I craft each of my characters because they call to me. Even though they're not real, they reach for me, and I give them life. Even when they exist in someone else's universe, and walk inside another's creation, I bring them out, and let them grow.
This is Shadow's story. Pain, hatred, untamed madness, savagery. Emptiness, loneliness, and endless despair. There is nothing good left in her, nothing human left in her. It is in this state that Jack and Riddick find her.
Her song, I borrow from Libera, because it speaks the concept woven in to this story better than I ever could.
Let me go where I will I hear a skyborne music still.
Its sound from all things old,
Its sound from all things young.
From all that's fair, from all that's dark,
Peals out an everlasting song.
not only in the rose,
It is not only in the bird.
Not only rainbow glows,
Nor in its music heard.
But in the dark and cold of things there always, always something sings.
From all that's fair, from all that's dark,
Peals out an everlasting song.
Tis not in stars I look,
Nor in the bloome of spring born flowers,
Nor in the robin's song,
Nor in the glint of showers.
But in the dark and cold of things,
there always, always something sings.
But in the dark and cold of things,
There always, always something sings.
There always something sings.
The deepest realms of most worlds are silent, echoing caverns, lost and forgotten to time.
But that's never been the case here. The surface is silent. The surface is my place, across a dead ocean, on a distant continent that was once free of danger and fear. There we lived in peace and safety, in a small, green, protected corner of existence.
Until the first great eclipse.
Now my world is a silent wasteland, and the insidious doom that came to be here has claimed the entirety of its surface in a vast, terrible migration. At first glance, it seems empty, but mere feet below the surface, the worst kind of evil seethes and breeds and wages continual war on even its own existence.
I am Aheyya Ziyailin. My people are gone. I am the one thing standing between pitch black, and genocide.
Most stories have a conclusion. They end, and someone somewhere has accomplished something. But this is my story, and my story never ends, and it is never concluded, until every last one of us dies. This is the story of doom. Give it wings, and it steals the sky. There is no such thing as time here. There is only death.
When dawn comes, I am a shadow on the horizon, gone like a mirage, sunlight striking highlights of deepest crimson and blue from wings black enough to absorb light. In the desert and the endless light I am the whistle and sigh of the wind, I am the distance, and I am the vastness. I am the heat, the silence, the stillness. I am the water, cool beneath the ground, and I am the sky, blazing with open light.
And when night falls... Not all battles are fought between good and evil. Sometimes you fight evil with fire. And fire is neither good nor evil. It is simply a force of nature, destroying anything that stands in its path. I am darkness that can never be lit, but I am fire that can never go out.
In the darkness I stirred, hunger pangs waking me up. I always slept somewhere hidden, in case I was seen, and as I looked down, I realized that it was a good thing I hid this time. I took in the image of myself, bedraggled and worn, the scarred hands, the dark skin. As I watched, it darkened further, and I felt long, thin, curved knife-like teeth push their way in to my mouth. I winced and tipped my head back so I could swallow the blood instead of spit it out, ever so practical in the dry emptiness of this place. I'd loved to have slipped in to form, ridding myself of the aches and pains of being human, but I couldn't.
I rose and turned, and a scent hit me like a brick wall. Without even being aware of it, I'd dropped to the ground as my back split, my bones shifting and clacking back together. Skin hardened in most places, and smoothed out in others. My head unfolded, its sound-sensitive bone blades unsheathing. I raised my head and chattered in to the darkness, receiving a fuzzy map of the area in front of me.
Blood. Blood. Blood.
I let out a set of fine tuned frequencies, feeling the high notes echo back in to the hollow spaces in my head. There were creatures ahead of me, a kill, fresh on the ground, still twitching. Blood rage drowned all sense of reason. It could, by my right, be mine.
I rose and stalked toward the sound, head lifted, long neck turning this way and that. Then they came in to view, and I stopped moving. They froze as well, looking at me, a circle of about five of them. There'd been a sixth, but he was dead, entrails spilling on to the ground, in a pool of blue blood, half-eaten. There'd been a seventh, but he was in a corner, a shadow among shadows, eating something.
That jolted me back just enough to stalk off in a different direction. I'd been crammed in a crack, but the force of my change had tumbled me in to the side passage where I'd found the others eating. I crept toward the surface, clicking quietly now and then when I came across others in my path. They didn't question me. None of them ever would.
I drew up short. blasting a narrow beam of abrasive discords ahead. Something dropped from a ledge and blocked my path.
Except, maybe, one.
