Wrinkles in Time Part 1 (long)

Chapter 15 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The Adventures of Béla, the Vampire Girl
Book 3: Wrinkles in Time
Part 1
Chapter 1 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Goddess Elaine hadn’t completely withdrawn from the mental image of her sister’s quarters on the great ship as she was awakened by one of her adoring worshippers, causing her to cut short her dream-walk with her sisters, Béla and Beth. She could still hear them talking to each other.

‘Dream-walking?’ Beth asked, giggling. ‘No wonder you seemed so aggrieved when I showed up in the communal baths. You thought I was Elaine!’

‘Aggrieved?’ Elaine thought, not knowing whether to be angry or hurt by the careless remark from a sister whom she thought loved her. She decided she was both. The distractions of her worshipper didn’t seem quite as exciting as they had a moment earlier.

The young man had lifted her legs up over his shoulders as he knelt down behind his goddess, pulling her off the comatose lover upon whom she had been impaled. He leaned backward, pulling her back, facedown, until her chin was dragging along her sleeping lover’s belly. The newcomer levered her pelvis further up until his goddess’ back was almost bent at a right angle into the air behind her and he could reach her aromatic, freshly fucked pussy with his mouth.

For a few seconds, Elaine’s weight was all on her face, neck and shoulders, her chin digging into the pelvis of the lover beneath her. Then her thighs were resting on a pair of shoulders, one on each side of the newcomer’s head as he licked his tongue along the entrance of her cream filled pussy. Elaine felt her legs tremble and her belly tighten from the exotic sensation.

‘One more won’t do any harm,’ she thought to herself. ‘Besides, I need something to take my attention off being so ‘aggrieving’ to everyone…’

A few inches away from her mouth and prodding her right breast, her comatose lover’s penis was reacting to her earlier movement of being dragged down his body. The little organ magically seemed to know what was it was being pressed against and was trying valiantly to rise to the occasion.

Elaine turned her head and watched as it throbbed, slowly getting larger and larger with each heartbeat she heard through the belly her head rested on. She breathed deeply, savoring the aroma of her own musky scent wafting from that slowly rising object of desire.

She felt her sleeping worshipper’s stomach muscles tighten under the side of her face as he started to wake up. Grinning as she realized her little orgy was starting its second (no… is this the… Yeah, its fourth) round, Elaine blew on the growing phallus with her breath and watched it jump, almost doubling in size in just a few seconds. Still smiling, she emitted a low growl of self-satisfaction, and blew on it a second time.

Her unknown assailant behind her was doing an incredible job of getting her juices flowing again. Elaine couldn’t stop squirming from the wonderful sensations he was creating back there with his warm, wriggly tongue. She radiated her pleasure back through him, letting him know how well she appreciated what he was doing to her, and he nearly dropped her in surprise as their minds merged together.

Jonas was waking up. The first thing he noticed was that he was lying flat on the cold, marble floor (again?) and his back was killing him. The second thing he noticed was that something warm and hard was pointedly gouging him in his lower belly just above his pelvis. His dick was squashed against something wonderfully warm and very soft. It was sending him signals that required his attention. He realized that that was what had awakened him.

The uncomfortably pointed object gouging him in his gut moved, suddenly becoming much softer and warmer as it moved from sharp chin to soft cheek. He could feel long hair caressing his torso as a cool, moist breeze tickled his growing member. His waking mind put together all the sensations he was experiencing into a recognizable image.

His goddess was lying on top of him, giving her teasing attentions to his most favorite organ. She was about to gift him with her mouth around his penis, breaking her waking fast with the gift he would give her in return. His stomach tightened and his legs twitched as she shifted her position slightly to accommodate his cock with her mouth.

Jonas luxuriated in the sensation of his goddess’ silky blonde hair caressing his belly as she moved. Then her warm, liquid mouth was pressed against and kissing the side of his bulging cock, causing it to surge upward with excitement. He moaned out loud, letting his goddess know that her ministrations were appreciated. He felt her shift position again as she moved to take his entire cock into her mouth.

He felt his goddess’ lips slide slowly up his shaft, realizing she knew he was awake by now and was deliberately going slow just to tease and tantalize him. He resisted the powerful urge to thrust his pelvis upward to force his dick all the way into her mouth – right now! Instead, he arched his back and tightened his leg and belly muscles to keep himself from grabbing her head and slamming it down on his cock as hard as he could.

Jonas opened his mouth and took several deep breaths to help retain his self-control. He recalled a story about a worshipper who had tried to force himself upon the Goddess of the Land, who just yesterday had left the land of the living to go live with her father in the heavens above. The goddess had angrily sunk her teeth into the fellow, almost severing his cock from the rest of him, then sucked blood from it while he screamed in agony.

‘The goddesses demand respect, even during an orgy,’ he remembered from the teachings of the Great Bard.

The sensations of the warm, wet, enthusiastic mouth on his penis were almost overwhelming. He was getting close to gifting his goddess with his morning offering. He tried to distract himself by remembering what the Great Bard Geoffrey had told him when he had inquired about the ‘unbecoming’ sexuality of the otherwise beneficent goddesses that had suddenly arrived in their hour of need to save them all from biological extinction.

“When a goddess sits in judgement, she reaches into the evildoer’s mind and pulls out of him all the evil that dwells within him,” the Great Bard Geoffrey had informed him. “The goddess herself is not a pure deity, but is made in human form, which denies her the ability to discharge the evil that she accumulates while sitting in judgement of others. This evil manifests itself as an overpowering sexual desire, intensified many times over by the evil she has drawn into herself to protect those she serves.”

While the explanation made sense to Jonas, it seemed that the goddesses who held court the least often were much more sexually aggressive than the ones who spent more time in their audience chambers listening to grievances.

Perhaps the few golden-haired goddesses, such as the goddess Elaine, collected the evil energy from the other goddesses who were less willing to dispense their sexuality so freely. That made sense. He would have to ask the Great Bard… Oh, yes… here it comes…

‘Oh, Goddess! Accept this gift of my offering!’

Jonas came, pumping his hot semen into his goddess’ hungry mouth. He could feel her happily sucking every drop from him as his cock spasmed, spurting into her hot, willing mouth several times. Finally spent, he dropped his arched back down onto the cold marble floor, panting heavily.

He could hear her moaning and crying out as she lay with her head and shoulders still on his pelvis and thighs. Someone was obviously worshipping her ‘other’ end. Jonas wasn’t surprised. The goddess Elaine usually had someone on one end of her or the other. Sexually, his goddess was the freest, the most energetic, certainly the most erotically enthusiastic of all the goddesses in this land they had named the ‘New Eden’.

Jonas struggled off his back, rolling onto his side to watch his goddess being worshipped from behind. The arch of her back was an incredibly erotic view, but since he had moved out from beneath the goddess, her head and shoulders were now being pressed against the hard marble floor. Her hips were being held in the air with her legs draped over her new worshipper’s shoulders as he smooshed his face into her (by now) almost liquid cunt. An almost constant animal moan was issuing from his goddess’ throat as she lay agonizingly bent backward into the air, as her newest worshipper happily lapped and sucked on her clit.

Jonas marveled at his goddess’ flexibility and endurance as Elaine lay in that awkward position as she moaned out one long, continuous orgasm. He knew from having attended several of her weekly services that she would keep coming until she lost consciousness before she would ever call ‘quits’ simply because she was uncomfortable. So long as she was coming she would never quit!

After several more minutes, she stopped making the moaning sound and her body relaxed too much for her sexual invader to hold her up. He let the unconscious goddess slide slowly down, holding onto her creamy thighs to keep her legs from hitting the marble floor too hard. He noticed Jonas for the first time.

“Good morning, kind sir,” he said, his face smeared with the love juices he had collected from his goddess.

The newcomer was slightly out of breath from his efforts to please his new goddess. He wiped his arm across his glazed face trying to remove some of his goddess’ return offering.

“The goddess’ nectar is sweet, isn’t it?” Jonas asked, returning the young man’s greeting.

“Oh, so that is the goddess, then,” the young man replied, laughing gently. “I was fairly certain from her description that I had the right one. She was certainly willing enough… but mistakes can happen, you know.”

“Yes, it’s a good idea to know who it is you’re chewing on before you stick anything into her,” Jonas said, referring to the stiff appendage sticking up between the newcomer’s legs.

“Do you think she would mind if I finish this off?” the young man asked, also referring to the uncomfortable hardness he sported.

“I rather believe the goddess would be upset to find that you wasted it somewhere else,” Jonas told him. “You aroused her, you made her come. I’m sure you have her permission. If you wish, I’ll help you carry her to the offering table.”

He indicated a long table with a cushioned surface in the center of the room. The young man nodded, then rose, grunting with the effort of straightening his knees after kneeling on them so long.

“By the way, my name’s Tamarind,” he extended his hand. “My friends call me Tam. I’m here to apply at the university, but someone told me that it was too early to disturb the schoolmaster. I came here to the temple because there is usually food available in the temples for travelers.”

Jonas and his new friend Tam bent down to pick up their sleeping goddess and began carrying her across the room, Jonas carrying her head and shoulders and Tam waddling along between her legs, trying to hold on to her slippery thighs and not drop her onto the hard floor. Grunting, they both manhandled her limp, but still curvy form onto the cushioned table.

“And I’m certain that ‘food’ is the only reason you decided to visit this temple?” Jonas asked, smiling smugly.

“Well, the yellow-haired goddess has a remarkable reputation,” Tam grinned, gazing raptly down at her naked, slender form. “But, believe it or not, I would rather not waste this on an unconscious girl, goddess or not. If there is a buffet of some sort, I think I’d rather sup now, and come back later when the goddess is in a more receptive mood.”

“Services are only held once a week,” Jonas informed him.

He noticed Tam’s disheartened gaze as he took in the marvelous view of the naked, sleeping goddess. Jonas had arranged her golden hair so that it surrounded her head like a halo. Even asleep, she was radiantly beautiful.

“It’s possible that she may grant you a private audience,” Jonas suggested, trying to cheer up the newcomer. “She holds court occasionally with the schoolmaster, the Great Bard Geoffrey. You could approach her after, I’m sure.”

Tam smiled bleakly. “Well, then, that will have to do, I suppose.”

Tam looked around, finding where he had quickly stepped out of his clothes when he’d entered the room and discovered several other sleeping revelers (make that ‘worshippers’) surrounding the sleeping blond goddess. Two of them were females. One was awake and watching them.

“Would you allow me to take care of that for you?” the girl asked, looking hopeful as she gazed at Tam’s nicely shaped rod sticking out in front of him.

“Are you a goddess?” Tam asked, smiling back at her.

The girl’s shoulders slumped a little. “No,” she sighed. “I only come here for the weekly service – to give my goddess aid in her time of need.”

“She helps the goddess with her worshippers when there are too many to handle at one time,” Jonas explained.

“Oh,” Tam replied, understanding, now. “She’s a temple girl.”

He smiled at the girl again and she looked up at him, hopeful of his attentions once again. She rose as Tam held out his arms.

“You are almost as pretty as the goddess,” Jonas said, grinning at her as she knelt down in front of Tam.

“You must wait your turn, sir,” the girl replied, feeling coy and sexy, now.

“You two know each… Oh, yes!” Tam said as the young female ran her lips along the side of his hard cock.

“We grew up on neighboring farms,” Jonas replied. “She was my first…”

Jonas’ explanation was interrupted by the arrival of the second girl, who had evidently been awakened by their conversation.

“How can you watch them and not feel like worshipping,” the girl whispered against his cheek as she delicately embraced Jonas.

“Sorry, Vicky,” Jonas replied, “but I have already worshipped the goddess this morning. But you feel warm in my arms, and may stay if you like. I’m certain, with you so close, that I can worship you, also, given a few moments to recover.”

Victoria seemed satisfied with that, and, since she was a little sore from her earlier excesses, she simply snuggled up against Jonas while they both watched her sister service the newcomer.

“You need some help with that, Ronnie?” Vicky asked after watching for a minute or two.

In response, Veronica looked up at her sister and grinned, slapping the side of Tam’s cock with her tongue.

Dropping down, Vicky pressed her face up against the side of Tam’s cock that her sister had vacated, then, the two sister’s grinned slyly at each other and began to move in opposite directions. Ronnie’s warm, wet lips moved toward Tam’s pelvis while Victoria slid her dry, breathy mouth down and engulfed the tip of his cock.

“Oh, God!” Tam groaned. “I mean, Goddess! Goddesses!”

A second later, he spurted into Vicky’s mouth. He would have lasted longer, but the first temple girl (Ronnie?) had slipped her fingers up behind his balls and pressed upward just in front of his anus just as Vicky had claimed the end of Tam’s cock with her mouth.

Laughing at Vicky’s surprised look, Ronnie shoved her away just in time for Tam’s second spurt to get Vicky right in the face, and her right eye. Ronnie had her lips over Tam’s cock as the third spurt sprayed up into her mouth, then she was sucking and swallowing until Tam had emptied his cum into the temple girl’s mouth.

Then he found himself completely ignored as the two girls embraced, almost attacking each other in their zeal to steal as much cum from each other as their tongues could find.

As he dressed, Tam considered the amazing activities of last half-hour. He had intended to make an unselfish offering to the district goddess by pleasing her with his mouth and tongue. But with his very first touch, he was sensuously assaulted by overpowering waves of psychic sexuality that she radiated as a direct result of his oral contact with her most sensitive parts. He had heard that this talent was one of the goddess’ abilities, but he’d had absolutely no idea what to expect.

He actually felt disappointed with the temple girls, even though their enthusiasm for sex could probably match the goddess’ own. There had been no real interaction; especially regarding psychic contact like he’d experienced with the goddess. He suspected that those two girls were there just for the sex. Doing it inside the temple would erase the ‘slut’ aspect of needing or desiring so much sex.

Jonas led Tam out through the main entrance of the goddess’ temple and started down the stone steps. Tam stopped. The crystal sun was shining brightly, as it always did. Morning started when you woke up.

