They fell into a rhythm. Mornings, they'd work out together for an hour or more, mostly unarmed combat. He'd either disappear while she was showering, or they would have a more substantial meal with Ziza and her pack of playmates. Some times, Lajjun would join them, though Riddick clearly made her uncomfortable. Most days, she'd visit Aereon.
Aereon was a mystery. Not a Necromonger. Not human. Riddick consulted with her sometimes. She had her own chambers high in the Necropolis, and her own guards. Jack had the sense she wanted to leave, but couldn't. She was friendly and open but terribly hard to understand.
Sometimes Riddick would join them for lunch. She'd spend the afternoon and early evening alone studying, for whatever reason given her likely future, and beating up things in the gym. Usually he'd eat dinner with her, often not taking his eyes off of her the entire meal. Made her feel funny. Sometimes the meal would just appear, and she'd eat by herself. More than a few times she went to bed alone, only to wake up with him wrapped around her. The one time she fell asleep on a couch somewhere in the rooms, he'd found her and carried her to bed without a word.
Despite the conversation that first night, he never brought up where she would sleep, and somehow, she couldn't bring herself to broach the subject. Not that she really wanted to sleep alone, but sometimes, she longed for some place that was hers. Even Ziza had that. Would Kyra have put up with not having that?
She was fairly sure he wanted something. But he seemed to be . . . waiting for some signal from her. It was beginning to feel strange.
He never suggested she leave his rooms. Most doors he used were locked against her. The one that wasn't locked was heavily guarded, by men who made it absolutely clear she would be walking out of that room only in the center of a square of soldiers. She hadn't yet. Though Ziza did it all the time, and was beginning to be insistent that she come with her.
Despite the isolation, she could almost be content. Having Riddick's undivided attention for hours every day was intoxicating; she had repressed just how much she'd missed him over the years. She slept better than she ever had, and somewhat to her surprise, she found she had the discipline to keep up with her studies. If she didn't know what was happening outside the walls of these rooms, she could almost be happy.
If she didn't know that the whole fucking point was to take some chosen people, make them immortal, and end any further creation. World everlasting. No more children. No more evolution.
And everyone who thought differently killed.
What little contentment she'd built was dwindling. For the last three days, Riddick had returned only long after she had at last fallen asleep, smelling of smoke and shredded metal and blood. He'd slip in bed with an exaggerated gentleness that made her feel churlish for wanting to ask where he had been. For the last three days, he had been gone before she woke up. Aside from a daily token visit with Ziza and Aereon, she spent the days shadow boxing and studying Necromongers, becoming increasingly certain she was in the belly of the beast, veiled from true evil only by the whim of a killer.
As her contentment faded, blackness began to wrap its thick arms around her. She found herself thinking more and more about Kyra, dead, Abu, dead, New Mecca, dead. About waking up in a space ship in a cage, bound hand and foot, teetering at the edge of that nightmare time she still could not think about directly. About how these rooms were a kinder, gentler, cage, but still a cage. About what Riddick was probably doing while she ate exquisite food from beautiful plates and wandered barefoot through sumptuous rooms.
There was always wine brought with dinner. She didn't usually drink it, after getting so drunk that first night. But on the fourth night, instead of eating, she drank that night's wine, and the wine from the night before, and the wine from the night before that. Maybe that's why she couldn't bear it any more. Maybe that's why she stayed awake this time.
As he was undressing, she asked, feeling inane, "What did you do today?"
He stopped and stared down at her, expressionless. "My job," he said, at last.
"Kill anyone?"
She thought he wasn't going to answer. Finally, he continued to undress. "Yes."
For the first time, he was utterly naked and utterly beautiful in front of her. Always before he'd worn something to bed. She swallowed, unsure. But she'd far drunk more than she probably should have, and rushed ahead. "You know the Necromongers are evil. Why don't we just leave?"
He gave her a strange look as he slid under the covers, turned her unresisting body to face him.
"Jack, I am not a good person."
"Liar," she whispered.
His lips twitched. "Maybe you bring out the best in me. Sometimes."
She stroked his cheek, cautiously. "What is the best of you, Riddick?"
His voice dropped lower. "I am a killer of men. I have done such things . . ." his voice trailed off, distantly, lost. He mirrored her gesture, stroking her face, his touch almost reverent.
