Pitch Black and Ultraviolet

Chapter Eighteen

Angel

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Have you ever run around during the height of summer, between the thick tree trunks and beneath the cool, leafy boughs, swishing through the grass, no shoes on your feet, your jeans rolled up to mid calf, and you have Mason jars in your hands? Why would you do that? Because you're there to catch fireflies. Fireflies, those little glow bugs that buzz around and light up the night, beating back the darkness with their itsy-bitsy, neon-glowing insides.

We had something better. We had glowworms.

Caroline, Jack, and I carefully pulled the little worms off of the walls of our cavern. Imam was too broad in the shoulder to turn around and help, but we didn't really need him anyway. Worm harvesting was not something a large party could handle. Every time we so much as twitch, a worm tried to slowly inch away. The wetness of the stone made grabbing the little things difficult, and by the time we were done, all three of us girls had scraped and bleeding knuckles. We didn't even have to comment on how this was a bad thing. Inside the empty, once-useless bottles that used to house booze now rested a bunch of compacted glowworms, emitting a soft, pale blue light from behind the walls of glass. If I'd had a book, I'd have been able to read with these little makeshift lamps, they were so bright.

It was... amazing. For a few moments, I was tempted to believe Imam had the right of it: God really did exist. Well, maybe.

The plan our pissed off Captain had come up with was simple: we use the bottles as lanterns, or rather torches, and go find either the skiff - and the lights that were on it - or we find Riddick, whichever came first. None of us voiced the telepathic concern blinking like a whorehouse sign in our minds: what if Riddick had already taken the skiff and jetted off this rock, leaving us behind to get eaten by flesh-eating, light-phobic dinosaurs? None of us said it out loud, but we could all hear each other thinking it. I tried not to. As naïve as it sounded, I couldn't let myself think he'd abandoned us.

I just couldn't.

Luckily, it didn't all four of us to move the slab of stone blocking our cave. With the combined strength of Imam and Caroline, we had a wedge big enough for her and me to squiggle through without scraping ourselves up or breaking our lanterns. Beyond the gap in the stone, the rain hammered down, as if trying to wash away the blood of all our casualties. Mud tried to crawl into our sanctuary. I had no idea what that mud contained other than water and dirt, but the thought that the blood of the monsters - and perhaps, Riddick's blood - tainting the brown sludge with crimson drops and blue ichor had bile rising in my throat like a tsunami. I barely managed to swallow it down again.

"Let's go," Caroline said - commanded, rather.

And in that second, I realized that I had three choices I could make. I could be the one to establish dominance, to make myself queen bitch, to show everyone - aka Jack and Imam, as well as Caroline - that I didn't take orders from our beloved captain or anyone else. I was tempted, because now I had neither Riddick nor Michael, and I didn't know whether to remain submissive or become the top dog. Or I could simply follow Caroline out into the darkness, and throw my allegiance with her. But if I found my murderous Riddick out there in the pitch blackness, what would I do then? My third choice was to pretend to follow the captain, until I found my own captain and returned to him.

"See ya soon, Jack," I told the little groupie, who nodded bravely to me and watched me stalk out into the dark, a slim spike of ivory and gold against the midnight blackness, holding my cobalt lantern high overhead to scare away the monsters.

The sound of the slab being hauled back into position hit me like an execution sentence. Not for me... but for them.

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"So, what do you see in a psychopath like Riddick anyway?" Caroline asked me as we slogged through mud up to the middle of our thighs. Somehow, we'd fallen into a sort of gully-ditch. I glanced at her, incredulous. Was she really going to talk about boys right now? Her hair, once the color of a freshly minted gold coin, now hung around her pale face in strings of drab dirty-blond. Water rolled down her face from the rain, reminiscent of tears. But who would Caroline Fry weep for, out of all of us? Jack? Imam? Not me, or Richard B. Riddick, convicted killer. She didn't have it in her to seriously care for the welfare of murderers and their girlfriends.

"What do you mean?"