“I thought we would eat first,” he said, wondering why they didn’t indulge themselves at the temple.

“Well, you said you wanted to apply at the university,” Jonas replied. “I’m taking you to the schoolmaster’s residence. Bard Geoffrey should be up and about, soon. The food is infinitely better there, anyway.”

Tam laughed agreeably, then followed his new friend down the sunlit street to the gated mansion a short distance away.

~~~~~

Elaine was coming so hard she that all she could do was lie on the cold marble floor and moan as her unknown lover treated her to an exquisite tongue-lashing. After several moments she passed out, unable to orgasm any longer.

‘That’s not fair! If you’d’ve fed me, I could have lasted a lot longer!’

Dreamwalking, Elaine watched her two morning lovers carry her to the offering table in the center of the room.

‘At least they didn’t leave me on the cold floor. I’ll have to reward them for that…’

Now that her attention was off sex, she decided to go see what Béla had been so ‘aggrieved’ about. She created an image of Béla’s quarters on the great ship, then she was there.

Elaine looked around. The room was empty. It smelled of sex; not Béla’s. It must be Beth’s musky scent.

‘Where are you?’ Elaine asked no one in particular.

She created an image of Béla and asked her the same question, then she was standing next to her two sisters in the arborium of the great ship.

‘This is amazing!’ Elaine thought, excitedly. ‘I’m in a forest! Where on the great ship are we?’

She looked around, trying to figure out where she was. What her siblings were doing was even more amazing than where they were. Beth was trying to string a bow, then she handed it to Béla. Béla looked at the bow in her hands, and it began to hum and shiver all by itself!

‘The wood is planing itself into a narrower version of itself. How is she doing that?’

Elaine saw that Beth was closely watching her sister work in her mind. She quietly melded her mind with theirs and watched Béla imaging little particles into the space outside the ship. The particles of wood that had been attached to the outer edge of where Béla’s mind was working simply blew off into the air.

‘So that’s what creates that powdery effect!’

Elaine realized that Béla could have worked much faster, but she was teaching Beth how to improve her teleportation abilities.

‘I didn’t even know Beth had teleportation abilities!’ Elaine thought as she continued to watch her two sisters interact, not making herself known.

Béla further demonstrated her teleportation abilities by making arrows from wood pieces she teleported from the growth around them, but she was drawing on Beth’s knowledge of bows and arrows and how they worked. Elaine chuckled to herself as Beth corrected her sister on how to feather an arrow. Then, surprised, she watched Béla teleport the bow right out of her sister’s hand.

Béla notched an arrow and said, ‘Let’s see if this thing works!’ then shot the arrow right into her sister’s stomach!

Grinning to herself, Elaine withdrew from the image of her two sisters. The two of them always mutilated each other savagely during their sex play, and it looked like they were beginning another session. Evidently, they had created the bow and arrows as sex toys for precisely that reason.

Elaine opened her eyes. There were still two revelers passed out on the floor, and the two sisters who had done such a wonderful job on her with their tongues, mouths and fingers were busy with each other, now.

She sighed as she watched the two girls, missing her own darling sister who had only been gone a day or so. But, surrounded by adoring worshipers, even unconscious or preoccupied ones, she felt less alone. After a few more minutes, the two sisters were either asleep or unconscious again, one lying on top of the other on the cold, marble floor.

Elaine closed her eyes and dream-walked into the dining hall. There was bread and finely carved cheese laid out for parishioners to partake, and pitchers of iced water and a bottle of wine.

‘Let’s see how this teleportation stuff works…’ Elaine thought to herself, anxious to try what she’d seen in her sisters’ minds.

She wrapped her mind around a piece of bread and pulled it into herself like she saw Béla do when she teleported the bow from Beth’s hand. Startled, she felt the bread physically materialize inside her chest, partially blocking one lung. Anxiously grabbing it again with her mind, she wrenched it out of her body, taking some of her body fluids and a chunk of lung tissue with it, creating a hole in her lung that quickly filled with blood.

She coughed up a mouthful of the red fluid before her lung started to heal. The bloody piece of bread splatted down on the floor beside the table, looking very unappetizing.

‘Well, so much for first efforts!’ Elaine thought disgustedly. She swallowed the blood she coughed up, not wanting to waste it.

She sat up, and instantly realized her mistake as she began leaking between her legs. She was on the table in the middle of the room with no towels in sight.

‘Somebody find me a towel!’ she anxiously radiated throughout the room, then she was holding one in her hand.

‘Where did this come from?’ Elaine inquired into the ether around her. There was, of course, no one there, and she realized she’d actually, accidentally teleported it. ‘Well! Maybe I was trying too hard the first time…’

She smiled to herself, enjoying her little victory, then remembered why she needed the towel as her juices began pooling around her rump.

Chapter 2 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“But I’m supposed to be taking over for Béla, I mean, the Goddess of the Land,” Elaine was saying to the Bard Geoffrey. “Shouldn’t I have some sort of title?”

“You have a title, Goddess,” Jeff explained. “It’s ‘Goddess’. If you want to be called something else, you’ll have to associate yourself with that object or concept. The only thing I can think of to associate you with is Temptation!”

Annoyed by where her questions had led them, Bard Geoffrey closed the book of historical references he’d been reading when the goddess had interrupted him to learn more about what duties were expected of her now that her sister goddess was no longer available. He watched the naked, golden-haired goddess as she considered what he said.

‘The Goddess of Temptation, huh?’ Elaine thought to herself. Somehow, it lacked a certain… dignity. She sighed, deciding to hold off on this matter until later. She needed a better title than that. “All right, you win. ‘Goddess’ will do, for now…”

She smiled at him. He was trying really hard to be annoyed with her right now, but she could plainly feel his attraction for her. That ‘want’ in his soul was what fueled his annoyance with her. As much as the Bard loved and worshiped the now absent Goddess of the Land, he lusted for her sister, Elaine, as well.

“What other duties are there?” she asked. “Do we eat together, or anything? Ceremonial dinners and stuff? Can I still have my own weekly services now that I’m a justice?”

She was being coy with him now. She’d lived in the manor with them for almost two years. She knew the routine.

“You will, I realize, do as you please,” Jeff replied, resigning himself to the fact that she was going to be the district goddess until such time as the Goddess of the Land saw fit to return to the land of the living. He was stuck with this temptress of a goddess until then.

“As far as administering justice,” he continued, “your reputation may cause some problems, but if you are as diligent as your predecessor in recognizing true causes and assigning appropriate sentences, any detractors to your reign will have no ground to stand on.

“You realize, of course,” he concluded, “that many people will not equate your incredible beauty and sexuality with intelligence and fairness in judgement. I know how smart you are and how well you can read others. I trust that the Goddess of the Land has trained you well in right-finding. It will be your words, your actions and your judgements that will create the light with which others see you.”

‘He thinks I’m smart?’ Elaine thought, confused, yet pleased. ‘I didn’t understand half of that! Is he complementing me or saying he expects me to fall on my ass?

‘He gets on that pulpit and lectures so that he can ignore how horny he is. When he does that I can’t tell if he means what he says or not! I hope I don’t have this much trouble in court…’

“So, okay then,” Elaine said, stalling, not sure what she should do or where she really stood with him, other than as a sexual object of his desire.

“Um, when do we hold court?” she asked, hoping he would say ‘sometime next week’. She was disappointed with his answer.

“Right after the noon meal,” he replied, smugly.

He turned his attention away, obviously dismissing her, and opened his book, thumbing through it to find where he had been reading earlier. After a moment, he looked up. She was gone.

‘I hope she wears something to court this afternoon,’ he thought, sighing with the relaxed relief the absence of her alluring, naked body provided him.

Jeff could relax, now that Elaine wasn’t present. Whenever she appeared in front of him, naked (and she was always naked), all he could think about was how badly he needed to merge his body with hers.

He read for awhile, not really paying attention to the text; reading simply helped him to think more clearly. He’d had a couple of visitors join him at his first meal, one of whom wished to apply to the university. This ‘Tam’ fellow wished to trade his knowledge of electrical engines for a variety of other subjects, some of which could only be considered hobbies, or personal interests.

Jeff suspected that Tamarind was more interested in teaching than he was in improving his own education, possibly attempting to trade his mechanical knowledge for an easier life than farming. Jeff hadn’t actually considered having professors in his university since he had the Praetor, which could mind-link directly with the students and educate them ‘en mass’ without ever having them crack open a book.

The main purpose of the university buildings was to house the students. There would be, of course, an assembly hall in each section, but only the first section was finished, so there was, currently, only one assembly hall, and it was being used for feeding the students. More construction would occur during the summer months, after the plowing and planting was finished and would continue until the Festival of Lights.

He decided to ask the Praetor what it thought of the situation. It always answered when he thought a question to it. He wondered what it did in its spare time. It answered him.

‘Images of the Praetor recording court proceedings from all thirty-two districts, formal occasions, such as weddings, funerals, transfers of property and other legal duties.’

‘Goodness!’ Jeff thought. ‘How will it have time to educate an entire generation of youths?’

Another image appeared in Jeff’s mind showing a pie chart of how much processing time the Praetor used to record all this data compared to its maximum input/output capabilities. The Praetor was operating at about five percent of its capacity. Jeff was impressed.

‘And there are three more Praetors?’

Jeff couldn’t imagine the total computing power of even one Praetor, let alone four of them. Although it could have been his imagination, he felt that the Praetor was somewhat smug about its superior mental capabilities.

‘If the Goddess Elaine gets into trouble while holding court,’ he decided to ask, ‘is there something that can be done to save face and maintain order and the respect of the populace?’

Although that wasn’t what he had planned to discuss with the Praetor, he was more interested in this topic, as Court was going to begin in less than two hours, assuming the goddess wasn’t scared off completely and didn’t show up at all.

‘I record the events of the court as they occur. I do not interfere with the judgements of the daughters of Sibilius. They are the ruling class of this domain. You were instrumental in creating the current class structure, so you are aware of its fragility.

‘Each of the justices is paired with a human who sits in judgement with them. As you have written in your tomes, both must agree on the judgement before it becomes a decision of the court. It is interesting to note that the greatest social error on the part of the justices was unanimously agreed upon, not only by the justices, themselves, but also by everyone who was present at the time.’

The Praetor was referring to the execution of the ‘Lady’ Sarah for her assassination attempt on the Goddess of the Land. That decision had nearly created a master-slave society with the goddesses as absolute rulers and everyone else as their slaves.

That situation had been defused by the Goddess of the Land, herself, and her sister goddess, Elaine, when they had produced the Writ of Stone, supposedly written by the Storm God, laying out the law in stone (granite, actually) as it applied to murder or assassination.

With the appearance of the Writ of Stone, the death penalty was revoked forever and was not a judgement that any justice, goddess or not, could use to condemn another individual, no matter what they’d done. The goddesses were not to be permitted lethal retaliation for any crime an individual might commit. Civil enslavement and loss of property was the worst one could expect in judgement.

He noticed that the Praetor had withdrawn from his mind, evidently satisfied that it had answered his question. The ‘Great Bard Geoffrey’ was equally responsible for any decisions that the goddess Elaine made as a justice. The thought made him less comfortable than he liked to be. Especially when lunch was only moments away.

The self-proclaimed ‘Golden Goddess’ joined him for lunch, having determined that that would be her new title as a justice. There was only one other blond goddess, and her hair was more rust-colored than golden, and that title wasn’t spoken for; Elaine had checked with the Praetor just to be sure.

“So that’s how you can announce me,” Elaine said, smugly.

“That says more about your sexuality than it does your ability to make valid judgements, Goddess,” Bard Geoffrey stated, quietly.

He didn’t really care what she called herself; he was simply relieved that she was wearing clothes. Her nudity always distressed his digestion. He wondered where she had gotten the modest white gown she wore. It looked vaguely familiar.

“It’s Béla’s,” Elaine volunteered. Jeff had been thinking so loud that Elaine couldn’t help but overhear. “I was looking through her stuff to see what she thought was respectable. What do you think of it?”

She smiled radiantly and straightened her shoulders. Jeff’s attention was immediately attracted to the part of the dress that the goddess Elaine filled out so much more than the Goddess of the Land.

“Is that all you think about?” Elaine asked, pretending to be annoyed with his distracted stare.

She knew she wasn’t fooling him into believing she was annoyed. He knew her too well. She loved the attention that men everywhere gave her. She blew him a kiss as forgiveness.

Lunch was a new creation by the chef; a cold-pressed, ground sausage baked with canned apples, burnt honey and cinnamon. It was light on the sausage and heavy on the cinnamon. Although Elaine didn’t care for meat, she thought the dish was delightful. Before she left for the temple with the Great Bard, she made arrangements with the chef to have that dish available at her next service.

‘It’s too bad they don’t use money here,’ Elaine thought. ‘I’d double his salary for creating dishes like that!’ She wondered what she could do to reward him, but his true love was his kitchen. Unlike most men, he actually didn’t care too much for sex. His great passion was cooking. ‘Maybe he would like a new pan…’

As the Justice and the Bard arrived at her sister’s temple (it’s mine, now, at least until Béla gets back, in a hundred years, or so…), the attendant greeted them at the entrance.

“This afternoon’s caseload is unusually light, Goddess,” he explained. “There are only three cases to be heard today.”