"The best things I have ever done," he spoke slowly, as if savoring the words, the tastes of their shapes and spaces, "the best thing I have ever done for you . . ."
He trailed off again, almost as if to end the sentence was to end the world. His hand on her face was tender, sending shivers cascading deep inside of her.
"But the worst thing I've ever done to you . . ." his voice was heavy. His hand stilled.
"The worst you did was leaving me," she whispered, wishing she was brave enough to kiss his fingers.
He sighed. His voice was an exhalation from a tomb.
"Maybe it was. But if you had come with me, then, you would be like me, now. There would be so much blood on your small hands . . . " He started to caress those hands, trapped between them, gently, lovingly.
"There is blood on my hands," she replied, almost hypnotized. Remembering.
"Every drop my fault."
She wanted to deny it. Couldn't find the words.
"The worse I've done to you --" He started to roll her over, to move her into the position they usually slept in. One of his hands brushed across the bottom of one of her breasts, and his breath caught, ragged. He closed his eyes and pressed his forehand hard against hers until his breathing grew steady again.
Should I kiss him? If he wants to kiss, why doesn't he kiss me?
"Was it sending my men to take you?"
"I would have come," she whispered, "if you'd asked."
"Not possible." His voice was a feather light caress in the darkness. "Not. If I had asked, and you had said no . . ." his voice slid away from the words, his eyes closed, and he was quiet so long she thought he had fallen asleep.
Then he finished rolling her over, held her close, whispered into her ear. "Was it saving you from the monsters?"
"How can you ask me that?" Her voice cracked. The air itself was becoming something new. Thicker. Stranger. Predatory.
He stroked her hair, gently. "I chose you. And because of that, people died. . ." His voice drained away into an abyss of regret.
"You think it's my fault they died?" she whispered, teetering at the edge of heartbreak.
He didn't answer, but he tightened his grip on her, almost loving. "Is the worst thing I've done to you holding you here?"
"If you'd ask . . ." she started to say. But his hand was covering her mouth, completely.
I must be dreaming, she thought, almost in tears. She must be dreaming because Riddick could not be saying these things, doing these things, to her.
"Hush, hush, mei mei. If I ask . . ."
His voice was the voice of a wanderer in the outer darkness.
"If I ask, then the worst thing I will have done to you is give you a choice. Because if you choose wrong . . ."
And she knew she must be dreaming, because his voice was no longer carried by the air, but by some thing that was old long before the air separated from the waters. She must be dreaming because instead of a man, she was wrapped in the heavy coils of a gigantic snake undulating slightly against her, lapping over her, around her wrists, over her mouth.
"If you choose wrong . . ." his voice breathed from the underworld.
But she never heard what would happen to her if she chose wrong. Instead, she slipped from the coils of the snake into the warm and dark waters of a great ocean, lit, dismally, barely, by a moon lower and larger and more shadowed than any moon should be. She drifted in and out of sleep resting on the face of the waters.
They were mostly narcotically peaceful. But from time to time those waters would churn and get sticky with blood. From time to time, strange slippery dead things would break the face of the waters. Sometimes they would brush against her skin, and she'd swim as far as she could before great flocks of malevolent sea birds would appear, rip them apart, and disappear. She floated in those waters forever, uneasy, alone, waiting.
She knew leviathans were battling deep below her. Their blood boiled up from below.
She knew, somehow, someday soon, the victorious leviathan would break through the face of the waters.
She knew horrible things were coming.
Riddick was gone in the morning.
While Necromonger victory was assured, tiny cells still battled, valiantly, hopelessly, against their overwhelming force. Riddick waded into one of these battles, and had actually been burned bad enough to hurt.
When it was over, late at night, he allowed himself to be persuaded to the med deck where, amidst much cautious tut tutting about putting himself at unnecessary risk, the skin was regrown.
They ushered him to a comfortable room in a secluded corner of the deck. A young doctor seemed delighted to help take his mind off of the time. He lost himself in her for hours and hours, before falling asleep tangled in her limbs and, for the first time since Jack had come, sated.
He woke several times to the unfamiliar smell of the woman next to him, and he would think of reasons not to return to his rooms.
Not long before morning came, he nuzzled the doctor, and she turned and smiled at him. They were kissing, thrusting, sweating and he had another reason not to go to his rooms before beginning the day's serious business of completing the inevitable conquest.
