Much to his surprise, he'd lost her trail. He wandered to her house. She wasn't home. Didn't feel like talking to the Imam. Promised the man he'd never see him again anyway. Decided to wait until everyone went to bed.
The house was at the edge of a zoo. Something about it called out to him. He found himself watching the animals being fed, the ones whose days were manipulated to make them visible for the evening crowd.
If you had to be in a zoo, this was the one, he decided. With the virtual reality set ups, these creatures had no idea they weren't on their ancestral hunting grounds. He watched fascinated as lionesses stalked gazelles; as wolves ran down a deer in the snow and ripped it apart. Comforting.
Until the moment he thought of Jack being the one run down, and he got uneasy again. Drifted away.
Found a swarm of peace officers. They didn't seem to be looking for him. Three men had been killed nearby, and no one had any ideas, except it fit a pattern. Small groups of men, dying. Men who were not from New Mecca, but seemed to come here and die.
He was good at finding the center of conversations. The center was a harried officer being briefed by a subordinate.
"Same basic profile. Three visitors, male, late twenties/early thirties, dead, in this part of the city. No witnesses. The street cameras missed it entirely. Initial sweep shows no obvious suspects."
"Damn. Someone who knew where the cameras were, then. This is frelling up our homicide rate. This is near the al-Walid home again, isn't it?"
"Yes sir. Shall I bring the girl in for questioning?"
The chief rolled his eyes. "You mean the girl who should be in protective custody? Or at least, with a 24/7 police guard? Who should have happily submitted to a brain scan by now? Spare me from suspects with political connections who only seem to kill bad guys and go into screaming panics when you try to protect them or use standard investigatory techniques. With that damn protective order it wouldn't be any use."
"Sir, shall I have the lawyers give it another try? Or maybe sit down with her father informally? Maybe he doesn't understand that these guys may have been after her . . . maybe they were all justifiable homicides. And we do have those pictures."
"We aren't the sort of people who show such things to a girl's father. Guardian. Whatever. Okay. Start with the lawyers. Then we'll see. Girl seems to be the walking eye of a homicide vortex; if we don't figure this out soon there's gonna be hell to pay."
Riddick drifted to the crime scene. Saw the bodies. They'd been killed clean, fast. Men were muttering around the corpses.
It was late. He decided to see if Jack was home yet.
Four of Swords. Homeostasis. KyraMeanwhile, Kyra had been having an irritating night. For a few days since she had left the hospital, she had not felt the presence of unwanted eyes, the prickle of a threat behind her. She liked it.
Then someone from her past – the wrong someone -- had shown up, asking obscenely intrusive and far too knowledgeable questions. She'd had a mild satisfaction in forcing him to leave by sheer force of bullshit, but it was upsetting. And she felt like someone was watching them, though she could never quite get a fix on where they were. Then she had gone to a bar where some of the folks from her philosophy class were getting together, and stayed too late to argue with the professor about the categorical imperative, of all ridiculous things. Then she missed the last public transport. So, despite her decision to avoid situations where she might be justified in homicide, she was walking alone in the dark. Again.
And now, there were men following her. Again. And that was pissing her off.
And she was afraid. She didn't know how to protect people; her training had all been narcissistic in that sense. Needed to do something about that, and fast. The idea of them following her home, hurting the people there . . .
She tried to lure the men away from the house; double back. It didn't work; it just made it later. Finally, she picked the spot to stand, took them on. She was tired of this. She was still sore and bruised from the last time, and while the broken bones had knit, they still ached. She told them to fuck off. They weren't receptive. So she killed them all, their blood spilling over her. Not one came close to getting a blow in.
She tried not to enjoy it.
This wasn't maintainable. "The Emperor will come for you," said the curly haired boy just months ago. And in the night of the dream that seemed perfectly sensible. In the day, it was profoundly unsettling. Maybe these mercs were his ambassadors, and she was fucking up by killing them. Pissing off people who could shred her.
She made it home, went through her window. Buried the bloody clothes in the hamper, too late to wash them. She showered quickly, hardly noticing the reddened water swirling down the drain any more. She hoped she wouldn't dream tonight.
Three of Pentacles. Conspiracy. Riddick.
The house, at last, was dark.
But not alone in the dark.
Riddick hesitated. He wasn't the only one looking speculatively at that house any more. Something tickling at the edges of his consciousness, like the distant buzz of inexorable bees. Other people, lurking. Watching quietly. Waiting.
He wished he really knew what was going on. How he'd been connected to the child after so many years. The girl. Jack. Kyra. Who he'd taken out of the darkness, and who'd changed her name to sunshine. The one living person he had cared about since . . .