The Golden Goddess could see that the attendant was nervous. She resisted raiding his mind as he had fairly good control and wasn’t blasting his thoughts in all directions. Mind raiding weakens the individual’s ability to control his own thoughts and emotions.

At one time during Elaine’s training, her sister had explained that the basic difference between a sane mind and a criminal mind is that the criminal mind lacks the social responsibility to control his desires. What he sees, he wants; whether he needs it or not. He doesn’t recognize another’s ownership; only his own desire. The criminal has learned, through personal experience, that he can be punished for exercising his ‘rights’, so he becomes sly about when and where he can ‘correct’ his perceived imbalance of ownership.

In cases of theft, Béla taught Elaine to seek out images similar to that in an accused person’s mind and make them visible to that person in the light of his lack of social responsibility. It often caused complete propitiation in the accused, and a trustworthy promise to act more responsibly in the future. The tricky part was that if the former criminal were to actually behave in a more acceptable manner, it was required that he be held accountable for the damage he’d done. He would have to make restitution, either in the form of property or service, to the victim.

It was often necessary to ‘right-find’ for the victim, too. The victim often was too emotionally distraught to see how any judgement other than burying the criminal in quicksand up to his neck and then setting his head on fire could be beneficial to society.

Béla had demonstrated that it was sometimes necessary to dig out images in the victim’s mind of similar acts, sometimes something he did as a child in order for the victim to become agreeable to a more sociable solution.

‘No one is completely guiltless, darling, and often their guilt is what fuels their anger.’

This also prevented unwarranted cruelty committed in retribution against the former criminal by the victim in cases where personal service was required as restitution.

“You learned all that in less than two years?” Elaine had asked, astounded that Béla knew so much about the human mind.

“Well, I had a lot of help from the Praetor,” Béla confessed. “It doesn’t actually have emotions, at least, not like we do. But it has learned, over thousands of years of collecting data, how the minds of father’s people and the humans work. They are not too dissimilar.”

“Why hasn’t any of this been learned before?” Elaine wanted to know.

Béla shrugged. “Nobody asked?”

It was the nearest to the truth that she could understand. Nobody wanted to know. They were too busy punishing and killing each other.

The court attendant interrupted Elaine’s reminiscing as he began the afternoon session.

“The first case is of a man who is accused of damaging the property of Akbar Shiest,” he announced.

Jeff felt the Goddess Elaine mind-link with him, as was normal procedure. Her mind felt completely different than the Goddess of the Land’s.

He couldn’t quite define what the difference was, but a cold, calculating edge was missing; a ‘rightness’ that his goddess had been convinced of about herself that was completely missing in the goddess Elaine. In the part of her mind where his goddess could feel anger and a call to action, the goddess Elaine felt uncertainty and the desire to back away from confrontation. She was having a terrible time just sitting there, listening to the court attendant talk.

Jeff marveled at the difference between the Justice Elaine and the sexy goddess he had been mind-linked with in previous instances when she was being a ceremonial object of desire during her services. She hadn’t lacked confidence and willingness to act, then. She had no lack of certainty about her sexuality; only her judgement when it effected others.

‘You’re right! This shouldn’t make that much difference!’ Bard Jeffery heard in his mind. Immediately, he could feel the Golden Goddess relaxing, becoming more comfortable in perceiving her duties as a justice. ‘This is just another role, after all…’

In the first case, the two men were lifelong friends. The accused, Timothy Slazenger, was a neighboring farmer. He had broken Akbar’s tractor moving a rock. The tractor, it turned out, was over forty years old. Last year, Akbar had requested a replacement and, in fact, the request had been approved. The new tractor was currently being prepared at the Southern Depot storage facility for shipment.

The problem was that Akbar had plowing and planting to do and didn’t have a tractor, which he needed right now. His friend Timothy had his own tractor and had been proceeding with his own plowing and planting until he had been brought to court, just today.

“But, Akbar, if I had used my own tractor, then it would be broken, like yours is,” Timothy tried to reason with his friend. “But I wouldn’t have sued you, even though the rock was on your land.”

‘Well, that’s interesting,’ Elaine thought to her bard. She decided to dream-walk, taking Geoffrey along with her, to the storage facility at Southern.

‘Do you know where we’re going, Goddess?’ Jeff asked. He wasn’t used to being psychically kidnapped and dragged out of the middle of court proceedings.

‘Relax, we’ll only be gone a moment,’ the goddess replied.

Once at the Southern Depot, she made an image of a tractor, and was drawn to about ten of them. There were several being shipped off today and the rest were shipping tomorrow.

Jeff blinked as Elaine released his mind and he was back in the goddess’ temple, sitting in the audience chamber.

“Your tractor is being shipped tomorrow, at the latest,” the goddess informed the court. “You should have it in three days.”

Akbar was still annoyed. “But, goddess, that’s three more days that I can’t plant. My crops will be at least two weeks behind everyone else’s. The darkness comes at the same time for everyone.”

‘That’s an explanation?’ Elaine asked herself.

She reached out and touched Akbar’s mind. There was definitely something there that he didn’t want her to know. She felt Timothy’s mind. Timothy was upset about his old friend’s predicament, but didn’t know what to do about it. Akbar was too upset to discuss it with him, other than demanding that he give up his own tractor.

‘We were both drunk as skunks, you dumb bucket!’ Elaine heard in Timothy’s mind. She smiled, returning her attention to Akbar.

“I understand your problem,” the goddess said, sympathetically. “Tell me the events of the day when your friend broke your tractor.”

As Akbar tried to envision what to tell the goddess, she could see in his mind the entire series of events leading up to wrecking his tractor.

There was a celebration. Akbar had thrown a birthday party for his old friend, Timothy. There were at least fifty people there; neighbors and family members. The food and the barley beer flowed freely. There was barbecuing, games of horseshoe, ball tossing… Everyone was having a good time.

The two were lifelong friends basically because they had spent their entire lives competing against each other in everything. One had the prettiest wife, one had the most children, one had the biggest crop…

Timothy’s crop the year before had been half a silo larger than Akbar’s had. During the party, Akbar complained that, even though he had more land than Timothy, this big rock made it impossible to plow and plant in the most efficient manner.

‘That’s not true,’ the goddess informed her bard, who, mind-linked with his goddess, was following the thoughts of Akbar as his goddess read them. ‘They were both drunk at the time they were bragging at each other and he was trying to save face.’

The two friends had both hopped on Akbar’s old tractor and headed out across the field, running over both plowed and unplowed sections. The plow was still attached, but they were both too drunk to notice the damage they were causing.

After a few moments, they arrived where a large chunk of granite stuck up several feet out of the ground. Between the two of them, they decided they were going to pull it up. Somehow, they managed to unhook the plow. Then they both stood looking for several minutes at the long, wavering, freshly plowed, fifteen-foot wide furrow that marked their journey across Akbar’s fields.

“Yer too drunk to drive, you old bastard!” Timothy informed his besotted friend and adversary. “See? You can’t even drive in a straight line! You work the chains, I’ll drive!”

The Golden Goddess glared sharply at the Great Bard Geoffrey as he unsuccessfully suppressed a giggle as poor Akbar stood before them, trying to explain what happened. They weren’t actually listening to what he was saying. They were looking in his mind at what really happened as he remembered.

Akbar stopped talking for a moment, confused about why the Great Bard had giggled. He hadn’t said anything funny…

“Please, continue,” the Golden Goddess requested.

Akbar began talking again. “And he pushed me right off the seat of me own tractor…”

Akbar allowed himself to be good-naturedly pulled down to the ground. Together, they pulled the chains out, unraveling them from the hoist built into the back end of the tractor. After securing the chains to the rock as best as they could, Timothy hopped up onto the tractor and began applying power.

The chain broke almost immediately and the tractor lurched forward, toppling poor, drunk Timothy out of his seat. As he fell, he tried to catch himself, grabbing the brake lever for the right wheel. It engaged the brake and the ancient tractor swerved sharply to the right, throwing its terrified occupant off the other side. Timothy tumbled to the ground next to Akbar, too drunk to be hurt by the fall.

The tractor continued its sharp turn, running itself up onto the plow and throwing a rod in the engine as the gears beneath the tractor jammed against the heavy steel frame of the plow it was attempting to climb over.

‘Isn’t there supposed to be some sort of protective covering over the gears?’ Elaine asked in Akbar’s mind.

Akbar stopped talking, realizing that the goddess knew the truth of the matter. The heavy metal plate had been gone for years. He’d traded it as scrap metal for parts to repair the hoist in his barn.

“He’s still responsible!” Akbar declared angrily at the goddess. “He was driving!”

The goddess looked down from her seat at him, radiating indignation at his outburst. Akbar bowed his head in apology.

“What are you willing to do to help your friend,” the Golden Goddess inquired of the accused.

“Goddess, I’m almost finished with my plowing,” Timothy informed her. “By the time Akbar’s tractor arrives, I’ll be completely free. I’d be willing to plow half of Akbar’s unprepared fields, cutting in half the amount of time he needs to ready his land.”

He bowed his head in respect. Elaine could feel that he was hiding something, too. She looked into his mind to see what it was. It was really too simple.

‘My fields are almost ready for planting, now. By the time Akbar’s tractor arrives, I’ll have three-quarters my fields seeded. That will give me a silo and a half more grain than he could possibly produce this year!’

“You are both good, hard-working men,” the goddess declared. “There is no criminal intent here to defraud or betray. However, the both of you are unusually competitive with each other. I have many sisters and know how fierce that competition can become.

“Neither of you are at fault for wrecking the tractor,” she continued. Timothy smiled slightly at her declaration. Akbar frowned. “However, you,” she indicated Timothy, “share responsibility for the accident, as your friend would not have tried to remove the stone by himself. If you had not been there, he would still have a tractor. He is also responsible, as he invited you to his home and supplied the beer.

“Because of the wrecked tractor,” the goddess concluded, “you, Akbar, are going to lose your not-so-friendly competition with your life-long friend and adversary regarding your crop tallies. Is this correct?”

She waited patiently for Akbar to respond.

Akbar half-rose, nodded, seemingly defeated, not looking either justice in the eye, then sat back down. He dearly loved a good competition, but losing was always hard on him, forcing him to try more fiercely the following year. This setback with the tractor just wasn’t fair. How can you fight if you know for certain that you can’t win?

The Golden Goddess looked at the accused. “In light of the private competition between the two of you, your offer to ‘help’ your neighbor is lacking in fair-mindedness. Once your crops are planted, you magnanimously offer your aid in plowing and planting his. In addition to allowing a neighbor and fellow farmer to fall dangerously behind schedule, the amount of food production for the district is being threatened.

“How can you put this competition between the two of you on a more even basis so that you both have good yields?” she asked politely.

She plainly expected Timothy to come up with a solution acceptable to both he and Akbar. She waited for his answer.

Honestly wanting to appease the beautiful goddess sitting judgement on him, Timothy thought for a moment.

“Goddess, um, Justices, there is a man I know in Independence who has a tractor he isn’t using. He’s an elderly gent, and retired. He’s letting his fields lie fallow this year, as it’s the fourth year in his cycle. It’s only a half-day journey each way. If I go get the tractor, Akbar can use mine to catch up on his plowing, then by the time I get back, he’ll be two days up from where he would be if he had to wait for a new tractor, and I’ll have only lost one day. Would that be fair enough, yer honors?”

“Is that fair to you, Mister, um…” Bard Geoffrey hesitated. ‘Shiest!’ he heard Elaine hiss in his mind. “Mister Shiest?” he added hastily.

“Um, that would be fine, sir,” Akbar acknowledged. “But I’ll still be another day behind…”

Timothy interrupted, “I could plow your fields with you for half a day after we have both tractors…”

Akbar’s face lit up. They had come to an agreement. They closed the case quickly with an arbiter assigned to ensure that what they had agreed upon actually occurred.

‘Well! Big Sis was right!’ Elaine said in Jeff’s mind. ‘They usually do settle themselves once all the dirty little secrets are out in the open…’

In the next case, a woman wanted to leave the man she had married because he was a total slob and made her do all the housework. Elaine mind-linked with them both to enable them to see each other’s point of view. After that, the divorce was granted. This was a classic case from Béla’s teachings regarding guilt being the main cause of anger. The woman had seen during the mind-link that the man she thought loved her was a user and already had a replacement wife lined up, although he constantly accused her of searching for another man behind his back.

She was granted the property he had gained by marrying her and one year’s menial service from her now ex-husband. There was to be no social interaction between them except for services rendered. At the end of his year of service, he was to return to court for evaluation regarding his future contribution to society.

‘Some people take longer to learn acceptable behavior than others do. And, by then, I may be proficient enough to deal with him!’

The last case was really unusual. An arbiter was being accused of eating his charge out of house and home. It turned out to be true. The arbiter’s judgement was a year of service to his former charge. Property was to be exchanged to cover two years of supporting the former arbiter. The accused was also ordered to attend the University for a half day of every other day to learn a trade so that he could be self-supporting in the future.

“That was fun!” the Golden Goddess declared cheerfully as she dragged her unwilling bard back to her favorite playroom in the temple.

She heard some men come in through the temple doors. The temple attendant had left with the defendant to discharge his duties regarding the judgements of the last case, so Elaine and Jeff were currently the only ones left in the building.

