Predator

Chapter 35

Alex broke her connection to Riddick and slowly pulled her mind back to consciousness. When her eyes blinked open, she glanced around her quarters on the Command Carrier and found her 2 men and son slumped over with anxiety in chairs surrounding her bed. “Wow. I must be a very lucky woman to warrant 3 gorgeous men hovering over me like this.”

All 3 of them snapped out of their seats and rushed to her side. Tyr took her hand in his and brought it to his lips for a reverent kiss. “Baby, I was so worried about you.” He held her hand to his cheek desperate to feel her touch. “By the progenitor, I thought we lost you when I saw what you did.”

“I’m still here, Tyr.”

“You shouldn’t have done it, Alexandra.” Rhade sat beside her and laid his hand on her upper arm. “You shouldn’t have risked injury to your baby just to save me and I firmly believed our forces would have defeated the enemy without the Phoenix’s interference.”

“Telemachus, I could not stand any further loss of life amongst our ranks and as for you…losing you was not an option.” His eyes were lowered in a mixture of shame for putting her in danger and pride in her unconditional love for him. She prodded his gaze back to hers by caressing his cheek and smirked. “I made the right choice and I won’t ever regret it.”

“You got extremely lucky, Alexandra.” Tyr growled at her right and cupped her cheek to turn her face towards him. “We had a med tech in here earlier while you were unconscious to check on your condition. As far as he could determine, Riddick’s child remains unharmed by your little gambit.”

“The baby is okay?” Her hands pulled free from their grip and went to her abdomen. “Are you positive, Tyr?” She glanced up at his smiling face and he nodded with a grin. “I can’t believe it.” She whispered with a tear in her eye. “You are right, my love. I did get lucky.”

“We all got lucky because if anything happened to that baby, we wouldn’t have to worry about the Necromongers any longer. After Riddick found out we did not live up to our promise to him, he would kill us all.”

“Don’t be so dramatic, Tyr. I wouldn’t let anything happen to you either.”

“While we are on the subject, my love. Why don’t you explain to me why Rhade’s life is so important to you that you would risk your unborn child?”

“Yes, my lady.” All eyes turned to the flash of light at the foot of the bed and Alex cringed when she saw Ian appear before her. “Why don’t you explain your relationship to Rhade? WE ARE ALL DYING TO HEAR ABOUT IT!”

Rhade moved a little closer to Alex when she clenched her eyes and flinched away from her first mate’s anger. She took a hold of his hand before she opened her eyes and leveled Ian with a steely glare. “I will explain everything when we are all home and safe. Right now we need to get to Riddick.”

“Fair enough.” Ian said and turned to the door. “I will have the fleet move into position around Helion Prime. Ares just arrived with a fresh wave of reinforcements so we should have no problem handling the rest of the Necromongers if Riddick fails.”

~* ~

Vaako reported his success and was rewarded with a promotion in rank. Lord Marshall went before Aereon to gloat over his future and to get a confirmation that what he was told was the truth. “Now, tell me if it’s true. Tell me the Furyan is gone, and I can close this campaign without hearing his boot steps.”

“If he is dead, I sense I’m not far from the same fate, being of no further use here.” She said quietly. “Shouldn’t I tell you that Riddick is still alive?”

“Don’t try me, Aereon. I could plow you under with the rest of Helion Prime.”

“No one really knows the future.”

“Then tell me the odds that Vaako met with success, that I will now be the one…who can carry his people across the threshold into Underverse where they shall begin true life. Tell me what I want to hear, Aereon…” He said almost desperately before his voice hardened. “…and maybe I’ll save your home world…for last.”

The Elemental seemed bored and blew at the wispy cloud-like cells that composed her hand making it turn ethereal. “The odds are good…”

“That?” He prodded.

“…that you will reach the Underverse…” He smirked and turned to leave. “…soon.” She smiled as he departed her cell knowing that she unsettled him with her foretelling. ‘Am I correct, bright lady? Will he return?’

‘He already has, Aereon.’

~*~

“Ascension protocol.”

“We still have numbers out there, Lord Marshall—sweep teams, recon ships. They would be hard-pressed to make it back…” The soldier did not have the opportunity to finish his sentence before Lord Marshall’s ghost-like form sped towards him and elbowed him in the face.

“Get my armada off the ground!” He growled at his surprised officers.

Outside Necromongers were racing to ships that had received their orders and were sealing their hatches. Dame Vaako stood among many on the steps of Necropolis and watched as ships took to the air leaving many of their men behind. As people around her scampered for the door, a single trooper brushed against her as he made his way inside the ship. Her eyes widened from the touch. It seemed familiar and she rushed to follow him inside. As the crowd around her thickened and she couldn’t move forward through the throngs of people, her eyes settled on the soldier and his silver eyes glanced back at her before he disappeared amongst the masses.

