Jack scrambled after Riddick, who was looking for liquid containers. "You never answered my question, kid. Why the gender change?"
Jack hesitated, then shrugged. "Doesn't really matter, I guess. I ran away from my dad once, but he found me. I figured if I changed he wouldn't be able to find me so easy."
"Why run away?"
Jack chewed on her lip. "My mom was rich, owned a business. She died in an industrial accident, and left everything to me. She and my dad weren't legally married. In fact, I only met him after she died, and he wanted a share of the money. Only way to get it was to have me sign it over. He tried sweet-talkin' me at first, but I ain't stupid. I knew what he wanted. I ran when he started threatening me. When he caught me, I figured what I'd done wrong and ran again." Her chin jutted out defiantly. "He hasn't caught me yet, and I don't plan on lettin' him."
Riddick smiled. "You got spunk, kid. I like that. When we get back to civilization, I can hook you up with Aristotle. He specializes in making new identities for us. You can disappear and never look back, while still keeping all your money and your gender."
"You'd do that for me?"
He shrugged. "Might as well. I'm going to see him myself. 'Richard B. Riddick' dies on this planet. I need a name without a police record attached to it."
"What name will you use?"
He shuffled through a large crate of old junk, occasionally tossing a usable container to Jack. "Don't know," he answered her. "Might go back to my real name. Definitely need to get these shiners taken out of my eyes."
"That kind of surgery is reversible?"
Riddick chuckled. "You don't quit, do you?" Jack looked away. "I didn't get a 'shine job' surgery. These," he motioned at his eyes, "are just contacts. The doc cut off my cornea, put these in, put the cornea back on, and they healed over the contacts. Voíla, instant fake shine."
"Why'd you get 'em in the first place?"
He smiled. "'Cause of Johns, really. You see, Johns doesn't realize it, but he's my plaything. From the moment he began trackin' me down, he became my bitch. It's a game of control: He thinks he has it, but I'm the one that calls the shots. I've been stringin' him along, lettin' him think he had a chance at getting' me. Hell, this time around, I let him go so far as to get me in chains, but everything happens according to how I want it to happen...and eventually that gets boring. I got these shiners 'cause I knew he'd find out. He'd know that it'd be harder to catch me now, and he'd have to alter his strategy a bit, keep the game interesting. But even now, it's gotten boring again. He's dull; I'm moving on."
They had a stack of fifteen usable containers. Riddick took half of them from Jack, and they went to the water pump. "Fill that half with water," he ordered.
"What about the other half?"
"That's for us to fill, unless you want to volunteer your blood for our meals."
Jack shook her head and began filling the containers. Riddick went in search of Angela. He paused and turned back to Jack. "I'll make sure the others know you want to be known as a boy."
Jack sighed with relief that only the vamps would know she's not a guy, and that only Riddick would know why.
Riddick found Angela sharpening a long bit of metal to a fine edge. It had been shaped almost like a sword and looked perfectly lethal. "Helluva shiv," he commented.
She smiled. "Thanks, made it myself."
"You don't have enough blood stored away to last a week or so?"
"No," she huffed. "We don't really have enough to last the rest of the day. I was hunting for blood when I met Zeke." Her face fell a little. "Too bad I didn't get to know him."
He laid a hand on her shoulder. "I don't like the idea of you going down those holes alone."
She laughed. "I've been going down those holes for three centuries. Why should today be different?"
He smiled tightly. "I'm goin' down there with you."
She stood and faced him angrily. "No, you are not!"
"Look, I can handle myself, I know how to use a blade, and given the fact that I'm immortal, I'd be damn difficult for those bastards to kill."
Angela rushed him and thrust her blade through his belly. His midsection gushed blood and bile. She jerked the blade from his body, and he fell to the ground clutching his stomach. The wound immediately began closing up.
"I watched a lot of our kind, a lot of friends, be killed at an inhumanly slow pace. They would 'die' from a wound, only to wake up a second later and watch bits of themselves being eaten. In some cases, it took nearly an hour for them to be killed." Hot tears welled in her eyes. "I could hear every snap of bone, every slurp of entrails, every scream of agony, and I'll be damned if I'll hear that from you."
She cleaned his blood from her blade and gathered her equipment. "If you want to come, you can help Inigo carve the carcasses that I bring out."
* * * * *
Four figures made their way to the spires in the distance. Shazza had come too. She wanted to get a good look at the bastards that killed her Zeke. The three of them laid out their tools while Angela prepped to go in. She took one clean swipe at a spire and cut it off at the base. Not only did that test the sharpness of her blade, but it produced an entry big enough for her to haul out her prey.
She took a deep breath and steeled herself for battle. "Inigo will show you how to prep the carcasses." She jumped down the hole.
Riddick listened intently to the noise below. Shazza did too, but her human ears couldn't pick up what he could. Inigo sat calmly, sharpening a small knife or straightening out a tarp on the ground.
Riddick's ears quirked at the sound of Angela softly humming to herself. He tried to pick out the tune, but she stopped every time there was a scrabbling noise, making it difficult.
"Old MacDonald," Inigo said.
Shazza gave him a quizzical look. "Who's that?"
Inigo smiled. "It's an old folk song. No one remembers it any more, except us old timers. She sings it every time she goes down there. Like a good luck charm for herself."
Angela's voice floated up out of the hole. "If you guys would can it, I could concentrate down here."