“Don’t go way! I’ll be right back!” She passionately kissed him, lingering only long enough to radiate enough lust through his body so that he would be incapable of movement for several minutes.

As she reentered the audience chamber, she recognized Tam and Jonas from this morning. She smiled at them.

“I owe you much,” she informed them, “for not leaving me to freeze on the cold floor this morning, gentle beings. How may I be of service to you?”

Tam stopped in his tracks, entranced by the golden-haired goddess who filled out that stunning white gown so well. Jonas stopped, as well. It was the first time he’d ever seen his goddess dressed. It was hard for him to believe that she could be more beautiful now than she was when she was naked and sitting on top of him. He had never thought of her as ‘elegant’, but she truly was, dressed in that gown, even though she was barefoot.

Elaine smiled, easily hearing their thoughts. She loved the effect she had on men. She loved how they treated her when she had that effect on them even more.

She turned to lead them to her private audience chambers where Jeff awaited, then stopped and turned back toward them.

“Have you eaten?” she inquired. She wasn’t about to be stuck with two men who couldn’t perform because they were hungry. Each shook his head, ‘No’.

“Well, in that case,” Elaine informed them, “we should go to the manor. I need to return my sister’s dress, anyway. I don’t want it damaged.”

The three of them exited the temple. Halfway down the stone steps, Elaine remembered her bard.

“Oh, my! You two go on ahead!” she exclaimed. “Someone will feed you! I’ll join you as soon as I can, I promise!”

She ran back inside, meeting Jeff as he walked unsteadily into the audience chamber, still half-mesmerized and wondering where she’d gone.

“Change of plans,” she hurriedly told him. “You’re off the hook! Happy, now?”

She led him out the door. They walked arm in arm down the steps and back to the manor.

Chapter 3 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

‘Béla’s on the Bridge. It’s her watch’ Beth said.

Elaine sat on the bed where she’d dream-walked to Beth and Béla’s quarters on the great ship.

‘I just wanted to see how you were getting on with her,’ Elaine mumbled.

She’d stayed away for almost a month, not wanting to ‘aggrieve’ her sister any more than she already had.

‘Hey!’ Beth said angrily, picking up the image Elaine was trying to avoid projecting. ‘Béla loves you! Even you are an annoying pest! She’s always wondering about you, but you haven’t visited, or anything! I’m sorry if what I said hurt your tender feelings, but that’s no excuse for you to stay away…’

‘Well, she hasn’t visited me either,’ Elaine complained, still feeling sorry for herself, ‘and she left me holding court for her while she’s on this great adventure of hers. She could have checked to see how I was doing, at least!’

‘She hasn’t visited you because every time she goes to sleep, she dream-walks to Earth to visit her horny boyfriend,’ Beth explained. ‘She likes fucking him more than she likes fucking either one of us! She really doesn’t think of much else except him!’

Elaine thought Beth seemed a little jealous. ‘You shouldn’t complain! I don’t have her at all. At least you get to sleep in the same bed with her!’

‘Well, it was your idea that I come on this trip to keep her company,’ Beth replied, not really wanting to argue with her ditsy blond sister any more. ‘Not that I’m complaining, mind you…’

Beth thought about the unbelievable antics that she and Béla had both been up to and decided she was actually quite delighted to be on this long trip to nowhere. The fun was definitely in the travel, not the destination.

‘Don’t broadcast that stuff at me!’ Elaine complained. ‘I already know how you two mutilate each other when you have what you call sex! And those ‘toys’ you use on each other? They kill people with those things!’

Acting disgusted, Elaine vanquished the image of her sisters’ quarters in her mind, ending her dream-walk on the great ship.

Elaine lay on the soft bed with her eyes closed against the light from the crystal sun streaming through the window. The Southern sun had begun shining almost two weeks ago, joining its northern companion, both radiating warmth into the hollow, vibrantly alive shell of New Eden. The long summer had begun.

Elaine had it all worked out in her mind: The crystal sun embedded into the shell of the world near Northern Depot was the ‘morning’ sun. Approximately three months later, the crystal sun embedded near Southern Depot would begin to glow, and within a few hours of its awakening would be shining brightly. When both suns were shining, that was ‘noon-time’ or mid-day. When the ‘Northern’ sun passed into the night side of New Eden and faded, leaving the ‘Southern’ sun shining halfway up the other side of the sky, it was ‘afternoon’.

Everyone already understood that when both crystal suns faded into darkness as the little artificial moon traveled through the shadow of the great god, Jupiter, it was ‘night’; for five long, cold, lonely months, it was night.

Elaine realized that it had been completely immature to lose her temper with Beth. Picking on Beth’s sexual inclinations was completely unfair. She liked vampirically sinking her teeth into Béla during their lovemaking as much as Beth did. The only thing Beth had done wrong was to be where Elaine had hoped to find Béla. When she’d joyfully awakened the sleeping form on the bed-table and turned her over, it had been the wrong sister.

‘Just to touch her one more time,’ Elaine lamented, feeling sorry for herself, again. ‘She’s going to be gone for so long…’

She felt a tear escape and disappear into the pillow her eyelashes brushed against when she blinked. She hated feeling sorry for herself even more than she felt sorry for herself, which added to her misery.

She also felt angry and restless. Lying on the bed, Elaine suddenly realized that the last time she’d flown was when she had abandoned her departing sister at Southern Depot early in the spring, at least a month ago. She struggled, trying to sit up in the soft, over-cushioned bed. Her right arm was asleep and being laid on by one of her worshipers. She opened her eyes and blinked, focusing on the sleeping face inches from her own.

‘What did he say his name was? Coranth or something…’

He was lying on her right arm and had his right arm draped over her. Elaine rolled backward to escape his limp, sticky embrace (and his snoring, morning breath) and was stopped by another warm, sleeping lump.

‘Who’s that?’

Forcing her body to continue rolling, she rolled halfway over onto the heavy male form behind her and managed to turn her head enough to see who it was. She didn’t recognize him at all.

‘I wonder if he was any good in bed…’ then remembered that he was.

Between the two of them, they had fucked her into unconsciousness several hours earlier. She smiled as she remembered. As she remembered, that certain part of her body began to buzz again.

‘Sex! My drug of choice! Yum!’

‘No!’ Elaine chastised herself determinedly. ‘I want to fly! Besides, these two lumps won’t be any good until they’re fed…’

She managed to free her arm from underneath… ‘Coriander! That’s what his name is! I remember now. These two are students at the university.’

She finally managed to climb, slide and roll over to the outside of the bed. She shoved ‘Rod (lovely name, very appropriate, darling, can I have you over again, sometime?)’ into the middle of the bed. As he stopped rolling, ‘Cory, he said to call him,’ wrapped his arm around his friend and fellow student and sighed pleasantly in his sleep.

‘They’re going to be really embarrassed when they wake up in each other’s arms,’ she giggled to herself. If they got upset, she would handle it. ‘A good fuck will handle just about any kind of upset a male can have…’

Halfway across the room, Elaine realized she was starving. She decided to eat before she went flying. Even though she made that decision, her body continued its travel toward the window, not the door.

‘If I don’t fly now, I’ll be too busy later!’

She knew that, as the district goddess, as soon as someone saw her, someone would need something to be done about whatever, ‘right now!’

Escaping, she pulled open the doublewide windows leading out to her balcony. The warm, summer air swirled in, exchanging itself with the stale, musky bedroom air surrounding her. The summer zephyr joyfully lifted her, literally, and sailed her out the window.

Elaine found herself looking down into the rear courtyard of the manor at the brightly lit green grass as it drifted by beneath her. Taking a deep breath and luxuriating in the radiant warmth of the crystal sun on her bare skin, she stretched her wings further out and began beating powerfully against the warm summer air, gaining altitude rapidly.

Gliding high over the Lorraine Station, she looked down at the quiet little community. There was a small band playing in the Town Park. Strains of music reached her ears, too faint to recognize, but pleasant to listen to. There were perhaps forty or fifty people sitting and lying in the grass far below, listening and enjoying the summer warmth.

The summer months, after the plowing and planting, were an idyllic time. People got up when they felt like it and went to bed when they got tired. Their internal clocks were only set twice a year – when it got dark, and when it got light.

Out beyond the town, there were waving fields of green wheat, corn and barley, stubby little tops of potato plants and onions, and plants with little round dots of red, orange and yellow on them. Elaine knew there were little green dots, too, but she couldn’t distinguish them from this height.

‘Lots of fresh, yummy peppers and tomatoes to slice and dice, and spread on hot bread with vinegar or cook with quartered potatoes and delightful little onions… Shut up, stomach! I’m trying to fly, here! Besides, it’s a least another month before any of it’s ripe enough to eat!’

Elaine wished there were some way to get a bushel of those lovely tomatoes to where her sister was. Béla loved the squishy red things. Elaine knew what ship rations were like. The great ship had left early in the spring. That meant they were eating last year’s fruit and vegetables that had spent the winter stored aboard ship in electronic stasis fields.

Her father’s people didn’t seem to put any importance on the physical pleasures of living, such as the pleasure of eating food that tasted fresh and wonderful, or the marvelous sensations of sex. She wondered about that for a moment, then forgot what she’d been thinking about.

‘I’m starved!’ Elaine realized for the third time in less than an hour. ‘I wonder what ‘chef’ has for breakfast!’

She closed her eyes, folded her wings behind her and began to plummet down through the sweet-smelling air. The warm wind began to whistle in her ears; the flesh of her legs, belly and breasts began to ripple as it whipped by. Her golden hair flared out behind her like a wild flame dancing in the wind.

After almost a half-minute of falling, she pulled her wings forward against the pressure of the wind and bent backward sharply to pull out of her exhilarating dive. Opening her eyes, she found she had guessed correctly that she was at treetop level. She dodged sharply to the left as a tiny branch carved a red line down her torso from the outside edge of her right breast down to her right hip. She laughed excitedly at the adrenaline rush the near miss gave her. She banked hard to the right, just missing the steeple of her own temple.

‘Whoa! Flying into a tree’s not so bad, but that wall would’ve hurt!’

She pulled her legs forward, causing her body to angle upward, stalling out until she lost enough speed so she could safely land, and did so in a perfect two point landing right in front of the goddess’ manor. She only needed her feet on the ground for an instant to regain her internal stability, then she lifted off again and flew around to her balcony window. By the time her bare feet touched the banister, the shallow tear in her side from that tree branch had completely healed, despite the fact that her skin was stretched tight to form her wings.

As she entered her bedroom, breathing heavily from her morning exercise, she saw that her two bedmates had departed.

‘Probably down in the dining hall eating my breakfast!

‘Shut up, stomach! There’s enough for everybody!’

She walked into her water room and turned the knob on the wall, gasping as a brisk spray of tepid water rinsed the morning’s sweat and last night’s sex down the drain in the floor. In a few seconds, hot water arrived from the roof heater, making her shower less exhilarating, but much more comfortable.

Elaine turned off the water and stepped out, wrapping herself in a large towel. She went over to the bed and rolled across it to the other side – her own personal method of ‘quick-dry’; a phrase she’d run across in Béla’s mind. Unwrapping the towel from around her body, she vigorously dried her hair for a few seconds, tapped the towel once under each armpit, touched it lightly between her legs, then tossed it over the mirrored dresser to air out.

Quickly picking out a pink sarong from her closet ‘just to please stodgy old Jeff,’ she dropped it over her head as she trotted down the stairs to the dining hall two levels down.

‘Life is good,’ she thought, smiling to herself. Her month-long funk was finally dissipating. ‘Okay, stomach, it’s your turn now…’

Chapter 4 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Golden Goddess stood gazing at the Southern Sun from her third-story balcony. The hedge wall surrounding the rear courtyard of the goddess’ manor, four meters high and a meter thick, was visible as a wide dark slash painted across the bottom halves of the first two sections of the new university.

The crystal sun was dim enough now to look directly at it. She still needed to squint her eyes, but the radiant light had dimmed enough for her to be able to see the tiny black specks that made up the huge warehouses at Southern Depot.

The urge to fly in the light one last time was overwhelming. This was her first Festival without her older sister commanding the spotlight. Elaine was the district goddess now, and the spotlight was on her, along with all the duties that went with her exalted position. And right now, she was feeling stifled and controlled.

‘I’ve got to get out of here!’ Elaine thought frantically.

She shrugged the gown off her shoulders, unmindful that her ladies’ attendant had spent the last thirty minutes fitting her for the festival that would begin shortly. She wriggled out of the garment and stepped naked out onto the banister. Even though the southern sun was going out, the air was still warm and comfortable on her bare skin. Raising her arms high over her head, she fell forward into the emptiness beyond. Forming her wings, she glided out over the rear courtyard barely clearing the hedge wall, her breasts and belly brushing the topmost leaves.

Closing her eyes, she beat her wings powerfully, reaching for altitude. She wanted to be completely surrounded by the fast-approaching darkness and watch the thousands of lights appear from all directions as New Eden passed into Jupiter’s shadow.

Elaine flew upward for several minutes with her eyes closed. When she couldn’t detect any redness through her eyelids indicating that the southern sun still shined, she opened her eyes and gazed at the surreal world surrounding her.

‘Wow! This is incredible! Even real stars aren’t this beautiful!’ Elaine realized as she gazed around her, awed by her surroundings.

From every direction – above, below and to all sides of her, lights were appearing by the thousands. The community below her was the closest and the brightest, but she could make out at least five other towns making themselves visible in the night. Elaine’s gaze followed the horizon up out of sight before her. Towns and communities further away showed up as dim clusters, their lights too distant to distinguish individually.

