Violet Eyed Angel

Chapter Three
(about two hours later)


“Angie, you traitorous bitch!” Michael shouted.

I was watching from behind Johns. The Merk thought he and Angel were alone, since I, after having been recaptured and given a deal of no chains, no bit, no fucking problems, was now supposed to be helping the others.

But I was watching the two of them.

Johns took a swing at Angel and hit her in the side of the head. She fell to the ground, holding a hand up to her temple. Blood was pouring out of what I thought was the reopened wound, but I realized he’d cut her badly with the ring on his right hand. She was bleeding badly, and the tears were falling from her lovely violet eyes.

But she was angry. Her eyes were a dark, royal purple, and she was furious.

So was I.

No one hit her except me. I was the one who hurt, who attacked, who killed. And if I didn’t touch her, no one did. No one touched her but me.

But I wanted to watch Angel kick her brother’s ass at that moment more than I wanted to kick his ass myself. She was so sexy when she was pissed off. I could listen to and watch her bitch at her idiot older brother all fucking day if I ever wanted to. Johns would always deserve it, and it’d be funny to watch the angelic little spitfire from opposite heaven knock the motherfucker on his ass.

Hahahaha.

“You let him escape! You goddamn bitch, you let the motherfucking bastard escape!! Goddamn you! Sure we got him back, and sure, we’ll keep him till we get off this fucking rock, but you didn’t know that, you couldn’t say it was gonna happen! And yet, you let him fucking escape, and you curled up in a fucking ball so you could tell me ya didn’t know where the fuck he went. You bitch!”

He kicked her in the side. I heard a rib crack.

Suddenly, I wanted to beat his ass down into the dirt. I wanted to skull-fuck him in his sleep, as he had so elegantly put it. I wanted to kill him. She shouldn’t have had to take this.

But then Angel caught my eye. Blood rushed through me and straight to my cock when I saw her. She was furious. She was wide-eyed, the violet in her huge, glossy eyes so dark they were practically black. Her lips were set in an unforgiving slash of a mouth, and bright spots of furious color danced on her otherwise colorless cheeks. She was gasping for breath, fists curled, trying to get up. She was breathing hard, and the tantalizing lift of her breasts as she drew in each and every breath was starting to make me pretty fucking horny.

I desperately wanted to fuck her.

Which is why, I thought to myself, I should look away.

I kept looking at her, though. Damn, she was hot!

Angel stood up slowly, looking like she could barely stay on her feet, and she murmured in her brother’s direction, head down as if in defeat, “If you hit me again, I’ll hit you right back, just as hard as I can. I’ll knock you on your goddamn fucking ass.”

Her brother huffed, laughing at her in derision, and leered at her, crying, “Oh, yeah? Bullshit, you fucking bitch-” He took another swing at her and missed. He should never have missed, because now she was gonna kick his ass, and how. She was pissed off, and even I was wary of Angel when she was pissed.

She gave him a roundhouse kick to the face, knocking him flat on his ass, as she’d promised him. She spit on him, and then she kicked it into high gear and ran away, fast as her sexy little legs would carry her.

I followed after her silently, unknown to her, leaving Johns with a nasty bruise on his jaw, a nasty cut where his cheek split, and a slight concussion from hitting the fucking ground so hard. I followed Angel as she continued to run, run away from Johns and, ultimately, from the settlement we’d discovered.

I couldn’t let her do that. She could get lost, and if she were right, that would be bad. What if she ran into whatever she sensed out there?

I didn’t want her hurt, unless I was doing the hurting. Unless I was the one who could feel her small, slim little body bruising beneath my hands, feel the bones shatter like the most fragile of eggshells, hear the final beat of her heart as I strangled the life from her. I wanted to be the one to slit her throat and watch her beautiful eyes close in exhaustion from the blood loss and finally shut forever in death’s sweet sleep.

If Angel were going to die, it would be by my hand, not anyone else’s. Not if I had anything to say about it. And right now, I wasn’t going to let her get hurt.

“Angel!” I, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, leapt in front of her just as she was about to leave the camp’s outer perimeter.

She gasped, jumped back by two feet, and immediately took a fighting stance before she even checked to see whom it was. She relaxed when she looked at my face.

“You’re bleeding again.”

She nodded, silent. She wouldn’t look at me. Why?

“I saw what happened, with you and Johns. Does he do that a lot?” I already knew the answer, though. Her dreams tell me everything.

