacon. That’s you.

“You’re everything she wants to be. Small town girl makes it in a man’s world, goes on adventures and is in command. Oh, and you found yourself a hot woman along the way. I can tell she likes that.”

“The hot woman would be you?”

“As we just established - Gosh… look at that.”

It took Tara a few seconds to bring herself up to the spot she already occupied but then looked down at the sight before them. And it was still breath-taking after that time had elapsed.

It was the chapel. The path had brought them up above it and then wound down to the doors. But that wasn’t what had taken her breath away – even after all the things she’d seen.

The beginning of sunset was casting a red-gold light from the polished roof of the chapel below them. It barely looked like it had been touched by the – often undoubtedly harsh – conditions. Or else something else was at work…

“There it is,” she said.

“It’s so pretty,” Tara replied.

“Uhuh. Look, we’re just in time,” she said. “Sun’ll be down in no more an half an hour and it’ll be pitch black a half hour after that. We could’ve stumbled around out here all night and never found it.”

Tara agreed. “You’re right, we’re not getting down this mountain tonight – we’d break our necks. You think we should stay in the chapel, find the tunnel and go through tomorrow?”

She wasn’t sure about that. It was a tunnel – if it was there at all - not exactly requiring daylight but they would need the rest. And if there was anything at all to the vampire stories, did they want to get to the place at night?

Probably not.

“Let’s take a look,” she said. Just as a precaution she unsnapped her holster. Ready to draw if something leapt out at them. Even though they’d seen nothing more dangerous than a few mountain goats since leaving the village this morning they’d heard wolves in the forest before they cleared the tree-line and there’d been a fairly fresh bear carcass in the village this morning.

It’d been causing some kind of trouble, they hadn’t established what. But running into bears? At night? No. Not a good idea. Not even if you had a gun.

“I don’t think that’s necessary,” Tara said, but all the same she actually drew her .45.

“Really?” she asked.

“I said I didn’t think its necessary,” she replied. “Unlike you, I can admit I’m occasionally wrong.”

They started down towards the chapel, the path almost wrapping all around the structure to descend into the hollow that housed it.

On closer examination, the building was more beaten and weather aged than had been apparent when they first were dazzled by the sun reflecting off the roof. But it did still seem intact, good enough – at least – to offer shelter for the night if they needed it too.

“Door’s locked from the outside,” Willow said. “That’s a good sign. Just a bar, no padlock.”

Which meant that it was probably intended to offer just that shelter in the event anyone made their way up here. You’d have to be coming here though, the path went nowhere else. What else could there be? The lock? That would just be to frustrate the wind and the odd animal that might otherwise try to make a home in there. Right?

Though the bigger question had to be why build a chapel – the chapel to hear the priest tell it – where it would take the best part of a day for anyone from the village to get up here. Sure, when the path was in better repair and you knew where you were going it might be a quicker trip, but it was still too far for casual worship or Sunday service.

Except… there was nothing casual about this chapel. From the outside, aside from the roof, it was functional at best. Designed for the location. Externally, apart from where it was, there was nothing surprising.

But once they were inside she caught herself taking a deep breath before exclaiming.

And then sneezed instead. They’d kicked up a lot of dust that had been otherwise undisturbed. The dust also illustrated the light streaming through the stained glass windows. The dying sun was illuminating the whole place in…

“Wow,” she finally managed after that dust-induced delay.

“It is beautiful,” Tara agreed.

“No kidding,” she replied. “This doesn’t just ‘happen’ – Like the roof, it was built for this. For sunset to come right through those windows and the stained glass, it’s been chosen to make the most of it, you can tell.”

“Why though?” Tara asked. “Who even comes here? Not the priest…”

“I don’t know, let’s have a look…”

Aside from the altar, under the stained glass window, it was a very simple place in terms of furnishing. The benches for the worshippers were low with no decoration of any kind. Here and there were mats, for the congregation to kneel on but age had affected them more than anything else and most showed the evidence of its ravages but no sign of rodents who’d have torn them apart for bedding if it had been anywhere else.

Must be the mountains.

Or the bears.

The structure though… that was a different matter.

All around the walls were murals and beautifully written messages in latin. Even the calligraphy was art. Then, above the altar was the cross you’d expect. No surprise there.

But beneath it?

“Look at this.” Tara was pointing. “Here.”

An alcove. An empty alcove. Almost like you’d expect something very valuable to be placed. Pride of place and centre of attention aside from the cross itself.

Maybe this was the intended home for the icon they were supposed to recover?

“Well, now we know how big it was,” Willow said. Less than a foot high, no bigger than that. And there was no sign in the dust of anyone but them coming in here. Not recently anyway. “How’s your written Latin, Navy?”

“Not great. There’s not been much call for it at all until we talked to the priest.”

“Well, come look at the pictures then,” she said teasingly. “See if you can’t pick it up?”

“How about you do us both a favour, shut up and translate instead?”

She smiled. “We can do both. It starts…” She tracked back around the room. “Right here. Look?”

Tara did as she was asked, examining the pictures while Willow delivered the commentary from the Latin.

“See… We have two armies, one light and one dark. At the head of each is a champion, of sorts. One in the service of God and the other of the devil, but it might just as easily be any evil. It was often the case that the evil of men was ascribed to the devil to give it a more acceptable face. Look at how it’s portrayed though, that’s not your typical representation of old Lucifer.”

“What do you want?” Tara asked. “Fangs and claws? A pointy red tail?”

“This one is beautiful,” she said. “Drawn that way. And around his head, look – like a dark halo. As if he were an angel who had fallen.”

“From vampires to fallen angels?” Tara asked. “I thought you didn’t believe.”

“I thought you did,” she shot back. She might be a woman of science, but Tara was military practical in most things and had to be. To hear she’d come to believe in ghosts and goblins was… odd.

“In some things,” Tara insisted. “Things I’ve seen with my own eyes – or at least thought I did. Pretty sure that’s almost scientific method right there. And there’s more out there, Rosenberg. More than you’d think anyway.

“And you know it. You’ve seen it too. You’ve seen a heart, still beating, plucked from a chest and the victim was still alive until it burned. We both saw that.”

And the rest.

Still, she hesitated, rather than answering right away. Of all people she could’ve listened to in this world – and believed anything they said – Tara Maclay was right up there. She was a professional with her own expertise in a different – but sometimes overlapping – field. Her feet were firmly on the ground, but they’d seen some of the same things.

They knew that, yes, there was a higher power – not necessarily white-beardy God - of some kind. That there was a mystical world that most of the time, people just didn’t see.

But…

Ghosts and goblins?

Vampires and ghouls?

It just didn’t sound… like Tara.

But it was Tara. “I… I have a hard time believing in things I haven’t seen. That’s my scientific method,” she said. She took Tara’s hand for a moment. The one not holding the gun. Squeezed it because… I don’t do that enough. Because you’re real and you’re mine. I believe in that and I believe in you.

“Honestly, I hope you don’t have to see what I’ve seen,” Tara replied. “Keep going.”

But Tara hadn’t let her hand go. Which was… nice.

“Okay – where was I, oh – yes. So here we have the great evil, with his giant, dark halo. He’s swept across the land, terrifying the people into obeying him. In the background we can see the stakes, his victims have been impaled. Look, women and children alongside those who wouldn’t obey. And here are the men who got the message – fighting for him now.”

“He terrorised them into doing what he wanted? Very angelic.”

“And it’s not like no one tried to stop him. Here, a small uprising. Led by the church. Priests. Nuns. Women and children, probably those whose men went to his side to save. He slaughtered the men, the boys. He gave the women to his men. It’s not a new story, not even then.”

“But there ended up being a battle?”

“The church sent someone, another kind of priest, with an army of his own. These invaders weren’t foreign enemies that split the people and threatened them just as badly. This was the church itself and it started to unravel his army as they denounced him. Their faith hadn’t been extinguished, just hidden.

“It got them close enough that there could be a battle… He – the devil – lost and was pushed back into the mountains, to his castle. His final retreat… and here… the hero takes the icon and…”

“What is that? Are they killing him?” Tara asked, peering at the picture.

“I don’t know, I don’t think so and it doesn’t say. But… They finally give him a name. Here. The Beast Prince.”