Balancing on her wings and back, she arched back until she was upside down, her gaze taking in the sky above her. She could feel the wind against her back telling her she was losing altitude. She spread her legs wide and forced her wingspan wider giving her more buoyancy, carefully balancing herself on her wings so that she could gaze upward into the center of the little hollow moon.

Elaine felt she was resting on a cushion of air surrounded by a magical world of lights as the inner surface of New Eden became almost magically illuminated. The area of sky directly above her was still dark; the atmosphere too thick for the tiny man-made lights that lit the towns and farms on the far side of this fragile world to penetrate.

After a moment, Elaine’s mental altimeter alerted her of the approaching surface. She folded one wing in front of her, flipping over so that her wingspan supported her once again. This time she’d pulled out of her dive considerably higher than treetop level so she could see more of the delicate, sparkling lights below.

‘Where am I? I don’t recognize this part of town… It’s beautiful, though. I wonder who lives down there.’

Gaining altitude again, she flew in a wide circle, tiny crystalline lights glowing from every direction creating a delightful, delicate fairyland around her. Recognizing the spotlighted spire of her temple (another one of Béla’s ideas), Elaine banked and flew toward it. After a moment, she recognized the goddess’ manor off to the right.

‘Poor Jeff’s going to be furious with me for neglecting my ‘duties’. Oh, well, fun time’s over. It’s time to attend the guests.’

Sighing with reluctance, she dropped down to her balcony where the Bard Geoffrey and her ladies’ attendant were pacing impatiently.

Bard Geoffrey’s had just stepped out onto the balcony for the third time when his golden goddess dropped down directly in front of him, causing him to jump backward, almost falling as his feet caught in the thick carpet at the edge of the double window.

Laughing, Elaine quickly reached forward, grabbing him by his lapels as he flailed his arms wildly and pulled him back upright.

“Goddess! There are a hundred people here already! Why aren’t you ready?” Bard Geoffrey complained excitedly.

He was flustered. He had been assured she was ready, but when he arrived at her room to escort her down to their guests, she not only wasn’t in her gown, but her gown was there and the goddess wasn’t!

‘At least, now, she’s here, but she’s in her normal state! Naked, as usual!’ Jeff thought, furious and flustered at the delay. “You’re not ready at all!”

Huffing and muttering under his breath, he and Elaine’s attendant quickly garbed her in the gown she had stepped out of a half-hour earlier. Her flight had ruined her hair, however, and there was nothing to be done for it.

“Sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I just wanted to get out one more time!” Elaine whined, apologetically.

She radiated her loneliness with her apology, knowing it would hit him in his gut. A pretty female in distress was not someone he could stay upset with.

Her attendant, not-at-all taken aback by the wild, unruly waves of her goddess’ golden hair, had it respectably stacked on her head in only a moment with what seemed to be no effort at all. Elaine could feel the pride her attendant took in her work, and made sure to admire it in the mirror the instant she was finished. As she gazed at the finished product, she didn’t need to exaggerate.

“Wow! This looks great!” the goddess exclaimed, smiling at her attendant. She added what her servant was already thinking, “I don’t deserve you! But without you, I’d be lost; especially on formal occasions like this!”

Before the surprised ladies’ attendant could avoid it, Elaine planted a grateful kiss on her cheek.

“Thank you!” the goddess exclaimed.

She turned back to the mirror for one final check on her appearance, arching her back around, trying to see how her gown looked from the rear.

Jeff watched his golden goddess preen in the huge mirror behind the entrance, remembering the Goddess of the Land standing in that exact same spot two years before, preparing for her very first Festival of Lights. Suddenly, he felt sad, missing her.

‘I miss her, too,’ Jeff heard in his mind.

He looked away from the mirror and toward the goddess standing before him. She was his goddess, now. In his own way, having worked with her, mind-linked almost daily for the last eight months as a justice, he had come to love her. He knew who she was and how she thought, and she knew the same about him.

Elaine, listening to his thoughts, smiled gently at him and offered her arm to him for the grand entrance. Together, the elegant pair paraded down the stairs to meet their guests.

The Festival of Lights had begun.

Chapter 5 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

2082 a.d. – Meanwhile, back on Earth

Béla had been gone for almost three hours. It was beginning to get light. Frank was frying ham in the kitchen. Tanya and Beth, both asleep, were still wrapped around each other in Frank and Tanya’s big bed. The smell of ham began to permeate the apartment, waking both girls.

Tanya stretched luxuriously, her big breasts pointing at the ceiling. She was proud that her one hundred and eighteen-year-old body was still perky and smooth-skinned like her daughter and granddaughter, Alicia and Jackie. On the rare occasion when the three of them were together, in fact, everyone thought they were sisters.

Tanya’s stretching awakened Beth, who grinned slyly and rolled over to graze her teeth against the side of Tanya’s left breast. As she pinched the soft, tender flesh with her teeth, Tanya jumped and cried out. Then they were wrestling on the bed, giggling like teenagers. Tanya easily pinned the slender little vampire beneath her. They kissed playfully, then more seriously.

Then Beth broke her kiss and moaned, “Oh, god! My head is killing me!”

She held her hands up against the sides of her head near the back, right behind her ears.

“I’ve got some aspirin,” Tanya offered.

Beth nodded, not knowing what ‘aspirin’ was, but realizing that Tanya was offering help. The chalky white pills tasted terrible as she chewed them, but the headache seemed to recede.

An hour later, it was much worse. Tanya massaged the back of Beth’s head and neck, trying to relieve the pain. It didn’t seem to help. Frank offered Beth a bottle of bourbon, which she downed half of before Frank and Tanya could take it away from her. Although they had seen Béla drink alcohol (a hundred years earlier), neither was certain how a liter of hundred and eighty proof booze would affect Beth’s unearthly metabolism.

Happily, she simply passed out and slept most of the day, snoring noisily. While she dozed, Frank told his wife about the anatomical differences he’d noticed about the vampire species while tending Béla’s gunshot wounds on the morning of that fateful day when they thought they’d lost her forever.

“You remember that rogue agent – the one that emptied his gun into her at the cabin?”

Tanya nodded, remembering the horrifying scene only too well. She had handled herself well, as a field agent was expected to, but it still had sickened her to see her friend and lover gut-shot like that.

“I only found two of the bullets,” Frank continued, “and they were pitted and half dissolved, like they were being digested inside her or something. Béla had an… organ? Well, something… that pretty much ran the entire length of her torso. Where it was ruptured, some kind of acid-like substance was seeping out. It looked like very dark blood, but it burned when I touched it. It blistered the skin on my hands while I was trying to get those bullets out of her.

“I’ve thought about that a lot since then,” Frank said. “I was digging around inside her enough to realize just how human she isn’t. Her body’s actually a much simpler organism than a normal human. She doesn’t seem to have a stomach or a ‘proper’ digestive system at all.

“There was another big, dark thing that ran up the left side of her body – that might have been her liver. It was connected directly to her bladder; no kidneys – not that I could see, anyway. Her intestines just seemed to start all by themselves down about where she was shot. They didn’t seem to be attached to any plumbing at the top end at all. I have no idea how they work. It’s like everything in her body would just drain into them.

“I just shoved everything back into her and taped her shut,” he concluded. “She seemed to heal just fine, but then she didn’t live long enough to actually know if what I did helped or not. I would have loved to dissect her, though, just to see how her digestive system worked.”

“I doubt she would have appreciated that,” Tanya suggested, smiling at the thought of her having a choice between being dissected or not.

Her mood darkened as she remembered what had actually happened to Béla in the early morning hours when they had finally believed they’d won the day.

‘Given a choice, I think she’d rather have been dissected…’

“Anyway, getting to the point,” Frank said, “it seems that whatever she eats or drinks goes directly into this central ‘acid-bath’ or whatever it is and gets dissolved on the spot. If anything penetrates into her body, it gets dissolved, too. She could probably eat or drink anything and her body would treat it like food – Metal, poison, glass, plastic…”

“Booze?” Tanya suggested. “What if it gets spread around through her outer bloodstream? How would that affect her metabolism, or her brain? Does she even have a brain, do you think? I mean, like ours? The space girls seem to be able to do so much more with their minds than we can…”

They both looked at their naked, snoring space girl sprawled across Frank and Tanya’s bed. After Tanya turned her on her side, Beth slept much more quietly. Frank shrugged.

“I’ve never seen Béla drink that much,” Frank volunteered. “I have no idea how that much alcohol will affect Beth, or her brain.”

When Beth woke up, it was late afternoon. Her head still hurt, but she was too drunk to care. They discovered that alcohol affected the little vampire much more dramatically than it did humans. Frank reasoned that that was why Béla had never drunk more than a sip or two at any one time. She didn’t need to.

“Heh!” Beth cried out, crawling to the edge of the bed. “The wroom ish sphinning wound and wound.”

She closed her eyes against the dizziness, but that just made it worse. She pursed her lips.

“You’re not going to throw up, are you?” Tanya asked uncertainly.

She didn’t feel like cleaning up any kind of a mess, especially after what her husband had told her about Beth’s acidic anatomy. She had no idea what might come up and out of the little lesbian vampire. Beth hadn’t eaten anything since she’d arrived the night before, but Tanya was still worried.

“I have never thrown up!” Beth stated indignantly. “But, I came closh wunch… once. Darling shister shucked an apple… two apples out of me. She made me empty inside. Hurt bad. Almost turned me inside out…”

“Inside out! Inside out!” Beth chanted gleefully, rolling over and over on the bed. “Sheh almost turned me Whoooo!”

Beth rolled off the far end of the bed, landing with a thump on the floor.

“Ow!” she muttered, slowly working into a position where she could see upward.

Beth looked up at her hosts from her topsy-turvy position on the floor with an incredibly sad expression on her face.

“I’m drunk, aren’t I?” she asked them, moving her head carefully as she gazed from one to the other of her hosts.

Tanya nodded and thought, ‘I hope Béla’s having more fun than we are,’ trying not to feel bad about how the babysitting job was going.

Beth, overhearing the thought, tried to dream-walk and visit her sister to find out how much fun she was having. She was too drunk to move outside her body as an independent spirit.

“Now I might throw up,” Beth complained, sprawling on the floor. “I feel like I’m turned sideways…”

Tanya reached down and helped her naked friend up. As Beth leaned against Tanya’s ample bosom, she closed her teeth on Tanya’s neck, biting deep into her artery.

Tanya’s terrified scream came out as a gurgling sound as her throat was crushed between Beth’s sharp teeth. Frank rushed in, furiously yanking Beth’s head away from his wife’s neck and threw Beth down onto the bed. Beth stared up at them, blood foaming around her mouth. The upper half of her body was spattered with flecks of Tanya’s blood.

Frank turned his frantic attention to his wounded wife. Tanya was pressing her hand against her neck; bright red blood pulsing through her fingers and down her arm. Staggering back, she stared at Beth, wild-eyed and terrified, not understanding why she would do such an awful thing. Frank forced Tanya to sit down, realizing that she had to keep her head up so that more blood wouldn’t escape. But she had to sit down or else she would faint and fall down.

As he applied pressure to the wound, forcing the skin back together so that he could bandage it and stifle the flow of blood long enough to get her to a hospital, he noticed that the wound was healing by itself.

‘Of course!’ Frank realized, suddenly relieved. ‘She has Béla’s blood in her! She can heal herself! God, how can I forget something like that, especially with as many times as she’s been shot during some dumb field operation!’

Even though he was relieved that Tanya wasn’t seriously injured, Frank was still angry at Beth for causing his wife unnecessary pain and frightening her (and him) like that. But, he was willing to wait and find out what Tanya wanted to do about the attack before he threw the little vampire bitch out on the street, naked.

After several moments of excited breathing, with the both of them messing with the wound on her neck, Tanya was recovering from the shock of the attack.

“Well, that was exciting,” Tanya said, being sarcastic and somewhat angry about the whole thing. “What the hell did you think you were doing, biting me like that?”

“I’m sorry. I forgot,” pleaded Beth, frightened and uncertain of her sudden change in status that her rash action had caused her.

She radiated as much humbleness and sorrow as she could. Tanya could feel in her mind that what Beth had done was a natural extension of sexual contact with her.

‘Beth and her sisters bite each other, as a human would caress his or her lover. It is how members of her species show affection to each other. Your offer to use your weapon on Beth during a previous visit in her dream state led her to believe that you feel great affection toward her.’

As soon as Beth had tasted Tanya’s human blood, she realized she’d made a horrible mistake. By then, it was too late. At least, Beth was no longer drunk. She was scared sober. But her head still hurt.

Tanya looked at Frank. He was smoldering with anger at their vampiric houseguest. Tanya touched his cheek and smiled at him.

“My man to the rescue,” she said quietly. “I love you, you know.”

She kissed him. When she ended the tender kiss and looked at him, he seemed more quiescent.

“It really wasn’t her fault,” Tanya started to explain.

“But…” Frank uttered.

Tanya held up her fingers to his face, lovingly quieting his outburst.

“It’s how vampires make love,” Tanya said. “I believe her when she says she forgot. I suppose I should be flattered that she bit me. It’s their way of showing how much they love you.”

“They tear your throat out to show they love you?” Frank asked, not as willing as his wife to forgive what Beth had done.

“So it would seem,” Tanya replied. She tenderly touched the healing wound on her throat. “They probably heal faster than I do, though.”

Frank thought about it for a moment. His anger toward Beth dissipated as he remembered how many times Béla had put her sharp little teeth on his neck, seeming to remember only at the last instant not to bite down. He remembered that Béla had bitten everyone she loved at least once. He had simply misunderstood why she’d done it, believing it to be some sort of control thing she used on others so she would feel safer in their presence.

‘So much for old vampire folklore,’ Frank decided.

Those old movies from the previous century were evidently the source of several misconstrued ideas he had about Béla and, by association, her sister, Beth.