I wove dissonance across its frame, knowing that it would be uncomfortable. On some level I enjoyed it. It edged away from me and raised its head, hissing a shivering, hateful discord. I half-unfurled my right wing and slammed it in to the other creature's side, flipping it onto its back. I raised my head over its body. The chittering hiss I sent it roughly meant, move, or become food. I added grating dissonance to it, which I knew would scrape its way down the other's spine and leave it disoriented.
I coiled back, watching it stagger to its feet in my echo chambers. The scent was submission. The scent was a good scent. I sent a hiss packed with as much scornful tones as I could muster up after its retreating tail, and kept going. This one had been trying to either make advances on me or kill me since the last eclipse. Honestly, it was getting irritating. Not the indecisiveness, that was typical. I'd have put up a fight against anyone, that was normal. It was the fumbling, clumsy way he tried to accomplish either by. He'd only gotten as safe as he was by ass kissing my predecessors. I wasn't having it. I hadn't even waited to figure out what he wanted this time.
I found the surface cave. There was a hole in the roof that we'd fly through when night fell. There was nothing alive in the vicinity, which was a relief.
I braced myself, and stepped slowly toward the light.
Fire lanced through my body, my legs going out from under me. I fought down a shriek as I felt skin split and hot blood flow down my sides. I scrabbled with soft, feeble hands, fast as my weakened body would move, toward a narrow crawl that I could use to get to the surface. I found the wrapped cloak and simple shirt and loose capri pants in the crack where I'd left them, and hauled myself on to the ground, pulling my sandals out of another crack, shivering with freezing fire. I looked down through streaming eyes, feeling all the fine details settle back in to place. I was in shadow, but it was still too much. My eyes always burned after a long absence, light or not, and this felt like it was killing me. I scrabbled with the wrapping and stuffed it in a crack, shaking out the clothes. I struggled in to the pants and shirt, my frame awkward even in human form. I settled the cloak around my body and pulled the hood up to hide my face.
I'd been here for so long that I'd managed to change at will, sometimes. I'd managed even to control tiny parts of the change, but I could never bring out the wings without going all the way. And then half the time they were trying to chase me, even when I wasn't in season. Having an unmated female in control of their colony had both confused and incensed them. Now and then I would rise to keep my line going, but I wouldn't keep any of them. But they were learning to live with it.
That was when the tremor started. It wasn't one of the small quakes, this one started big, the ground snapping beneath me, the spires around me trembling. I froze, still as only darkness can be. I'd learned once, in another life, that you could be so still that people wouldn't register your existence at first glance. I'd never truly mastered it. Not until this place, not until the darkness came, not until the doom. Then I could become a piece of darkness. I was the night, and the sky, and the open wind. I'd tried to convince myself that was enough for me.
I rose slowly, flickers of old memories surfacing in my mind. Explosions. Smoke, fire, the hated, terrible fire. I slipped from shadow to shadow, making my way with painstaking slowness toward the sounds. And toward the smell of blood. I was already weak enough, but the blood made it worse, blown downwind to me as it was. Teeth slid in to my mouth and my face elongated, but I forced the rest of it down, and chanced a soft, whistling call in to the confusing daylight. I saw only what I thought I would see, so I let the scent draw me even further away.
I had to cross an expanse of open sand to get to the source of the smell. I shrank back in to the shadows as a group of people passed me. Their voices were so foreign to me, and they were every one of them taller. They didn't have the bent posture, the shuffling gait, the ungainliness of one not used to a body so frail. I chittered softly in their direction. I could see their outlines, and through their bones. They were each sound of body, but of mind, I'd never know. I didn't even know what I was like anymore. Less than human, I knew, but I couldn't remember what that meant.
One of them stopped and spoke. I struggled to remember the words, caught curiosity in the tone, and slowly a few of them came back to me, asking about a sound. I cursed myself, I'd forgotten the level of human hearing.
There was a man with them who smelled of deception and chemicals and had a big metal contraption in his hands. I struggled for the memory of it, projectile, weapons, gun, yes, that was it. My senses were so fine tuned that I could tell he had turned in my direction because I could smell his breath from here. It smelled bad, chemicals and bad teeth. My lip peeled back, and I pulled my bottom jaw back so that the longer teeth pointed at him, the way I would something disgusting that needed killing. I'd have hissed at him, but a shred of human instinct coupled with the predator in me kept me quiet.
"There's nothing there," he said. "Just a damn shadow." This time, because I was listening for it, I caught all the words. Fragments of memories, emotions I was no longer comfortable with, came back to me. Beneath my concealing cloak, I trembled. That was not a world I had loved, but I had loved no world. I liked the concealing shadows, the safety of darkness, and that was the most I'd ever liked.