Her dreams were violent, passionate, and delicious. Her dreams of her brother were frightening to her, but I loved listening to her dream of me. She would gasp, moan, cry out. She would whisper my name ever so softly, and everything in me would beg to fuck her while she slept. I knew she dreamed of how it could be, how it one day would be, my desire piercing her innocence and making her cry out in ecstasy. The beast, the animal, in my soul would rage at me, shrieking at me to just shrug off my inhibitions, pin her to the ground, and fuck her until she was too exhausted to even talk.

But I never did.

“Does he do that a lot?” I repeated. I waited patiently for her answer.

“Yes.” She said it simply, casually. Like it was nothing. I knew it was her coldness, the point where she reaches utter uncaring about anything at all, when she’s overwhelmed by anger and fear and hate. Her coldness even scares me, sometimes, but it’s useful.

“We’ll take care of that later. Let’s go.” I took her hand and tugged, but she didn’t want to go. She shook her head. “Angel?”

“Riddick-”

She stopped. She blushed.

I sniffed the air. Just from her scent, I could tell she was nervous. Anxious about something.

And... turned on. Just a little bit, not full on horny, but still a little turned on. By what? Me? Well, I thought, Angel was a pretty tight piece of ass. She, I thought to myself, was very, extremely beautiful, especially as far as blondes go. And I was good looking, if I did say so myself.

Maybe there was... some mutual attraction between the two of us. After all, she’d kissed me. She’d kissed me twice, and that had nearly knocked me out, her kisses were so powerful. Mutual attraction? Oh, fuck, yeah!

I pulled her towards me, till she was right up against my body. There was no way she couldn’t realize my obvious desire. She could feel it pressed against her lower abdomen, and it was making it hard for her to catch her breath.

I bent my head to her neck and inhaled her scent. As always, smelling her gave me a sense of pleasure. I could smell her blood rushing just beneath her skin, smell her nervousness and her arousal. Without knowing it, she was releasing pheromones to get my attention. Part of her animalistic splicing. It was actually kind of a turn on.

I laced my fingers through her hair, holding her head in place as I kissed the satin soft skin of her neck. The breath left her lungs in a soft ooh. My lips stayed over her pulse for a moment, feeling it fluttering. I felt a strange, warm sensation in my chest. I was enjoying myself with this.

My tongue flicked out to taste the salt on her skin, swirling against the flesh just over her pulse. She gasped for breath. I trailed kisses up the side of her slender neck, along the line of her jaw, to the corner of her succulent mouth. It was a teasing kiss, a chaste kiss with as little contact as possible. She closed her eyes briefly against the sensation. I kissed the other corner, kissed both her eyelids, kissed the tip of her nose.

She looked up at me, breathing shallowly, trying to remain calm. I could hear her heart pounding in her breast. She was excited. She wanted me to kiss her. I came a little closer to her. She stood a little bit straighter. Her eyes were bright with obvious hope. I lifted my goggles up to uncover my eyes. I wanted her to see my eyes. The light was uncomfortable to me, but I pulled her into the shade of one of the buildings and then it was all right. She looked into my shining black eyes and swallowed hard.

“Not nervous, are you, Angel?” I asked her softly in a husky whisper. She shook her head almost imperceptibly. I smiled, chuckling. “Are you sure?” She made a soft, breathy whisper-murmur of assent. “Well,” I said, coming even closer, “if you really are totally, one hundred percent sure that you’re not nervous...” I trailed off, and it took her a minute to gather her thoughts and nod slightly. She was quivering with expectation. I bent my head to hers once more.

I had never wanted to do anything as much as I wanted to kiss Angel at that moment. Which is probably why I did it. I breathed a hot breath against her parted lips, then I touched my lips to hers gently. Or, at least at first, but then I increased the pressure. Her lips were moist and soft, yielding under mine, and I kissed her with everything I had. I was demanding, dominating. I kissed her like the apocalypse was fucking nigh, and suddenly, I wanted her so fucking bad. I wanted her. Fuck, I goddamn needed her. She had my fire lit again, and it was blazing out of control and it felt so very good.

Her arms went around my neck, and she practically melted into my hold. We broke apart, and I smiled at her. The sweet taste of her lips was... haunting.

“Riddick...”

I looked at her then, really looked. She resembled a twenty-year- old girl, wearing a thin, breezy, long sleeve shirt of white cotton and a pair of black, silk/cotton pants. Her boots were of deer hide, thick and sturdy, but not hot like leather or cow skin. She was actually dressed for the desert we were in. But under all that, under the tough-looking, sophisticated, sexy Amazon exterior, she looked nervous, like a frightened rabbit.

She’d never been with a man, or even spent much time around them besides her brother. She bit her lower lip, looking like a sultry, delicious woman. She was so sexy, and I still wanted her. I slammed my mouth down on hers. She met me half way, wanting my kiss, my touch, the fire deep in my belly. She wanted me, too, just as badly as I wanted her. There was a matching fire in her, as well, and it burned just as hot as mine.