Beth watched her hosts, intently listening to their thoughts as they decided what to do with her. She looked over at the silent Praetor setting on the floor in the corner of the bedroom, wondering what it thought about all this. It’s function, as she understood it, was to record events and, when necessary, use the information it stored to make judgements. She imagined what judgement it might make about her, right now.

She couldn’t feel its presence in her mind. Frank and Tanya’s emotional states were much easier to feel, even through the noise in her head.

‘I think it’s getting better,’ Beth thought to herself. ‘At least, it’s getting quieter…’

She watched as Tanya forgave Beth her transgression against their human customs, wondering how Tanya got so smart about her and her sister’s vampiric habits, not realizing that the Praetor was guiding Tanya into a better understanding of the two special hybrids it was brought here to protect. Frank, having been soothed to merely simmering by his adoring wife, left the room.

Tanya got up and sat down next to Beth on the bed. She reached up and caressed Beth’s cheek. Beth fought her desire to pull away from the gentle contact and permitted Tanya to touch her. At her touch, Tanya’s mind was much stronger and easier to read. Beth suspected that Tanya was having a similar epiphany. A moment later, she was proven correct.

“I can feel you,” Tanya said, “inside my head. I know you weren’t trying to hurt me. Béla bit me once, but she wasn’t quite that enthusiastic about it. Frank and I talked about it once; we decided it was her way of making it safe for her to be around us humans. I guess we were wrong about that…”

Beth was so relieved that she embraced the beautiful, but bloodied blonde tightly. She was very careful not to put her mouth on any part of Tanya’s neck or shoulders while they hugged. Tanya kissed Beth, sucking on her neck and creating a little hickey.

“This is how we do it,” Tanya explained about the hickey. “That’s about the maximum amount of damage that we permit ourselves to do to each other in the name of love.”

Beth wasn’t about to try that. She wouldn’t be able to resist nibbling on Tanya’s neck without indulging in a few lusty swallows of the sweet, red, life-giving nectar that pulsed so warm and tempting just below the surface of her soft, tender flesh.

After a while, the smell of food cooking permeated the room, interrupting the sixty-nine they had going. Beth raised her head from between her hirsute lover’s legs.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, her voice tremulous with sexual tension. “Why did you stop? I was just about to come again.”

“Don’t you smell that?” Tanya asked. She radiated her hunger into Beth’s mind, not even realizing she was doing it.

“Oh!” Beth exclaimed. “Is that food? I’m starving!”

They both climbed out of bed and went searching for the source of the delightful aroma, exuding their own aroma of sex as they entered the kitchen where Frank was messing with a skillet. He turned around, noticing first off that his wife’s neck was completely healed and the blood had been cleaned off. (Beth had carefully licked it off, demonstrating to her loving companion that she could be trusted not to bite, now.)

‘She’s housebroken…’

There were a dozen little sausage patties stacked on a wire rack. A clear, sweet-smelling liquid dripped down into a container below. Beth dipped her finger into the grease-disposal container and licked the hot residue off her finger as Frank and Tanya stared at her, their faces contorted in disbelief.

“What?” Beth asked, not understanding.

‘This is earth-food, isn’t it?’ she broadcast into their minds.

“It tastes good,” she said to them. “But it would probably be better spread on bread with some cheese to munch…”

She looked at her hosts, realizing that she’d discovered something else she didn’t understand. She was eating refuse. Frustrated and embarrassed, she vanished, rudely teleporting herself elsewhere from right in front of them.

They found her in the bedroom sitting naked and cross-legged on the floor holding the Praetor in her lap, staring at it. There were tears running down her face.

“But it’s so hard,” they heard Beth say almost inaudibly, her voice cracking with emotion.

Tanya looked at her husband. “She’s talking to that thing like it’s alive, or something.”

Tanya believed the strange device that Béla had brought with her was more than just the communication device she’d told them it was. Tanya had spent some time during the day watching over Beth as her guest slept off her alcohol overdose. The entire time, Tanya felt as though the strange device was monitoring her and somehow paying close attention to every move she made.

“Maybe it is,” Frank suggested. “Or, maybe there’s someone on the other end, talking back to her in her head.”

He didn’t know, either. Here, in his own home, he was experiencing entirely too many things that he didn’t understand. And he’d always felt that one’s own home should always be under control – safe from surprises.

“I give up,” Frank said, disgusted. “I’m exhausted. I’ll use the spare bed. You can pick whatever bed you want, but I think she probably needs you more than I do right now.”

He kissed Tanya on the cheek and left the room. Tanya smiled at his back as he left, realizing that he’d just granted a big concession to their guest by suggesting that Tanya take care of her rather than him.

‘He really is the sweetest guy I know. I’m glad Béla helped him make up his mind about me all those years ago…’ Tanya thought, glowing with pride in her chosen companion.

Beth looked up, seeming surprised to see Tanya standing in the doorway.

‘Béla’s a lot harder to sneak up on than you are,’ Tanya thought.

Surprisingly, she got an answer to the comment she’d thought to herself.

‘Béla is senior to the rest of us. We’re designed in her image, but individually independent of each other. If you need a… reference… to compare us to each other, she’s like the queen of the hive and we’re the princesses. She is expected to be better. She was granted the freedom to be better.’

Tanya didn’t understand that last part, but she got the part about Béla being senior to the rest of her sisters. Her oldest daughter, Alicia, was the senior in her own family, often overruling her own mother on matters that were important to her.

Beth watched as Tanya formed the image of her own extended family, trying to grasp it in comparison to Beth and Béla’s loosely knit sisterhood. Tanya’s daughter, Alicia, only thirty years younger than herself, had extended the power of the Tabors across several fortunes in her ambitious reach for power.

Alicia, despite her sometimes cruelly efficient methods, never failed to share her power or her wealth with her parents or her own children. Tanya was certain that Alicia loved them all fiercely, and would protect them at any cost to herself. Tanya had, only the year before, discovered the great lengths to which Alicia had extended herself so that her children would be as immortal as possible.

‘She would make a good ruler, your daughter would,’ Tanya heard inside her head. ‘You and your offspring are part of the reason that Béla has returned to you. You and your family are as invaluable to us as Béla, herself.’

“So how do you know all this?” Tanya asked Beth as Beth set the strange device aside and rose to stand on the far side of the dimly lit bedroom.

“This ancient relic,” Beth stated solemnly, indicating the Praetor, “is, among other things, a vast library of information. In addition, I’ve spent the last fourteen months sequestered alone with my sister while we traveled here, learning how to use my mind and my special abilities to defend myself.”

She didn’t feel the need to explain to Tanya just how intoxicatingly delightful much of her ‘training’ had been.

“Why?” Tanya wanted to know. “Is there going to be a war, or something?”

The look in Beth’s face explained more than Tanya wanted to know.

“How bad is it going to be?” Tanya whispered, fearful of the answer, knowing that she didn’t want to know.

When Beth told her, she was certain that she hadn’t wanted to know.

“It will be the end of everything,” Beth said, simply, her voice flat and emotionless. She sat on the bed, her face looking numb.

“How long do we have?” Tanya said, not wanting to know, but needing the answer. To her relief, Beth shrugged.

“I don’t know,” Beth said, sitting down on the bed. “Twenty years? A hundred? Who can be certain about these things?”

‘The final cataclysm will occur in four hundred and twenty-eight years, plus or minus eleven years.’

“How do you know that?” Tanya asked. Beth looked perplexed. “Plus or minus eleven years?”

“What are you talking about?” Beth wanted to know. “What about eleven years?”

“You said something was going to happen in four hundred and twenty-eight years!” Tanya insisted.

Beth simply stared at her, openmouthed, and shook her head in denial. Then, suddenly realizing what was happening; she swung around, centering her attention on the unmoving Praetor setting on the floor next to the wall.

‘Are you talking to us?’ Beth shouted in her mind loud enough for Tanya to hear. ‘Talk to both of us! Don’t leave me out!’

“What?” Tanya asked, startled by Beth’s revelation. “That thing can talk?”

Then she realized that it had talked to her earlier, explaining the sexual habits of Beth and her kind, smoothing over the social faux paux that Beth had committed. It had probably been adding bits of information to their mental conversation all along, helping them to understand each other better.

‘I was right!’ Tanya realized. ‘That thing was watching me!’

‘As you command, Princess Beth,’ Tanya heard in the same ‘voice’ that had spoken earlier.

‘It sounds like I’m thinking to myself,’ Tanya exclaimed in her mind. ‘It sounds just like a mechanical version of me!’

“It sounds like that to everyone it speaks to,” Beth explained, looking back at her bewildered friend as Tanya sank slowly down to sit on the bed across from Beth.

“Wow!” Tanya exclaimed aloud. “That would be one hell of a propaganda device!”

“Propaganda?” Beth asked.

‘Damn! Here’s something else I don’t understand!’ she thought, frustrated once again.

“Mind control!” Tanya explained, still stunned that this thing had that kind of power. “That thing could control entire populations if there were enough of them spread around the continent.”

“Why would you want to do that?” Beth asked, perplexed.

‘You really are na?, aren’t you?’ Tanya thought, looking at her surprisingly innocent houseguest sitting naked on her bed.

Beth’s suddenly hurt look caused Tanya to wish she could take back the thought and vanquish it completely.

‘I told you this wouldn’t work!’ Beth radiated to the Praetor.

‘Be at peace, Child,’ the Praetor replied. ‘This human is your friend and has your well being foremost in her mind.’

Tanya could hear the ‘conversation’ in her mind even though Beth and the thing on the floor were supposedly ‘talking’ only to each other. Then she remembered that Beth had instructed it to ‘talk’ to both of them whenever it spoke. Strangely mind-linked to both the ‘thing’ on the floor and to Beth, Tanya could see images of an impossibly inside-out world where the ground covered the sky and people flew from place to place like honeybees collecting nectar.

‘Only the sisters of the Goddess fly,’ something explained in her mind.

When her attention returned to the now-quiet bedroom, Beth was asleep. Sprawled across the bed, she looked incredibly young and innocent. Tanya leaned down and kissed her hair, a strange longing filling her soul.

‘It is well to love the Princess,’ Tanya heard in her mind, ‘for she is the cherished protector of the Goddess. But do not become too attached to her. Her purpose is to protect. The chances of both the Princess and the Goddess surviving the coming conflict are slim.’

‘What Goddess? What conflict?’ Tanya shouted angrily in her mind. She was upset. This soulless thing on the floor was telling her that this beautiful, fragile young girl might die fighting in some stupid, unknown war.

The Goddess… image of Béla, winged, flying high in the air, facing off against an army of human soldiers, tanks, aircraft flying overhead. Energy weapons fill the air around her with sizzling death. Beside her, the Princess Beth, also winged, using the incredible power of her mind to make certain no weapon discharges or projectiles threatened Béla, putting her sister’s safety above even her own protection. Behind them both, a small group of ‘chosen’ huddled in a reinforced underground bunker as the walls around them shook from the artillery pounding the hills protecting them.

Tanya recognized herself, Frank and others of her family among those huddled few the Goddess and her sister fought so fiercely to protect.

‘Why is this happening?’ Tanya screamed in her mind.

Tears of terror and grief ran down her face. Her world was being destroyed; everyone she loved was being threatened with annihilation.

‘Humankind is dying,’ she heard in her mind. ‘Each year more die and fewer are born. The colored lights in your night sky announce the coming demise of your species and your world. The Seeker predicts the conflict you witnessed. She sent the Princess Beth to insure there would be survivors. The Princess Beth is the deciding factor determining whether or not beings from your world survive the coming cataclysm. Her presence in the coming conflict will determine your species survival, even more than the Goddess herself, as it is Beth’s destiny to protect the Goddess and to insure victory.

‘Her destiny? You mean, with her death?’ Tanya exclaimed indignantly. ‘Who is this ‘Seeker’ that commands the life and death of so many?’

Image of a young, blonde girl, barely twenty.

‘That’s Elaine, Béla’s sister!’ Tanya realized, recognizing her. ‘How is it that she commands such enormous power over the others?’

Image of Tanya mind-linking with Elaine. Tanya falls backward through space and time – thousands of years into Elaine’s deep memories; earlier memories of an earlier life, unknown even to Elaine. The Seeker – a coveted position of power among the bridge crew of a great spaceship fleeing from an unknown menace. The Seeker, becoming aware of events that would transpire thousands of years in the future.

‘In my time!’ Tanya realized. She continued watching.

The Seeker casting about desperately for an answer projecting backward through time from herself in the future, frantic to find an answer to save her beloved… Captain? her sister, Béla… to herself in the present.

‘Thousands of years ago, to me,’ Tanya thought, awed at what she was being permitted to witness.

A solution wrenched from the universal plasma and sent back to the future, impossibly coordinated with the mind of the captain of the great ship in that far-distant future to insure that the solution would be implemented.

The image faded. Tanya sat, stunned. The captain’s mind had seemed intimately familiar.

‘It was Béla!’ Tanya realized. ‘In a tall, fragile, alien body, she had been the captain of that spaceship! Why didn’t she ever mention that? It’s incredible!’

Tanya, excited beyond measure, rose up from the bed.

‘I’ve got to tell Frank!’

Seconds later, she was sound asleep, her head resting against Beth’s torso. It had been necessary for the Praetor to place those images in the earthling Tanya’s mind for future reference, but when she awoke again, she wouldn’t remember them until she needed to. Tanya was the matriarch of her clan. She and her daughter, Alicia, would also become vital players in the coming conflict.

With both females put to sleep, now, the Praetor checked the premises again, as it had every hour since it’s arrival. The little communication devices strategically placed throughout the dwelling were still inactive. Several ‘reboot’ commands had been sent to them from an unknown source, but the Praetor successfully thwarted each attempt to use the little devices to spy on those under its protection.

Chapter 6 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Falling through space and time… gazing out at the stars… water flowing over my body, warmth pushing up into me, making me come…

