The Ghost in the Machine
Chapter Eight: The Shadow of Death
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or the Pitch Black Series
Author's Note: Woohoo! Update! Sorry about the wait guys!
Thanks to everyone who took the time to review, alert and favourite! Now on to the chapter!
"Fuck," Harry repeated more quietly leaning heavily against the door frame.
"Harry!"
Shazza and Zeke were at his side in an instant. Shazza checked him for a fever and Zeke plucked the small flashlight from her belt to shine it into Harry's eyes.
"Is he going to be alright?" asked Jack, his voice a good octave higher than normal, "What's wrong with him?"
"Get that damn light out of my eyes," Harry growled shrugging them both off, "I'm fine."
Zeke shot him a look.
"Alright, I'm not exactly fine," Harry conceded, "But I'm done puking my guts out and I feel better now."
"Well you don't have a fever," Shazza said with a huff.
"Pupil dilation s'all normal s'well," Zeke added tucking the flashlight back into his partner's tool belt.
"See?" Harry said, "Fine."
"Healthy people do not blow their chunks from 'ere to Xerxes Sector," growled Shazza.
"Does anybody else feel sick or nauseous?" Johns demanded.
"Fuck!" Fry exclaimed suddenly causing the group to whip around wide eyed and stare at her.
Paris even took a few solicitous steps back in case she decided to lose what passed for her lunch.
"What is it?" asked Johns, a hand strayed to his gun.
"He hasn't been inocked," Fry announced grimly, gesturing to where Harry still leaned against the outer wall of the mess hall.
"Fuck!" Shazza swore even more violently.
"What?" Harry demanded urgently, "What does that mean, inocked?"
"Inoculated," Zeke explained, "Ev'ry planet spinnin' with a half-decent atmo has bugs, some of 'em are pretty nasty too, so to keep the system-wide pandemics to a minimum the Company made inoculations 'gainst the common ones planetary standard and anyone travelling out of system has to 'ave a broad spectrum inock every three months."
"Makes sense," said Harry with a nod.
"You've never been inocked you don't have the standard immunizations, hell, you don't even have any natural immunity because it's been thousands of years since you were exposed to a pathogen. In your state a common cold could kill you just as easily as one of the fancy bioweapons the Company cooks up," Fry said with a disgusted sigh.
"There's a med-bay set up, I bet they have standard inocks, those damn things only expire 'cause the bugs are constantly evolvin'" Shazza said.
"Better than nothing," Fry agreed, "Johns, you said you were recovering from a bug, could Harry have picked it up from you?"
"Could be, but it doesn't look like he's got what I had," shrugged the so-called lawman noncommittally.
Harry was trying to figure out the best way to explain that he couldn't catch the same diseases as the rest of them because of a magically enhanced immune system without actually mentioning the whole magic bit when Imam came running up to them looking frantic and out of breath.
Hassan and Suleiman scrambled up in his wake coming from different ends of the settlement, shaking their heads and babbling softly in Arabic they shot the group anxiously pleading looks.
"Has anyone seen Ali, my youngest boy?" he panted, "Please, we have searched everywhere—"
"Has anyone checked the coring room?" asked Riddick laconically, interrupting.
The still desert air was suddenly shattered by a ragged shriek of fear and pain.
Imam wheeled around and was already running before the cry broke off. Harry followed hot on his heels for the first stretch and then easily outstripped him. He hit the double doors of the coring room hard enough to make the hinges groan and creak, snarling furiously at the chains that held them shut. If he'd been at full strength the doors would have burst open of their own accord before he'd even reached them. He kicked them again for good measure the gesture more cathartic than fruitful.
Imam was right behind him yanking futilely on the padlock with all his desperate strength.
"Move!" snapped Johns, gun free.
Harry and Imam slid out of range and Johns fired, his gauge blowing apart the chains and the locking mechanism in one go leaving the doors swinging.
Imam shouldered past the merc who didn't take more than a few steps into the coring room, his scope-light sweeping across the room searchingly.
Harry moved to follow him without hesitation. Riddick caught Harry by the arm his grip tight enough to bruise.