“Look at this,” Tara said.

They looked together. Clearly the beautiful devil with the dark halo had… changed. Literal? Or was it a reflection of how the people who followed him came to see him in defeat?

“So is he supposed to be Dracula?”

“I… don’t think so. Dracula was fictional, only the name came from Vlad Drakul, ‘the Dragon’. But in terms of the history, Drakul was the son of Vlad Tepes, the real terror of these lands. A prince who pulled these people kicking and screaming into prominence in the Ottoman Empire. Much of what was said about Dracula was Stokers imagination, only loosely based on some of the excesses of noble men and women from this part of the world.”

“So… not a vampire?”

“No. Not a vampire. Just a very, very bad man.”

Because they both knew how often that happened.

“What’s this last part?” Tara asked. “Who is this woman? She doesn’t look like the others?”

“The Duchess of… it doesn’t quite make it clear, someone that the priest met on his march here… They, they fell in love.”

“But he’s a priest.”

“Priests have plenty of love, what they don’t have is sex,” Willow corrected. “Love is supposed to be what they’re all about. Love for the people, for everyone. For God.”

“Fair enough. But – they work together, this woman and the priest?”

“An ‘act of love’” she read. “Something about an ‘immovable presence’, but mostly about the ‘act of love.’

“Sounds like sex to me.”

“No, no, it means something different here. See how important it is – how the words are bolder, brighter. ‘Act of Love’ is… really important to this story.”

“Well, since you’re ruling out the obvious – that just sounds… weird.”

“Believe me, I’m right there with you,” Willow said. “But it is what it is. Then, after… sounds like they were both buried here, in what’s now the crypt of this church. Under the ground, then the church was built on top of them.”

“So this ‘act of love’ killed them?”

“It’s a little fuzzy on the sequence of events,” Willow said and this bit has faded, probably where the sun comes through the most. “I guess that might’ve been years later. But – the people, they were grateful. They built this church; they made it a place worthy of what the two of them had done – whenever it was.”

“And now they’ve all but forgotten about it,” Tara pointed out.

“And now they’ve all but forgotten about it.”

“Makes you wonder how any of us will be remembered.”

“Remembered?” she asked. “Commander, you’re a secret agent. I’m an archaeologist and the biggest thing we ever did vanished into government bureaucracy.”

“So you think anyone will?”

“Yes! Are you crazy?” she countered. “How can you work for the Navy and not understand the amount of paperwork that must have our names on? And how long they’ll keep it? Our names will still be out there for decades after we die. Maybe more. Someone will probably still be processing those papers twenty years after we’re gone.”

Tara’s smile was worth the subject. “That’s really very comforting, that vision of immortality that you have.”

“Sometimes I amaze even myself.” Once again, she squeezed Tara’s hand.

“Come on, Ms Archaeologist. Find me this crypt. Sounds like that’s our way forward.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

***************

[zampsa19752001]

Dibs-y Goodness...

Yay for excellent update-y goodness... I wonder if Ilsa the Ghoul is the woman in the murals...

[Katharyn]

Thanks, Zampsa - That is interesting speculation you have there...

Next part will post tonight.

Katharyn

[Katharyn]

New chapter below, but just a quick note. When I posted chapter 9 I forgot to change the thread title to show 9 was up. It's possible then that some of you missed it was there so... before you read 10, make sure you read 9. Simple how that works!! My bad.

Katharyn

-----------

Title: The Raiders Chronicles – Tomb of the Vampire Prince - Chapter Ten
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Absolutely, yes please. That’s why I write for this place, to engage in the discussion about the story.
Spoiler warning: Nope. All new. All original. Set in a universe where Willow Rosenberg takes the place of Indiana Jones. What can I spoil?
Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. No conversion to eBook or other formats please. Enjoy it here.
Summary: Down to the crypt…
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS or Indiana Jones. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property. There may be occasional use of ‘classic lines’ from the source series/movies or others for which full credit is given to the original writers.
Rating: Occasional, tasteful, adult situations and contextual bad language.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever. 100% FAQ compliant, 100% of the time. Look it up if you don’t know what that means.
Text convention: Use of italics denotes either special emphasis if used for a single or a few words in a sentence OR first person thoughts if used for a whole sentence.
Physics: I’ll say it here… It’s Movie Physics, people. Someone Willow’s size and weight can punch out big, big guys… If you don’t like it, don’t read it. (But please read it)
Notes: I commented on it before, but I’m giving much more dialogue to our girls while I have this ‘investigative’ moment to work in. You can’t really do that once the action starts up again and – having created a backstory for them in these roles I wanted to play into that and show just how they are together. How they still ‘fit’.
That’s my excuse anyway. Yes, it’s less cinematic, but in my original fic I’d have spent about ten parts doing that without advancing much of the story… At least we’re still moving and I am keeping it relatively short ☺
For me.
Also, this isn’t a hugely long part. That said, it’s a part that was generated almost entirely in redraft because - originally - it was revealed in little more than a flashback after the events at the end of the chapter had happened.
Thanks to: My readers who leave me the feedback. It’s special. I’d write without you. But I probably wouldn’t let anyone read it. So, thank you.




Rosenberg’s discovery of the entrance to the crypt wasn’t particularly ‘special’. Not in the great scheme of things. Actually, it was just what was expected and really just illustrated the skills that she’d frequently been consulted to make use of.

Indeed, Rosenberg would admit that there were plenty of her colleagues who could do some of that work just as well as she could.

No, the ‘special’ portion of Doctor Rosenberg’s repertoire was usually revealed when things had gone wrong.

But for now, up here, her expertise was more efficient than ripping up every stone on the floor and then coming up empty as they would’ve done had they tried that imprecise tactic.

Instead of going straight down as anyone might’ve expected, the sealed crypt was accessed through a panel in the wall that Rosenberg had discerned by reading the Latin and looking for a slight difference in… something. Whatever it had been though, that hidden door concealed a set of steps more suited to midgets than regular sized people.

Even by their - not quite lofty - standards.

By then, though, it was obvious that no one was expected to go down there.

Or come up again.

Because… crypt.

Rosenberg was in her element though. This[i] was what she did. Crypts and the places where there were dead people. In the Navy you tried to avoid death, or made sure it happened to the other guy.

In archaeology, it was very different. In that discipline, death and the dead were often exactly what you were looking for because it was all that was left of the past.

A mandatory lamp check (including how much oil they had for them) preceded going down the steps even to investigate. The immediate entrance to the crypt was cobweb filled - spooky even - but there [i]was air moving, which was reassuring.

She hadn’t thought about it until Willow said so, but the moving air had had to be a good sign. A significant draught blew through once the stone had been removed.

Air didn’t move through water that way. Even if the route it was taking wasn’t passable, it meant that there was at least one dry way through.

To somewhere. Maybe too small for them or too dangerous but… it existed.

And they wouldn’t suffocate.

Tara didn’t delude herself that this was a risk free endeavour. Falling off a mountain had the attraction – at least – that one day someone might’ve happened across the bodies, find her military ID and get word to the Navy and their families.

Anything happened to them down here and… well, they’d probably never be found. But – as Willow had said – they’d live on in bureaucracy. The sheer amount of paperwork that would be pushed around with their names on would see them having a kind of immortality…

Precisely as much immortality as she had any right to expect in this job. No one had ever said it was supposed to be easy or risk free.

Nor had anyone mentioned ‘survivable’.

“Once we go down there, we’re not coming up right?” she asked, supposing it unlikely that there’d be a nice clear, simple route. Because… hey, look who she was with.

“Not here,” Rosenberg agreed.

“So how long do you figure it will take?” She was having trouble visualising even how far away the castle must be, they were quite a way above it, but had looped around the mountain several times to get up this high. A tunnel or cave could cut through all that.

Or might be even more convoluted.

“I have no idea. Believe it or not I’ve never done this before.”

“Me neither,” Tara admitted. “I just assumed that you…”

“That I’d poked around in some pretty dark, dank places,” Rosenberg told her, dead pan. Maybe they didn’t need Dottie to pick up on the innuendo.

“And then you met me?” she supplied.

“And then I met you.”

The kiss they shared then was borne of a passion for life and what they represented for each other. And it left her a little breathless because of that passion, not really because of how long it went on.