Tanya opened her eyes, her long lashes brushing against a soft, dark nipple. While she slept, she had snuggled her head up against Beth’s ribcage.

The pleasant, lapping warmth continued, miles away, down between her legs. Her torso twitched as she came, waking her up further. She sighed contentedly and looked down the length of her body, recognizing Frank’s head in her favorite position – between her legs. She reached down and tousled his hair.

“Thank you, sweetie,” she told him. “That felt wonderful.”

Frank raised his head from his worshipful position and climbed up off his knees and onto the bed next to his partially disrobed wife.

“You guys looked like you fucked each other silly, so I thought I’d wake you to see if you’d had enough.”

“Um, I never have enough,” Tanya replied dreamily.

She stretched over to kiss him and discovered his face wet with her juices. She rubbed her cheeks against his, smearing her girl cum over both their faces, then kissed him passionately on his slippery, wet mouth.

‘Yum! Very tasty! May I have more, please?’ Tanya thought to herself.

A quiet sigh from the sleeping beauty beside her brought her mind reluctantly back down to the bed.

“What time is it?” Tanya asked dreamily. She wasn’t looking forward to another day of Beth’s strange headaches.

‘Why do they happen only during the day?’ she wondered.

“Around three, maybe three thirty,” Frank replied, smiling at his disheveled wife. “Did you two have fun?”

“I… I don’t remember,” Tanya said, uncertainly. “I think we just fell asleep. But I had the weirdest dream – we were flying, or something. I can’t remember.”

“Flying?” Frank asked, lightly interested. “That sounds like fun.”

“It was a nightmare, really, with fighting and explosions,” Tanya replied. “I was terrified. But there was something important that I needed to tell you… I just can’t remember it.”

“Well, if it was important,” Frank intoned almost mechanically, “it’ll come back to you.”

He leaned back on the bed, betraying his aroused state. Tanya smiled and moved over to kiss it.

“Your turn, hum?” she asked.

Without waiting for a reply, she engulfed his entire dick into her warm, wet mouth and began moving her head up and down, fucking herself in the mouth with his warm, filling cock.

‘You smell like soap. Did you just take a bath? Why do I think you should be able to hear my thoughts?’ Tanya thought.

To help him along, and because she didn’t want to get horny again, Tanya moved one hand up and began caressing his balls. After another moment, she pushed her hand up further underneath him and began messaging his rectum with the knuckles on the back of her hand. Frank lasted another fifteen seconds. Then, moaning quietly, spurted his thick, salty load down her throat.

Almost choking on the expected load of cum, Tanya swallowed what she could get down her throat and sat up, expelling his shrinking dick and licking her lips.

‘That rectum trick always gets him!’

Then she leaned forward and brushed her lips against his, breathing heavily into his mouth.

“Thank you for the snack,” she said in a sultry voice, breathing her cum-scented breath into his face.

Frank licked her lips once with his tongue, then kissed her passionately.

“I thought you might be hungry,” he replied, smiling.

Tanya thought he was simply referring to what he’d just fed her (typical male), but then he reached down beside the bed and produced a plateful of tepid sausage pieces. They’d been left in the kitchen hours ago and forgotten.

Tanya was on her second piece when her vampiric charge began to wake up.

“Good morning, buttercup,” Tanya said in a singsong voice. “Did you sleep well?”

Beth sat up, supporting her slight, naked frame on one arm and looked around, frowning.

“It’s night,” she informed them.

Then she spotted the sausages. She looked at Frank, wondering if they were for her or just them. Frank broke the empasse by offering her one. Beth took it in her hand and looked at it, then watched as Tanya ate one. Mimicking her blond host, Beth put it into her mouth and chewed. Then she laughed.

“This is good!” Beth said, opening her mouth and losing half her food. “I usually don’t like cooked food. What is it?”

“Sausage,” Frank replied.

‘Ground up, spicy pig meat. It’s delicious! Have another?’ Frank thought.

“Thank you. I will,” Beth replied to his unspoken invitation.

She picked up another of the dainty morsels and bit it in half, still holding half of it in her hand. She intended to enjoy this one much more than the first one she’d eaten.

‘These are made to eat slowly; slowly and lovingly, tiny bite by tiny bite…’ she realized.

She bit the half she still held in her hand in half again, looking at Tanya with lust in her eyes. She couldn’t wait to smear her sausage-greased fingers over Tanya’s big, soft, squishy breasts.

“Not me,” Tanya protested, sliding off the bed. “I was just finished off. I’m not ready for more, yet. You can either do Frank, or we can just talk.”

“Do Frank?” Beth asked, confused by Tanya’s unexpected rejection. “He’s not ready – I can smell him.”

“Well, then,” Tanya said, “I guess we can just talk. What happened to you earlier? You were saying something to that piece of metal on the floor, then you just… conked out!”

“That?” Beth indicated the Praetor. “It’s called a Praetor. It collects data and determines judgements about… things. I… keep my… personal thoughts in there and it talks to me, guides me…”

“Like a talking diary!” Tanya exclaimed. “How cute! Where can I get one?”

“There are only four…” Beth said, not sure this knowledge was safe to give away, even to friends and companions, “and it’s not really a diary, if I understand you correctly. It’s more complicated than that.”

They talked for the next three hours. Beth told them about New Eden, surprising herself that she actually missed it, now that she couldn’t get there anymore.

“The landscape curves upward, because we live on the inside of the surface. You can see almost all the way around the world! When we first arrived, Béla fell off the ship all the way to the ground, hundreds of… miles(?)… below. She landed in a thunderstorm. That storm stopped her fall and saved her from going ‘squish’ when she hit. It almost ripped her wings off, though.

“Some guy saw her fall out of the sky and wrote a ballad about it, calling her a ‘goddess’. There was a plague, and she healed everybody there. The rest of us… me and my sisters, I mean, did the rest of the planet. Now, we’re all worshiped as sexy, supernatural deities and we pretty much rule the place.”

“So this hollow world of yours, it orbits around Jupiter disguised as one of its moons?” Tanya asked.

“How did you know that?” Beth asked, surprised and certain that she hadn’t mentioned where her little world was.

“Your sister, Elaine, told me,” Tanya explained.

“When did you meet Elaine?” Beth asked, half laughing in disbelief, astonished that her blond sister might already be known to them.

“In a dream,” Tanya replied, “a few years ago. Béla was teaching her how to travel in her sleep and they got separated somehow. Elaine stumbled into my head looking for Béla.”

“I’ll bet I know where she was,” Beth said, smiling wickedly.

“You’d be right!” Tanya replied, grinning back. “And that’s where we found her – wrapped around you-know-who!”

They both giggled. ‘Big Sis can be so predictable!’

“Oh, fuck!” Beth cried. “Not again!”

She curled up in a ball on the bed, holding her head and wailing in intense agony. Frustrated and angry, but not knowing what to be angry about, Tanya looked helplessly at Frank.

“Oh, fuck!” Tanya said, echoing her little charge’s lament. “Not again!”

“I’ll get the bourbon,” Frank called out, sliding off the bed.

They doused poor Beth down, forcing it down her throat until she passed out.

“Are we going to go through this every day?” Tanya asked helplessly. “I don’t think poisoning her daily with whiskey is any kind of solution. Do you? This is bound to have some unpleasant long-range consequences…”

“Christ! I don’t know,” Frank replied, frustrated. “Anyway, she’s going to be out for hours. We haven’t been out for days. Let’s go somewhere! Maybe we’ll figure something out…”

They both quickly dressed and fled the apartment and their strange, otherworldly problem.

“Walk or ride?” Frank offered.

If they walked, there were several coffeehouses within a half-mile radius where they could (and often did) get a pleasant, simple breakfast and socialize with the hired help. If they continued on down to the parking deck, there was no limit to where they could go; most likely a specialty gourmet breakfast house in any one of several major cities less than a half-hour away by flitter. In addition, if they wanted, they could drop by and visit Jake if they took the flitter.

“Walk,” Tanya decided. She wanted to be close by in case other problems developed with their (more and more burdensome) charge.

Five minutes after they left, a key-card activated and overrode the VR system protecting the apartment complex where they lived. A moment later, the same key-card admitted two men in casual dress into Frank and Tanya’s apartment.

“Whoa, baby!” Denny said, spying the slender, naked little vampire passed out on the bed. “Will you look at that! Sweet!”

He sniffed the air, then actually walked over and shook her by the shoulder.

“Hee-Hee!” he exclaimed gleefully. “She is passed out drunker’n a skunk!”

“What’re you doing, man?” Carl said, startled as Denny stripped off his jeans.

“What’d’ya think I’m doin’?” Denny replied in a loud, conspiratory whisper. “I’m gonna fuck her! I’m not gonna pass on a sweet piece like this!”

“What about the bugs?” Carl asked, motioning desperately for Denny to come away from the potentially dangerous, but delightfully naked broad on the bed.

If she woke up, they would probably have to kill her to keep her quiet. He didn’t like killing girls, especially when they were young and pretty like this one.

Denny was already pulling on the naked girl’s legs, positioning her for the coup de’ grace.

My specialty!

“Ohhh! God!” he cried as he thrust his hard dick up between her legs, forcing his way into her tender cunt. “She feels great, man! Get over here! You can do her next!”

Carl watched her breasts and head rock up and down on the bed as Denny repeatedly rammed his cock into her comatose body. The girl looked sweet and innocent, limply bouncing on the bed like that. Disgusted, Carl turned and went into the kitchen. He was replacing the third burnt-out bug when he heard Denny cry out.

“Oh, shit! I’m coming!”

‘Did I hear another voice talking at the same time?’

Carl heard a thump on the floor. He continued working, hoping to whatever gods there were that (1) the girl was still alive, and, (2) she didn’t wake up and start screaming bloody murder.

He finished replacing the bugs in the kitchen and living room, then went back into the bedroom, wondering why Denny hadn’t come out to help.

‘Maybe he’s doing the bugs in the bedroom or the spare bedroom.

‘Nope! The girl’s still passed out on the bed – no blood, nothing sticking out of her. At least, Denny didn’t finish her off.’

Sometimes, when Denny came, he liked to increase the sensation of his orgasm by gutting the girl he was fucking with his knife so that he could feel her cunt convulse around his cock.

He didn’t see Denny anywhere. He checked in the spare bedroom. The bugs hadn’t been replaced there, either. He went back into the bedroom and stumbled over Denny. He was lying on the floor. His eyes were open and his pecker was still hard. He was stiff as a board.

“Hey, man!” Carl said, his voice shaking. “C’mon, man! Wake up! Yer scarin’ me, here!”

‘Holy Christ! He’s dead as a nail!’ Denny realized when he bent down to shake Carl.

Shaken, Carl backed against the wall and nervously pulled out his personal communicator. He pressed a button on it and held it up to his ear.

“We’re on site, man!” Carl spoke into the little box nervously. “Denny just pulled a crapper on me!

“No, man! He just dropped dead!

“I mean it! He is lyin’ right here on the floor! Cold, stone dead!”

‘Stone cold dead, you idiot!’ he thought anxiously to himself.

“All right,” he concluded his conversation. “I’ll finish up! You just get a clean-up crew over here!”

By the time he replaced the last six bugs, two men he didn’t know were carrying Denny out in a nondescript case. A third man was taking out a needle gun. He leaned over the unconscious girl on the bed.

“Aw, man!” Carl complained. “D’ya hav’ta do that?”

That sweet, young girl on the bed, already helplessly raped in her sleep, was about to die of a drug overdose.

The third man motioned with his head for Carl to get out! He stuck the barrel of the gun against the girl’s bare arm and pulled the trigger. Carl heard a hissing sound as powerful narcotics flooded into the sleeping girl’s bloodstream. He heard a soft moan of protest as she convulsed once, then her body relaxed completely. She would live less than minute, now. The drugs would fry her brain and her nervous system, and then her heart would stop.

‘At least, she never felt it…’ Carl thought as he left. ‘Man, there are times when I hate this job!’

He didn’t know the dead girl’s name, but he’d probably hear it on the news in the next day or so. He wondered if he would feel worse if it had been someone he knew.

‘Narcotics overdose’ had replaced ‘heart attack’ in the same way that Industrial Espionage had replaced the Mafia. Carl knew too many people who had died of an overdose of drugs.

‘How many of them were accidental?’ he wondered for the first time.

Chapter 7 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Frank and Tanya walked through the door into their apartment, just having returned from breakfast. Tanya peeked in at their comatose houseguest.

“Nope, she’s still out like a dead bulb,” Tanya said.

“Well, I’ve got work to do, so I’ll be back late this afternoon.” Frank said, kissing his wife goodbye. “Hopefully, she’ll just lie there the rest of the day. I’ll bring ‘Chinese’ home.”

“You hate Chinese food!” Tanya reminded him.

“Yeah, I know,” replied Frank, “but I love you, and you love Chinese…”

Frank knew she hadn’t had any Chinese carryout for at least two years.

‘For what you have to put up with, darling, you deserve a special treat!’ Tanya imagined she heard in her head.

After Frank left, Tanya went into the living room, leaving Beth to sleep off the overdose of alcohol they’d forced down her throat earlier that morning. Tanya had a lot of work to do, too. She sat down and opened up her work file. There were a lot of financial transactions awaiting her approval. There always were on Mondays.

‘I hate Mondays!’

It was dark in the apartment when Tanya finished. She closed up her work file and it folded away into the arm of the couch. She’d spent (well, allocated, but she liked to pretend she was splurging) almost a quarter of a million credits.

‘Frank would be so proud!’

She stood up and stretched, groaning as stiff muscles that hadn’t moved for hours were forced into motion, reaching for the ceiling.

‘Wow! It’s dark already. Must be overcast…’

“Lights, please,” Tanya said to the wall.

The room became brighter as pleasant, indirect lighting came on around the edges of the ceiling.

It was only half past five, so Tanya decided to work on her stories.

“Console,” she told the wall, and waited for the console on the couch to make its appearance. “Access Girls with Guns.”

She sat down and touched the monitor screen, bringing up her story and began reading.

“Jodie heard the shots and jumped up. Drawing her 45, she ran toward the saloon door and burst through into the street. Another shot rang out, and Jodie turned toward the sound. At the same time she felt the ‘whoosh’ go by and realized that she had nearly been shot!

“She ducked down, realizing how exposed her position was and dropped off the boardwalk and onto her stomach in the dusty street. Raising her head, she could see Barbanne, dressed in a black leather vest, loosies, a bright red bikini bottom, leather boots and nothing else. Her gun belt was tightly fastened around her narrow waist and her long-barreled forty-five was aimed right at her.