"Don't," he ordered.
Harry didn't even spare the convict a glance as he slipped free of his hold and followed Imam into the darkness of the coring room.
He spared a second to thank Hermione for the thousandth time for convincing him to undergo the experimental procedure that had healed his eyes as they adjusted to the dim lighting more quickly than a normal person's.
"Ali?" whispered Imam creeping forward.
There was a small skittering noise.
"Ali?"
"Imam don't!" hissed Harry moving to grab the chrislam's arm before the man opened the door as his ears caught the faintest hint of a trilling hiss.
The warning came too late as Imam yanked the door to the supply closet open.
The creatures came flooding out, hissing and chittering angrily at the shaft of dusty second-hand sunlight that penetrated their dark lair. Harry and Imam both let out surprised cries as the multitude of small winged creatures swarmed past them, moving as one.
Thinking quickly Harry grabbed Imam and pressed them both into the floor. Harry heard a woman's scream, either Fry or Shazza, and a man's alarmed shout. Johns' gun went off once, then a second time and a third as the creatures circled overhead.
Suddenly the shrieking, hissing, and trilling chitters faded away.
"Where did they go?" Jack asked fearfully.
"Down the shaft," Johns answered.
To their right in the direction of the supply closet Imam and Harry heard a soft thud, like a body hitting sand.
Imam rolled Harry off him scrambling on hands and knees toward the supply closet. A broken sob fell from his lips.
"Ali…"
The youngest chrislam boy had been reduced to bones and kite tails of shredded flesh and clothing. In less than a minute the nest of small creatures had turned a healthy young boy into table scraps.
"Harry!" called Shazza, "Harry, Imam! Are you both alright?"
Harry drew in a shuddering breath and tamped down on his unruly emotions blinking back the moisture that had come to his eyes.
"We're both alive Shazza, and uninjured."
Harry watched as will shaking hands and tears streaming quietly down his ruddy brown face Imam covered what remained of his youngest charge in his outer robe. It was a dark rusty red color and made of soft cotton, perfect for absorbing the blood. There was so much blood still, making the sand sticky and dark. Ali had clearly still been alive when the creatures had torn into him.
"Ali is dead. The creatures ate him."
This statement drew another broken cry from Imam who clutched at his stomach as if he was in pain and began rocking on his knees in the sand, Arabic prayers spilling forth from his mouth in a ragged musical chant.
Harry levered himself to his feet barely registering the feel of rough sand underneath his hands. He emerged into the light provided by Johns' scope and the two older chrislam boys broke out of Zeke's restraining hold and dashed into the darkness from which Harry had just emerged, dismayed and grieving cries telling Harry just when they'd reached Imam and Ali.
"What were those things?" demanded Paris.
"The same things that did this," Harry answered tiredly, holding up his bandaged arm, "Except I think they were hatchlings from their size. This must be one of their nesting sites."
"Is Ali really dead?" asked Jack in a small voice.
"I'm sorry," Harry said to the younger boy, not knowing what else he could say.
All the experience in the world did not make dealing with grieving friends and family of the recently deceased any easier.
Imam, Suleiman, and Hassan appeared then, carrying their youngest member between them. Ali's body was swaddled in Imam's outer robe sparing Jack and the two women the gruesome sight of his mangled flesh.
"Come on," Paris said quickly, "Best not linger here any longer, let us pay our respects."
He led an unprotesting Jack away from the coring room and into the blazing sunlight with a firm grip on the boy's thin shoulders.
"Jesus god," hissed Fry suddenly.
She and Johns had inched forward warily and were now peering down the coring shaft. Johns looked perturbed and Fry had gone completely white and was trembling faintly.
Harry, Zeke, and Shazza all moved over to see for themselves what was so frightening. The coring shaft was littered with dozens of bleached white human skeletons.
"Bloody oath," breathed Shazza wide-eyed.
Zeke wrapped an arm around her waist drawing her close against his side and pressing an affirming kiss to her hair.
"What happened here?" asked Fry quietly moving stiffly from the side of the coring shaft to trail her fingers over old coring samples picking up tags and reading dates to distract herself.