No. Don't think about it. Think about the bees. The buzz.
Not bees. Wasps. Predators. Like him.
Like him. They were stalking the house. Waiting.
Turns out, they were easy to kill. Just three men, watching the three doors. One he killed with a slice across the throat; traditional; soothing. Broke the next guy's neck. Not his M.O. That pleased him perversely. Did the same with the next. Wondered idly if the old man had hired them as guards.
Every person he killed made the world simpler. Less buzzing in his head. Which was good; he had the feeling he was about to make his life more complicated.
Listen.
There are always patterns, shock waves perpetuating themselves through the ether. Some people surf these waves, riding intuition or calculations, visiting possible futures before time catches up. If you know, you can nudge the present towards the best possible future. Knowledge is power. Understanding is complicity.
Now, probabilities were collapsing.
There was a possible future where all life was obliterated.
There was a possible future of a thousand year war.
There was a possible future of a fast and bloody conflict, leading to another golden age.
There was a possible, but dim, future where a minor gate to the underworld was opened, and some who died before their time might come back.
There was a pivot point, two men, histories and fates intertwined. Two incarnations of death. The first a new face of a new death; the second, an unknowing servant of the old elastic truth, death as the other face of life. If they met at a certain place, at a certain time, one would live, one would die. Life's best chance rode that probability wave forward.
Wheel of Fortune. Al-Walid home. RiddickHe eased silently back into the house. Up the stairs. Down the hall. Jack was finally in her room. It smelled sweetly like her.
But not just her. For an instant, he thought someone else was in there; a distinct smell of men. He did not like that.
No. There was only one person in that room. No other living person had been in that room for some time, other than him and her. The other scents must have been carried in on her body, on her clothes . . .
He did not like that much either.
The door was locked from the inside. He smiled. Good girl. He carefully undid the now-familiar lock, slipped in, locked the door silently behind him.
The smell of other men resolved itself into the strong smell of other men's blood. Blood he'd smelled not long ago. The police were right; she did have something to do with those corpses in the alley.
She had other men's blood on her clothing, and she hadn't bothered to wash it out before going to bed. That was yet another thing worth thinking about.
Later. He focused on her, curled on her side, her hands in front of her face protectively. She had some muscle on those arms, he noted approvingly.
And bruises. Probably a few weeks old. Indistinct ones on the fleshy part of her forearms. Ones that had been nasty and deep on her wrists. He was suddenly sickly certain there would be similar bruises on her ankles. Fuck. Someone had tied her up and she'd panicked and fought the bonds. The things Toombs said started to make disturbing sense.
She rolled over, and for the first time in years, he saw her face clearly. The combination of newness and familiarity sent a shiver through him. His eyes were arrested by the faint bruises purpling up the side of her neck. Oddly familiar bruises. Hands had closed around her neck and squeezed hard. The familiarly was puzzling. In the months they were together, no one ever touched her throat, he was sure. He was sure he'd remember killing them.
Until that moment, he'd been driven by restlessness, irritation, boredom, morbid curiosity whether he had been a chump, saving them. And some protectiveness for this girl he had enjoyed protecting. He'd been obscurely grateful that she was in trouble. Gave him some reason to retract his commitment to stay away.
But now, looking at her, he was squarely confronted with something he'd avoided thinking about. He was fond of her. That's why he'd spent so long trying to teach her to defend herself; why he had left her here. Helion Prime was supposed to be safe for little girls. Not a place where they got hurt like this. Not a place where she went to bed smelling like blood, with bruises she could have only got in fight a fight she'd lost.
He felt guilty she was hurt. Not the right place to have left her after all.
And he felt something else, something unexpected. Damn it, he thought. When you left her here, you were killing men who looked at her the way you're looking at her right now.
Abruptly, he felt her fear. A knife was in his hand before he realized she was dreaming, again. He remembered her dreams; he remembered surfing on the scent of her responses to them almost every night. One reason he had let her sleep in his bed, once he had figured it out. The vicarious experience of her naked emotions had been addicting. He felt vaguely guilty about that; like it was a liberty he should not have let himself take.
Interesting. She was awake, even though her steady breathing had not changed. Did he teach her that? She rolled over languidly, seemingly sleeping, a hand incidentally sliding forward under a pillow.
He knew what she was going to do. What he would do. Kill first, ask questions later. Before she could, he was on top of her. Pinning her down as gently as he could, one hand on her mouth, the other plucking a familiar knife out of her hand, carefully placing it arms reach – for him -- away.