Chapter 1

Frank was reading; sitting in the large front room of the near empty lodge in front of a cold, dark fireplace. The morning sun glistened brilliantly through the East windows, a few branches swaying in the outside breeze causing long-fingered shadows to move back and forth across the floor. He looked up as the double-wide front doors opened.

Two couples entered, the bright sunlight shining on the hardwood floor and dancing amid the shadows of the people entering, then vanishing again, limited to brightening up the room from the East windows once again as the huge wooden doors closed behind the new group of hunters.

"Just in from the Vortex?" Frank asked, smiling as he rose. "Welcome to Earth."

"It's a lot heavier than I remember," the older man grinned. "Living in New Eden you forget how real gravity pulls on you."

Frank chuckled, liking the stranger instantly. "You've been on Earth before, then," he suggested, not remembering the neatly bearded, rugged, middle-aged man among the refugees who had escaped Solar City on the Phoenix III a dozen years earlier.

"Yeah," the older man replied. "I worked in Maintenance at Solaris."

Tanya, Frank's wife, entered from the kitchens. "You must the De Campo group," she announced, smiling at the four newcomers.

"Yep!" the older, bearded man replied. "I'm Ric – this is my wife Vicky. The kids here are Tony and Cherrill."

"Kids?" Cherrill smiled. "You're closer to my age than you think, Ric."

"Glad to meet all of you," Tanya replied with Frank grunting his greetings as well. "Been married long?" she asked Tony of his companion.

"What?" Tony asked, turning slightly red. "Oh, uh..."

"We're not married," Cherrill laughed. "We're just, um..."

"Experiencing life together," Ric's wife, Vicky, quipped. "They're city-bred, but they're good friends, at least since last night, and we talked them into coming with us to bag a dinosaur."

"Yep!" Ric replied once again, smiling now. "After what we've seen in the museum at University, I definitely want to get me a big one!"

"You have a big one, dear," Vicky whispered loud enough for all to hear.

"Yeah, I guess I do, at that," Ric smirked, standing straight and gazing at his wife. They were exactly the same height.

"Okay..." Frank said, closing his hands together in front of him in a silent clap as he wondered what was going on with these two. "Let's get you guys settled, shall we?" He looked at the register and attempted to scan down the list of names, certain that one of the older couple, probably the wife, didn't want to be here.

"D ... d ... de Campo?"

"It's delCampo, actually," Ric politely corrected him, then pointed to his name. "Party of four."

"Ah! There it is!" Frank replied, looking up again. "You have the first two rooms on the second floor, just at the top of the stairs and to your right." He pointed and everyone looked across the wide, beamed-ceiling room toward a grandiose, solid wood stairway leading up into the large, wooden structure. "You'll get the morning sun – as you've requested, I see," Frank added.

The bustle of the large veranda increased suddenly as several men entered, carrying the gear and luggage of the new guests. As Frank led the group upstairs, he continued talking.

"There are two other groups here currently – a group of students from University are studying the flora of this period, and another group of vacationers are here to try their hand at, as you say, 'bagging' a dinosaur.

"Lunch will be in an hour and we'll serve you after that whenever you wish to eat. The other groups are out and won't be back until evening, so you'll have the dining hall to yourselves and the permanent guests who reside here. You can make plans for tomorrow's excursions into the wild this afternoon. Murielle and Miranda will be setting you up with guides. They're both Phoenix trainees, and they may guide you themselves if they're not too busy."

"I'm a Phoenix trainee," Cherrill cheerfully volunteered. "But I haven't met anyone named Murielle – or Miranda, for that matter. But then, I'm kind've new to this whole immortality thing of becoming a Phoenix."

"You may recognize them when you meet them this afternoon," Frank suggested. "But, they've been doing most of their training here in the Jurassic period for the last two months, so it's entirely possible that you've never met."

Frank left them, and all the gear and luggage was stacked in Ric and Tony's rooms during a somewhat confused dialogue with everyone saying, "That's mine, it goes in here"... "No, that goes next door"... "That's fine right where it is"... "Where's my..."

"Hmmm," Victoria sighed, coming up and putting her arms around Ric from behind. "Alone – at last..."

Ric allowed her to squeeze him in a hug for a few seconds, then gently pried her arms loose.

"That blond girl is pretty hot," Vicky murmured. "Do you think they might want to get together with us later?"

"Well," Ric told her. "they're both 'long-lifers', and the blond girl, Tanya, used to be in Security back in the old days in Solar City. I've heard hair-raising stories about some of her exploits and I'd say she'll probably go along with anything us mundane little folks can come up with."

"You mean like hunting her?" Vicky asked, grinning as excitement caused goose bumps on her neck and arms.

"Hey!" Tony called out, softly but excited as he entered the room from behind them. "Did you see Tanya? That girl I was telling you about? And there are several other Phoenix girls here, too. I bet if we just 'casually' bring it up, we can talk them into a girl hunt! Especially if I should just happen to be showing off that new bow I brought with me!"

"Yeah," Ric agreed, just a little tired of hearing Tony rave about girl hunting. "From what you say, these girls cream at the very thought of being lacerated with bullets and arrows. If that's really true, I'll eat my gun for breakfast tomorrow!"

"Well," Tony replied, sounding somewhat optimistic, "they are immortal. What good is it to live forever without being killed every once in a while! Cherrill almost catches fire whenever I stick anything into her..."

"Tony," Ric said, sounding serious, now, "I told you that even if you do arrange a girl hunt, I'm still gonna go hunting for big game. I really want a triceratops head on the wall over my fireplace. And even if we do take down some of those flying goddesses or a Phoenix girl, they don't stay dead, so you can't display 'em. What's the point of wastin' perfectly good ammo?"

"I know," Tony replied, trying to explain, "but you've never hunted a girl before. There is a special 'thrill to the kill', if you catch my drift. And, you're right! They don't stay dead! You can kill them over and over!"

Tony had a lot of experience in girl hunts and in killing girls in general. After his arrival on the Phoenix III and placement into a rural community in New Eden, Tony began spending his weekends in the preserve where the phoenix Lisa was teaching 'enhanced' girls how to control fire with their minds. Part of that training, when the girls reached a certain level of proficiency, included using the fire in their minds to reanimate their bodies after they had been killed, thus achieving true immortality.

After volunteering for several weekends at Lisa's preserve, Tony quit his mechanic's job in the rural community where he'd been living and became one of the 'handlers' for the girls as they evolved from 'human' to 'phoenix'. As a certain level of sexual arousal was necessary for a girl to complete the evolutionary process, the handlers were necessarily male and had to have a certain – passion – for the job. Currently, there were only two handlers – Macario and Tony.

As a handler, Tony often got the opportunity to kill one of the girls as they practiced their fiery reincarnations, usually while being sexually coupled with her. His current companion, Cherrill, was with him now because she was almost to the point where she could feel the need to die while having sex. She had already learned to use the fire in her mind to heal minor wounds that Tony had inflicted on her, with the phoenix Lisa's guidance, of course.