So they turned, and kept going.
I turned in the opposite direction and dashed, low to the ground, toward the heap of metal I could hear resonating before me. I didn't dare whistle again, though it would have prepared me.
I was grabbed roughly, my head snapped up. I was looking in to the muzzle of a gun. My voice had barely been left to me after the change, but I tried. "No," I said, a soft minor key whistling still present in my voice. "I am not your enemy." The words were coming more easily than I'd expected, now that I'd heard words again.
The gun lowered, but it didn't leave me entirely. "Who are you?"
"I..." I fought to remember what they had called me.
"Silence?" the man behind the gun demanded.
"No, not Silence," I said, misinterpreting him. "I am ... Shadow." It fit me, if I remembered what it meant.
"Take off the cloak," he said. Looking for weapons, the single threat of predator in me that had accepted human knowledge and instinct whispered.
"I can't do that," I said. Surely he'd shoot me then. He might not know where to hit, but if it weakened me too much to change, I wouldn't heal fast enough.
"Why not?" he asked.
"I...you don't want to see what I look like."
He jerked me forward. "What do you have to hide?" he demanded. A woman wandered up to him, asking what was going on.
"This." He shoved me twoard her.
"Promise me something," I said.
"What is it?" I could hear suspicion in his voice, and other things that my sound sensitivity told me instantly. I picked up the harsh smells of stress and fear, sweat and blood. And under it all I could smell death, the old scent of decay this place always held, and the new scent of fresh blood. I was hungry enough that I'd have gone for cold meat. An image flashed through my mind-my long frame poised, pinning the man with a talon, dipping my head to tear out his throat. It might have been a bad thing, but even in human form, my mouth watered at the thought.
"Promise me," I said, letting my pronunciation slide, "that you won't shoot me on sight."
The man stepped back. A woman put a hand on his shoulder. "OK Ryan."
"I need to go in to shadow. I can be in enough light for you to see me, but..." I started toward the shadows of the ship, the two of them trailing me closely. Finally, when it wouldn't hurt too much, I stopped, lifted the hood, and let the cloak fall.
There was a gasp, and the woman covered her mouth. "Oh, God..."
I knew what I would look like to her. I was slight of figure, barely five feet tall, with dark skin and black hair. The hair was a mess, hanging below my waist in an impossible tangle. It was always a mess when I came out of form, but I hadn't had anything to brush it with, so I'd been tempted to just go chop it off. I knew I looked no older than a child, one of the old experiments coupled with my extremely slow aging took care of that. I was physically about nineteen years old, but this world had taken all the meat off my body, leaving me all bones and sinew, hard lines, harder angles. My face was sharp and narrow, my teeth flashing points in my mouth. Even back in human form, they were sharp. My body was bent slightly, forcing me to move with a rolling gait, but I was still fast, faster than any human. My feet were black and as hard as horn, having lost my shoes long ago, the sandals a recent discovery, and the toenails looked as if they'd been filed in to curving points. They hadn't, it was just one of the side effects.
"Can I see something?" the woman asked me, moving closer.
"What?" I asked warily.
"Don't panic, please," she asked. "I just... I'm not going to hurt you." She moved behind me and I whirled, grabbing her shoulder in one liquid motion. Her eyes went wide.
"your eyes. Your eyes!"
Ah, the eyes. I smiled at her. "What is it you were going to do?
"see...see something."
"What the fuck, Maria?" the man, Ryan demanded, rounding on me. I ducked from beneath his gun and his grasp, twisting away with a lithe, easy motion. Despite my weakness, I knew in that instant that his guard would never be up enough. I could kill him any time I wanted.
"I was not going to hurt her," I said, and let the woman step behind me. I felt her lift the back of my shirt, and tensed. I knew what she was seeing.
Down my back the skin was hard, smooth and dark grey, nearly the color of a shadow. It was touched with a faint rippling pattern, and it was lighter near the edges, until it was almost mist grey, before it merged with the rest of my skin.
She let the shirt fall. "What are you?" She glanced at Ryan and, I think, mouthed something. But I was too blind to read her lips.
"You don't want to know. What's important is that I'm here to help you, not hurt you." I sighed, the sound a soft whistle in the hollow spaces in my face. I picked up my cloak and put it back on. Why was I doing this? Why didn't I just slip in to form, like my body was demanding, and let blood rage consume me?
"Why do you wear that in this heat?" the woman asked me.
"The heat doesn't bother me," I said.