The next thing either of us knew, we were lying on the sand in the shade, horny as a couple of teenagers, kissing ravenously like rabid wolves, almost, my body on top of hers, her blood trickling from the gash at her temple. I was straddling her thin waist, brushing against her as we pressed close to each other. God, I needed a fuck! I needed Angel, so very fucking badly. She bucked her hips against me, just as eager for what had to inevitably come after this.

We kept kissing. I didn’t know or even care where this might go, but I never found out. While I was kissing her petal-soft lips and my hands were reaching to touch her hot, sexy body just the way women like, just the way I so desperately wanted to, a shout went up from the others back at the settlement. We stopped and looked back the way she’d come.

Suddenly, I heard her heart nearly stop, then begin hammering in her chest. Her eyes were wide in shock.

“Probably just found that fucker of a brother of yours with those bruises.”

I was about to kiss her again, but she shook her head, fear suddenly in her eyes. I felt the rage start to boil up inside me, and I wanted to hit her. After all this, after the kisses and caresses, she was afraid. Now, she was afraid. I wanted to hit her as hard as I fucking could. But I never would.

So, instead, I just looked at her, my eyes hard and flinty. She had a glazed look in her eyes, and I realized she wasn’t afraid of me. She had an inkling, a hint of things to come, maybe even a vision. That’s what she was so very afraid of. At least, that’s what I thought she was worried about. But I had to make sure.

When her eyes cleared, a few moments later, I asked her, “Premonition?” She nodded. I got off of her like I’d been burned. “Come on!” We leapt onto the rooftops, and started running.

oo8oo8oo8oo8oo8oo

“Where’s Riddick and Angel?”

That was the kid, Jack, the girl. The one pretending to be a boy. Looking out for us, that one was. Cute kid.

I heard Paris, the drinker, shout, “Leave ‘em, they’re probably off fucking some place! They’d leave us if it was them!”

We exchanged a glance, then Angel and I leapt onto the Sand Cat, Angel glaring fiercely as her brother came running. The drinker gave me a fake smile and murmured, “Oh, thought we’d lost you two. Would have been a pity.”

Angel hissed at him. I helped Johns onto the Sand Cat, knowing his sister wouldn’t do it, and then went to sit beside Angel, who smiled at the kid. When I saw her, I was surprised. And a bit touched, though the others really didn’t need to know all that.

She’s shaved her head of her short, scruffy black hair, fashioning it to look like mine, what little I had left, and her eyes were hidden behind the black goggles she pulled over her eyes. I wondered where she’d gotten the goggles and the stuff to shave her head.

I could tell Angel was amused by the kid’s admiration. She gave her a big smile, the kind she only gives to strange, amusing people. Like that kid, for instance. She bore a striking resemblance to someone I knew. A little, blond, lavender-eyed someone.

She reminded me of how Angel had been when she’d first met me, eager to impress, eager to learn, the eager-listening child who’d request stories of my notorious exploits. She’d worshipped the ground I walked on, and to this day I don’t know why. She’d only been five or six when I met her, a sweet little thing all long legs and elbows because, due to the DNA splicing, she’d grown too quickly, matured too fast, and she was a gangly little thirteen-year-old with a six-year-old adoration and maturity.

Johns, the blue-eyed devil, had brought a golden-haired, violet-eyed angel to see me at the Slam, before I was put in one of the pits. I’d been paraded before her, to show the kid her brother’s prowess at bounty hunting. But Angel didn’t like the parades, hated them in fact. I think it was because she had adored me from the start, despite the horror stories told to her by Johns about me. She saw in me a tender beast, an animal that protected that which it cared for almost to the point of abnormality. She had seen a gentle giant, a mother lion. I’d thought she was cute. Ridiculous and hopelessly romantic, true, but cute. She liked me, and I adored her. Maybe, I even loved her. A little bit.

She’d loved me when she’d been a little girl, I think. Because of that, I hadn’t cared what Johns did to me in front of her. I allowed the torments, uncaring. All I cared about was the rage, the sadness, and the hatred in those big, lilac eyes of hers when she was allowed to come to me after. The looks she cast in her brother’s direction. The friendship, concern, the love in her eyes when she looked at me made it a bit bearable.

But then it happened. Johns took my little Angel away from me. That’s when I went cold, when I lost my humanity... when I became a true monster.

I snapped myself back to the present. I looked at the fiery, grown-up woman who’d taken the place of my little Angel. She may have been cute back then, but damn, she was sexy now!