“Seriously though?” she pressed.

“Seriously, I’ve never done this, Tara. But even if we don’t know how long these caves are, we do know that water flows downhill.”

Tara paused. “That’s what we know? That’s all we know?”

“The castle is below us from here and there’s a lot of mountain, a lot of snow in winter, that’s above us. If the caves we assume are down there were cut by flowing water then the water will have gone through softer rock more easily, but generally it has to flow downhill. Right?”

“You were sounding so confident until that last part…” Tara said.

“But I’m right? Right? You’re Navy; you’re supposed to know about water. Tell me I’m right.”

“Makes sense to me, yes. So if we just head east, downhill - ”

“Even if the cave goes up or down or doubles back on itself – we follow the flow of water. East.”

“Sounds like a plan. But do you want to hear the rest of it?” Tara asked. She was trying not to think about the possibility the caves were much more complex than they were imagining. With chambers and passages going every which way… a maze they could get lost in.

With no natural light. Once the oil for their lamps ran out… they’d be caught there. In the dark. Trying to find a way out by touch.

That would be bad.

Yes, let’s stick with her version, about the water.

But it was tough not to worry…

“Go on.”

“I think that we could be down there a while. I think we should get something to eat, rest up and be fresh before we go down there. It’s been a long hike and a long day just to get this far. I don’t know about you but I’m tired. Also… I don’t think we should walk in there at night?”

“It’s a cave.”

“No, I mean getting to the other end. The castle. I don’t think we should get there in the dark.”

“I thought we agreed this wasn’t vampires?” Rosenberg checked.

“And I thought we agreed – a long time ago – that it was foolish to take chances?” Tara countered. Even though they both did it all the time.

“Okay, sure,” Rosenberg said. “You’re right. Besides, what’s the hurry? We have the food, the gear and warm coats to sleep in. Could be cosy. Now all we need is a deck of cards and something to talk about.”

“Let’s start with Dottie?

“What about her?”

“You sent her looking for some local girl,” Tara reminded her.

“I did, didn’t I?” Willow asked. “Think she’ll look like you?”

“No!” Absolutely not. Neither of the women she knew Dottie had… left the club with had done. Not at all. Except for being women. Because – that was Dottie’s thing.

“Really?”

“Everyone here has dark hair,” she explained.

“Ah,” Rosenberg said, infuriatingly. “That would be a difference.”

------------------

The initial descent into the cave had been several hours ago. Down and down and down, seemingly forever. It was easy to believe that they were already below the bottom of the mountain before they even started to head in what they thought was the right direction.

The crypt of the church had been unremarkable, at least at one end, with two stone coffins carved out from the actual rock and given marble lids that looked to be perfectly chiselled to match the edge of the rock tomb.

They hadn’t disturbed them. There hadn’t been any need to do so and - generally - it was a little rule she had. ‘Don’t disturb the dead without good reason.’

Some of them resented it.

Forcefully.

At the other end of the crypt though it was just… a deep blackness…

A way down. The source of the moving air that they’d detected and they’d been able to hear the – distant - movement of fast flowing water too. A constant, alongside the air-flow.

Steps, of a sort, had been carved into the rock for the first little while. Little more than cracks in places, but full steps in others, had been their assistance to get down into the depths that were required.

Then… rope. One they’d been reluctant to trust, but then had to.

It’d surprised both of them, they hadn’t been expecting to descend like that before they’d set of, but that was the nature of many caves and – thinking about it – once this spot had probably been open to the elements above. Before the church had been built upon it.

And that meant that the water which had carved out this entire system had started on the surface, there, and found its way down, down and down over thousands or hundreds of thousands of years.

Man probably hadn’t come down from the trees when the process started. So why were they surprised?

Because it was daunting. Not even inside the tomb in Egypt – when the torches had gone out – had the darkness been so complete and pervasive as it would be down here when the torches went out.

Absolute.

And it had only gotten worse as they’d needed to fashion harnesses from the rope and then give one of them up – leaving it hanging there as they lowered themselves into the inky dark

So black it pressed on you. Smothering everything.

How had the builders of the castle used this route? Perhaps there was some other way. For a while there she’d wondered if they were going the wrong way, deep into the mountain and never to be found again. But then – reassuringly – more signs of previous transit had become clear.

Even if answers had not.

For a moment there though… Yes, it had been a little scary. It was so easy to get turned around, to lose your bearings. And this was a truly three dimensional journey they were on. Up and down were real factors in the decisions they had to make and more than once – where the signs and choices hadn’t been too clear – they had taken the wrong options and been forced to double back to the marks they’d left scratched into the walls.

In that way they’d made that uncertain descent, heading down water carved passages that dug deeper and deeper into the mountain.

Until… things became clearer.

Where passages had split they’d headed east – down the mountain – and followed the strongest flow of air. They’d also continued to mark the rock to show which way they’d come. A great idea and a good use for a stray piece of board chalk she’d found, because neither of them wanted to be lost down here.

Some way in though, they found the water… The first sump betrayed the fact that they couldn’t just be following air flow, that there were other passages and ways for the air to move. That hadn’t been very reassuring, not since they’d been basing their decisions on which way to go on that movement of air.

The sump itself had been no more than a few dozen feet wide and half that in depth. It was nothing but still water – trapped for who knew how long – with an overhead rock dipping into it.

That hanging rock forced them to go under the water and take it on blind faith that there was a way through. And given how long it took to undress enough to leave them some warm clothes, protect them – and the lamps – with waterproof oil skins and screw sealed tins for the precious matches. They just had to hope that it wasn’t a regular occurrence as they hadn’t exactly been able to get top of the line equipment from the village.

Also… it was damned cold where there was - and never had been - any hint of sunlight.

When Tara emerged from the water, she already knew the lamp had been lit again – she’d seen the glow as she’d tried to see something during the short dive. Anything. Thank goodness. If that had failed them… If the matches had gotten wet…

It was impossible not to be afraid of that. Of the cloying darkness.

Of the consequences.

Probably they’d never have gotten out of here. Those were the margins they were dealing with. Life or death in a dry match.

“Come on, get out – get out of there,” Rosenberg insisted as she pulled their clothes out from the oilskins. Dry, thank goodness.

Not that she needed any invitation. It was damned, damned cold. Her teeth were already chattering and it had only been a dip of less than half a minute. A shock to the system after all the effort they’d been putting in to get down here.

“That – that’s – that’s a good look on y-y-you,” Rosenberg said.

“Wh-wh-what is?”

Tara felt like she had brain freeze, the dive under the rock ceiling had almost made her spasm and it didn’t feel it had let go of her brain because she didn’t understand what Willow could mean.

“Emer-emer-emerging out of the water in a vest – all w-w-wet,” Willow chattered. “And p-p-p-p – damn it – p-perky. Oh – you’re – you’re t-taking it off.”

“You too,” Tara insisted. Cold did what cold did. “C-come on.”

“Is now the t-t-time?”

“We n-n-need to get warm – d-dry, should – should’ve gone through n-naked.” She hauled herself from the water and threw the vest out. “St-st-stupid – stupid not to see - see it.”

What had they been hiding? Why get anything wet? No one would see them. No one had probably seen anything down here – they weren’t even in the main tunnel. Surely this couldn’t be the old route through the mountain to the castle?

Or… had something shifted or changed? Was that it? Had some water broken through, found it’s level or –

So cold.

They needed to get warm, they needed to stay warm and right now naked was better than wet. Wearing anything into the water – just for the sake of modesty – had been a mistake because now it was wet and wouldn’t dry out. Not down here. It’d just chill them when they needed to be warm.

They needed to be warm; otherwise they were likely to end up dead.

If there were more sumps or any reason to get back in the water, it had to be naked. They didn’t have a stash of clothes they could keep discarding.

“We need a fire,” she said, but that was pointless. Apart from burning some of their own dry clothes, there was nothing down here for fuel. So instead… “Come here – no, take those wet things off f-first.”

“Hon-honey,” Rosenberg said as they hugged and ran hands over each other briskly. Encouraging blood-flow and not in their usual way. “I n-n-never could say ‘n-n-no’ t-t-to you.”