There was a sound from the front of the ship, and Ryan whirled, pointing his gun outward. A bedraggled man, still wobbly from ... cold, cold ship sleep, was standing in a doorway. He started babbling, his relief plain on his face. "I got up, couldn't find nobody. Why'd I wake up so late? Where'd you all go?"
And Ryan pulled the trigger.
I had moved so fast, even I barely registered it. That was unacceptable! I came down hard on the bigger man, slamming him in to the ground, all four foot ten inches of bone and muscle, claws and teeth.
"You out of your bloody mind? That man said he was a part of your crew! He was pack! You kill pack when you know they're useless and you can get a use out of them or when you're challenged or when there's a blood feud. You out of you bloody mind?! Teeth slid in to my mouth, but I knew the words were understandable, though changed.
He struggled beneath me, but my muscles could lock the way joints could, and it wouldn't hurt me to keep them that way for a while. I could unlock them just fine. The woman was standing near us, afraid to go closer, her eyes wide, unable even to scream. To a human, if I locked my body, I would be a steel wall. It was terribly ineffective in human form, because of the softness of human tissue, but I'd known instinctively how to put him in a position from which he couldn't resist.
"You gonna tell us what you really are?"
The voice sent a chill down my spine. Dark, steel encased in velvet, growling, dangerous. A predator. Possibly, an equal.
An equal ...
I unlocked my muscles and joints with an audible crack, and stood up. Ryan rose shakily, throwing a fearful glance in my direction.
"I heard what you said. About pack, and usefulness. I heard what you didn't say, too. About strength, and equals." The heavily-muscled man in the doorway turned his goggle-covered eyes to me. Even through the goggles I could feel his eyes bore through me.
"You have to fight to prove equality," I said.
"Believe me," he said, "I know." And while no part of him smelled shadow, the subtle tones in his voice revealed only harsh, bitter honesty.
Ryan scurried backwards. "I'll move the body," he said. He threw a glance at the big man in the doorway, and mouthed something, though he didn't say it to the other man.
I looked at him. "You remember it, what I said."
He left without another word, but I knew he would remember.
"You want to know what I am?" I leveled my gaze on the man, and turned them on full bore. Brilliant red flames flashed in the centers of good garnets. "I've been called a lot of things. Things along the lines of devastation, desolation and demon."
"So have I," he said.
Anyone else who had been in the open shiphad vanished, too afraid to stay here any longer. Those who didn't know yet were off doing whatever it was people would want to do here. I knew I oozed a predatory sense despite my size, from my previous encounters with humans. And this man did, too. I could respect him, but I could still kill him. I could fight him, and knew that I probably would. You couldn't put two such similar creatures in such proximity and not expect it. It was something basic and almost ritualistic, a test. One would die, or both ...
I shied away from that thought. He did not smell right. He wasn't what I was or even what they were. One of us would die. Both of us could not be left standing, it was impossible. He could not complete what he would have started.
One of us would die.
He stalked toward me, and I waited him out. If this was it, so be it. I could fight, in or out of form. I shrugged my cloak off, and it pooled at my feet. I shifted forward slightly, my body assuming a whipcord tension, smooth and ready for any motion.
Instead he drew close enough that a hard thought could have closed the space between us. Something basic inside me recognized this, this ritual of most creatures worlds over. His face lowered until his nose was almost touching my neck, and he breathed in, sniffing, scenting me. Instinctively I responded, dipping my own face, running my nose up the curve of his neck. His blood was so rich, so close. I could have simply pulled back a lip, and sunk the long front teeth in, an yanked my head back ...
"You smell," he said, his voice barely more than a deadly breath of air, "like darkness and sky and cold and rage."
"You smell like desert sun and fire, the storm strong enough to tear wings, and rage," I replied.
He stepped back from me, and my body relaxed slightly. He would not fight me yet. My death didn't trouble me, it was bound to happen.
"How long have you been as young as you are?" he asked, startling me. "And why are we in this fuckin' ship?"
"A ... long time ... what is the date?" I asked.
He told me, and I answered, "Seventy years, then."
"How much in cryo?"
"Cryo?" I asked him. "Cold sleep?"
He nodded, and I said, "Two trips. Several months."
He whistled softly. "Why don't you age?"
"Body comes back almost the same."
"You need to get out of here," he said to me, "before someone comes back. They think no one is here. But now that goddamn jumpy fuck shot his own man and saw me come for you, they know."
I glanced around. "You're not with them?"
"Fuck no!" he said. "Military figured out what was here. Wants to use these things as a bioweapon. Jack and I, we're here to wipe everything out. That bother you?"
I thought about it. "I don't know."