Angel gaped when she saw the huge, Jovian planet about to block out the suns of this desert planet, the hell of fire and brimstone where we’d shared our first kiss.

Heh, our first kiss.

First Kiss.

I could smell the spike of fear that shot through her, and for a minute, I desperately wanted to kiss her, touch her, maybe even fuck her. I restrained myself.

“What’s wrong?”

“Something really bad is going to happen when the eclipse totals out. Four is a magic number, Riddick. Four is a magic number.”

What did that mean? Was that all her mind could tell her?

“Light. Stay in the light.” She hugged herself and bit her tongue to keep from saying anything else. I nudged her leg with mine, and smiled at her, telling her it was all right. She smiled back.

Johns glared. I loved pissing him off, and even touching her in the most innocent of ways made him angry. Just to add insult to injury, I made sure that the bones everyone else ducked to avoid whacked him hard.

“You forgot to duck, Johns.” I saw my beautiful Angel smile.
oo8oo8oo8oo8oo8oo
“Riddick.” Angel whispered. I heard a tiny spark of anxiety in her voice. She was looking at the planet, I guess, realizing just what was gonna happen when the lights went out. I ignored her. I didn’t have time to comfort her right now. We were busy loading the power cells. She hefted a power cell and handed it to me. I dumped it on the deck of the Sand Cat.

“Riddick.” Fear was creeping into her voice, and the urge to fuck her was coming upon me. I loved the sexiness of Angel Johns when she was scared. But still, I ignored her. When we got all five of the cells loaded, I started to turn towards her.

When I didn’t see her, I knew something was wrong. I heard a heart-stopping shriek, and then I heard her scream, “RIDDICK!!”

Johns jumped down from the Sand Cat at the sound of her voice, but I was faster, already on her position, and I saw why she was screaming, and I damned myself for ignoring her. A beast, a creature, like a dinosaur or something, had its tale wrapped around her legs, dragging her down into the darkness it was hiding in. She’d had a sense of evil, and I’d ignored her. I grabbed her hands just as the rest of her vanished into shadow.

She screamed, then I felt a change in her. She yelled, furious, and began kicking as I dragged her upper half out of the shadows and had her wrap her arms around my waist. She had a lot of natural defenses, like the poisoned quills on her ankles.

I dragged her out of the dark, but the thing held on. Kicking off her sandals- having exchanged them for her boots- the thin, elegant, yet terrifyingly strong and deadly barbs on her lower legs flared out, slicing through the creature’s flesh, muscle, and bone. I fell on my ass, her on top of me, and I felt one of the quills nick me.

Angel jerked her legs up and away from me, and Johns shot the bastard before it could grab her again. She stood, gasping, everyone else staring in amazement at her calves.

Her pants had been replaced with black capris, so that the cloth didn’t hamper her defenses. They saw that her legs were death pale, like the rest of her body, milk white, no pigmentation at all. Fleshed out from her legs were forty-eight poisonous barbs, twenty-four on each leg, twelve on either side of her leg. When nicked by them, they injected poison into your system, as well as secrete bufotoxin, which was usually poisonous, or at least irritating, to humans. Because of her crossed DNA, the poison they injected was a mix of snake venom and spider venom, even though the quills themselves were from platypus DNA.

That made me laugh, but I realized I was possibly fucked. In her current state of agitation, the spines were oozing with venom, and she’d nicked me. But, I didn’t feel anything wrong. Still...

“Come here, Riddick.” She murmured, the quills laying themselves flat against her legs. She knelt by my leg, looking at the inside of my right knee, where’d she got me. There was a tiny scratch, but no blood. Just to make sure it didn’t get infected, though, she nicked her thumb against one of her fangs, for she had fangs, drawing blood, and rubbed it against the cut. Her blood would get into my system, neutralizing any poison she’d introduced. She then stood up.

“What the fuck was that? Those things on your legs?” Jack exclaimed. Angel glanced at her.

“Platypus quills, attached to venom sacs that hold rattlesnake, cobra, cottonmouth, and copperhead venom, as well as black widow, brown recluse, and African wolf spider venom. The glands actually in the skin surrounding the quills, and the skin on my legs, secrete bufotoxin, which my dear brother calls frog poison.”

“Why?” Angel gave her a confused look. “Why does he call it that?”

“It comes from the skin of Monkey Tree Frogs.” Jack grinned, replying, “That is so fucking cool!” Angel merely smiled and nodded.

“Come on, we need to get... moving... oh, my God!” Johns cried.

I turned with the others to see the small, bat like creatures flocking from their little holes in the ground. They were swarming into the dusky sky, like vampire bats on a mating flight.

“Beautiful,” I said, but I didn’t mean the bats.

