CHAPTER 14

He held her face in his hands. Neither one of them had made a move since he uttered her name in stupefaction. For the life of him he couldn't make himself do anything but stare at her face. A face that showed no recognition of him whatsoever. It was like looking into an empty mask. Her eyes dead of all emotion. Showing no fear of her handler, no happiness at seeing Riddick...nothing. She was dead inside and her body just didn't know it.

In all the years of being without her, he'd never once entertained the idea that she was alive. She was just in too bad of shape mentally. Physically she would've healed. Mentally, emotionally, she'd been fried. Without hope and deep in despair. It hadn't taken a giant leap of the imagination to know she'd gone to kill herself.

It would've been torture to think that she hadn't found peace in death, but rather was living a nightmare of pain and rage trapped inside a silent and near useless body. Without him.

But the nightmare, at least for her, was a reality. How in the hell had she ended up with that ass wipe?!

Suddenly her face was ripped from his grip. Her whole body flying away from him and towards the man who was yanking her against his chest.

Slowly Riddick raised up to his full height. Watching in a deceptively casual way the man who'd signed his own death warrant. This man was NOT keeping Zar from him.

The idiot seemed oblivious to the fate that was staring at him as he lashed out. "Keep your hands to yourself, punk! Didn't anyone ever teach you not to touch someone else's property?"

Riddick refrained from answering. Instead he looked around the street. It seemed relatively deserted. Only two or three people moving along on the other side of the street. Thoughts on their errands, not on the scene playing itself out a few blocks down. It was the quite time of day. Most of the families working, the kids in their homes doing their computer curriculum.

Losing patience waiting for a reply to his obnoxious comment from the 'Thug' (as he had tagged him), the man turned and started to drag Zar towards the small towns landing port. Mumbling dire threats of punishments in her ear as her body tried to keep up. He looked behind him once and fumbled a bit when he saw the street was empty.

Where had the Thug gone?! Even the store front was too far for him to have gone into in the few seconds he and the woman had turned towards the ship. A very bad feeling was growing in the pit of his stomach. The man had obviously known the worthless piece of humanity he was dragging along with him. Recognition had been in every line of his body as he touched the woman. He wasn't just some do-gooder, that was for fucking sure.

In the four years David Flowers found her slowly bleeding to death from self-inflicted wounds in the cargo hold of his ship, three days out of Dee 7, she'd never uttered one word. She'd looked a mess...wrists cut, sores suppurating, dehydrated. But the entrepreneur in him saw a chance to make a some credits. He was going to sell her but he decided he was in the market for a slave himself. Slavery was technically illegal, but there were ways around the law. Especially if you were handy with the bribe money.

So he stopped the bleeding, tried to clean her up. At first nothing seemed to work. The bleeding had stopped easily. But the sores wouldn't go away and she seemed to slide closer to death. Then, a week later, when he was about to give up and just kill her to get her the fuck out of his way, she awoke. Completely healed in all but mind. She refused, or been unable, to answer any questions he yelled at her. He needed to know if anyone was coming looking for her eventually. But she was evidently just a burn out.

So he named her Bitch and made her his. She was only good for so much. Washing clothes, making basic meals, that sort of basic thing. He was bisexual with a strong masochistic streak so sex with her wasn't very appealing. With the amount of resistance she showed in his treatment of her, fucking her would've been like screwing the dead. For him, it was no fun without the fighting and the fear.

Most of the time he had to tell her what to do. She was too burned out or too lazy to take the initiative. When first finding her, he had to show how to dress herself, eat, even wipe her ass after taking a shit. But she was an available punching bag. And her upkeep was almost nil. A couple of meals a day, clothes a few times a year. Left more money for him.

The only thing he had to do was keep her restrained or tied when he wasn't able to keep an eye on her. She had a tendency to walk away aimlessly if he didn't.

The best thing about her was her sturdiness. She never seemed to get ill or hurt. On Stalos, a God forsaken piss-ant of an Arctic-like trading post, he'd drunkenly left her tethered outside the ship all night. Waking up twelve hours later to find her missing, he remembered where he'd left her. Pissed at himself for losing an investment not easily replaced, he went outside expecting to find her frozen stiff in death. Instead he found her sitting on the ground with the just the barest hint of frostbite. And even that had healed with a few hours of getting her inside.

It was almost like owning one of the human looking robots everyone said was coming sooner or later. Low maintenance, little overhead and best of all, easy to take out his frustrations on.

Approaching his ship, he quickly hustled her up into the vessel. Throwing her to the floor and racing for the pilots cabin after making sure the door was secured. A nasty fission of fear crawling down his spine told him that getting the hell out of Whitson's Crossing was as necessary as breathing. If you wanted to live, you made sure you did it.

He was going through the pre-flight list in a state of sweaty urgency. The computerized voice acknowledging each step a drone that did little to help his concentration. But at least it meant he was that much closer to leaving.

He was reaching for the seats safety harness when the ship lost all power. Every board went black and every system quit humming. The only light available coming from the cockpits two large viewing windows. The abrupt lack of sound felt evil and heavy with malignant purpose. He knew he wasn't alone and he knew the other person wasn't Bitch.

Fear held him paralyzed in his seat for a few seconds. But the sound of the door behind him sliding back had him lunging for the blaster taped under the seat.

He never made it.