Willow might’ve managed a joke, but she knew that this was serious too. This hadn’t even been running water, but it was all but ice cold and the air moving through the caverns wasn’t warm either.

“We - we have to g-g-get smarter,” she said. “That was d-dumb.”

“You’ve been t-t-trained for this sort of thing, right - right?”

“Haven’t you?” she asked.

“Usually I – I’m d-dealing with heat and mosquitoes and dehy – dehydration,” Rosenberg chattered, pressed up against her.

It was much warmer.[/i]

“S-s-sorry to b-bring you somewhere cold,” Tara said.

“It has its compensations,” Rosenberg said, looping their combined – dry – clothes around them as they huddled. “But just barely.” They were pressed together, the lamp that they’d relit providing more comforting light than actual heat. But pulling their dry clothes loosely over them once they’d got rid of the worst of the water and heated themselves up… it started to get warmer.

“I – I don’t think we ever d-did this without doing the other,” Tara said after a while of just enjoying it. It was still cold, especially the parts of her that were exposed to the moving air, but compared to the water and the aftermath… hugging Rosenberg was like being next to a roaring fire.

“Except that t-time I fell asleep.”

“You’d had a rough d-day,” Tara replied. “Do – do you want to know why I’m here?”

“Are you allowed to tell me?” Rosenberg asked, finally managing a sentence without her teeth chattering. Good sign, surely.

“You’re already involved; you’re up to your… neck in it.”

“My pretty little neck?”

“That’s not your neck.”

“It’s your hand. But you know I want to help you,” Rosenberg assured her.

“Well, this is serious – just as serious in some ways as anything we’ve ever done. War’s c-coming,” she said.

“Everyone says so but - ”

“War is coming,” Tara repeated. “The Germans are arming for it, so is everyone else – but maybe too late. No one in history has spent that much money without pulling the trigger. It just doesn’t happen.”

“What about us?”

“We’re… interested bystanders. The President wants to support his European allies. Congress doesn’t want to get involved. I…”

“You’re supporting his European allies?”

“Not exactly,” Tara replied. “More like… there were rumours that Germany was about to pull Romania into the Tri-Partite pact.”

“They’d have to change the name,” Rosenberg quipped. “Sorry.”

“It might not change much, on the face of it – but the intelligence pointed to the fact that there was something here he wanted – something worth the effort. Not just another country, but actually access to some weapon.”

“Nazi ghouls.”

“So it - well, I guess that’s how it appears. We – we didn’t know.”

“But now we do.”

“If they had them already – and they do have Ilse – then they’d not bother and these things already have been ‘created’ en masse. Someone would’ve seen them, somewhere. So, I have to think that they still need something from here. Something that makes a 3rd rate power like Romania worthy of full inclusion in the pact.”

“Something in the castle, you think?”

“Maybe – possibly… It – there’s no way to be sure. But now that we’re here, that’s what I’m afraid of. Yes.”

Rosenberg thought about what had been said. “How many laws and orders did you break to tell me that?”

“None, you’re temporarily conscripted to service. I need you. I need – if anything happens to me - ”

“Nothing is happening to you.”

“If something happens to me, then you need to complete this mission. Whatever it is, however it works – the Nazi’s can’t get their hands on it.”

“And Ilse? If they already have her?”

“I don’t think we’ll get through this without seeing her again. I’m fairly sure it’s in the script.”

“That is how our time together seems to go,” Rosenberg said. “Remember the submarine? But – like I said, I’m liking this twist.”

And the movement of her hand, playful rather than meaningful, showed just how much.

“Obviously you’re not so cold anymore,” she concluded. “We – we should get up and get dressed. Move on.”

But Rosenberg was holding her tightly. “Wait, Tara.” It wasn’t sexual, but it was reassuring.

Loving in that other meaning of the word.

“It’s going to be okay. We’re getting through this, just like we got through everything else. Right?”

She could hardly doubt it. Not after that. “Right.”

-----------------

Progress without another dunking was quicker and much less naked. Whether it had been a wrong turn that took them that way they never decided, but they were lucky enough to make it back to what had plainly been a tunnel men and women had passed through long before. Here and there were signs of attempts to make it easier and more passable.

Taking advantage of that work they passed through tunnels, very aware of the declining stocks of lamp oil and following the direction of the water flow. They even went through vast caverns in the rock that they couldn’t see the roof of. Fully lit – from the echo – it would probably have looked like a natural cathedral. But the lamp light barely extended ten feet around them before the blackness swallowed it.

In addition to the occasional steps and had-holds, here and there they found animal bones. But never saw anything actually moving or alive.

This was such a desolate, dark environment that wasn’t even populated by slime and that kind of low-level plant life.

And then, totally surprising…

A door.

“Well, that’s kind of obvious now, isn’t it?” Rosenberg asked.

“If I’d known it’d be that easy I don’t even know if I’d have brought you along,” Tara replied, reaching for it.

“Wait!”

“Just testing. It’s stiff, but it’s turning. I don’t think it’s locked.”

Tara released the handle and checked all her gear, her weapons. Rosenberg did the same, touching the whip at her side. Making sure it was there. Weapon of last resort, usually much more use in other ways.

“You know,” Rosenberg said. “There’s something I should – I don’t know. I think I should say something.”

“Can it wait?” Tara had hold of the door again, ready to pull it open and let them into what they assumed was the castle.

After all, what else can it be?

“It could – but I don’t think it needs to.”

“So, why don’t you just say it?” Tara asked. “And let’s get on.”

“Say what?”

“How you feel about me.”

“Why – what?” Okay, having built up to this – mentally – and saying the bleeding obvious as Giles would’ve put it.

“I already know, it’s not really a big deal to say it. Is it?” Tara said.

But she didn’t wait for an answer and instead just opened the door.

Only to be met by a machine pistol.

No, actually, there were three of them.

Oh.

********************

[kimmy_s]

Dibs and so sorry, I didn't forget you honest!

Chapter 9 -
Hmm only one priest? Wonder if there were others and they got scared off.
I'm not a clown fan either, they give me the wiggins.
It's funny to hear the girls debating whether vampires are real or not. As Tara pointed out, Willow of all people should know there are some things science can't explain, however I totally understand Willow's reluctance to just readily accept it.
I enjoyed the light banter about pitchforks and angry mobs, it needed it after all that monster talk.
Interested in the "act of love" what it was and what significance it has for the girls.

Chapter 10 -
Nice pacing on the tunnel exploration, not too long and not too short. Tender hugging moment too even though it was purely for body heat (yeah right! Hehe). The unsaid "I Love You's" at the end was perfect. Damn those 3 machine guns!

Look forward to the next.

Cheers
Kim

[zampsa19752001]

Yay for excellent update-y goodness... Nice welcoming comittee the occupants have for Willow & Tara...

[loislane1]

Well, either Vlad the Impaler has rather significantly updated his weapons of choice or there are some much more modern bad guys in the castle as vampires certainly wouldn't need guns either. This was a nice couple of chapters still moving the plot forward a bit while also giving some much appreciated Willow/Tara time and deeper character development than what you would see in the equivalent movie. One nice part of the two being alone for the bulk of the past two chapters is the moments where they are being authentic with each other. This is not to say they are fake when out in the wider world but Willow especially has her rakish adventuress persona and Tara has a pretty impeccable professional persona as well. These are part of each of them but also serve as a level of protection in some ways. Sitting in the cave warming each other after going through the sump was a short time where all of that dropped off and we got a small glimpse of there inner selves. They got to simply be with one another without demands, dangers, or diversions. Of course now they are at the door facing down three guns and firmly getting stuck in the middle of a whole heap of trouble again. In another story I might have been a little more worried about the foreshadowing in Tara's comments about if something happened to her. Knowing board rules and IJ movies, I am only mildly concerned as in the end the girls should, hopefully, beat the bad guys and of course still be together.

I will admit I was rather tired the first time I read there was a sump ahead of them and my addled, sleep deprived brain thought, "wow it must really flood in these caves if someone from the castle has installed sump pumps like you would put in your basement. Where would the power come for those anyhow? Does the castle have electricity?" And then my brain caught up to the story and did a mental Picard forehead slap and figured it out. What I usually say when mental moments like this occur is my hamster temporarily stepped off his wheel.