Inigo shrugged and leaned against another spire, waiting for her to bring up prey. Riddick went back to listening. She was humming again, then she softly sang a few words.
"Ol' MacDonald had a farm..."
Scrabbling.
"E-I-E-I-O..."
Scrabble, scrabble, growl.
"And on this farm, he had some monsters..."
Growl, click, clickety, click.
"E-I-E-I-O..."
Click, click-k-k-k-k, screech.
"With a slash-bite here..."
Blade-swish, crunch, inhuman scream.
"And a snap-crunch there..."
More blade-swishing, more screams.
"Here some guts, there some blood..."
Scrabble, shuffle, growl cut off by blade-swish.
"Everywhere there's monsters..."
Snap, snap, click-k-k-k, swish.
"Ol' MacDonald had a farm..."
Scream, grunt, swish-swish, crunch.
"E-I-E-I-O..."
Angela's head popped out of the ground. She smiled at her brother, who released the breath he hadn't realized he was holding. Angela rolled out of the hole with her legs wrapped around a nightcrawler's neck. Its body was flung out onto the tarp Inigo had laid out.
Shazza took a good look at the nightcrawler. The whole thing was mostly teeth and claws, huge teeth and claws. Angela had impaled it in the chest. Blue blood covered its torso and most of Angela.
Angela stood and stepped to Shazza. "I found this." She pressed a ring into Shazza's palm.
Shazza had to bite her lips together to keep from crying. It was the ring she'd seen in a store window. It was a simple silver band with a few decorative etchings. Zeke had seen her admiring it and said that they didn't have enough money for stuff like that. She'd agreed. They had boarded the Gratzner later that evening. So he bought it for me anyways. She choked on the sobs that came out. "Oh, Zeke..."
Angela moved to comfort her, but stopped when she remembered she was covered with blood. Uninterested in her sorrow, Inigo had already begun carving up the nightcrawler. Angela looked at Riddick.
He rolled his eyes in an oh-alright fashion and wrapped Shazza in an embrace. She continued to sob, soaking his shirt with anguished tears. He slowly rocked her back and forth while stroking her hair.
With a strangled cry, she broke from his arms, screaming, swearing, and kicking the shit out of the dead beast. Riddick pulled her away and gave her a hard shake. "Get a hold of yourself!"
She sniffed back the last of her tears, wiped her face with the back of her hand, and slipped the ring on her finger. "I'm alright," though she didn't sound very convincing. "I'll go back, see if they've finished the last of the wings yet."
They watched her go for a ways, then bent to their tasks. Angela dropped back down the hole to get another carcass. Inigo had to pick through the creature's now-broken ribs to find the heart. He squeezed the blood out of it, like juicing an orange, into one of the containers that Riddick had brought. He did the same with some of the larger, juicier organs as well.
"Ricardo," he instructed. "Hand me that large bucket."
He did, and Inigo put the liver and several cuts of meat in it. "For the humans to eat," he clarified when he saw Riddick's puzzled frown. "Help me with this." He stood and grabbed the edge of the tarp. Together, they tossed the smoldering body to the side in time for Angela to fling another one out of the hole.
The process repeated until they had several gallons of blood and as much meat as they could carry. Riddick tasted the blood that had gotten on his hands from helping Inigo. It was very thick, almost sweet, without the metallic edge that human blood possessed. Not bad, but something of an acquired taste.
His stomach rumbled. It had been a while since he'd eaten, and he lost quite a bit of blood when Angela had attacked him.
Angela saw him staring hungrily at the bottles they'd collected. "C'mon, Richie. I'll take you down for a bite."
Riddick followed her to the hole and jumped down after her. His "shine job" may have been fake, but he could still see in the dark. He removed his goggles to see dozens of nightcrawlers outlined in the darkness of the cave. Angela had moved out of the shaft of light created by their entryway. "Stay there," she ordered. "I'll bring one to you."
Crouched with blade at the ready, she stalked forward humming her tune. The nightcrawlers seemed to recognize the sound of her voice because they gave her a wide berth. One of them, who either didn't know better or was simply too entranced by the scent of the blood covering her, crept up to her from behind.
She stopped humming and froze in her place. She listened intensely to its clicking sonar, gauging its distance from her. When it came close enough, she whipped around with inhuman speed, and sliced off its legs and wings. She tossed the appendages into the shadows where they were promptly grabbed and eaten.
The creature screamed and writhed in agony. Angela brought the blade down again, cutting the sonar appendages from its head and knocking out its razor teeth. It was now blind and absolutely helpless.
She grabbed it around the neck and wrestled it over to where Riddick waited in the light. "Here, take what you want," she said, exposing the nightcrawler's neck to Riddick. "If you need another, I'll get it. Just let me know."
He nodded and sank his fangs into the beast's fleshy neck. Despite the blood loss from its dismemberment, it was quite filling. As he fed, the nightcrawler slowly stopped flailing. When it gave its last twitch, Riddick released his hold, and Angela tossed the body into the shadows.
"Do you need another?"
He shook his head and patted his stomach. "Nah, just like home-cookin'."
They flew out of the hole and saw Inigo prepped and ready to leave. "Hell of a hunt, eh, Ricardo?"
"Yep," he agreed, flashing a fanged and satisfied smile as the trio made their way back to the skiff.