Author's Note: I do not own Riddick, more's the pity. I did not create Slam, merely this interpretation of it. I did not have any hand in the creation of Pitch Black. I did however create Spook, and the other
characters not seen in Pitch Black.

Khyron let his own smile start, pulling at his mouth, touching nothing else on his lean jawed face. His eyes flashed, danger in the dark.

Riddick met the gaze with his own chill, his own nightmare smile. His hand held firm on the handle of the faintly shining shiv. The muscles in his shoulders, arms, chest visibly relaxed as his eyes bored into Khyron's. Again he rolled his neck, the sound of vertebrae popping against each other echoed through the silent corridor.

The men behind Khyron shifted, looking between the two large men.

"Ya'll aren't gunna keep holding onto that shiv, are ya? Fighting'll just make it hurt more, boy."

Riddick snorted. "Such a big fuss over such a small man. You've been hunting me for months, Khyron. Your boys haven't succeeded yet. Was he really worth all this trouble, all the blood of your boys?" The smile grew wider, an icy grin. "Was he really that good a fuck?"

The smile vanished from Khyron's face, the slender jaw clenching, the eyes widening in rage. His breathing sped up, flaring nostrils, harsh in the cold air. Even to shined eyes, the mottled rage rising in his skin was visible. The jaws continued to work; the grinding plaint of teeth wearing into teeth raised the hackles of the men. The dark brows descended onto the roman nose.

"He," Khyron finally managed to splutter, "was my brother."

"So? You're always telling whoever will listen that you and he were descended from Roman Emperors," Riddick's grin turned a little colder. "Everyone knows how close those sibs were. Ya'll." His eyes narrowed, a pleased gleam reflecting from deep within at the outraged near-squeal that escaped Khyron.

The men behind him shifted again, unsure, their leader fuming, raging. Six men began to reach for weapons.

Khyron was spluttering.

He had gone from the mottled reds and purples to a winter pale.

His hands were clenched at his sides.

The thick, ropy shoulders were bunched, long arms stiff at his sides.

The barrel chest heaved.

A vein had begun to stand out on his forehead.

"Careful, Khyron. It looks like you're about to blow a fuse. A comeback isn't all that necessary."

There was a flicker of movement at the back of Khyron's pack. One of the men vanished in the dark.

Looks like Khyron chose the wrong guy, there, Riddick growled to himself.

"You!" Khyron could barely get the word out from between his clenched teeth.

Riddick only smiled.

"YOU!" Khyron's eyes showed full white around them.

"You said that already, Khyron."

Another flicker in the back.

This time Riddick saw it.

It was the flash of a shiv, burying itself into the throat. The man couldn't get out as much as a squeak as the blade pulled him back out of life.

It was only a matter of time before someone noticed. Those two men had been spaced back a little from the others. Now a tight bunch of four was all that remained behind Khyron.

The smell of blood was filling the hallway now, pooling near Riddick's feet from within the tunnel to the girl's now abandoned lair. The coppery scent was heavy, nearly a tangible beast in the dark. It twisted and turned, writhing around the men.

"Hope you weren't as attached to that one," The smile was fading from Riddick's wry mouth, but hints of it still lingered. His heavy hand casually motioned towards the slowly accumulating pool, the stilling trickle from the duct.

With a roar, Khyron leapt at the slightly taller Riddick, yanking a shiv from his waist, lunging straight for Riddick's throat.

The shiv shone vicious in the dark, winking at Riddick as it hissed through the space between them. He watched the blade. The way the hand holding it shimmered through the Shine. The flicker around the straight double edged steel. He noted, in an odd corner of his mind, that the shiv had a carved bone handle.

Then he tilted his head to the side. Snapped up his hand.

His thick, calloused palm struck the wrist of the stocky man. The knife slid past his ear, biting the air over Riddick's sturdy shoulder with a soft hiss.

The heavy hand flew, the back of it striking Khyron's jaw. The dark man reeled back a step, his eyes widening, near madness.

With a snarl, a curse, he leapt at Riddick, his face contorted in a show of feral aggression. He struck Riddick hard, sending him back a tad, fighting, ripping, as if gone completely mad. Snarls of fury. A barrage of blows from his fist. Slashes and stabs from his shiv. Rips from his teeth.

Eyes narrowed, Riddick focused on the blows, sweating. His hands flew in a fervor, a defensive storm, striking forearms, wrists.

He felt the hot kiss of the blade on his bicep, felt the blood flow.

Over the stitches on his side, a new slash brought a grunt through his clenched teeth, the blade dragging over ribs. The heat of the blood. The seductive purr of the pain.

The grip of anger on the back of his skull.

Riddick jabbed in with his curved blade, drawing the parry of Khyron. The other hand grabbed Khyron's sleeve, yanking the smaller man to the side, sending him crashing against the wall, the floor.

He rolled, fast to regain his feet.

But Riddick's boot moved faster, catching Khyron with a vicious blow to the middle of his chest.

The blow was swiftly followed by the rest of the huge convict. Riddick struck the man again, his weight behind the hand that crushed Khyron's nose. The curved shiv sheared in above Khyron's brow, blood pouring over the man's face.

Riddick's face was icy calm. No emotion showed; no glint in the eyes, no twitch to the hard mouth. Just a tensing of the muscles in his strong jaw as he concentrated on the man below him, the blade in his hands, the blood flowing.

Khyron's men, staring in shock, look to one another.

A cry goes up from the pair of throats- only two of the men remain, the others had vanished into the bowels of the Slam.

Then as the first stared in horror, from behind the other rose a thin blade, held in a pale hand. It plunged into the throat of the other, the possessor of the shimmering hand holding it unseen behind the bulk of the large man. He was pulled backwards to disappear in the dark.

Crying out in horror, the first turned to bolt.

A hand around his throat stopped him short.

A hand belonging to the huge man they had come to kill.

The man now in control of the descending blade.

Riddick dropped the body of the man, breathing hard. Blood traced intricate spiderwebs on his arm, ribs, and back. He stood for a moment, staring at the bloody shiv in his hand.

Out of the darkness, glowing red in the Shine, the girl stepped towards him. In her hand dripped another shiv. She moved with a confidence he'd never have guessed her small frame could hold. Eyes fixed on him; she took steady strides, closing the dark distance between them. She stopped a short distance away, her head tilted.

"What are you, some kind of spook?" Riddick's eyes blurred slightly, his leg buckling under him as exhaustion swept over his frame.