Looking forward to the next installment to see how deep the mess is that they literally just opened the door to and of course how the girls will get out of it.

-H.

[Katharyn]

Kimmy - No, it was me that forgot! I forgot to flag it as a new chapter being up. Can't blame anyone else for not noticing

THIS is what I love about feedback. Speculation and ideas. To be honest there's nothing that your ideas will do to this story because it's already finished, but in my longer work neat ideas that readers have resulted in major plot twists that lasted for dozens of chapters... That's why TKB is special

IN this case... yeah, maybe there should've been more priests. On the other hand it was just a mural. Perhaps the rest got missed

You know, clowns never really bothered me until Pennywise (and not even reading Pennywise, it was seeing Tim Curry that got to me!)

TBH I had some second thoughts about Tara's role in the sort of 'Warehouse 13' style role (yes, I saw an episode since I wrote all this and it's a shorthand I can use) because, actually, it's a huge change to the IJ universe where (until IJ4) it was all about the spiritual rather than sci-fi/fantasy. However IJ4 blew all that away so I feel I can use it LOL

Pitchforks... I had this image of Dottie being chased by the mob after 'taking advantage' of some village girl. Of course I'd never let it come to that, but I can see T/W worrying about it

Both the 'act of love' and the 'unsaid' I love you will come back... Significantly.

Thanks

Zampsa - Thank you, too. As ever

Loislane - We'll see who is in the castle... soon.

You're right about the time the girls spend alone, though I didn't plan it that way. I think it's just what happens after spending more than a decade with them as the bulk of my daily writing LOL. I just slip into that stuff, even when I am trying to do movie style!

Interesting what you say about their persona... My own take on all that is that they somehow both saw right through that - while appreciating it - the very first time they met. They're two people who can keep up with each other while still being T/W who don't NEED to.

And yes, you should have no fear that both the girls come through this - relatively - unscathed. FAQ compliant and IJ style LOL. They may be beat up but they'll be functional enough to enjoy the aftermath

Sump... it was my dim recollection that said that was what the 'overhanging rock dipping below waterlevel' was called? I hope it is!! I never checked. I just wrote it LOL

Next part very soon

Thanks

Katharyn

[Katharyn]

Title: The Raiders Chronicles – Tomb of the Vampire Prince – Chapter Eleven
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Absolutely, yes please. That’s why I write for this place, to engage in the discussion about the story.
Spoiler warning: Nope. All new. All original. Set in a universe where Willow Rosenberg takes the place of Indiana Jones. What can I spoil?
Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. No conversion to eBook or other formats please. Enjoy it here.
Summary: Ah. Here we are… Back into the action. Tara and Willow had been captured by the Nazi’s after their spelunking adventures.
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS or Indiana Jones. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property. There may be occasional use of ‘classic lines’ from the source series/movies or others for which full credit is given to the original writers.
Rating: Occasional, tasteful, adult situations and contextual bad language.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever. 100% FAQ compliant, 100% of the time. Look it up if you don’t know what that means.
Text convention: Use of italics denotes either special emphasis if used for a single or a few words in a sentence OR first person thoughts if used for a whole sentence.
Physics: I’ll say it here… It’s Movie Physics, people. Someone Willow’s size and weight can punch out big, big guys… If you don’t like it, don’t read it. (But please read it)
Notes: I should note that the last part, going through the caves, was originally MUCH shorter and more ‘tunnel from one place to another’. Then I saw some bad movies about monsters in caves (no, not the one good movie about that with all the women) and thought… actually. No. This should be harder. So once again I strayed from the cinematic and into a slightly more realistic place to make it a little harder.
Now though… now we’re back into the cinematic Indiana Jones style. I suppose that might seem a little ‘unbalanced’ as we start whizzing through the action again but… I like to write stuff I never did before. LOL
Thanks to: People who’ve taken pleasure in spelunking with me




“Really? There’s nothing you want to say to me?” Willow asked as they were herded from the entrance to the caverns onwards into the castle.

“You want to talk about this now?”

“Who knows how much longer we’ll have to say these things,” Willow said with a shrug. Okay, so they were surrounded by bad men armed with guns but… really, was that so unusual? For them, at least?

“Way to be positive about our chances,” Tara replied.

In terms of originality there were only two things this scenario had going for it. One was that the ‘bad guys’ in question obviously weren’t quite your average Nazi. Definitely not by the look of them. The other was that Tara Maclay had just gotten really close to using the L word, meaning it but hadn’t actually taken that last step.

And much as she might claim to be ‘busy’ with other things right now (being captured and all), that had been back before they’d even known they were in danger.

So, yes, she was going to talk about that now because…why not?

What else were they going to do? Getting out of this kind of trouble was all about picking your moment.

After all, both of them had seen their guns taken and even if these hadn’t been undead nazi creatures, they’d still have been armed. On the bright side, the whip still hung at her side. Unfortunately in these confined spaces, it wasn’t exactly the best choice of weapon. Still, small mercies and all that.

They’d been captured by three Nazi’s; at least that was what their uniforms represented. Of course – once upon a time - those uniforms had probably fit much better. Right now they were baggy, as if hanging off skeletons.

These guys didn’t quite fit the bill as skeletons, but they were sunken faced. Withdrawn. Not like they’d just lost weight though. No, much worse than that. About the best you could say was that the skin was ‘tight’, if you’d wanted to avoid hurting their feelings. After that you might have to admit that it was beyond ‘pale’ in all three cases. No, you’d really have to go with ‘miscoloured’.

With a sort of ‘greenish/black’ tinge to it. More… slightly rotten.

Gangrene, might’ve been somewhere to go in terms of comparisons.

And, if you were being absolutely candid, then they looked… Well, they looked dead.

This was what had been beneath Ilse’s apparent face then?

Perhaps.

That was the best she could say, ‘perhaps.’ After all she hadn’t had lots of time to examine it while the woman was trying to kill her and throwing her off balconies, but it didn’t quite look like it. Under that flap of skin Ilse’s face had seemed wilder and more bestial. These things that had once been men just looked… unburied.

“Least we can talk to these guys,” she said, putting aside the previous topic of conversation. “How’s that for positive?”

“No.”

“Really, we can. We both speak at least a little German. That’s better than the alternative. You know, not being able to speak the language.”

“Excuse me, I speak more than a little. I’m fluent. But even if we can speak the problem is… their lack of tongues,” Tara pointed out.

Ohhh.“You saw that?”

“I saw that. When they were getting us to come out,” Tara said. “That’s why they grunted. They couldn’t do much else.”

“Yeah, I can see how that would make conversation really tough. Plus, you know, they look… dead already so I’m not sure what we can do about that.”

“Just what I was thinking,” Tara replied as they were shoved, one after the other, into a small room where the door was locked behind them. Turning, she caught Tara in the middle of a stumble and kept her on their feet. Pressed up against her, and there was nothing bad about that.

Except for the circumstances.

“Don’t worry, I gotcha, doll.”

“Don’t call me - Oh, I’m too tired,” Tara said.

“Yeah.”

So where were they?

A cell? A old-time, euro-dungeon?

No, just… a storeroom.

Surely any good medieval despot should’ve had some cells in his castle? Maybe that honest to goodness dungeon? Seemed like if you were staking people out on the road, impaling them, you should have a dungeon too.

Otherwise where was your escalation? Had the Prince who’d had the castle built really just gone from ‘everything’s fine, fancy a drink?’ to ‘impaled’?

Probably…

And what were they waiting for anyway? Why not just shoot them now and be done with it?

Of course, she had to wonder why Ilse had been trying to send her here at all? It seemed over elaborate for a trap when the Nazi’s could’ve just taken her in Paris if Tara hadn’t been around.

Not that it had seemed like their intent at the time. They’re really wanted to employ her. At least until she’d asked one too many questions.

And then that ‘woman’ had decided to kill her instead. Changing her mind, just like that.

Now… this. As warm a welcome as they could’ve probably expected. And we were expected, that much was clear. But a welcome without a hail of bullets.

So what was going on?

“You know, I take it back,” she said after a moment’s thought.

“What?”

“Oh, that I want to know what you were going to say,” she said. “No, just kidding. I still want to hear it, that’s not going away. But I do take back my disbelief in… things that go bump in the night. These are the walking, talking – ah – grunting proof.”