But the real reason he stayed away this time was that he was guiltily aware he had terrified Jack. The shamefully intoxicating smell of her fear lingered in his nose, cutting through the acrid bite of burning metal, and the heady scents of blood and desire.
He felt bad. And it worried him that he could not remember the words that seemed to well out from some almost unknown oracular place deep inside of him. The place the Quasi-Deads had touched, and found her. The place a woman in a dream had touched, and he had exploded, dying a little in the sands of a dead world before a long lost brother had swapped skins with him, and taken his place in the inferno.
He didn't really want to touch that place again. Didn't want to know that place again. Didn't want to know what welled out of that place, again. The idea that Jack might be a key to that part of himself was . . . unsettling.
He also missed the smart ass kid she'd been. Sometimes, he saw sparks of that . . . but she'd become so cautious; so careful. So afraid.
There was a victory to solidify. He put all else out of his mind.
Jack woke up alone again, only this time, there was not even the lingering imprint of his body beside her. She had slept alone for the first time since she had come to this dead city.
Was he ashamed of what he had said to her?
Was he tired of being with her?
What would happen to her if he was?
She began to believe she had dreamed his words. Hadn't he already asked her to stay? Impossible to believe he'd say such things to her. Impossible to believe he'd use that voice that went straight to the secret places deep inside. That he'd put his hand over her mouth, muffle her while he fell asleep.
Why the hell does he want me here anyway?
Fuck this. Snap out of it. Time to venture upstairs to talk to Lajjun, Ziza and the interchangeable children that scurried around them.
As she came up the stairs she heard voices she thought she would never hear again. Lajjun's sister, Zoe, and her nephew, Gabriel. They'd never really liked each other. Still, they embraced warmly, made happy noises. Enjoyed Ziza's happiness with her playmate; Gabe's happiness at the abundance of food.
As soon as she could, Lajjun pulled her aside. "Be careful what you wish for," she said in a voice full of bitterness. "Our Lord Marshal is sporadically indulgent. Ziza said she missed them almost a year ago, and he sent a full detachment to systematically take refugee camps until they found them."
"Take?"
"Conquer. Converted or killed everyone but those two. Never said a word about it until he came by yesterday to drop them off. He's Ziza's hero, all over again."
He did that?
The thought was horrifying.
Would he do that for me? She thought of her classmates, her teachers, people she had cared about, people she thought she'd never see again. She thought about Kyra. For a moment, she was drowning in the longing for their presence, their normalcy.
Should I ask him to do that for me? Send a warship to gather my friends?
The thought was horrifyingly tempting. But no, she wouldn't, she couldn't. Couldn't do to someone else what he had done to her, rip them from friends and family to be a diversion from the darkness.
But the temptation to ask was almost physically painful.
Then the other implication hit her. He came to see Ziza yesterday, but not to see me? It hurt in an unexpectedly squashy way.
You two do have a more complicated relationship, that treacherous part of her whispered back. You're afraid of him, and he knows it. And he's probably getting tired of it. Not like he's done anything to you . . .
Nothing but kidnap you, isolate you, and, at best, treated you like a pet.
She made her excuses and left. Went to the little gymnasium and punched the practice dummy until her knuckles bled.
When she got out of the gym, there was food. Once again, enough for one. I'm going to die of isolation, she thought.
That night, at last, Riddick came back. She was already in bed, but not too long there. She watched him undress and said, softly, "I missed you last night."
He gave her an unreadable look. "Got burned. Slept in the med deck."
She was out from under the covers and in front of him. "Burned? Let me see."
He smiled indulgently, put her hand on his skin under his rib cage. "Good as new." He held her hand on his bare skin for a heart beat longer than he needed to. Finally, she pulled away.
"Kill anyone?"
He gave her a hard look, and she wondered just how much of what happened last time really was a dream. Finally, he continued to undress. "Yes."
As if she was completing a ritual, she continued. "You know the Necromongers are evil. Why don't we just leave?"
But he broke the spell, broke the pattern. "First, someone worse will just take my place."
"So that makes it okay? That you think it's better with you in charge?"
He slid under the covers and wrapped his arms around her, and, just like before, rolled her over to face him. She was uncomfortably aware of his bare skin against her. Uncomfortably aware of him handling her, making her do what she wanted as if he had no question it was his right to do so. He breathed into her ear, "much better."