"Honest answer," he said. "What do you believe?"
I thought about that, too. I analyzed his tone again, and realized he was being honest with me. The one time I'd thought about what being a decent human was, I'd been wrong, and almost tried to save the asses of ... what? Those who would let my people survive? But no, my people were human.
No, another voice whispered. Not anymore. Your people are shadows, and you are a shadow among them.
I moved to his side, the way I could, the way one who is one with sound and air can. "What is your name?"
He looked at me, expression unfathomable. "Riddick," he replied.
"I am nothing but a shadow among shadows."
Then I was gone across the open desert. Scent hit me like a brick wall, blood, fresh, rich, human blood. I staggered and hit the ground, hissing in pain. I would not lose control here. I would not die, like this ...
Something was lifting me, pulling my twitching body along. "Come on Shadow." The voice was Riddick's, and to my surprise, it was damn near gentle. "You're safe. Hold it back. Fight, Shadow. I know you can. I do it myself, every day. Fight for me, dammit, snap out of it."
I gasped, and a tortured whistle escaped my lips. "So hungry," I said. "God, the blood." Then I couldn't speak at all, only whistle. It sounded pathetic even to me, the dry, reedy sound of my breath, the agonized crying. Tremors racked my body, and my blood ran with alternating fire and ice.
"Can a bit of blood help you, or do you need meat?" he asked quietly. We'd reached the shade of the far end of the ship.
"I, don't know," I whispered past my teeth. "I can't stop. You ..." I realized what he was going to do, then choked out a single word. "No."
"I can stop you. Just believe me, I can," he said.
"Blood," I said, "isn't ... it might help me clear my head. But I will need meat. Fresh meat. Preferably my own kill."
"You can have that eventually, and hopefully soon. I've got a few pieces in mind, but I don't know how choice they'll be."
"I'm not feeding off you," I said. "Can't stop. I'll tear your head off. Then I'll die anyway."
"Then I'll sneak you meat."
"It's cold, I can smell it. Do you think the blood has coagulated yet? Once it has, that shit is nasty."
"Look, if you can eat what's already dead to stop you from eating the rest of us, I'm all for it. People have an ... interesting take on what you're supposed to do with bodies. But I heard what you say. You kill a pack member only when a better use can be made of them. But he's no pack and not even your kind."
I nodded mutely.
As soon as Riddick stepped out of the shadows, I took a few deep breaths. It was the way Layla had taught me, back when I was first changing. Breathing exercises to calm the agony, calm the rage, calm the frenzy, calm the flight anguish.
I had killed Layla. The least I could do now was honor her. That was one of the tattered shreds of humanity hanging from my mind, now monster enough to want the dead and not care about it.
A figure came in to view, leaning on joined sticks, with a mask over her face.
"I saw Riddick bring you back here."
"Child, go," I said.
She crouched down beside me instead. "What are you called?"
"I am a shadow ... among shadows," I whispered.
"you're burned." She reached out and touched my arm. "They've noticed Riddick, they know they're not alone. But I'm sure you can hear it. I can, I can hear everything."
My eyes opened slightly, but the glare made them water. "What are you called, child?"
"Ailina," she said. "I know I'm going to die here. Another ship crashed here, recently. Only a few weeks ago. I've been on it alone. My cryo locker is reinforced and padded, and has shock absorbers. So I survived, living in the wreck."
This time my eyes opened fullly and I looked at her with what was left of my vision. I saw dark hair, skin as pale as crystal, blue eyes which were strangely luminous.
"I can't see a thing," she said. "I'm slow, and weak from bone sickness. I don't know why they can't fix it. I can echolocate, but it won't help me much." She made a sort of clicking, chittering sound, and cold ran through my blood. It sounded so much like my own lower level echolocation. "You ... don't seem to be human."
"No, I'm not," I said, shutting my eyes again. "How strong is your talent?"
"I can see through some stuff. Skin mostly, and thin materials, but I can't see the insides right, like dolphins can."
"Doll ... fins?"
"No. Dolphins." Her head jerked around and she chattered. "They're coming again." She staggered to her feet. "You smell familiar, nightwing. ..." Then she slipped away, surprisingly quiet for a girl so weak. I could barely feel the vibrations of her feet as they hit the ground.
Riddick was there like a shadow, scooping me up. "We have to go," he said.
I lifted my head. "Riddick, there's a little girl."
"We have to go!" And with that he took off running. I scrambled to pull the hood back down over my eyes. The burns on my body weren't serious, because I hadn't really shifted, but they stung anyway. Burns were the worst wounds as far as pain went. I'd taken hits in fights before. I let each of my kills leave a scar on me so that I would always know their number.
