Chapter 14

There were seventy passengers in the Strato-Cruiser, all set comfortably, seat belts fastened, seat in the upright position with trays slid down between the seats. The passenger compartment was long and spacious – at least compared to Tia's apartment – but the twins still felt confined, their senses assaulted with a variation of deep vibrations they could feel through the seat, their feet and the armrests, a low, solid roar that seemed to vibrate through the length of the craft and a soft, yet irritating, breath of stale, cool air that continually brushed against their face and arms.

Tia shivered, uncomfortable and not used to being in an environment she couldn't control. The craft was moving now – slowly – but noticeable enough that several girls let their bodies sway in their seats, accentuating each nearly silent, cushioned maneuver as the Strato-Cruiser moved across the tarmac toward the launch ramp.

"Cold?" a flight attendant asked as she noticed the twins.

Tia shook her head, 'No, ' but the young woman stopped anyway.

"I want you to know I loved that final episode of Vampire Princess where they brought you back to life. I cried when that evil bitch queen had you killed. I wanted to kill her myself! I'm glad you were able to."

Tia smiled at her new-found fan, then glanced over at the third seat in the set of four seats that faced each other (two seats side-by-side with two more identical seats sharing the same foot space). The attendant's attention followed Tia's glance and found Ronnie (read "evil bitch queen") smiling back at her. Ronnie wiggled her fingers in a friendly greeting and the flight attendant actually flinched. Then she blushed – a beautiful deep red that made her makeup suddenly look garish.

The woman straightened up, then noticed Tara, the 'actual' Vampire Princess, sitting next to the one who had been killed and resurrected. "Oh! Oh, my! You're both ... you're all here!" She quickly checked her roster screen, then exclaimed, "You really are her sister!" Then to Ronnie, "And I suppose you're really their mother's sister?"

"No," Ronnie laughed. "I'm married to... was married to ... their father's brother. I'm still the evil aunt, though."

The flight attendant quickly checked her screen again and touched her finger to the screen several times. "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that..." Then another thought occurred to her. "Are you ... do you own Artistic Suicides now? Oh, of course you do. I heard about you moving the company to Bonn now that your husband was..." She didn't finish the sentence, realizing she'd embarrassed herself and had likely insulted her passenger perhaps once too often.

"Yes," Ronnie replied, trying to keep a straight face and still answer as many questions as she could before the flustered attendant could become more upset at her faux pas – if that was even possible. "I'm the sole owner of the production company now, and yes, Artistic Suicides is still accepting applications." She couldn't resist adding, "Would you like to fill one out?" After all, that stranglehold of embarrassed emotion must come from somewhere. The woman obviously had a death wish; look at her occupation.

The attendant continued to stare, aware of the single fact that, if she kept her mouth shut, she wouldn't utter any more insane inanities. Ronnie blinked as she waited for an answer, and the attendant suddenly became aware that everyone was staring at her. She jerked again as her mind suddenly leapt into gear. "What was that?" she asked.

"Would you like to fill out an application?" Ronnie repeated, unable to hide her smile any longer. She elbowed Dave, who was sitting next to her and whispered, "Application form?" so he would get one out of his briefcase.

"Application?" the attendant asked, then saw an electronic pad being held out to her. She forced her hand forward and clasped it tightly in her fingers, then turned and fled, trying to walk as professionally as possible, toward the galley.

"That went well," Tara said, then all three girls burst into giggles. Dave watched his three favorite recording artists with a slight smile on his face. Women! He didn't understand them, but they certainly fascinated him.

Dave was the head Tri-D Cameraman at Artistic Suicides and had met Ronnie several years earlier – the day that Peter had accidentally shot himself in the head while admiring Buck Simpson's gun. But it was Ronnie, not Peter, and her incredible suicide scene that had made that day memorable. He had recorded the deaths and suicides of many young, beautiful women during his time at Artistic Suicides, and had enjoyed every minute of every brutal scene, but Ronnie was the first performer who had actually asked him to participate in her execution. And she had the most alluring stomach and exciting, sensitive-looking breasts ... and her pussy – with that machine gun sticking out of it – and her eagerness to have him pull the trigger...

He had worshipped her erotic sacrifice the only way he could – the way he had with many others before her – by sinking his hard, engorged cock into the remains of each dead girl's cunt, swearing that he would remember each and every one who died. And when he was finished worshipping Ronnie's corpse, he'd machine gunned her between her legs in a final salute to her amazing sexuality. No one else would ever fuck that beautiful cunt.