Tara grunted then, probably meaning she agreed, but sounding more like she had something stuck in her throat. “Sorry - So what do you think they’re waiting for?”

“Someone who can talk?” she guessed. “To make us talk. Otherwise we wouldn’t know what they wanted us to say. Talking’s involved, when it comes to talking. Making us grunt - well, it probably has no practical use.”

“Torture’s ineffective,” Tara commented.

“You been through it?” she wondered, not wanting to think about it really. It was one thing to get hurt or injured in the line of duty, but for someone to deliberately set out to cause her girl pain…

No, I don’t like that idea at all.

“No,” Tara admitted. “It’s just what they teach us. Personally, I’ve always believed in not getting caught. You?”

Tara had seen the scars, she knew where some of them had come from. But not what had been behind it. It wasn’t like she’d been asked questions…

“After a fashion, but probably not like these guys – things – will get into. Why do you think it’s ineffective?”

“Oh, they can make you talk. You can make anyone talk - absolutely anyone. But, the same way that an animal will chew it’s leg off to escape a trap, someone being tortured will say anything to make it stop. They’ll lie. They’ll tell the interrogator exactly what they think they want to hear.”

“Which does them no good because they have no way to know the truth,” Willow realised. She’d never really had to think it through before.

“Proving reliability gets easier with more than one person. If we both told the same story under intense pressure then they’d be better placed to trust it - if it’s done carefully without giving away what you want to hear. But listening to either of us alone? It’d prove nothing.”

She didn’t say anything about that. Better to be here together than not. The two of them together had a better chance than either alone.

“You know what they’re probably going to do - ?”

She nodded. “Use us against each other – they’d be right. I’d give it all up to save you. Eventually. If it was just me…” Only a shrug could end that thought.

“You’d tough it out. I know.”

Well, wasn’t this cheery?

Tara wasn’t done though. “No one’s coming for us, Rosenberg. No one’s coming to the rescue. Only Dottie knows where we are and there’s nothing she can do. No one she can even ask for help. Even if she could - they’re days away.”

“I know.”

“And if they want it, they’ll get it out of us eventually, but there’s no benefit – to anyone – in delaying things. There’s no clock. Nothing we’re waiting for.”

“I know.”

“So… You’ll give them what they want, okay?” Tara asked. “But only what they ask for. Not Dottie. Not anything else we did - before. Hopefully they won’t know here about that other stuff – I don’t get the impression these guys are still receiving orders from Berlin but I don’t want to test it.”

“Makes sense,” she agreed.

“Does that mean you’ll do as I ask?”

“It means I don’t intend to end up in that position. How does that sound for a plan?”

Her girlfriend paused, for a long moment and thought about it. She could already tell which way that was going to go.

“I like it,” Tara replied. “I like it a lot.”

------------------

So they had a plan.

The trouble with most plans was that you had to wait for them to come to fruition. Some things were just out of your hands. Like that door opening…

In the meantime she put up with no small amount of ribbing from Rosenberg about Dottie and her supposed crush. More about how the girl would be back at the inn, down in the village, pining for her.

That was the word Rosenberg had used. ‘Pining.’

Really?

And it completely made light of their situation. Not that their circumstances were yet ‘desperate’ but they were definitely in the realm of ‘not great.’

Of course, ‘not great’ was just about ‘normal’ when they met up. After all, how could things get better when they weren’t already screwed up?

“Really?” she’d just asked. “You’re going to talk about that now? And – more importantly - again?”

“Was there something else you wanted to talk about?”

After all, they already had their plan all worked out. Such as it was.

“Oh, how about anything? You really can’t let it go, can you?”

“You’ve told me often enough,” Rosenberg said, “about my students.”

“Well, they… They give you fruit.”

“And they write messages on their eyelids – well, this one girl did but… none of them ever saw me in uniform. Dottie’s seen you that way and… I get it. I really do. I absolutely get why a girl like her would put you on a pedestal, look up to you and when she was doing that, hope to look up your skirt.”

“Hey! Whatever it is - It’s not like that, she told you as much. Right?”

“Oh, you’re right. The skirt thing, that’s me. You’re a hot woman, Commander Maclay. You just are. Moreso in uniform. You should learn to live graciously with it.”

“Rosenberg…” she warned.

“Oh, come on. It’s something I never get tired of thinking about,” Rosenberg said.

“Now? You say this now? Why? Why would you?”

“Cold nights, alone in a cold bed? What do you expect?”

“You’re a pervert.”

“Oh, come on. You never think about me? Swinging in your hammock, or whatever they give you in the navy…”

“I have an apartment. And a bed. You’ve been in both of them, remember?”

“And in you, doll,” Rosenberg said with one of those smiles of hers. The ones that said ‘I know you better than you know yourself.’

Wasn’t always true.

“Well… Stop calling me ‘doll’.”

“Sure, Tara. But that’s a ‘yes’. You do think about me. And what do you do about it? Hmm?”

Tara looked at her watch, really, really hoping that – yes. “It’s time.”

“Time?”

“Time,” she said firmly.

“Just when we were having fun…”

“Well, we need to get out of here,” she said. “We agreed that a few hours ago, but waiting for them to lose interest – I’ve lost interest in that too. Must be the conversation.”

“Takes two, honey. And when it comes to escape, I’m not the expert,” Rosenberg said. “Breaking out of long dead tombs is a little different to jail cells. Or store rooms. Whatever this place is.”

Once again, she set about examining the door. Just for something to do, other than talk. The door was no less solid than it had been a few hours ago. Not unexpected, but it gave her an excuse not to go on with that particular conversation as she put her head up against it. Ear to the wood. Listening.

There were some things a well brought up young woman just shouldn’t - not with anyone.

She held up a hand to Rosenberg, asking for silence. There was absolutely no sound to be heard. Just as there hadn’t been since they were left here. No one had bothered with them. No interrogation as they’d initially assumed. No… nothing.

So waiting for the door to open wasn’t working for them, even if the delay had been useful. There had been good reason to wait. Or at least they assumed so…

“So this is the new plan?” Rosenberg asked.

“Right,” Tara said and started to take off her shirt.

“Oh. I like this plan!”

Rolling her eyes, because what else was she likely to do; she tied the shirt to the barred window, hanging the two ends out of it.

“Okay, wait, now I’m confused,” Rosenberg said, looking up at her.

The other woman was right, of course. Neither of them could possibly have fitted through the bars. But then what was the shirt tied to the bars and hanging out for? That was what Tara expected the guards to need to investigate and hopefully the security concern would overcome sound logic and reasoning, if only for a few seconds.

“Scream,” Tara said.

“What?”

“Scream.”

“I don’t scream.”

“Rosenberg, please, just do this. Scream and tell them I fell from the window.”

“You’re not listening to me, I don’t scream. It’s… it’s just not something I do.”

Tara ignored her. She needed a scream and it was going to have to be Rosenberg.

“You’re not listening to me – I told you, I don’t do that,” Willow said, watching as she climbed the rough walls and eventually braced herself against three of them in the corner. Above the door.

“Scream,” Tara grunted. This wasn’t exactly easy and she was aiming for actually being useful from up here, not landing in an undignified heap in front of the door at the feet of their captors

“I don’t - ”

“I’ve heard you scream,” Tara said.

“Right, well, I don’t scream outside bed.”

“We weren’t in bed,” she managed, wondering why - now - she was engaging in this?

“Okay, okay. I don’t scream except when you’re working your magic, woman. So… there.”

“God – just shout, Rosenberg. Do something. Now.” This was already hurting. A lot.

The other woman shook her head. “Why can’t you be the one to panic?”

“Because I’m trained not to.”

Her punishment for the lie was a decidedly unenthusiastic call for help from Willow.

“Oh, please. Guard. Guard. Help. Please. Oh my God, she fell. Please help me.”

“Really?” Tara mumbled to herself. That was supposed to convince them?

Rosenberg really didn’t take it well when she had to be the damsel in distress.

And she had no talent for it.

*********************

[zampsa19752001]

Dibs-y goodness...

Yay for great update-y goodness... Another "quiet" moment before fecal matter hits the rotating cooling device... Willow is definately not a damsel in distress...

