Chapter 14

Everything was gathered into the circle that Danny was planning to take back to University with him – the notes, several plastic containers of leaves, seeds and fruit and a case containing his clothes and Kristin's personal effects to give to her sister, Sandi.

"Well, I never thought I'd be going back alone," Danny sighed. "You sure you want to stay here, Vanessa? I know I haven't been the best of company for the last week, but I was just trying to get all these notes and samples in order."

"No, it's okay," Vanessa replied. "Unless you think you need help with the final presentation..."

"No," Danny interrupted. "That was Kristi's task, not yours. I can handle it okay. There are technicians at the lab who'll help me with it."

"Well, bye, then," Vanessa replied, holding up her hand palm first in front of her.

"Everything ready?" Tanya asked, stepping forward along with Tia and Tara.

"Guess so..." Danny replied. "See ya around..."

"Yeah," "So long," "Catch ya later, 'gator," Frank, Ric and Tony called out, standing well clear of the circle.

Tanya and the twins held out their arms, stretching to almost reach each other's fingertips as they surrounded the circle with Danny in the center. The three phoenixes, mind-linked, visualized the time-shield that protected the local environment from the vortex that stretched a hundred million years into the future and softened it, moving it from a quarter-of-a-second-in-the-past to within a few Nano-seconds of the present.

All around them, the edge of a meadow and a fence-line appeared, seeming to exist in the same space as the ground they were standing on. Air began swiftly moving into the center of the circle where Danny stood, blowing in from all directions and seeming to vanish as the vortex, now open, tried to equalize the air pressure between prehistoric Earth and New Eden.

A few seconds later the meadow faded and the wind died down as the girls hardened the time-shield again by moving it backward in time a quarter-of-a-second. Danny and everything in the circle faded, as well. To Danny, of course, everyone around him would appear to fade, and he'd find himself standing in a meadow near the university, surrounded by all his equipment and samples, which he would now have to carry to the nearby lab.

"Gee, the inn's going to seem empty," Tanya mused, dropping her arms. "Most everyone's gone again."

"Wow!" Vanessa exclaimed. "I could feel that! All that power stretching across the centuries! It gives me goose bumps just thinking about it!"

Tia grinned and said, "Your psychic perception is better than most humans, especially now that you've dream-walked."

"And met a real live ghost!" Vanessa added, grinning. "Where'd Miranda and her sister go, anyway?"

"They went back to New Eden earlier," Tanya answered. "Murielle had an idea about setting up a wormhole into the late 21st century, back before everything started going wrong."

"Things were going wrong before that," Frank added, frowning as he remembered. "Those two just want to go play in the Sam clubs!"

"Sam clubs?" Vanessa asked, not having heard the term before.

"Yep, SAM!" Frank declared. "S and M! People of similar perversions got together and did whatever their sick fetish was to each other in those places. Society was getting pretty degraded by then..."

"I seem to remember you enjoyed going to those places, too," Tanya reminded him, a hint of laughter in her voice. "You used to put me on 'display'..."

"That was then," Frank interrupted her. "This is now! And if you ask me..."

"Oh, C'mon!" Vanessa wheedled. "Tell me what you were going to say, Tanya."

"Well," Tanya began, grinning widely.

"Well, nothing!" Frank growled.

"Hey, guy, let her talk!" Ric admonished him. "This could be interesting."

"Yeah!" Frank replied, turning toward Ric. "And usually when Tanya starts remembering those times, everybody ends up naked in a pile!"

"Yum!" Tony called out, getting his two-cents in.

"And that's bad because... ?" Tia butted in.

"Oh, all right!" Frank caved in and cried out, "Go ahead! Talk! I'm going to start lunch! We're going to need to eat..." and walked off, leaving the others gathered around Tanya as they slowly ambled back toward the inn.

An hour later, Frank entered the food preparation area in the back of the inn, having been working with his crew on the Gorgosaurus carcass. It was completely skinned, now, and the hide was being cured before it was sent up to New Eden to become clothing accessories and furniture covering. There was far too much meat to be consumed here, so most of it was being cured for transport as well.

Joey and his trophy head had left for New Eden several hours earlier, along with the 'M' twins, who, being phoenixes, could open and close the vortex by themselves.

As Frank was drying himself off after having showered off the dinosaur blood and gore in the clean-up area, he heard someone running down the grand staircase in the front part of the lodge – male, from the heavy sound of their boots. "Hey, what's up?" he asked, sticking his head through the wide swinging doors leading into the dining hall.

Tony was almost to the main entrance, carrying his bow and a quiver of arrows. He stopped and waved his bow at Frank, then raised his eyebrows when he noticed Frank was naked. "Ahh ... Well," Tony stammered for a moment, trying not to grin too hard, "the twins have Tanya tied to a tree an' we're gonna use 'er for target practice."