"But not good."
He sighed. "Got a better solution?"
"Just stop. If we can't leave, change them. Make them be good."
After a painfully long time, he answered, his voice even lower than usual. "Been killing people the last few days. Some bad people. Some good people. Some by issuing orders. Some with my hands."
"I broke an admiral's neck with these hands today." A hand began kneading her neck. She shivered.
"I felt her die. We won. They surrendered. Their allies never came." Once again, he rolled her over, gently, spooning her from behind.
"I gave them all a choice. Convert or die. Every living one chose conversion."
His voice and hands, one slow on her spine, the other moving lower than it ever had before, were almost hypnotic. She managed, somehow, to formulate words. "How do you know they won't turn on you?"
"Doesn't work that way. Usually. People take the mark," and he started caressing her neck again, slowly, surely, "and they believe. They are Necromongers. And the Necromongers are mine."
She thought for a moment he was finally going to kiss her, kiss her neck on the spot every Necromonger was marked. His breath was hot and his lips were close. Finally, agonizingly slow, he pulled back. "They are also mine because I win. Stopping would be suicide."
"And if I die, who would protect you?"
I wouldn't need protecting if it wasn't for you, she thought, bitterly. She couldn't bring herself to say it.
After a long time, he sighed, seemed to take pity on her. "Find a solution that doesn't risk you, me, or Ziza, and I'll think about it."
His hands stilled and he drifted into a deep sleep. She laid awake a long time.
Kyra was trying to show her some move or another; one of those step, step, thrust, moves that looked elegant and simple when Kyra did it, but Jack just couldn't make her muscles work that way. Even though she'd seen Kyra kill a man with this move. Maybe because she'd seen her kill a man with this move. Even though they were only using dummy weapons, mocked up knives that gave an electrical shock when they struck.
Finally, Kyra stopped, glared at her, angry. "You're not doing it right. You're still not doing it right. You need to get it right. Or you're just going to be useless when the time comes."
Jack backed up, tossed down the weapon. "You think my destiny is to be a killer? Isn't that why the gods made people like you and Riddick?"
"You are people like us. Or you should be."
"Maybe I don't want to be."
Kyra lashed out a kick so fast Jack didn't even see her muscles twitch. Then she was flat on her back, Kyra pinning her; a hand across Jack's windpipe. Her voice was low and malicious.
"I'm going to tell you some secrets, little sister. You are incredibly lucky. People like Riddick and me don't usually protect people like you. We're monsters. We eat them. We just all pretend otherwise. You sheep pretend we'll protect you, trying to trick us into buying your sentimental crap. That our highest and best destiny is to be shepherds."
Kyra's eyes bore down on her, intense, furious.
"Now, we usually pretend to lure you in.
"You're family, Morrigan help me. I'll do my best to keep you from getting hurt any more than necessary. But some day, some thing is going to come out of the darkness for you, and no one is going to step in between. You need to be ready. Or you will die. And then you'll be useless."
Jack licked her lips, stared up. Said, softly. "You're wrong. It's better to be a shepherd."
Kyra snorted, applied more pressure on the throat. "Yeah. That's what the sheep think. But a shepherd's just a wolf that's learned to keep inventory."
She let Jack up, as if the lesson was over. Then Kyra had a knife in her hand. Then it was arcing for Jack's throat.
Riddick woke abruptly when Jack's body lurched like her spinal column had been severed. She shot bolt upright in bed. He could hear her heart hammering, the acrid bite of her adrenaline terror. There was no one else in the room.
He fought to keep his body relaxed. "Bad dreams?"
She spasmed, stared at him as if she'd forgotten he existed. Took a deep ragged breath. "Yeah. Bad dreams."
"Monsters again?"
There was something strange in her eyes, like some new revelation was at hand. "Dream monsters."
"Wanna talk about it?"
"I so don't."
He pulled her back down into the bed, gently. "Don't worry. I'll protect you." Wondered how her body knew what it was like to have a spinal cord snapped. Had he ever done that in front of her? Didn't think he had.
Had someone else?
Had Kyra?
She was shuddering against him. He thought for a moment she was going to try to pull away. But instead, she rolled over and buried her face into his chest and shook for a long time.