[kimmy_s]

Me and Zampsa are playing Dibs tag LOL

[loislane1]

Good evening Kathryn!

First to the comment you made to my comment from the previous chapter:

Interesting what you say about their persona... My own take on all that is that they somehow both saw right through that - while appreciating it - the very first time they met. They're two people who can keep up with each other while still being T/W who don't NEED to

I agree they see the I guess you would call it true persona under the exterior cover in each other. I was thinking from a reader/viewer perspective that here were a few moments where we get to see them the same way. Kind of like an insight into what they see in each other all the time.

For the current chapter - very eww on the whole zombie rotting ghoul Nazi thing. I am intentionally not thinking through all of this too much as I'm trying to enjoy on a more lighthearted basis much as I would if I went and watched IJ. Even so I thought it was interesting that Ilse had apparently been to the castle before but was going to hire Rosenberg to go to there to retrieve an artifact and now there are rotting Nazi ghouls apparently left from the first group that went to the castle and never returned.

Tara trying to get Willow to scream for help was very comical. I was trying to picture Harrison Ford screaming for help and that was equally as ludicrous. I cracked up at the less than half hearted call for help. Of course I wouldn't think rotting Nazi ghouls would come to any cry for help so I'm assuming we might get to meet the brains behind the seriously icky brawn.

As ever, a pleasure to read.

-H.

[Katharyn]

Zampsa - Neither of them do damsel very well, but I like to think that Tara would've tried harder

Kimmy - Yes, you are!

Loislane - I shan't comment on my comment on your comment cos that would be too much

It's probably no coincidence that I made Ilse (outwardly) attractive while these guys are rotting. Yeah, that's just he way I roll!

And it's probably a good thing that you try to approach it without thinking TOO much But what you ARE thinking about... yes, that is an interesting factoid isn't it. Ilse has been here before but needs someone like Rosenberg to do something for her. Hmm...

I really was trying to channel Harrison Ford doing the damsel thing. It was ridiculous so I made her that pathetic at it

Thank you very much!

Katharyn

[Katharyn]

PS - The posting of chapter 13 and 14 may be slightly haphazard. All I can say right now is that they will be posted over the next 10 days...

For now, enjoy 12 and apologies if I'm early or late with the next one.

K

Title: The Raiders Chronicles – Tomb of the Vampire Prince - Chapter Twelve
Author: Katharyn Rosser
Feedback: Absolutely, yes please. That’s why I write for this place, to engage in the discussion about the story.
Spoiler warning: Nope. All new. All original. Set in a universe where Willow Rosenberg takes the place of Indiana Jones. What can I spoil?
Distribution: This story was written for Pens. Pens is its home. No archiving off Different Coloured Pens and the Kitten Board please. No conversion to eBook or other formats please. Enjoy it here.
Summary: Breaking out…
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the copyrights or anything else associated with BTVS or Indiana Jones. All rights lie with the production company, writers etc. I am making no money from this series of stories however all original characters and situations remain my property. There may be occasional use of ‘classic lines’ from the source series/movies or others for which full credit is given to the original writers.
Rating: Occasional, tasteful, adult situations and contextual bad language.
Couples: Tara and Willow forever. 100% FAQ compliant, 100% of the time. Look it up if you don’t know what that means.
Text convention: Use of italics denotes either special emphasis if used for a single or a few words in a sentence OR first person thoughts if used for a whole sentence.
Physics: I’ll say it here… It’s Movie Physics, people. Someone Willow’s size and weight can punch out big, big guys… If you don’t like it, don’t read it. (But please read it)
Notes: I realise I’ve kept saying it, but I really do mean it. Once the action we’re building to starts, it won’t stop. (No, I am not teasing you, I am just incapable of remembering (or bothering to look at) my own story. This part gives us some humour, some explanations about what is happening and the nefarious plan is unveiled. Which makes me ask, how ‘bad’ does a plan have to be to be ‘nefarious’? You can’t say it’s a ‘bad’ plan cos that means it wasn’t going to work. Perhaps ‘nefarious’ just means that it would’ve worked but was ‘bad’ in the sense of being evil? Or is that just an evil plan? Can anyone speak to what equals nefarity?
Thanks to: Everyone’s who’s showing the patience…
In the previous ‘episode’: Willow wasn’t very enthusiastic when she was asked to ‘scream like a girl’ about the idea Tara had ‘fallen’ from the window in order to trick the guard. It’s curious, on one hand you have Willow Rosenberg who is very capable of a scream about that and on the other you have Indiana Jones who… wouldn’t. This Willow who has much of that Jones background… I think she could’ve. Maybe would’ve, if Tara had really fallen. But she didn’t, so all we got was the half-hearted ‘Oh, help,’ damsel in distress act.
Still does the job though.




“Oh, thank you!” Willow enthused. “Please – you have to help!”

She was putting a little more into her performance now that the guard was here. By which, Tara would probably say, she meant just not making it so obviously sarcastic.

A girl had to try. For her girl.

The guard was another of those – basically dead looking – Nazi’s. They hadn’t seen anyone else since they’d got here. Maybe that was all there was.

And maybe her performance wouldn’t be up to much by movie standards, but she was doing her best to appear helpless and unthreatening. To look consumed by the fact that her girlfriend had – apparently without starving herself for months and then collapsing her skull and most bones in her body – managed to get out of the window.

It was ridiculous and the guard probably knew it. Even a dead guy had to know it. You only had to look. But…

Where was the other prisoner?

That was the question he’d have to ask himself. The answer was - hopefully - unexpected.

Because Commander Maclay was wedged in the corner above the door - awkward, obviously - and any minute now a drop of sweat was going to fall from her brow because that had to be hard too. Who thought of that? Who did it?

Navy. Apparently.

She had her part to play though and Tara wouldn’t be happy if she loused this up. The guard was – rightly – suspicious and she needed him in here. Right inside the door.

“Please! I don’t know what happened. I just – I guess I fell asleep and when I woke up she was gone. I don’t know what she did – or why – she knew how far down it was - She must have!”

Stepping back as he grunted – all he could do without a tongue - the door opened and he gestured for her to get even further back, his eyes going to the twisted shirt that was hanging from and out of the barred window. So it was about two hundred feet straight down as best they could tell from in here. Would he believe it?

The bars weren’t even far enough apart to let an eight year old through…

And actually – by some miracle - Tara had been right. He believed it enough (or feared his superiors enough) to come to check when what he actually should’ve done was shrug and then close and lock the door again.

Because, if his other prisoner had gone, what could he do anyway?

“I don’t know – maybe it was your face that made her jump,” she said as he entered the store room passing beneath Tara.

‘Jump’ was the signal, though they’d never agreed it and now she’d get to see what happened next.

It was actually a little underwhelming. Rather than anything that resembled an actual attack, Tara mostly just let go and fell on him. The unexpected weight pushed him to the floor though and that was the important thing.

Once he was down and Tara rolled clear they both - enthusiastically - put the boot in. So enthusiastically that by the time he actually stopped moving and ceased trying to get up she was sweating just as much as Tara who - after all - had been wedged up there for a few minutes.

Now, she was sure it wasn’t actually ‘wrong’ that she found the sight of Tara kicking the stuffing out of an undead Nazi - wearing no more above the waist than her brassiere – something of a turn on.

Was it? No, those were a few of her favourite things all brought together. It really encapsulated so much of their time together.

Wrong or not, the net result was that the cell door was open and the lack of a tongue meant that he wasn’t shouting for help either.

But whatever these things were, they needed an unnaturally long period of being battered to cease trying to get back to their feet.

It looked like a smashed body and broken limbs might’ve ultimately been the reason for that. Physical incapability rather than anything else was keeping it down. The eyes said it was still ‘conscious.’ Who knew what the groans actually meant?

She liked to think that at least some of them were ‘ow.’

“Sun’s going down,” Tara commented as she wiped her brow and checked the barred window. “Whew!”

“Think it could be a bad thing?” She was just admiring another of her favourite things. Tara Maclay with a light sheen in sweat.

Still not a bad thing. Still not ‘wrong.’

“Or good…” Tara said, but she didn’t sound exactly convinced.

“Maybe it won’t make any difference,” she argued but knew that it must sound about as convincing as her call to the guard. She didn’t believe it either.