"Riddick," I said. "You do realize how close you are, don't you?" I opened my mouth, feeling teeth slide out, and grazed his neck with the curve of them. "You ... would taste interesting. But something tells me you are not to die yet. You might want to set me down."
I hit the ground with a thump, and scrambled to my feet.
"You're waiting for me to challenge you, aren't you?" he asked.
I shrugged. "Maybe."
"It's not the time for that," he growled. "Neither of us have outlived our usefulness. Don't make me decide when you've outlived yours, and stop pulling your alpha bullshit. With me, it's going to get you nothing but a knife in your back."
My eyes bored in to him, and I turned them up again, feeling the centers heat. "We'll see who decides what about the other's usefulness." Then I closed my eyes and reached inside myself, reaching in to the darkness, and there I found a lightless flame for which I was the wick.
I opened my eyes. "Where are we going?"
Riddick pointed.
"Run," I said. "Full speed."
"You won't keep up."
I grinned, exposing the curve of long teeth. "You'd be surprised." I kept my mouth open as they retracted. In truth it hurt like a bitch, but I wasn't showing Riddick that.
He took off at a run and almost seemed to flow faster and faster. I started after him, gaining speed until I felt my feet barely touching the ground. I rummaged in my pocket, threw on my dark glasses, flung my head back, and raised my face to the wind. If I could, I would have let out a flight song and reveled in it. But at the moment I wasn't equipped, and letting myself go would get me killed.
I hadn't forgotten Ailina, though. It was my responsibility, I felt, but that was probably my pack organizing instinct telling me to keep everyone in line. My pack organizing instinct also told me that Ailina could be left to die, because she was a cripple. But seeing people again, both bad and strange and somewhat like me, had reminded me of some instinct that I couldn't name. I felt strangely protective toward poor Ailina, and as I ran I scented the wind, but I couldn't smell her in the area.
I followed Riddick effortlessly, knowing I was burning up my reserves, but the animal in me knew that I wasn't going to need them for long. I could smell prey in a situation the way people can smell blood. My mind flashed back to the people I'd passed. Irritating gun toting boss man was definitely the first one on my list. Why not make life less annoying while sustaining yourself at the same time?
I came even with Riddick, matching him stride for stride. The synchronicity of it coupled with the freedom of it woke a strange emotion inside me, one I couldn't quite name. Warmth slowly suffused my body, spreading outward until it flared from my fingertips, hung suspended in the already hot air, and felt like it spiraled back through me.
It was then that I knew what it was. Gritting my teeth, I put on a burst of speed, felt the faint tremor I usually felt just before the change was up and my wings were about to come out. I ignored all of it. I ran.
I spied a small starship ahead of me, behind a cluster of spires. I slowed finally, despite something inside me demanding I run until Riddick caught me. He was even with me again, though, having barely missed a beat.
I smiled humorlessly. Equals ...
A young woman rounded the building and stared at me. "Whoa, Riddick. Who's this?"
"I'm Shadow," I said. I pulled my glasses down to try to get a better look at her, shading my eyes, but it was useless. Most of the facts I could gather from my surroundings came from sound and scent.
"You look ... familiar. But not ... not your face, I don't know how to describe it." She stepped closer, looking me over warily.
"What's your name?" I asked.
"I'm Jack," she replied absently. I could feel the intensity of her eyes on me.
Riddick snapped us both out of it. "We might have to move."
"Why?" Jack asked.
"Military's here to pick these up," he said. "Got a useless trigger happy fuck leading them."
Jack sighed, and I said, "Riddick, there's a little kid from a crash. Her name's Ailina. I don't know how to help you. I don't know ... anything but ..." I trailed off.
"Go then," Jack said. "Find her. Can you find us again?"
I leaned toward her, weaving my head around her face, scenting her. I smiled. "Now I can find either of you."
She looked a little spooked, so I backed off and slipped around the edge of the spire cluster. I bent close to the edge of one and breathed in. Those were mine, in there, my scent was all over them. I would have laughed, but something demanded silence.
I realized that I was delving too far in to my dark side, but there was nothing I could do about it. It was either delve in to it, and possibly live, or don't do it, and lie on the sand to die. I'd never had this poor self control, even in the beginning. What was it about this situation, these people, combined with bloodlust, that made it so difficult to fight?
I had run in a single massive circle, from where Riddick's ship was to where the other, blocky transport was. Transport. Cold seeped in to my bones. They didn't know it would be damn near impossible to transport them.