I'd never understood that question, what does so-and-so see in so-and-so. What did seeing have to do with love? Physical attraction, I could understand. But any idiot could see that Riddick was hot. Chiseled features, broad shoulders, rippling muscles, trim waist, big dick, long legs, feet that could kick hard enough to break someone's jaw - he had those attributes and others in abundance.

"He's a convicted killer. How can you love someone who kills people?"

"I didn't see you stopping him from killing my brother," I told her, trying desperately to ignore the throbbing in my shoulders. Holding up that bottle was harder than I'd anticipated, despite the sealant I'd poured onto the bite on my left hand that helped dilute the scent of my blood. The rain didn't hurt, either. And the burn from the snapped-off spines on my shoulders wore at me, beating down on my reserve strength. Despite the rain and the darkness, despite the chill, sweat mingled with the raindrops and heat rolled off of my body in ripples of steam. I thanked my lucky stars that my clothes, once so pristine and bright, were now splattered dark with mud and drenched with the showering water from overhead. It helped hide me from the monsters - I hoped - and kept me from overheating.

"You said he was going to kill Jack," she reminded me.

"He was," I said. "So? How can you let someone kill someone else right in front of you?" I continued, turning the words back on her and twisting them to suit my purpose. "You let Riddick kill Michael because he was going to kill Jack. How do you know the people Riddick killed didn't deserve to die? How do you know it wasn't to save another little girl?"

"Was it?" Caroline asked me.

I scoffed and shrugged my aching shoulders. Were we even going the right way? It was pitch black beyond the glow of our lanterns, so I wasn't sure where we were or whether it was the right direction. It would freaking serve us right if we missed our turn because Caroline didn't stop yammering.

"I don't know, it was before I was old enough to care, and I've never asked since. I don't know why he went to jail, only that my brother's the one who always caught him when he escaped. Now, though...." I trailed off, allowing a cold pain to grip my chest for a few moments while I considered the ramifications of my brother's death.

"What?" The blond ship captain asked, breaking into my thoughts. I wrenched myself back to reality, scanning around us for the hungry raptors crouched in the darkness. Nothing yet. No problems so far. And our little glowworms weren't even beginning to fade around the edges. Maybe, just maybe, we were going to make it out of here alive. My thoughts returned to the conversation.

"Now," I continued, "I'm not sure if there's anyone good enough to nab him and drag his ass back to prison. The odds are pretty slim. But who knows? Between the two of us, though, we should be able to keep those Merk bastards off of our asses."

"The two of you?" Caroline echoed, voice tinged with faint incredulity. "You don't think he's ditched us for parts unknown?"

"Why would he?" I asked, feigning ignorance.

"Wouldn't you?" She demanded, and I shook my head.

"No," I told her coldly, feeling in my gut that this was the truth. I was equipped to handle these monsters. There was no reason for me not to be able to fight them if it came down to it. Just like Riddick, I could kill them when necessary. I was poisonous, for crying out loud! I had taken out a flyer unarmed, suffering... well, suffering no life-threatening injuries. But whether anyone else - including Caroline Fry - would have made it to safety and then walked back into the killer darkness to save our shipmates when she was fully capable of getting off this rock and getting back to civilization was a question that I didn't know the answer to.

"You wouldn't?" She repeated, skeptic.

"No," I said. "Would you?"

For an extraordinarily long time, there was a pregnant silence waiting to birth some sort of condemnation or redemption, and then she whispered her answer, flinging it out into the pitch blackness all around us.

"I don't know."

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Author's Note: Finally, a new chapter! Sorry it's taken so long, but I had to rewatch the movie (again) and then I got married (yay! Dec. 19!). A then I got horrendously sick and then I had to start work again.

And now I'm desperately trying to make sure my boss still loves me while dealing with the fact that my in-laws gave my husband a new breathing hole because I asked him to ask them if we could borrow $10 for rent money since my schedule got messed up.

Okay, so I have three questions, and I NEED the answers (from more than one person).

1 - When Caroline dies, should both she and Angel die? Should Angel get nabbed by the monsters too?

2 - Or should I allow Caroline to live? Only one person has given me their opinion of this so far.

3 - Should I write a Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury sequel to this if Angel survives?

Remember, reviews make me smile! Loves to you all!