"Why was the door chained up? What in the bloody hell would make them lock themselves in like that?"
"Not sure," Johns answered, holstering his weapon snorting uneasily, "Tell you what though, best get the chrislams back in here and tell them they've got no need to waste time on digging another grave."
"The other buildings weren't secure," said Riddick moving suddenly from where he was leaning against the door frame, casual as you please, "So they came here. Thickest walls, heaviest doors. They thought they'd be safe inside."
"They were wrong," said Harry softly.
"Someone forgot to lock the back door," smirked Riddick, darkly amused, delivering the cutting truth in a voice like rum and crushed velvet.
Harry shivered.
"You two get," Zeke ordered into the long silence that followed, "Me n' Johns'll board this place up."
Moving on autopilot Harry and Shazza did as ordered, stepping out into a blue sunrise and squinting at the glare.
In the distance the chrislams were gathered together and the faint lilt of their voices could be heard carried on the slight wind.
Jack was standing in the middle of the street staring at nothing and Paris was walking back towards the mess hall occasionally pausing to take a long draught from his latest bottle.
"That officially make it three days," Harry said, chewing thoughtfully on his lower lip as he watched the sunrise.
Shazza hummed in agreement. She hesitated a moment looking over at Riddick who had followed them out and was leaning in the shade of the coring room.
In a few fluid motions she had her O2 rig unclipped from her belt and shrugged off her shoulder and she held the silver construction out to the convict.
"What?" sneered Riddick, "Is it broken?"
"Nah, got a couple of good hits left."
"So why are you giving it to me?"
"Maybe I've decided that I'd like our deadliest fighter in top form now that I've seen what these things can do," snorted Shazza, "Didn't you want me Zeke's rig? Wasn't that why you attacked him and Harry? Take it. I'm starting to get acclimated at any rate."
Riddick took two hits in quick succession and then held the rig back out to her with a foxlike grin.
"Jack's been sneaking me hits."
Shazza took back the construction with a snort and a short chuckle.
"Our Jackie boy is smarter and more trouble than any of us give him credit for. After all t'was him what set this one loose," she said nudging Harry pointedly with the curve of one rounded hip, "Speakin' of, you holdin' up alright?"
"I should be asking you that," Harry said, "I've seen deaths a hundred times more gruesome than that."
"Well I asked you first, so spill it."
Harry considered his answer for a long moment taking in the numbness in his fingers and toes and the way his head felt like it was in the process of floating away from his body.
"Been better, it's always harder when it's a kid that gets caught up in this kind of thing. I'll be okay, I just need to sleep for a couple of hours, or decades," Harry said smiling ruefully, "You'd think after a couple of millenia I'd've slept enough."
Shazza interlaced their fingers and squeezed briefly. Harry barely felt the contact.
It was almost like his fingers were asleep, vague pins and needles shooting up his arm where skin met skin. Harry gave her a wan smile and gently urged her in the direction of a lost looking Jack. Ali had been his friend and around his age. The tough-talking pre-teen looked to be taking his death hard and needed her comfort more that he did and besides that he simply didn't want to worry her.
"Look to Jack, I'm just gonna make like Paris, find a bunk and crash out for a couple of hours."
With a nod and another brief squeeze of his hand Shazza did as he'd asked.
Shazza and Zeke had come to care for him over the past three or so days, and they were observant, he would rather die suddenly and quietly than have them spend the last hours of his life hovering and mourning. He would die. He realized and he had accepted that. A body just couldn't function for more than three days without water. It wasn't possible, no matter how much magic a person had and he was running painfully low as it was, just because he hadn't been feeling it until now didn't mean it wasn't happening.
Harry watched Shazza ruffle Jack's new prickle of peach fuzz, murmuring low words. Jack nodded slightly leaning into her touch.
Together Shazza and Jack disappeared into one of the many empty dwellings leaving Harry and Riddick alone in the middle of what passed for a street for the moment.
"Whoa!" Harry exclaimed as he found himself unceremoniously hauled off his feet and tossed over the convict's broad shoulder.