My people, now, something said in my head. It had been saying it for a very long time now.
I collapsed beneath the shadow of an outcrop, my cloak spread over my body, halfway back to Riddick's ship. No Ailina, I thought. Where could she have gone?
I heard pebbles rattle down the slope beside me. The darkness I'd been using to keep myself going was the rage I wanted to avoid, and I knew that only a thin black barrier lay between me and survival.
Something touched the edge of the cloak. I hissed, a deep, rattling discord from somewhere in the back of my throat. I smelled blood, and a clean, sharp scent. I also smelled decay, and the smell of death approaching.
"Ailina," I whistled at her. "Run, back toward the far ship. Run."
"How did you know I knew where it was?" She was crouching down beside me now. This was bad.
"Because you're smart like that. Now go." An unearthly high tone was creeping in to my voice, rising and falling slightly.
Instead, she put her hand under the cloak. I reached up, pushing ineffectually at the hard bone plates stretching outward under my face. Skin split, and my blood fell on to Ailina's approaching hand.
I hissed at her, a harsh, ragged sound. She only reached further.
"Aren't you afraid to die?" My words were now nearly completely distorted.
"I am already dying," she said. She laid her hand at the base of the lengthening jaw, carefully avoiding the places where my skin was rehealing.
"You can do this," she said. "Shadow, listen to me. I know you can understand what I am saying." Her voice took on a strange edge, and I realized something. She wasn't talking to my human shell. She was talking to the beast beneath it. Her hand slid up my face, across the flattening cheekbone. "You can fight this. You can overcome it as you have overcome, completely destroyed, every obstacle that has crossed your path. You made yourself from nothing in to a leader. You faced hundreds of deaths and evaded all of them. No real leader dies like this. No real strength goes out like this!"
Through my exterior, it could understand her words. In my head I could see its mouth open, its needle teeth glint, as it roared its defiance. Then it was gone, sliding away, coiling back in to its darkened corner.
Because we both knew she was right. I amended myself: I knew that she was right.
I let the last of the changes fade. Even the teeth slid back, leaving my mouth free and normal, my tongue smooth, teeth flat. I sat up slowly.
I breathed in deeply and felt a sudden knot twist at my insides, human emotion welling up so vividly that it almost felt like no time had gone by. Ailina smelled exactly like Layla. Even her disease smelled like Layla's.
In the end she had asked to go. In the end, I had killed her. "Let me go where I will ..." she had murmured. "The pain has stopped the listening. I can't live like this, in silence. Silence will kill me."
So I had let go, and for the first time, I entered form in perfect control. I had been seen carrying her body away, and that was why I was where I was now.
"No," Ailina said softly. She reached out and touched my face.
"I won't cry," I said. "I can't cry."
"What is it that you can still mourn, after all this time?" she asked.
"Life," I said. "Mine, and others'. That will be the last thing to go, the ability to mourn. Then ..."
"I wish I could tell you ..." Her hand drew back. "I wish I could tell you that you're safe."
"I wish I were." I stood up. "We have to get back."
"And where would that be?"
I whirled around and came face to face with the big man I'd seen when I first came out of the ground. He looked me over, and though I'd never in my life been bothered by the look anyone, or anything, gave me, I was bothered by this man's eyes. They were light green, a strange, ghostly color, and they looked at me as if his eyes could strip me and feel every inch of my body. I had killed over less, and I opened my mouth, showing him the beginnings of needle teeth. "I wouldn't. You don't want to know what you'll find. And I'm going back where I should go," I grated out at him.
"Change of plans," he said.
"Fuck you and your high horse," I growled. He was lounging against one of the spires. I lifted my head and scented the wind, and restrained myself from laughing. This was my territory still.
He grinned at me. "You won't need to go back to your holes. What do you say to an off planet ride? You've been off planet before, haven't you? What do you say to seeing home again?"
I turned up my eyes at him. "I have no home," I said. "If I do, this is it." I strained my senses, listening for others.
Then I noticed where his gun was pointing. Slowly, I turned, though I didn't need to. Ailina was standing stock still behind me, her eyes large and dark with fear.
"I think you can wipe your smirk off now, bitch," he grated out, "and get on the goddamned ship."
Something inside me screamed in rage, and I was lunging forward and to the left, instinctively shielding Ailina. The gun went off, deafening in my ears, and searing pain erupted in my shoulder. But my momentum carried me forward, and in to him, and I felt the change start to come over me. He fought to free his gun hand but I swiped at it, knocking the gun away. A shudder went through the mound behind him, and faintly I heard dozens of tiny wings flapping as young ones scattered in to the tunnel below.
