Eight

"Sleep as little as you can," Mr. X had warned. But there was no practical way to follow that advice, not without more food supplies. We were weeks away from any port that might have such things available for purchase.

While Riddick and Maddie were calibrating the cryosleep stations, I wandered through the rest of the small ship. My fingers brushed over the keypad for the weapons locker, and I whimsically keyed in the code to open it.

ACCESS DENIED.

I nodded slowly to myself, pursing my lips. So he had changed the code, with Maddie's unwilling help. I had expected as much. Her reunion with her grandson had taken a lot of the fire out of her. Fortunately, I had slipped a small blade into my brassiere earlier. The element of surprise could make turn even the smallest weapon into a lethal one.

"Angel?" Maddie called uncertainly, appearing in the doorway. "Oh, there you are. Listen, everything's ready…. Do you think you're going to be all right? I mean, Mr. X was just playing head games with you, right?"

I shook my head. "No, I think he was actually quite serious. But it doesn't matter. There's nothing else I can do." I clapped her shoulder and returned to the main cockpit, where the shadow of Riddick moved among the chairs, finishing the calibration. I walked past him slowly and examined the holo-chart. Our destination was in the Chiel system, as I said, a planet called Urialis. It would take us over six weeks to get there.

"It's ready." I could feel Riddick's deep voice in my chest. "You first, old lady."

"Sure." She glanced worriedly at me for the barest moment, then took her seat and allowed herself to be hooked into the cryo-sleep machine. Blue fluid began to fill her veins, and her eyelids fluttered. "Naomi…" she sighed. "If only…I'd been there. God…damn it."

Riddick looked at her for a long moment. Then, when she had fallen into the chill embrace of full cryosleep, he bent to whisper, "It wouldn't have made any difference."

He was right, of course. In the face of the terrible power of the Necromancers, one sniper could hardly have turned the tide of battle. The only difference would be that Maddie, too, would have been slaughtered.

Suddenly, Riddick was mere inches in front of me. Reflexively, I moved away from him until my back hit the wall, but he kept coming. He took off his goggles and tossed them onto his chair, and then we were almost nose to nose. What was he trying to do? I stared evenly back into his moonstone eyes, keenly aware of the masculine, musky scent coming off of him and the sound of his breathing. Calm, I told myself, slowing my heartbeat with my own breaths. I will not be intimidated.

"Angelface," he said with a smirk, a flash of gleaming white canine tooth. "You have something I want."

A shiver rushed through my body. So…that was it, then. Well, I had gambled on this eventuality—but I was surprised that it had come so soon. Though…not unpleasantly so, I had to admit. I reached for his face and caressed his cheek. It was smooth and very warm.

Riddick caught my hand in his, bringing the inside of my wrist to his soft lips. He inhaled the scent of my skin deeply as he kissed and dragged his teeth over it, and I felt the room begin to spin. No one had ever touched me in this way, and I was unprepared for the sudden heat that rose within me. I twisted my wrist and lifted his chin with both hands so that I could kiss his throat, and he grabbed me by the shoulders and ripped my jacket off of them. Once my arms were bare and the jacket lay in a heap on the floor, he slid his hands up and down my sides, over my hips, and squeezed my bottom, hard, pressing me against the cold hull of the Pirahna. I could feel the heat of his skin through our shirts.

Riddick knelt, then, and ran his hands from my ankles to my thighs and upward, lifting my shirt and bringing his lips to my stomach. My breathing was growing distinctly ragged, but there was so much fog in my mind that the thought of maintaining control could not enter it. There was only Riddick, and my desire for him—this killer, this beast who could look into my eyes and see something like itself behind them.

He stood again, but left his hands beneath my shirt, and I felt his fingers slide under my bra and over my breasts for an instant before withdrawing to bury themselves in my hair. He pulled my face toward his, and I parted my lips for the kiss…but it did not come.

Riddick looked into my eyes and chuckled huskily. "Interesting."

I didn't trust myself to form a fully coherent sentence, and only stared at him blankly.

He released me and stood back. That was when I noticed the flash of silver he twirled between his fingers, and all of the pieces clicked into place at once. He had been patting me down, looking for the weapon. Maddie, military-trained to take quick inventory of available arms, must have noticed it was missing, and Riddick must have somehow been alerted to this. He was more observant than he seemed. And more clever. Even through my irritation, I admired him for what he had done. The logic of the situation dispelled the fog, and I felt serenity take hold of me once more.

"Well done," I said, and meant it.

"You, too," he replied. "But remember what I said. I can play this game."

"Clearly." Riddick might talk in a rough, uneducated way, but it was a smokescreen. I was pleased enough to have learned this about him. It was also obvious that he did not always feel the need to resort to brute force in order to achieve his ends. He could have easily restrained me or knocked me out, or searched me while I was held helpless by cryo-sleep. I concluded that his actions had been a show of his cunning, to discourage me from working against him in the future.

I could have done more, he might have said. But I didn't.

Riddick spun my chair and placed his hands on its back, tapping his fingers twice. "Sit."

I sat. When the coolant apparatus closed over my arm, driving the hypodermic needle into my flesh, I asked him, "Why are we going to Urialis?"

He sat down in his own chair and fastened the cryo-sleeve over his arm before he answered. "To take you to see the telepaths."

"Telepaths…" I was growing very tired very quickly. "Why?"

Riddick's lips moved, but I heard no sound. It was too late. I was slipping deeper and deeper into cryo-sleep—into blackness.

Two moons shone down on me. The taste of dust was in my mouth, for I had been sucking my fingers, and tears had dried in long tracks on my face. I heard a shuddering whistle and realized it was my breathing, which came in shallow rushes. The air was heavy with the stink of decay. I knew I had been sitting there on the ground for more than a day.

I struggled to remember what had happened, but I could not. The eyes of the dead all around were turned toward me, looking but not seeing. I could not get away from them. I knew in my heart that there was no place in the whole world that I could go to escape them. I knew that the whole world was dead.

"Mama…" I rasped, my throat painfully dry, the skin dead on my lips. "I didn't mean to do it…. I'm sorry! Please come back…."

I held my knees and rocked, and she did not come. No one came.

I woke abruptly, fumbling for the release on the cryo-sleeve. My fingers found it, clawed at it, and I was free. I knew at once that I had changed while sleeping. My thinking was erratic, confused—animalistic. But I had gained something, too…. Somehow I knew exactly where we were in the vastness of space without even glancing at the holo-chart. We orbited Urialis, where hundreds of people were waiting for me. If I closed my eyes, I could see them in my mind…tall, golden-skinned beings without voices. They were calling to me even now.