The view was pretty damn good but Harry was not at all comfortable with Riddick's shoulder sending the air whooshing out of his poor abused diaphragm every other step.
"Put me down, Shrek!" he grumbled breathlessly, squirming.
"What the motherfucking hell was that!" demanded Riddick setting Harry on his feet next to a house far enough away from the beaten track that they weren't likely to be happened upon by any of the others and taking a bruising hold of the wizard's bicep.
"You're hurting my arm," Harry snapped.
Riddick shoved him into the side of the building hard enough to make the plastic groan and rob Harry of his breath for a minute.
"Why did you do it?"
"None of your damn business!" Harry snarled back at Riddick twisting out of the bigger man's hold as easily as if he was made of water, "You're not my keeper and if I want to throw myself into danger there's not a damn thing you can do to stop me!"
Riddick made an annoyed noise in the back of his throat as Harry turned on his heel and stalked away from him and, moving at speeds a cheetah would envy, he recaptured the smaller male shoving his face into the wall this time and pinning him there firmly.
"Ugh," Harry groaned seeing spots, "Don't do that."
"Then answer my question," Riddick said, no longer shouting but still clearly pissed off, "You're a killer, sweetheart, you knew the second you heard that scream that the kid was already dead and there was fuck all you could do about it, so why?"
"Imam's a stand up bloke who doesn't deserve to be ripped to shreds and eaten, how about that?" Harry snarked.
"Better, now try again with the whole truth," the bigger man said softly against the shell of Harry's ear biting down briefly hard enough to leave marks.
Harry shivered the small twinge from the bite going straight to his cock. No longer fighting Riddick's hold Harry arched back into him. He craned his neck to look him in the eye his mouth twisting into a wide grimly satisfied smile.
"You're a killer love, a better one than me most probably, and you knew the second I walked through that door just exactly what the game was, so let's just say that's enough bullshit out of the both of us, yeah? I'm a dead man walking Riddick. You wanna fight or do you wanna make it worth my while to stick around this hellhole for a few hours longer? Either is fine with me," Harry all but purred as he slid himself up Riddick's body and draped an arm lazily around his neck.
"Am I gonna catch something nasty?" Riddick asked, bending his head to let lips, tongue and teeth trail slowly along the exposed side of smaller man's long neck.
"Mm, nope," hummed Harry as he dug his nails into the back of Riddick's neck hard enough to break skin in payment for the implied insult, "Cryo-sickness, can't drink or eat anything and I've been – oh, mm, yes, there – t-trekking through thi-isss fucking desert for three days."
It was a roundabout way of explaining that he'd spent so much time as rock that his magic couldn't tell that he was once again flesh and blood and needed things like food, water, oxygen and sleep. It didn't help that water and stone were natural enemies. Still it was mostly true from a certain point of view and had the added benefit of being a completely muggle justification.
Harry hissed and then moaned long and loud, pain and pleasure mixing into a heady cocktail as Riddick took a bruising hold on his hips, spun him around so that they were face to face, and then slammed him back against the side of the house with his arms pinned above his head by one large capable hand as the other slid down between his thighs.
Harry gave up on all pretense of discretion and outright keened as he strained against Riddick to arch into that maddening touch and get more friction.
"Mmm, you are so fucking hot, sweetheart," Riddick said in a low rumbling groan.
The slash on his arm was bleeding again, and a sluggish trickle escaped Imam's bandages to draw a thin crimson river along the underside of his forearm. Riddick's tongue was there in an instant and the murderer shuddered, his eyes half-lidding. Reaction enough to let Harry know the other man could feel the magic in his blood just as somehow he could see it hovering just below his skin.
"I could eat you alive and be the happiest motherfucker this side of anywhere," Riddick breathed huskily.
"I know a good place to start," Harry said smirking and bucking shamelessly into the hand massaging his cock through his pants.
Riddick laughed a little, that low purring chuckle that gave Harry the tingles in all the right places, and green eyes glazed over with burning want.
