“Riddick,” The voice sounded muffled. “My contract doesn’t want you dead.”
“Well, there’s alive and there’s alive,” he called back, slipping between the shadows, spare as they were. “They could have invited me. Nicely.”
“I am nice,” the merc said and it sounded like he was laughing. He was also moving overhead. Pacing his prey.
Riddick kept moving, along the arch. His plan was still a good one –maybe it just got better and he pulled his lips back over his teeth, chuckling softly, and ran.
The bolts hitting around him were herding him, he realized. Fired from above, they were too accurately close to be misses and he weaved in and out of the columns, forcing the merc to fire wider and run faster. There were delays between blasts as his pursuer had to jump from one column crown to the next. Riddick gained advantage by inches.
But he only needed inches. The columns closest to the temple weren’t whole, they were broken and fallen and his little merc shadow was going to have to come down at some point.
The whine of the tangler being shot out was the tell and he plastered himself to a column, heard a tangler wrap itself around the stone, hooks digging into the hard surface. One of them scored Riddick’s arm, leaving a lance of fire in its electrified wake.
There was a sound of tearing cloth, a ripping, shredding sound and another whine. Another bolt kicked up gravel and he dove forward as a second tangler created a fence between two columns behind him.
Shit, how many did this guy have?
He could only go forward now — which is what he was doing before — but this merc, he wanted him to go forward, toward the temple…
Now why would that be?