Shortly afterward, his boss, Peter, was discovered dead with a bullet in his head. He'd been admiring Buck Simpson's pistol when it accidentally went off, and he'd killed himself. 'A fitting end to the life of a truly murderous bastard pervert, ' Dave had thought at the time, but his fellow cameraman got extremely upset and left, leaving Dave to clean up the mess in Buck's studio all by himself – something he didn't look forward to. But, perhaps there was one cunt left that hadn't been machine gunned too badly, and he looked forward to fucking that before he cleaned up Peter's most recent – and his last – mess of dead girls.

At the bottom of the stairs leading down to the soundproofed kill set, he opened the door and discovered – all five performers, still alive and, though still covered with blood, they were sitting and chatting with each other like they hadn't just been murdered.

Ronnie met his gaze as he entered the room. "You're not dead!" he exclaimed, shock, surprise and joy warring to claim his facial muscles.

Ronnie shrugged and smiled, a bit self-consciously while Tara, still sitting against the wall where she'd been gunned down, reached out and, lifting an automatic weapon off the floor, said, "We can fix that..." and pointed the thing at Ronnie.

"No-no-no! Stop!" Dave yelped as he waved his arms trying to get the crazy blonde's attention. "Don't shoot her!"

"Why not?" Tara asked. "You did."

"But she's not dead now!" Dave cried. "You can't shoot her again!" He thought fast, not realizing that the girls were simply playing with him. "There's a ... a clause! Yeah! That's right! A kill clause! If a girl lives through her death, she can't be killed again!"

"Well, that sucks," a voice from the middle of the room revealed a blue-haired pixie sitting on a mat absently licking the palm of her hand and trying to wipe a blood smear off her leg. "Guess we get to live, huh? Those of us who aren't sick, anyway..."

"You're not sick," Tia, who was lying nearby, told her. "Not anymore. That got fixed along with all the bullet holes." Then she had blue-haired, blood-spackled pixie all over her, kissing and hugging excitedly.

Dave found himself sitting next to Ronnie, staring at her blood-spackled face, his hands holding onto her shoulders tightly. "You're alive," he said for about the fourth time.

"Um-hum," Ronnie nodded, smiling at his unexpected happiness.

Dave grabbed her breasts, surprising Ronnie by very unromantically mauling them, trying to find all the bullet holes he'd put there. "They're all gone! You're healed!"

Ronnie nodded again, wondering if this sexy cameraman would be coming to his senses anytime soon, then gasped as he pushed her back to inspect her stomach. There were no holes there, either, and he seemed to glare – happily – back up at her face. "Go any lower and you might have to do a repeat performance," she grinned.

"Repeat ... What?" Dave asked. 'Is she expecting me to shoot her again?'

"You fucked me, remember?" Ronnie asked. "After you killed me?"

"Oh! That!" Dave replied, clearly embarrassed that she had still been conscious enough to remember what he'd done. He hoped she didn't remember what he'd done to her after that. "I was ... I was 'honoring' you," he explained. "Your ... sexuality. You were ... you are ... so ... beautiful. Remarkable."

Ronnie grinned. "Thanks. I think you're cute, too."

And he'd stayed with her ever since, even though she was married to a psycho who killed her at least once a week, and he faithfully filmed it every time – all of her performances, as well as the shots she directed.

The lurch of the passenger compartment accompanied the increased roar of a half-dozen ramjets as the Strato-Cruiser began its journey down the ramp – up the ramp, rather – to catapult its massive bulk toward space. Gravity seemed to increase as the jet accelerated, its bulk pushed upward by the solid, thin rail it rode, then Dave, riding backward alongside Ronnie, was almost pulled out of his seat as huge, circular electro-magnets at the end of the ramp accelerated the giant craft up and into the air like an oversized bullet fired from an electronic gun, successfully achieving supersonic velocity during those last few seconds.

The horrible, frightening vibration that had filled the lives of everyone aboard immediately ceased. Even the roar of the ramjets seemed distant and somehow comforting.

"Well, that was ... exciting," Tia muttered, almost to herself. She remembered a conversation she'd had when being interviewed at Max-Planck Institute. When asked if she'd ever been on a Strato-Cruiser, she'd said she didn't think so. Now she was sure. 'I'd definitely remember being on one of these things!' Riding a Strato-Cruiser wasn't something one was likely to forget.

She looked around to see if Professor Guthnick was seated in her section. She'd promised him a ride on this thing, but the seating in her section had already been filled. Her Wolf had been seated elsewhere, in the back. 'Not everybody gets 'first-class', I guess.'

In another moment, the Strato-Cruiser was beyond any atmosphere the ramjets could use, and the craft was eerily silent. It was only a few seconds, though, before she heard the clicking sounds of seatbelts being unfastened and the increased murmur as dozens of people began excitedly talking all at once. Tia unfastened her own belt and stood, twisting around to grasp the back of her seat for balance – as she seemed to be falling.