Harry slipped Riddick's hold with minor difficulties and a lot of frustrated noises and then made quick work of the zipper on the man's cargo pants. The convict went commando, unsurprising and an entirely welcome turn of events for Harry who wrapped his smaller long-fingered hand around Riddick's length and stroked.
Riddick pressed him harder into the wall.
Each touch and kiss burned until it felt like Riddick was going to permanently branded into his skin. Moaning keens and grunts mixed with pained hisses, rumbling laughter, and cries for more, harder, right there. Dizzily Harry was vaguely aware of being lifted and he automatically hooked his legs around Riddick's waist not letting up in his exploration of the murderer's mouth.
His back hit hardwood covered something softer, a blanket maybe. Harry kicked off his borrowed boots and they knocked something over with a soft crash he couldn't be bothered to investigate.
Riddick rucked his shirt up over his head and tossed it aside and Harry had just enough time to consider that Riddick had planned on getting into his pants sooner rather than later before the convict was on him again. Hot desert air ghosted over the bare skin of his thighs followed by large eminently capable hands and Harry cried out losing himself in the pleasure.*
Harry was feeling hazier then even the afterglow of the most amazing sex of his life could account for only the fleeting skitter of sensation as Riddick mapped a path over his ribs, across one highly sensitized nipple and over the fragile column of his throat kept him from sinking into that dark haze of weakness and cotton fluff completely. For the moment at least.
Riddick bit and sucked hard at his throat adding another garish red-purple splotch to the line of hickeys Harry was sure that he now sported.
"How long?" he asked the low rumble next to Harry's ear seeming very far away.
"Not long now," Harry answered with a sleepy sigh pressing himself more firmly against his bedmate, "It's gettin' cold."
"You seem awfully calm."
"Why should I fear Death?" snorted Harry as if the very notion was ludicrous, his eyes blinking slowly half-open and then shutting again as if the effort was all too much, "M'not fuckin' Voldemort. 'Sides, if I had to pick a time, place n' way it'd be somethin' like this."
Riddick hummed an agreement as he traced spirals along the jut of a hipbone and the strong line of the muscled thigh that hooked over his leg.
"Riddick?"
"Mmm?"
"Stay with me, just 'til I fall asleep?"
"I'll be right here," he promised.
"Thanks."
Harry's lashes fluttered and the wizard let out a huge sigh, his lips curving in a deceptively innocent satisfied smile and then he stilled. His breathing slowed and his heartbeat got slower and then fainter and fainter until even Riddick could barely hear it. The scent of static electricity faded from the air and the glow faded out from underneath Riddick's stroking hands.
"Sweetheart?"
There was no response. Riddick bit down on Harry's neck again, hard enough to draw blood this time. There was barely a spark in the flavour, whereas just an hour before the small dark-haired killer had tasted like tame lightning.
The illusion of an easy sleep with good dreams was just that, an illusion. That sleep was not the sleep of the peaceful at all. It was the long sleep. The sleep that was quickly draining all the life and fire from his little lover.
"C'mon, sweetheart, open those baby greens."
It wasn't quite a plea, though it was certainly a demand, and even as softly as he'd uttered the words, even if the naked beauty curled into his side hadn't heard them, the fact that they'd entered his brain at all much less passed his lips was more than a little unsettling.
AN: Another cliffie...eh, I never claimed to be nice!
Okay so, now for my excuses!
Again I'll apologize for the time it took me to get this update up. I had the first half all done up months ago and then some rat bastard pulled a smash and grab and took my laptop from my car taking all of my works-in-progress with him (or her) as well as my copy of the Pitch Black movie (which I have yet to replace). Re-writing this chapter was slow going especially as I had to edit out some of the yummier bits due to the site rules (I'll be posting the full MA version of this fic somewhere at some point so check author's notes and my profile for that if you're 18+ years of age), and I still think the first draft was better. Ah well, la vie.
In other news I have accepted an offer from Jyalika to have this fic translated into Russian (Squee!) so if you have any interest in reading that stay tuned and I'll let you guys know when it's up!
Alright I'll let you guys get back to your regularly scheduled programming now, please feel free to drop me a review on your way out! See you on the next go around!