His swivel captains seat twirled in a dizzyingly hundred and eighty degree angle. Two well muscled columns trapped him into his seat as their matching hands rested on the arms of the seat. His face only inches from a visage straight from hell.

"What's the name?" Riddick stared at the sweaty piece of shit with his un-goggled eyes. Their cold, silvery depths promising death. The question had been put forth in an almost courteous tone of voice. He knew the brute show of force and the politely spoken question mingled and left the person the focus of the concoction nervous. And uncertain.

But evidently the man who'd been using and abusing Zar wasn't that in tune to the warnings that should've been screaming down his every nerve ending. The answering "Fuck you!" was accompanied by an attempted kneeing in the groin. It would've been a good strategy if Riddick hadn't felt the man gathering himself to attack. But since he knew it was coming, he easily deflected it by grabbing the desperate mans throat and squeezing tightly. Flowers flopped around, frantically trying to get air as his hands tried to pull the vise from his throat.

When his eyes started to roll back into his head Riddick let the pressure up some. Enough for Flowers to get some gulps of coughing air.

"Once again...what's the name?"

To weak to do anything but comply, he gave in with a roughly rasped response, "David Flowers."

"Where did you get her?"

Knowing playing dumb would just cause more pain, so he didn't even try.

"On Dee 7. I didn't snatch her or anything man! I found her in my hold. Honest! Nobody came looking for her or anything! How was I to know? Shit man, I saved her! She was bleeding like a stuck pig when I found her. She cut her self up something fierce, lost a lot of blood. Probably why she's so whacked now. Blood loss can do that to some people."

He wasn't sure if his answers were the right ones or not. Nothing showed on the Thugs face.

"You fuck her?" The tone became more polite, it was even accompanied by a small smile. But the dangerousness of the situation, and the man standing over him, had finally cut its way through to Flowers' brain. The need to inflict pain was radiating off of the Thug in bright, hot waves.

"No, man! I swear it. Not into the broken type, ya know? Bit...I mean...she hasn't said 'boo' to me the whole time she's been with me. Her minds gone! Just a walking bag of flesh and bones. No zip in there at all."

"That why you beat her?"

Every cell in Flowers body said to "Run!", but the hand on throat suddenly tightened in warning.

The lack of air had him whispering desperately, "She's clumsy, man! Ya know how these skag burn outs can get! Hell, she'd walk away to nowhere if I didn't tie her up. She just falls a lot too, so I get fed up sometimes...but I don't really hurt her or anything! Honest, big man!" He tried to smile at end, hoping it added a bit of sincerity to his lies. But as he kept talking The Thugs eyes became deader. He was not buying the bullshit.

He was going to die.

His bladder opened and his brain pleaded with him to beg for his life. He was basically a dyed in the wool coward, and meeting death with dignity was beyond his abilities.

"Please...don't kill me. Please..." His words were broken off by the abrupt snapping of his neck.

Riddick slowly rose from his bent position over the dead man on the chair. He hadn't harmed a hair on anybody's head in the four years since he'd left Dee 7. But the ability, and ease, in killing someone had never left him. He asked himself if it was nice to know something's never change? Or was it just sad? No wise thoughts came to him on the subject, so he just let it pass.

Turning away he went in search of Zar. She was where Flowers had thrown her. Sitting on the floor with her hands tied. She hadn't looked up at his approach, but started to rock softly. A gesture that reminded him of Zarabeth whenever she tried to comfort herself after a crying jag. It made him want to go back and kill Flowers all over again. Very slowly.

Going to his haunches in front of her he undid the binds on her hands. Once again he gently gripped her chin. The rocking stopped. Bringing her face around to his, he noticed that she kept her eyes focused somewhere just behind him.

She looked like shit. There was no other way to put it. She'd lost weight but her face was still as round as he remembered. Dark circles ringed her dead blue eyes. He'd seen corpses with more life in their gazes than she had. He wondered if that was the feeling people got when they looked at his own eyes.

She might come back a little with some TLC. She might also be as good as she was going to get. He knew she would never be the Zar of old.

Fuck! She'd hate being like this. But...

Running a finger over her cheek, he came to a decision.

For all the notice she'd given him previously, he didn't expect the slight hitch in her breathing when he bent his mouth to her ear. It brought back precious memories of times that seemed eons ago. She had always liked him to blow in her ear. Enjoyed the shivers it sent down her spine.

It gave him hope. For better or worse, it gave him hope. The only problem with hope is that hope could be a disappointing bitch.

"I don't know if you can hear me in there, Zar. But I'm taking you home with me. Taking you home to your daughter, your friends, your man. If you are in there, help me, baby. I need you...God, how I need you." He hoped God was listening.

Carefully he wrapped his arms around her shoulders. She was broken in body and soul but she was still his Zar. And even if she didn't realize what she was doing, when she laid the side of her face his chest, it felt right.

Slowly he raised them both up to their feet. "Wait here." She made no acknowledgement of his order. But he hadn't really expected one. She just stood there liked a good little zombie.

He made his way back into the pilots cabin that reeked of fresh death. Stopping to glare at, then spit on the dead man in the chair.

It didn't take long to rig the self-destruct.

He led her to the door with her hand in his. Once outside he had them walking toward the store with purpose. When the ship blew, neither he nor Zar so much as blinked an eye.