Chapter 5

Roger lay in the grass on his back, that hot little brunette sitting on top of him while she straddled his hips. He'd been surprised when the girl had taken his hand and practically dragged him away from the other girl who'd been in the courtroom with them and his co-defendant, Luke. Now that he was on the ground, though, with his pants open and this wild witch of a girl riding his cock, he understood her anxious behavior. She'd wanted to get him alone so she could get a good fucking out of him.

'Is this going to be my life, now?' he wondered as Sandi anxiously raised herself up then dropped down on his cock again and again. Except for pulling his jeans open and giving him a couple of sucks to get him hard, the girl hadn't done anything – not even talk to him – to establish any kind of rapport. She hadn't even taken off her dress and he couldn't see her naked skin or her pussy, though he could feel it stroking up and down as she massaged her insides with his dick.

The girl's eyes were closed and he couldn't help but wonder who she imagined she might be fucking. It sure wasn't him; she was all by herself up there, riding his dick with that quiet, almost angry, subvocalized grunt she made every time she dropped down on him. His cock was simply something convenient that she was using to scratch an annoying itch.

And in another moment, that itch was satisfied. Sandi grimaced and shuddered, the muscles of her thighs tightening as she came. After another minute, her breathing settled down and she opened her eyes to gaze down at him. Somehow, she looked disappointed. Or at least, she didn't look especially happy.

Sandi sighed and dismounted, pulling herself off his shrinking dick and rolling to one side. "You should probably go rinse off in the creek," she told him, her voice flat and dispassionate. "The water's clean enough to drink – at least until you start splashing around in it."

Roger sat up and looked over at her. "You are one cold-hearted cunt, you know that?"

"And you kill girls for fun," Sandi replied, her voice still sounding flat and uninterested. She didn't even open her eyes to look at him as she lay in the grass recovering from her orgasm. She did open her eyes though, and looked at him when she said, "What's the matter? My pussy too warm and alive for you to enjoy? Not used to a heartbeat when you stick your dick in some body?" She made sure to separate the word so that he knew she meant 'dead body'.

"Look, I'm sorry that one of those fuckers shot you, okay?" Roger griped. "I've shot at some of those girls myself, though I don't think I ever hit one. Mayfield and Jasper were the ones who went for the kill."

"Were they dressed?" she asked.

"Were who dressed?"

"The girls! The ones you shot at!" she accused as she sat up and glared at him. "Were the girls dressed or naked? Did you creeps shoot at naked girls?"

Roger thought for a moment. "No," he finally said. "They weren't naked. I never saw any naked girls running through those woods."

Sandi continued to glare at Roger, her facial features gradually relaxing until she simply looked disappointed. She finally sighed and asked, "You don't even know what a Phoenix is, do you?" It sounded more like an accusation than a question.

"Those wild women who live in the woods are called 'Phoenixes'," he told her. And that was all he knew. Everything else he'd heard, mostly from Mayfield and Jasper, was conjecture and guesses and outright lies. He could almost hear her telling him that in his mind.

"A Phoenix, simply put, is a girl who lives to die," Sandi explained. Roger could tell there was a lot more to that, but he realized that this strange girl was breaking it down and simplifying it enough for a five-year-old to understand. "Her entire purpose is to experience sensuality and conquer death. Those of us who experience death over and over become more powerful with each restoration. The Phoenix Preserve – those woods behind the Mayfield's – is a safe haven," she stopped and glared at him before continuing, "supposed to be a safe haven, for girls to practice and learn to control their powers."

"Kind of like you're creating a police force of 'immortals' to take over New Eden?" Roger asked. That was one of the 'factoids' that Mayfield had fed him.

"Why would we want to wrest control from our own kind?" she asked, willing to let Roger believe the goddesses who administered justice across the land were actually Phoenix girls.

"But they aren't 'your kind'," Roger grinned at her, letting her know he'd caught her in that little lie. "Those 'goddesses' are some kind of hybrid – half human and half 'something else'." He sneered when he said 'something else', as though that alien part was an abomination of all things natural. "You and your kind are completely human. Except for your demonic powers."

"Wow, you have a lot of unlearning to do," Sandi murmured, completely uninterested in his opinion, especially when he had nothing good to say about most things feminine. "You realize you're going to spend the rest of your days surrounded by girls with 'demonic powers', don't you?"

"That's a horrible fate to hand out to somebody!" Robert snarled. "I never shot at any naked girls! I never murdered any inn..."

Sandi suddenly stood up, her body a brilliant blaze of bright blue fire! Five seconds later, her fire vanished, but now the girl was completely, beautifully naked. She stared at the overwhelmed human for a few seconds, letting him see her exactly as she truly was – female and naked, her skin glowing a soft blue, her hair floating but somehow not burning in the heat rising from her fire.

"Clothing doesn't suit us," she informed him, not using 'mind-speak' because she didn't want to completely terrify him with her 'demonic powers', after all. She'd already yanked him through time and space a couple of times, trying to find Crystal. "We go through shirts and shoes like you might go through a log of wood in your fireplace. If you saw a girl roaming through those woods and she was dressed, she wasn't one of us! She was just some farm girl looking for ... I don't know what, but you freaks killed every one you found!"

'You freaks killed ME!' This she shouted into his mind, unable to control her temper any longer. 'You made me into this! So you have NO RIGHT to judge me for what I am! To accuse me of being a DEMON!'

She glared down at Roger, who was now on the ground, sitting on his bare ass with his dick hanging out of the 'V' in the front of his pants. He held up one hand to ward her off as the girl began to glow brighter, his face terrified.

Sandi blinked several times as she stared at Roger, truly not understanding why he looked so scared. He smelled like he'd just shit himself and he was whimpering like a kicked puppy. Realizing it was her he was frightened of, she forced her fire down to the 'invisible' range and dropped her hands to her sides. "I only wanted to find out what happened to my sister. And you rabid bastards chased me, terrorized me, shot at me – shot me – and..."

She stared, seeing what was in his mind. Roger had been the one to find her trail, to fire his rifle into the air, letting the others know where she was. "You may not have been the one to shoot me, but you led the others to me. You caused my death..."

"But you got away!" Roger insisted, remembering her now. "We lost your trail!"

Sandi shook her head, showing him in his mind what had happened to her. Shot and bleeding, she'd fallen down a ravine, then crawled away, slowly bleeding to death. "I crawled away ... crawled until I bled out."

A Phoenix girl had found her and brought her back to life, showing her how to harness the mystical energy found in all living things so she would never die again. "An angel found me, and she made me into something special like herself. She was not a demon. Demons don't save people."

She continued: "There were more of you in the woods that day than what I saw in that courtroom this morning," Sandi told him. "I don't think that all of you were taken in by Mayfield's fairy tales, but that remains to be seen. Some of you may be 'relatively' innocent, but some – like you – were active hunters. The bodies of a dozen girls lie out there near that salt lick, exposed to the weather and the animals. Mayfield didn't kill them all, even if he was the head butcher of you bunch of psychos. You are all guilty of those deaths and no matter what you personally believe, you will never be allowed your freedom to harm or murder another human being. The others will be found and their properties will be forfeited – added to the Phoenix Preserve. Murdering children will not be tolerated!"