“You mean on Helion?” Vaako asked.

“I mean here, on this very ship!”

“Could you be wrong? Mind fabricates fear. Could you be wrong?” He grabbed her arm as his voice rose in volume.

“Not so wrong as you when you left him alive! It’s twice a mistake. Not only your failure, but now the report of success. How do we salvage this? How? How?”

“Lord Marshall’s got to be warned.” Vaako turned to leave the room when his wife stopped him with her words.

“You will never see the Underverse! He will kill us both before our due time. I say give Riddick his chance.” Her husband turned to face her. “If he is half of what you think, he can at least wound the Lord Marshall—and that is when you must act.”

“Just to take his place? Just to keep what I kill?”

“That is the Necromonger way.”

“It is not enough!” He yelled.

“Then you do it for the faith! If he has fear, he has weakness. If he has weakness, Vaako—“

“He is unworthy of lordship.”

“We do it for all Necromongers.”

“Protect the faith.”

She nodded her head. “This can still be a day of days, but the timing…must be flawless.”

~*~

Necropolis had taken to the air and Lord Marshall had invoked the final protocol. A large blue gravity sphere entered the air and waited to be deployed. A dead Lensor was brought before the Lord Marshall who viewed his last sights, which were a man with twin silver eyes breaking his neck. The guards were sent to hunt him down while the Vaakos moved their plan into motion.

Two guards protected the door to the throne room and heard the sound of scraping metal. When they turned to look through the gaps in the door to discover the source, Riddick impaled them both on a saber claw and pushed the door open. He pulled his blade from his boot as he entered and jumped into the air coming down towards the Lord Marshall’s back.

The holy half-dead sensed his approach, spun around to grab the arm wielding the blade, and threw him across the room. Riddick rolled and slid across the floor before he finally came to a stop when the guards started rushing in. “Stay your weapons!” They stopped at their leader’s order. “He came for me.”

Riddick grabbed his blade and rose to his knee when a hooded figure came out to stand beside the Lord Marshall. When she turned slowly to face Riddick and removed her hood, he saw the gray eyes of a convert staring back at him. ‘NO! I lost her!’

‘You didn’t, my love. I promise you didn’t lose her. I am almost there! Hold on for us!’ Alex picked up her mate’s pained cry from orbit and sent him reassurances. His faith in this mission was waning and was quickly being replaced with unbridled fury and desolation. ‘Richard, I’m coming! Please don’t lose sight of what is important here!’

“Consider this: If you fall here now, you’ll never rise.” Riddick listened to his enemy but his eyes held Kyra’s. “But if you choose another way—the Necromonger way—you’ll die in due time…and rise again in the Underverse.” He held his hand out to Kyra and she moved up beside him. “Go to him.”

She walked with her hands clasped before her to stand before Riddick who looked at her with complete devastation in his eyes. “It hurts…” She told him in a subdued or even neutered kind of way. “…at first. But after a while, the pain goes away, just as they promise.”

“Are you with me, Kyra?” He whispered as gazed into her dead eyes.

“There’s a moment…when you can almost see the Underverse through his eyes. It makes it sound perfect—a place where anyone can start over.”

“Are you with me, Kyra?” He said with a little more conviction. He had already started over when he met Alex so this perfect verse meant nothing to him now. She walked past him without answering in a daze and he turned to watch her go.

“Convert now…” The Lord Marshall said. “…or fall forever.”

Riddick gripped the blade in his hand as he stared at the ground that Kyra had last stood on. “You killed everything I know.” His eyes grew large in hatred and he turned and threw the blade at the Lord Marshall’s head. His enemy faltered and everyone in the room gasped out loud.

“Vaako.” His wife grabbed at him and urged him to ready himself.

He looked down on the lower level and saw his leader move to his feet. “Not yet.”

Lord Marshall looked at Riddick and glanced at the blade fisted in his hand. “Been a long time since I’ve seen my own blood.” He motioned the crowd to move back and dropped the blade to the ground. As soon as it hit, his ghost side flashed forward and punched Riddick in the chest with such force it sent him flying into the far wall.

Riddick rose to his feet and tried to defend himself but the Lord Marshall’s ghost image moved faster than the eye could follow and every swing Riddick threw would connect with the empty air of where he stood seconds before.

Unbeknownst to her husband, Alex arrived and spirited into the throne room with Aereon in tow. They stood in the shadows beside the throne and watched the battle for the survival of worlds take place. Alex gazed upon her mate wishing she could help him but this was his fight. She had brought him this far. He had to go on alone.