"Oh, Jesus!" Frank muttered, rolling his eyes upward before turning around and going back into the kitchen.

Despite his attempted disinterest in what was happening outside, Frank was getting a really uncomfortable boner from imagining Tanya becoming a pincushion full of arrows for Tony and Ric. He remembered a time when he'd taken Tanya to a Suicide Club and donated her as the evening's entertainment - chained to a wall to be executed by firing squad.

A dozen men, volunteers from the audience, came up, one at a time. A dozen rifle shells would tear up a girl's breasts and belly pretty good, even when they were quarter charges. The small charge in each bullet meant that, afterward, the firing squad and the girl's donor would have ample time to use her while she slowly bled to death. Because of her unusual constitution, Tanya was still conscious when she was carried off stage for audience usage after her killers were finished with her. She was jacked off on and fucked for two more hours, even after she pretended to expire from her wounds.

Since that was Tanya's favorite story, Frank understood why Tony had come in to get his bow and arrows.

As he dressed in clean, dry clothes, he wondered what that cute little brunette thought of all this perversion. What was her name again? Oh, yeah! Vanessa. She was a member of that university group that had arrived last week. That group, like many others before it, had been decimated by the local wildlife.

It was odd that so many guests had died on the same day. Three people lost matched the record set two years ago when several hunters had interrupted a pack of raptors in the process of disemboweling a dying triceratops. Three members of that party had been torn apart before all seven raptors were shot and killed in the single biggest bloodbath in the history of the lodge.

'Ah, well, ' Frank mused, 'some people come to hunt, some come to die. Either way, it's the most excitement they'll ever experience... '

Then he grinned as he thought again of his sexy blond wife, out there tied to a tree and ready to experience some lethal excitement. He shook his head, thinking, 'If she doesn't get killed every other day or so, she gets bored... '

He was perfectly willing to let Tony do the honors of keeping his wife happy. But he wanted to time it so that he could witness the end of today's little perversion. Watching Tanya get butchered was incredibly erotic, and Tanya loved it when he got a particularly gory image of her bloody torso stuck in his mind for a few days. It made him want to do really gruesome things to her, and she loved stuff like that!

Vanessa watched as Tony strung his bow. Her heart was pounding under her breasts and she was beginning to believe that what she and Tanya and the twins had been joking about earlier was actually going to occur! Was Tony really going to murder Tanya? My God! This was real! She wasn't dreaming!

She pressed her thighs together, trying to control the wild sensations that were raging through her belly right now. Trying to be casual, she walked around behind the others and 'adjusted' where her nylon bodysuit seemed to be binding at the top where her legs came together. A couple of quick strokes against her almost visible clit were all she dared to do right now. Her fingers came away soaked, and that surprised her, but then she realized that it shouldn't have. Checking again, she discovered that her inner thighs were wet almost all the way down between her knees!

'This is going to be soooo fucking good!' she realized as Tony hefted the bow and notched an arrow.

Vanessa trotted forward quickly, wanting to be nearer to the action. She froze in mid-stride with the 'Thwang!' of Tony releasing the arrow. She nearly came an instant later when Tanya's soft 'Uhh!' reached her ears.

"Great shot, Tony," Ric called out, clapping his hands together.

"Yeah! Way-to-go, Tony," the twins called out as they sat in the grass and watched the show.

"Ha-ha, I have my own cheerleading section," Tony grinned as he notched another arrow.

"Wait-a-minute!" Vanessa gasped, suddenly forcing herself to move. "I wanna get closer!" and started toward Tanya, still tied to the tree.

As she approached, she looked at the arrow-shot girl leaning against, actually pinned, to the tree and immediately froze, her legs wobbling unsteadily under the sudden assault of sexual excitement as she stared at the bleeding wound in Tanya's stomach and the long, slender, incredibly sexy shaft sticking out of her.

Vanessa stood and stared for a few seconds until Tony's impatient "Well? Are you close enough?" startled her back into reality.

"Uh ... Yeah?" Vanessa replied, still unable to tear her eyes away from that incredibly erotic trickle of blood seeping out around the arrow stuck in Tanya's tummy.

She flinched as Tony's bow 'twanged' again. This time she could hear the arrow as it whipped by. The almost silent sound of the inch-wide razor sharp arrowhead slicing through soft female flesh and rudely burying itself in the hard tree trunk was followed an instant later by another soft, sensuous sound from Tanya's throat.

Vanessa found herself kneeling right in front of Tanya with her hands touching Tanya's bleeding stomach where the two long, hard arrow shafts emerged from her soft, warm flesh. The rope was lying loose around the tree trunk and on Tanya's feet, having been cut through by Tony's last arrow.