I meant the way Angel’s eyes went dark and wide with fear, how her luscious lips parted in a slight O of horror. I meant how her full, round breasts lifted up every time she took a gasping, terrified breath. How her beautiful golden hair, now the color of a volcano due to the light on it, was blowing about her in the wind as she watched the monsters coming. Afraid, she was a beautiful woman. Furious, she was a perfect goddess.

“People,” Paris cried, calling us, shattering the instant of adoration, “May I make a suggestion? Perhaps you should flee!”

Everyone bolted, except Johns, Rachel, Angel, and I.

Johns was tugging on Angel’s sleeve, but she wasn’t moving. Her eyes were locked on the creatures, mesmerized. Her eyes were wide, so very wide, but she wasn’t breathing. Johns glared at her, and took off running, leaving her behind. I grabbed her hand.

“Angel!” I grabbed her arm when she didn’t respond, yelling harshly, “Angel!!”

She jerked her head towards me.

“Come on, goddamn it! We gotta get out of here!” She looked into my goggled eyes for a brief moment of panic, and we both took off running.

I heard Rachel, the prospector type from Australia, snarl, “Shit!” She started running too. But she wasn’t made for this kind of running, we could tell. She was a long-distance runner, whereas Angel and I were sprinters. We were a few feet ahead of her when I felt the animal instinct in the back of my mind.

I grabbed Angel by the back of her shirt and shoved her down.

Rachel hit the dirt near us.

My eyes locked with Angel’s, and I saw the question in her eyes.

Do we move now that they’ve flown by? Do we move?

She started to push herself up, and Rachel leapt to her feet and ran. The bats flew after Rachel, but before I could react they’d hit Angel, too, slamming her forward so that she went sprawling a few feet in front of me.

“Angie!” Johns cried.

They were descending on her, and she was too frightened to move. But it was also making it hard for them to see her. I had time.

I leapt up and ran as the little monsters started tearing Rachel apart, as they flew at Angel. I grabbed her by her knapsack this time, tore the pendant from around her neck, and tossed it in the air as I slammed her downwards into the dirt. The things caught at it, clutched it, but soon lost interest when they realized it wasn’t edible.

We waited until they left, busy devouring the two halves of the Australian woman. They had dropped the necklace in the dirt a few feet from us. I saw Angel’s sparkling, lavender eyes staring at it, then flicking back to me. I gave her the go ahead to get up. Then I heard flapping behind us.

“Run, Angel.” I whispered, looking at her. She stared at me, knowing I wasn’t gonna be right behind her, or beside her.

“Riddick-”

“RUN!!” I shoved her forward, and the tone of my voice made her bolt. Halfway there, she glanced back at me as I dove for the pendant.

The platinum chain with her name in hematite stones, it had been a gift from me, the only gift I could get. Johns, I’d told him I wanted cash, he’d paid me a good behavior allowance. I’d bought the necklace. She’d said the stones reminded her of my eyes. I didn’t want her to lose something she treasured, something that I had given to her.

So I dove for the pendant.

She screamed my name as the bats flew at me. I grabbed it up. I ran to her.

When I made it there, Angel shoved both the kid and me behind her, and let out a piercing scream, like the sound a dolphin or bat makes for echolocation. Some of the bats exploded. A lot of them just veered off. The rest just flew overhead, making carrion of Rachel while Angel coughed hard, hacking up and handful of blood. No wonder she hadn’t done that before- it must have been agony.

Soon, though, she’d regained the ability to breathe without coughing up a lung.

“Riddick.”

I turned to Angel. It was just her, Caroline, and me. Paris and the kid had gone inside.

“Riddick.”

Angel’s eyes were dark with fury and fear. I could smell the adrenaline in her blood, smell the slowly ebbing terror. She took three steps towards me and threw her arms around me. Her mouth was suddenly on mine, kissing me. There was fright and passion in her kiss, but I kissed her back, reveling in the ability to do so. I held her tightly, suddenly not wanting to let her go. We broke apart, me looking into her eyes.

“Don’t ever do that again.”

“Sorry, Angel.”

She let go, stepped back, and we both turned on impulse towards the eclipsing planet. In that direction we saw, me with my night vision and her with her second sight, the larger, even deadlier beasts rising up from beneath the desert surface.

“Well, well,” I said.

“What, you two?” Caroline asked. I could tell she was surprised at the passionate welcome I’d received from Angel, but was trying to hide it. “What do you see? What’s out there?”

“Like I said,” I said, putting one arm around Angel’s shoulders, “it’s not me you need to worry about anymore.”

oo8oo8oo8oo

In the words of JunoMagic:

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