Riddick was getting batted around from all sides at once as the ghost flashed around him. He managed to deflect a couple of blows but inevitably ended up on the floor. The Lord Marshall walked around with his fists in the air and spoke to his people while Alex, Aereon, and strangely the Vaakos looked on in dread.

“These are his last moments.” He knelt beside Riddick and his ghostly hands reached into his fallen foe’s head. He grasped on to Riddick’s essence and began to pull it from his body. “Give me your soul.”

‘I don’t think so motherfucker. His soul belongs to me!’ Alex sent him a burst of power and Riddick pulled his essence back within his body with a growl.

“Fuck you!” He spun up from a seated position and caught the Lord Marshall under the chin with a powerful uppercut that sent him flying back to crash to the ground several feet away.

As Riddick stalked towards him, the Lord Marshall looked above the throne and saw a spear held by the statue. He sent his image to collect it and jumped down bringing the metal staff crashing into the ground at Riddick’s feet. He turned to swing it as Riddick feinted back and he ducked it. He missed a couple more swipes and swings before he caught him across the back.

He brought the end to Riddick’s chest, who caught it between his hands and prevented it from penetrating his armor. The Lord Marshall hefted him up on the end of the staff and ran across the room. He pulled back so swiftly that Riddick was still in the air when he slammed it into his body and sent him crashing before the throne.

He threw the broken staff down and took an offered battle-axe from one of his men. He moved behind Riddick and used the staff of the axe to choke him. Vaako went to retrieve a long staff axe from the wall and turned back to the edge of the balcony. Through Riddick’s now blurring vision he could just make out his blade lying on the floor just out of reach.

“You’re not the one to bring me down.” Lord Marshall laughed. He yelled out in pain and released his hold on Riddick as a spear penetrated his back. Riddick looked up from his position on the floor and saw Kyra’s eyes met his as she held the spear. The Lord Marshall turned and backhanded her across the room until her back impaled itself on a spiked column by the throne.

She gasped as the pain arced through her body. Her lungs were filling with blood and she could barely breathe. Her body slipped free of the spikes and she slammed the floor.

“Now!” Dame Vaako yelled. “Kill the beast while he’s wounded!”

Vaako jumped down to the lower level and stalked up to the Lord Marshall.

Riddick stared at Kyra who held his gaze and sighed deeply as blood trickled from her mouth. His brow furrowed in anger.

“Help me, Vaako.” The Lord Marshall gasped as he pulled the spear from his back. “Kill him.” Riddick reached for his blade. Vaako came to stand before a bewildered Lord Marshall. “Vaako?”

Vaako swung the axe over his head and whispered. “Forgive me.”

Dame Vaako turned her head away with a smile. “Flawless.”

Lord Marshall’s ghost form left his physical body to seek a weapon but when he turned he found Riddick stepping on the staff holding it to the ground. As Riddick brought his blade up, Vaako began his downward swing on the physical body of Lord Marshall who was quite attached to his ghost form. Where one went the other followed.

His body ran away from Vaako’s axe unaware of what his ghost form was facing. The axe impacted into the marble floor but the Lord Marshall’s body was just reaching its other self. As soon as it was joined, Riddick drove the blade down into the top of his head.

Dame Vaako turned when she heard the empty sound of Vaako’s strike. “No.” She said in shock when she saw the turn of events. Vaako turned and saw Riddick break the embedded blade off at the handle and drive his knee into Lord Marshall’s face sending his dead body backwards on the ground. “NO!!!” Dame Vaako screamed when she saw her dreams of conquest and power disappear at the hands of a breeder.

Aereon smiled. “Now what would be the odds of that?”

“Very good if you ask me, dear Elemental.”

“Thank you, Bright Lady. I don’t know how to thank you.”

“I’m not the one to thank, Aereon. My husband did not have to come here no matter how hard I pushed. He is probably the most powerful man in existence now. He controls me, my Empire, and now this bunch of freaks. I have no idea what we are going to do with them. I suppose free the ones who have homes to return to and assign the others some kind of duties.”

“That sounds perfect, Creator.”

“He needs me now, Aereon. If you will excuse me…”

“By all means.”

Riddick held Kyra’s head up and listened to the rasp in her voice. “I thought you were dead.” She whispered.

“Are you with me, Kyra?” He asked with a hitch in his voice.

She looked into his eyes and exhaled deeply. “I was always with you. I was.” He looked into her eyes as the life faded from them and lowered her head gently to the ground with trembling hands. A tear slid from her eye as she let go.