There was a knife in one hand, tracking fire across my collarbone. I opened my mouth, feeling the teeth shoot out, and bit down on the hand, stripping the skin away, tipping it to let the blood slide in to my mouth, and he howled in pain.
It was at that moment that the spire behind him gave in and he plummetted in to the darkness, screaming. I dove in after him, feeling my body split, my arms and legs dislocate and pop back in to place somewhere else. The joints were broken down, rebuilt. The bones stretched and thinned, the skin hardened, the claws ripped outward. I hit the ground with a thud, knocking the wind out of me, my legs scrabbling for purchase. Fire blossomed in my veins, and a series of cracks told me my bones had resettled. With a sound like ripping cloth, my wings unfurled, and I tumbled from the ledge I'd landed on.
Hatchlings swirled around me, curiously. They knew who I was. I had their scent, and I had been here when they hatched. In this world, you never left eggs alone. For the first few weeks, hatchlings were saved by a collective survival instinct, but once they grew past a certain size, they were anyone's meat. Some fusion of human and beast wanted to see them become powerful and follow in my footsteps, but I knew that wasn't likely.
I hit the ground, managing a decent landing in spite of what was going on, and whistled in to the darkness.
Searing pain ripped through my wing, and I mustered up the ugliest discord I could manage, and shrieked. hatchlings backed away, disoriented and hurt.
I said one word, one hateful whistle that anyone could understand.
"Kill!"
I looked back. My wing was, in places, hanging directly from the bracket. I whirled to face him in that odd birdlike way, grabbing him before my body had come full circle, so that he slammed in to the wall, snapping his head with the force of my momentum. He slashed again, this time going for the groove of a horn, but he missed, leaving nothing more than a scratch above the sensory chamber. I shook him, but at this point the hatchlings were closing in, a dark mass tearing at his face.
He raised his knife, hitting one. It tumbled to the ground, whistling a quiet, mournful sound, its wound mortal. I shrieked and slammed him backward, and as he hit the wall and crumpled, they closed in on him. Since it was my kill, I technically got first choice, but I let them have most of him.
If I change now, I thought, I don't know if the wing will have healed properly. If I don't, it will knit itself quickly, but not quickly enough. I'd taken hits like that, but I'd never had to shift quickly after it. My life in the lab and the caves had been relatively sheltered to the brutality of the life I'd been dropped in to.
I walked around the wide, circular room, staying out of the light, dragging the injured wing. If I'd had more energy, I could have dropped in to suspended animation for a while and let that do its work. There was no danger in it; I hadn't been under for a while now.
A small face appeared at the lip of the cave. Hatchlings hissed and gathered at the edges of the light like living darkness. I hissed at them. Most of them were young enough to listen, but a few were already defiant. I would have smiled, but in this form a similar expression meant something different. They would turn out exactly like me.
She looke down and said, "Which one are you?"
I didn't bother to respond.
"The sun is setting, Shadow."
I still didn't respond, though I knew she was right. I could smell darkness coming the way some people can smell a storm. I raised my head and whistled softly in anticipation of what was coming.
"Are you going to wait for sunset? They will be coming. I can't run that far."
Then come in, I thought at her, as if she could hear me.
"You may be able to control yourself, but how much control do you have over the rest of them?"
Not enough, maybe.
"You don't understand! We were all looking for answers! She threw the words in to the darkness. The hatchlings around me hissed at the edges of the shaft of light, animated shadows shifting and chattering.
You have no idea what I do understand.
"I would be dead, without the genes they gave me," she said. "I would be a puddle of decay somewhere, or I would be something's shit. Jack and Riddick came looking for death. The military, they came looking for something to cause death with. But my people, came looking for life, and they brought me, and now they're all dead for it. I'm going to die, and so are you, and your people. What are you going to do about it?"
A shadow moved across the beam of light. She sat down, I think, because I couldn't see her anymore. I sank down on a ledge. It wasn't her fault she didn't know that I couldn't help her yet. I sent my senses questing in to the injured parts of my body, bracing myself for the onslaught of pain that I'd forced away from my consciousness. I felt torn muscle, but no shattered bones, not even in the wing. If that was the case ...
I bent my head and slid in to blackness darker even than my own world.
A/N: I know this chapter is quite long, I have a habit of that ... I also know I'm not working on my other things, but I'm planning to take some of them down and completely revamp them. This time I promise I'll do everything I can to finish this, instead of being disappointing. I welcome reviews and constructive criticism. (Note word: constructive. lol) And yes, I know, bad formatting. This is what I get for writing things in txt.