Chapter 23

She gazed down at the three of them sleeping on the bed, their positions betraying their earlier activities. The tall, bosomy blonde had her rump and back spooned in against the man's belly and chest. He had his arm wrapped possessively around her waist. The blonde, in turn, had one arm over another, slightly shorter streaked-blond girl with short cropped hair.

'This must be the potential Phoenix Tanya wants me to evaluate, ' Lisa thought, casually brushing her mind against the dreaming girl to determine what idle thoughts roamed through her sleeping mind.

She stood for several minutes, simply gazing at the girl, then, carefully reaching down to grasp Tanya's shoulder, teleported Tanya and herself into an empty bedroom elsewhere in the lodge. Frank's arm fell through the empty space where his wife had lain only an instant before, and he rolled slightly forward to take up the space previously occupied by his wife's luscious rump, but he didn't wake up. Vanessa didn't stir as the warm, comforting arm across her stomach vanished, either.

Tanya shrieked, sitting straight up in the bed, nearly bouncing her skull off Lisa's head as the dark-haired girl jerked back.

"Finally awake, huh?" Lisa asked, laughter animating her voice. "Happy dream?"

"Lisa!" Tanya yelled, recognizing the mischievous minx's influence in giving her that nightmare, then laughed, happy to see her old friend and sometimes lover again. "I thought you'd never come see me again!"

Lisa shrugged, still chuckling about Tanya's little dream. "I got bored. Things are really dull at court these days..."

"I'll bet!" Tanya exclaimed, still shaking that image of being gored in the cunt out of her head. "If you'd used a Tyro instead of a Triceratops, I would've recognized your evil ploy, you know!"

"Sure you would," Lisa replied, yawning with pretended disinterest. "Just like the sea serpent that sucked you right out of that little pond."

"Well," Tanya said, chagrined that this wasn't the first time Lisa had messed with her dreams and not gotten caught at it. "I'm getting better. What made you think of using that pointy-faced beast to skewer me? They're really docile, you know."

"What if I told you that wasn't a dream?" Lisa suggested, unable to keep that sly grin off her face.

"What you do mean?" Tanya asked, wondering why she could never get her mind to function properly when Lisa was around.

"I just looked in on your little friend," Lisa replied. "I decided to follow her lifeline a few days into the future. She's another one that won't last a week here. You used to like it when I brought back your death scenes after pulling your butt out of the fire, so I thought you might like to experience hers."

"Dammit, Lisa!" Tanya said, some ire sounding in her voice. "Why do you let all these people die? You could save them, you know."

"Sorry," Lisa shrugged, definitely disinterested, now, "not in my job description."

"Hon," Tanya pleaded, "we lost two girls and a guy yesterday. And now you're saying that Vanessa's going to be gored to death by a plant eater? That's four in one week!"

"Gored and crushed," Lisa corrected her old friend. "She'll end up flatter than the pancakes you had for breakfast! Even the raptors will have trouble scraping her catsuit up with those nasty little claws. She'll make good ant food, though; little critters like that squishy stuff... 'specially when it's bagged and oozing right through the material!"

"Why are you telling me this?" Tanya interrupted, upset about the warm-bodied girl she'd put so much time and loving effort into rescuing. "You just decided to fuck over my mind, or what?"

"Relax, Blondie," Lisa replied. "I came back to before it happened so I could warn you, didn't I? Keep her inside and nothing'll happen!"

"God, you drive me nuts!" Tanya declared, realizing she was still trailing far behind and simply couldn't keep up with Lisa's little mind games.

'Of course, Lisa cares. She loves all the Femmes, doesn't she? Wasn't she always right there, fighting with us? Pulling us out when we got ourselves killed and bringing us back? Why is she behaving like this? She says she wants Phoenix girls, but... '

Tanya sighed in frustration, not understanding. "You let too many of them die, Lisa. Some of them could be trained. Sometimes I cry for the people we lose. It's really hard pretending that this is all fun and games – hunting these vicious creatures. The Phoenix girls enjoy all the gore and stuff, but even they get upset when a human dies."

That wasn't strictly true. Tanya didn't understand it, but the Phoenix girls actually didn't get very upset when a human died, even when they'd spent a few days interacting with them on a social or even a sexual level. Tia and Tara, for example, didn't seem at all upset about the deaths of those two girls yesterday, even though they'd all blatantly had sex together for several days prior.

"Come with me, sweetie," Lisa said, looking at her distraught friend very seriously. "I really didn't know you didn't know."

"Didn't know wha..."

Everything vanished!

Tanya blinked as the bright sun exploded into her face. Gradually, she became aware of standing in a meadow of tall grasses. As her eyes adjusted, she saw Vanessa lying asleep in the sun in that sexy nylon catsuit.

There was movement, and Tanya recognized Kristin bending down over Vanessa's prone form.

"C'mon, honey, wakie, wakie. Wake up! It's time to go-oo..."

"Jeez! Was this ever a bad idea!" a female voice grumbled from behind Lisa and Tanya.

Tanya turned around to see... Sheryye!

'They're alive!' Tanya yelped into Lisa's mind.

'For the moment, ' Lisa thought back. 'Just watch ... and wait!'

There was something in the shadows behind Sheryye. Tanya squinted, her eyes still adjusting to the bright noonday sun.

"Lisa! Save her!" Tanya cried out as Sheryye was suddenly picked up by her rump and hoisted into the air, spilling her quiver of exploding arrows all over the ground.

"Wow, she's really out of it," Kristin said, seemingly unaware of the horrid scene unfolding behind her. "I guess we overdid it, huh?

"Sheryye?"

"Be quiet!" Tanya tried to tell Kristin, and discovered she wasn't really there! 'I'm dreaming!' she thought angrily. 'Damn you, Lisa! Stop tormenting me!'