He looked down at the girl with excruciating pain in his eyes and finally covered the sight of her with his hand over his sealed eyelids. Vaako turned and glared at Riddick as he settled on the throne. The entire Necromonger contingent moved towards the throne and Riddick glanced at them between his fingers. He pulled his hand away thinking he had another fight coming but was shocked by the actual outcome.

Every man and woman present kneeled before him and paid homage to his or her new Lord Marshall. “You keep what you kill.” Riddick whispered in understanding.

“That is lovely to hear, my love, but I need you to get your new army to evacuate this planet immediately and go sit somewhere nicely while I finish my work around here.”

“Alex?” He stood as he heard her voice and saw her push through the crowd. “You’re here?”

“I told you I would be.”

He took her into his chest and hugged her so tight she could barely breathe. “I missed you, baby.”

“I’m here now, love. Everything will be fine.”

He pulled back and looked down at Kyra’s body. “Everything isn’t fine. She’s dead.” He held his mate by her arms and shook her in grief. “You told me I wouldn’t lose her!”

“Humph.” She shook her head and pushed his hands from her body. “Who do you think you’re talking to?” She knelt down beside the prone form of the 17-year-old girl and caressed her cheek before she placed her palm over her heart. The all too familiar healing touch of the Phoenix glowed through her body for a few moments before she disappeared from sight.

“Where did she go?”

“I sent her home, my love.” His brow furrowed in confusion and she smiled up into his face. “I sent her to our home where she can heal from this whole ordeal both mentally and physically.”

“She’s alive.” He released a breath he didn’t know he was holding and then studied the tired form of his mate. “Are you alright? People usually heal from your touch instantly. What is wrong with you?”

“I got into a little more trouble than I thought and I’m pretty tapped out.”

“Is the baby okay?”

She ignored his question and sighed heavily. “Richard, I’m tired and I want to go home.” She turned her attention to the Necros and narrowed her gaze. “You serve him now.” She addressed the hall. “I am his mate and will not interfere with his rule unless you threaten his reign in any way or disobey his orders. I am the Phoenix. Perhaps you’ve heard of me.”

She gazed through the open view port to the gravity well sphere that hovered over New Mecca. The Necros watched her extend her hand and as she closed it into a fist the sphere collapsed in on itself. “I want you to leave this place and move your ships to Achilles. Wait there for further instructions from your Lord.”

“YES, MISTRESS!” They yelled in unison.

Alex’s eyes settled on the form of Dame Vaako on the upper level and her mood combined with exhaustion had brought forth the dark jealousy of a woman who doesn’t like to see her husband touched by another. “You!” She pointed at the woman that pawed her mate and Dame Vaako’s eyes widened in shock when she appeared before Alex. “You are not worth my time or the air I provide you to breathe.”

“Alex…”

She held her hand up and Dame Vaako clutched her throat when she felt an invisible force cut off her air supply. Riddick pulled at her arm but it wouldn’t budge when she was at full strength. “Don’t use your power…the baby…” She ignored him and watched with emotionless eyes as the woman gasped and tears ran down her face until she hung limply from the force that gripped her throat.

She let out a sigh and dropped the dead woman from her mental grasp. She walked up to Vaako and raised his lowered head to meet her gaze with a finger under his chin. “If you valued her as a mate, I am sorry for your loss but she could not be allowed to live.” He stared into her eyes without sorrow. “You will find better when you are allowed to live free and enjoy life again.”

She left him staring after her curiously and stood before her mate. “I am going home now. Are you coming with me?”

“Of course I am.” He moved to stand beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “You really had a tough time out there, didn’t you?”

“I was surrounded by the very people who nicknamed me the Angel of Death. I forced them to stand beside me by threat of leaving them to their fate if they refused. I ordered many of them to their deaths and they couldn’t afford to say no. I couldn’t bear to watch that travesty for another moment and I did the unthinkable. I’m sick of it, Richard. I’m tired of war and I don’t want to have anything to do with it again.”

“I will do my best to keep you out of any battles that arise in the future.”

“Yeah, well I have one more coming when I get home.” He was about to ask when she waved him off. “Take me home.”

He turned to his troops and looked down at Vaako. “You will proceed to Achilles like my mate instructed and wait for your orders. I am leaving you as my second-in-command. Don’t make me regret that decision.”

“I will not let you down, my Lord.”

Before they departed, Alex settled her gaze on the new second-in-command. “Vaako, I will have a team of engineers and scientists waiting for your arrival. They will reverse the conversion on any Necromonger who wishes it and, if their home worlds still exist, you will aid them in their return home. Am I understood?”

“Yes, my Lady. I will do as you ask without question.”

“We will contact you soon.” She laid her head against Riddick’s chest and teleported them to her ship in a flash of light.

~*~