In the meantime she was making herself feel better by taking the guard’s machine pistol. Sure, that left Tara with just the handgun. That was fine though. Tara was the better shot and knew how to make them count. Training would account for that.

Her own style, having picked up shooting through necessary experience and often in a panic, was a little less disciplined. Tara had told her once it was if she thought she’d never run out of bullets.

Actually, she just couldn’t conceive of why it was better to save them. For the want of a bullet, lives could be lost.

When it was their lives that wasn’t a price she was willing to pay.

And besides, you could always pick up guns and ammo from the never-ending hordes of Nazi’s, Thuggee cultists or whatever flavour of armed bad guy she found herself up against.

Tara, being trained and all, saw the value of… well, secrecy. Sneakiness.

So the secret agent could take the pistol.

“Come on,” she said.

“Wait - ”

“Tara – now,” she said firmly.

“But my shirt?”

“Tara – we have to hussle. There’s no time for you to untie that shirt. You did too good a job with tightening the knot. You had so you’d fool him – so, come on.”

Given the look Tara gave her, she had to suspect that Tara thought her motives were less than pure. For shame. “What?”

“You just want me running around without anything on. That’s why you told me not to do something I could’ve undone easily. Isn’t it? Come on, just admit it!”

“Don’t flatter yourself, doll. My only concern is for how we’re going to get out of here,” she said to Tara’s breasts.

“I’m up here.”

“Oh. Anyway, come on.”

It was true though, that time was tight. And there really was no choice. So Tara abandoned her frustrated attempt to untie the shirt.

Maybe I’ll give her my jacket.

But later.

She took the lead as they made their way through this lower level of the castle – at least they hadn’t been taken up many stairs to get here. “Doctor Rosenberg, will you stop looking at me.”

‘Doctor Rosenberg’? Oh, she must really be ticked off.

And so sexy when she’s angry… let alone shirtless and angry.

“I’m not. I’m checking we’re not being followed.”

“That’d be more convincing if you weren’t still talking to my chest. Up here. Remember? Besides, I’ve got it covered.”

“Not from where I’m standing. I… maybe I’m having trouble taking you seriously.”

“Exactly, Doctor Rosenberg. Exactly.” This time it wasn’t Tara that called her by her professional title.

A familiar voice all the same.

Ilse.

And a bunch more Nazi’s.

“Well, obviously this why you need to pay attention,” she explained under her breath. Looking Tara in the eye too.

Finally.

-----------------------

“Ilse. I should’ve known. Nice to see you got your face repaired though.”

It was, Tara realised, typical Rosenberg. What it was supposed to achieve, she wasn’t so sure. But… this was how it always went. Wise ass.

Ilse smiled, all bright teeth and flawless skin when they both knew very much better that there were flaws that went well past ‘skin-deep.’ “I’m sure the girl who donated her life for it would thank you for your – what do you call it in English? A witticism?”

Rosenberg didn’t have an immediate answer for Ilse because – she understood – hearing that kind of thing bit deep. Tough girl she might be, but Willow had a moral core and empathy for people who couldn’t fight back.

Ilse should’ve been in hospital for a month to repair that damage and then would’ve emerged with scars so terrible no one would’ve been able to avoid staring at her.

Instead… This wasn’t possible because there wasn’t even a bruise where a great flap of her face had been ripped free.

Except it had happened. So there was no question, none at all, that Ilse was being entirely serious about what had happened. Some girl had died to allow her to be healed.

However that worked, whatever that meant, it was like a fist to the stomach but – like Rosenberg - she couldn’t be weak now. So if that made them seem callous, about something they couldn’t change?

So be it.

“So you’re what? A ghoul?” Rosenberg asked.

For now she was happy to stay silent and cross her arms. Partly it was because Rosenberg had this banter down much better than she ever had. But maybe it was also because she’d left her shirt behind and she felt unusually exposed.

Secret agent she might be – as Rosenberg kept labelling her – but she was also a well brought up woman who felt most comfortable in uniform. And though she had no issues with being naked – at the right time – this certainly wasn’t one of those times.

Yeah, when we get out of here, Rosenberg’s going to pay for this one. ‘No, doll, tie the knot tight - not a sailors knot.’

Right.

“Ghoul? That’s an inadequate word,” Ilse said. “This is… something greater.”

“Well, you definitely look better than your Aryan brothers here. I’m not sure der Fuhrer would approve of what became of his master race. I mean, they are SS right? Blonde haired, blue eyed would-be masters of the world? They’re not looking too healthy and I don’t think calisthenics will help.”

“The Fuhrer will spend as many lives as necessary to secure my Master’s assistance. And so will I.”

Interesting… Ilse’s loyalties weren’t where they’d thought – and assumed – them to be.

A Master other than the far away Fuhrer?

That might not be good… And – potentially – these creatures could be the beginnings of an army that could heal serious wounds in days - or perhaps even minutes - through taking the lives of others? If true, that definitely wasn’t good. Was that what all this was for?

If so… they’d definitely been right to come here.

Someone had to get the word out too, if they couldn’t stop this.

Can I get a message to Dotty? Tell her to run, to get on the train and get away? Take the news back?

She couldn’t see how. Not unless they got out of here and then… it wouldn’t be necessary anyway. This whole situation – however bad it was – would be resolved.

One way or another.

For now though… Let Rosenberg do her thing. It was often more informative watching and listening than it was taking part in the conversation.

“Well, we certainly didn’t mean to be the fly in your ointment.”

“You’re very much mistaken, Doctor Rosenberg.”

“How so?”

“You seem to believe your presence here is an irritation. In fact it was planned for and expected. Required even.”

Willow was plainly taken by surprise there and Tara was right there with her. After all they’d had to sneak their way in… because we didn’t try coming to the door.

And we were captured anyway so that whole frigid swim was…?

They really were waiting for us?

But they tried to kill us. More than once.

“Oh, really?”

“Really. I have a task for you Doctor Rosenberg. For both of you, actually. Right here in the castle. Though it really would’ve been simpler if you’d come to try to bluff or force your way through the gate as we expected you to.”

“If you wanted us here, why did you - ?”

“Why has everyone been trying to kill us?” Tara asked finally.

“There is a word in your English, I do not know it so well I think – Ah, Plausibilität?”

“Verisimilitude?” she guessed.

“Ah, yes…”

What? Really… they tried to kill them so that it would look real?

What if they’d succeeded? It’d been a close run thing, you didn’t mess around on the top of trains and hope that your target would survive it. And it wasn’t like they hadn’t really been trying back at the club either. A stray bullet and - that would’ve been it.

Frankly, she was doubting Ilse’s word at the moment. Of course, double-dealing Nazi’s made that her default position anyway.

“Oh, I’ve very well aware of both of your achievements and the fact that nothing, ever, goes easily for you.”

Rosenberg turned to her. “You know, she’s right, it really doesn’t.”

“We do tend to do things the hard way,” she agreed.

“Oh, that’s so sweet. You said ‘we.’”

“We’re a team,” Tara said. Usually it wasn’t her choices that led them to ‘doing things the hard way.’ Typically it was more about Rosenberg’s modus operandi.

“So, you felt that if we’d thought it was too easy we wouldn’t have come?” Willow asked, turning back to Ilse.

“Something like that.”

“Actually, I’d have coped with that. It’s not like I think much of your Nazi competence anyway.”

Ilse held up a finger. Pointed. “You would’ve smelled the trap you walked into.”

“Well, I can certainly smell something…”

The Nazi woman laughed. “Instead, here you are, under your own power at a time of your own choosing but ultimately dancing to my tune.”

“No, I’m serious… I can smell - can anyone else smell that?” That cute little nose wrinkled in distaste as Rosenberg leaned towards the enemy and… sniffed.

And this time it did get to Ilse.

“I’m sure your partner, Commander Maclay, can tell you that most people avoiding making me angry, Doctor Rosenberg. You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.”

“Bring them!”

***********************

[zampsa19752001]

Dibs-y Goodness...

Yay for great update-y goodness... Pretty short escape... I guess Ilse needs help in waking up old fang tooth Vlad...

[Katharyn]

Not a bad guess! Thank you, Zampsa!

Katharyn