Jodie didn’t even have time to blink as she saw the black hole of Barbanne’s gun light up. Something wet splashed on her face and her right breast hurt like someone just kicked her, there. She looked down at her wound. The bullet had splashed right through the top of her breast, squashed against the dusty street, and punched right through the bottom.

Whimpering in shock, Jodie raised up and looked down the dusty, and now bloody, front of her body. With an anguished cry, she saw the furrow that the bullet had carved down the front of her ribs before burying itself in her soft belly.

This was a serious wound, and Jodie knew she would die if she didn’t get it treated, very soon! Casting around with her eyes, she found herself completely unprotected, and Barbanne was much closer, just standing in the middle of the street and watching Jodie squirm in the dirt.”

Tanya stopped reading and said, “Begin recording: Jodie staggered to her feet, blood running down her front making a sticky lake of dark red against her nearly transparent white blouse period.

“Paragraph. Barbanne laughed and said comma quote, Are you ready to die comma deputy question mark. Crap. End record.”

“Edit. Word. Die. D, I, E. End edit. Edit. Word. Deputy. Capitalize. End edit. Edit. Word. Crap. Delete.”

Tanya sighed. Each time she accessed this site, she checked to see if the sound bite program was working any better. It never was, although the Site Master continuously promised an updated version ‘any day now.’

Sitting up, Tanya requested a keyboard. A virtual display appeared on the monitor – the lower half being the keyboard while the upper half displayed what was typed.

She began typing: “You’re evil, Barbanne,” Jodie gasped, wincing at the pain of her wound. “Someone needs to stop you.”

“And that someone is you?” Barbanne asked, a wicked smile cracking her face.

Laughing, Barbanne raised her gun and pulled the trigger again. A loud crack assaulted Jodie’s ears and she felt the kick of the bullet in the center of her stomach, right in her bellybutton. She could feel the blood flowing, soaking her jeans as well as filling her up, inside.

Gasping in pure agony, Jodie raised her own gun and fired, point blank at Barbanne’s gorgeous body. The bullet smacked into Barbanne’s belly in that sweet, soft spot just above her bikini line. Barbanne staggered back, a look of pure shock on her face.

“You… You shot me!” Barbanne whimpered. “You really shot me!”

She dropped to her knees, gazing down at the bleeding hole in her belly. Then, with a snarl of pure rage, she emptied her gun into…”

The wall clock chimed six o’clock and Tanya looked up from her typing.

‘I’d better check on Beth,’ she decided. ‘She’s been awfully quiet all day…’

She finished typing: “into Jodie’s belly, a snarl of pure rage on her face. Jodie fell backwards off her knees, crying in agony and curled up into a ball, still holding her gun.”

“Save,” Tanya commanded to the console. “Close file.”

Then she got up and entered the bedroom to look at her sleeping beauty. Beth was still out and evidently hadn’t even moved from that one position all day. Tanya sat down on the bed and stroked Beth’s hair.

“Hey, honey,” she said softly. “It’s nighttime. Time for all good little vampire’s to wake…”

Tanya jerked her hand away in sudden terror.

‘She’s cold! Why is she so cold?’

Tanya felt Beth’s arms and stomach. Her body was cold to the touch…

Room temperature cold!

‘She’s dead!

‘Ohmygod! We’ve killed her!’

Suppressing a shriek in her throat, Tanya leaned down and listened for a heartbeat, shaking with fear. Beth’s breasts were cold against her ear, as well. Tanya shuddered with loathing at having to touch her.

‘I’m resting my head against a dead alien body! Oh, please be alive!

‘I don’t hear anything! There! Was that a heartbeat? It was just my imagination…

‘There! I heard another one! Did I imagine that one, too? I don’t hear anything now…

Tanya sat up and stared down at the cold body on the bed, forcing herself to sit still and think. She was able to sit on the bed, but she wasn’t able to keep from trembling.

‘What’s happened to her? Is she hibernating? Is she even breathing?’

‘Breathing! Yes! I can check that!’

She knew that breathing could be very faint and difficult to detect in a comatose person. She tried to remember her military training from all those decades ago.

‘Find a mirror! That’s it! I remember! A piece of glass – anything shiny! A spoon!’

Tanya grabbed the spoon off the dresser and looked at it closely.

‘Is this shiny enough? Can I detect moisture from her breath with this?’

She polished it on her blouse, then held the spoon up under Beth’s nose and waited, trembling so hard she bounced the spoon off Beth’s soft lips several times.

‘This isn’t easy, you know! I’m trembling so hard I can’t even hold this!

‘There! I see it! She’s breathing! Thank God!’

For just an instant, the tiniest amount of vapor had appeared on the spoon. Beth’s body was cold, but she was alive.

‘I’ve got to warm her up!’

Frantically casting about the room, Tanya jumped up and opened the storage wall. She pulled out an old-style electric blanket and unfolded it as she backed across the room, dragging the bulk of the blanket on the floor. Reaching the bed, she wrapped Beth as tightly as she could, set the blanket to draw energy from the wall receptacle and turned it on ‘High Heat’.

The front door opened. Frank was home.

“Thank God!” Tanya cried anxiously as Frank stuck his head into the bedroom.

“What?” Frank asked, suddenly panicked. Tanya’s skin was almost white. Her flesh was cold and clammy when he touched her. “Wow! What happened to you? You look scared to death!”

“I… I thought she was…” Tanya said, her voice shaking. “I just walked in here and Beth was just lying there, not breathing. Her body was ice cold! I thought she was dead! But…”

“Is she all right?” Frank asked, breaking his hold on his wife and quickly walking over to the bed. He bent over Beth’s blanket-wrapped body and forced open her left eyelid. Her pupil was enormously dilated. There were purple crystals in her retina. “Wow! She’s really doped! What did you give her?”

“Nothing!” Tanya protested nervously. “I’ve been working all day! I checked her when you left and I checked her again five minutes ago! I just found her like that!”

“Alcohol doesn’t turn your eyes purple.” Frank informed her. “She’s been drugged.”

He listened to her heart for a moment and took her pulse.

‘She is really cold…’ he thought as he held Beth’s limp wrist.

“Well, she’s breathing, and you’re warming her up, so…” Frank shrugged, “she should be all right. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

Tanya wasn’t convinced. She was still worried sick. “She could still die! What would I tell Béla? ‘Hi. Do you remember your sister, the one that traveled through the depths of space for thousands of millions of miles safely with you, the one that you gave to us and said, ‘Take care of her?’ Well, we dumped a gallon of booze down her and she croaked!’ ” Tanya’s voice rose with hysteria as she spoke.

“Look. It’s okay,” Frank said, trying to sooth his wife’s frayed nerves. “She’s a vampire. They can survive anything! Well, almost. She’ll be fine. Just let her sleep!”

Tanya didn’t enjoy the Chinese take-out as much as Frank had hoped she would, but she ate everything that he didn’t.

It was almost midnight. Frank was lying on one side of the bed and Tanya was lying on the other. Beth was between them, still wrapped up in the electric blanket. Beth’s body was warm, now, and her heart was beating almost fifty beats a minute; her breathing slow, but regular.

They both jumped when Beth moaned almost inaudibly. She opened her eyes, and blinked, trying to focus on the face gazing so seriously at her from beneath disheveled piles of long, blonde hair.

‘Elaine? No, Tanya… I’m on Earth. It must be nighttime. I feel sick! Oh, shit! I’m gonna barf!’

Tanya saw that ‘upchuck’ look on Beth’s face and got out of the way!

‘I didn’t know I could move that fast!’ Tanya thought as Beth threw up all over where Tanya had been lying only a second before.

‘My god! That stinks! That’s not even bile! It’s something worse!’

The steaming, volatile mess the Beth vomited up dissolved the bedclothes and ate halfway through the mattress before it stopped.

“Jeez, Beth, do you ever get heartburn?” Frank asked, trying to treat this new disaster with some semblance of lightheartedness.

‘What is that stuff? It smells like…’

“She has been drugged!” Frank cried, suddenly recognizing the heavy narcotic aroma.

He’d smelled it before. “Do you remember Evan Caldwell?”

Tanya nodded, her eyes wide with fear.

“He smelled just like that!” Frank informed them. “He was throwing up all over the place, then he just keeled over dead!”

Tanya let the information sink in. She remembered only too well. She had been there, too. Someone had drugged her assistant Evan and he’d died. The autopsy had stated ‘Accidental Overdose’, but Evan wasn’t a user. She and Frank privately believed that Evan had been murdered, but after two years of following leads down blind alleys, they’d given up trying to find the killer.

Now, someone had tried to kill Beth, not knowing she was immune (well, more resistant, anyway) to the drugs they used.

Tanya sat down on the edge of what used to be their bed and reached out to caress her trembling, very sick little friend.

“Beth, darling,” she said, softly. “Was someone here while we were gone?”

‘I should never have left her alone, helpless like that!’

“I don’t… I don’t remember,” Beth whimpered, sounding very weak. “…something to drink? My mouth is burning…”

Frank quickly crossed the room and got a container of water. Beth weakly sat up, still trembling, and sipped it slowly. The glass melted where the bile on her blistered lips touched it. Tanya watched, fascinated, as the edge of the glass that touched Beth’s lips bubbled like a piece of cheap plastic.

‘I’ve never seen glass dissolve without being superheated… She must be immune to her own acid – her lips and mouth are blistered, but that much acid should have dissolved the whole front of her face!’

Tanya found a towel and sacrificed it to clean up Beth’s face.

After a moment, Beth took a deep breath, seeming to snap out of her weakened, sickly state. Swallowing several times, she tried to talk.

“I had this… weird… dream,” she told them. “There was somebody fucking me… A man… I got angry. He was squirting his stuff inside of me. I scooped it out of me… I mean, I pulled the icky stuff inside of me and pushed it out inside his head. He went stiff as a board and fell over backward. It was really weird! Everything was upside down!”

“It sounds like it!” Tanya said, patting her hands and agreeing with her.

‘I didn’t understand a word of that! Somebody raped her in her sleep? Pushed and pulled what?’

“Did you get a good look at him?” Frank asked. “Would you recognize him if you saw him again?” Beth looked over at him, frowning with the difficulty of thinking.

“Yes,” she finally replied. “I think I’d recognize him…”

‘I would recognize his mind…’ she thought at them.

“Well, then it’s settled,” Frank said enigmatically. “Beth, I want you to bite me.”

“What?” both girls said at once.

“Bite you?” Tanya asked. “What in the world for?”

“Now, listen, you two,” Frank insisted, “I learned this from Béla a long, long time ago. A little human blood will go a long way. It will make Beth well. Our blood helps them; their blood helps us. Beth needs our help.”

He presented his bare neck for Beth. Beth looked at Tanya.

Tanya shrugged.

‘If that’s what he wants, go ahead… But don’t take too much!’ Tanya thought, somehow knowing that Beth would hear and understand.

‘I promise!’ Beth thought back.

She leaned forward and gently, delicately bit down on Frank’s neck, lapping at the trickle of blood she drew with her blistered tongue.

“Oh, come on!” Frank insisted, disgusted with her wimpy attempt not to hurt him. Grabbing the sides of her head, he pressed her face against his neck.

“Bite my neck!” he ordered sternly.

‘Okay, here goes!’ Beth clamped her teeth into his neck and bit, hard.

She was rewarded with a really nice mouthful of tender, raw flesh from Frank’s neck and a warm rush of thick, sensuous blood filling her mouth and throat. She greedily swallowed several mouthfuls before she remembered that he might need some, too.

“Oh, that was good!” Beth sighed, reluctantly breaking away.

‘My mouth feels much better! Thank you!’

Frank looked a little white, now. He hadn’t quite trusted the little vampire to know when to quit. He would happily let Béla suck him dry if she needed to, but this wasn’t Béla. This girl was almost a stranger; a stranger who had nearly torn out his wife’s throat the day before. He held his hand against the tear in his flesh while he waited for it to heal.

“What was that for?” Tanya wanted to know.

“Well,” Frank began, a little unsteadily. “Whoever was ‘in here’ is now ‘out there’. We need to go ‘out there’ and find him.”

“How do you propose to do that?” Tanya asked flatly.

She often questioned his sometimes radical, sometimes ingenious, but always original ideas. That’s why she ran the financial end of the company.

“Well, first off, Beth has to be well enough to go outside,” Frank began. “That’s what the blood-letting was for. Then, we go bar-hopping!”

He grinned and flung his hands out to emphasize his brilliant idea!

“Actually, that is a good idea!” Tanya agreed. She was a party girl from way back, and they hadn’t partied for awhile.

Frank and Tanya danced excitedly around the room for a moment. Closely watching them both and backing away slowly, Beth scooted backward toward the far end of the ruined bed, away from them.

‘These people are too weird!’

“Wait! Wait! Wait!” Tanya exclaimed, stopping suddenly. “What’s Beth going to wear? All she has is that ‘kimono’ thing…”

“No problem!” insisted Frank. “That’ll be our first stop!”

“Are you sure you’re not giddy from the bloodletting?” Tanya asked, surprised by her husband’s sudden cheerfulness.

Ten minutes later, the three of them were out the door and into the back of the company limo. Twenty minutes later, Beth was standing in front of a mirror staring at her reflection. She balanced herself carefully on the strange platforms strapped to her feet, mind-linked with Tanya so that her muscles could learn from Tanya’s experience how to walk on these painfully odd, slippery little pieces of shiny plastic.

‘Does anyone care that my toes are being mashed into my ankles?’

‘No, if it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t look good!’

Image of cruel master with whip hobbling his mistress so she can’t run fast enough to get away…

Beth turned slightly, studying how the shimmering outfit clung to her. There were slashes, deliberate tears in the material, strategically placed to show off her figure without baring the essential goodies. The rest of it was skin-tight, metallically bright and almost transparent.

‘This thing is shorter than my sarong!’

“Well, do you like it?” Tanya asked hopefully.

‘If we were home right now, I’d tear that off you and eat you up until there was nothing left!’ Tanya thought excitedly as she watched Beth preen.

“I guess so,” Beth admitted, acting shy. “It looks, well…”

‘Wow! This looks really good! I didn’t know I was this… What did that guy call us the other night? Oh, yes! ‘Hot little hookers!’ I’m… hot! And my feet hurt!’

“Okay! We’re ready!” Frank announced, entering their dressing room.

He stopped and gaped at Beth, looking her up and down.

“Ooo, boy! I am sooo sorry that you’re a lesbian!” he exclaimed, almost drooling. “You sure will draw attention in that! It’s exactly what we need! We need everybody to look at you and you need to be on the lookout for anyone whose mind is upset that you’re still alive and kicking! Got it? That’s the plan!”

He herded the girls towards the door, back to the limo.

Chapter 8 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A heavyset, middle-aged man stood looking out over the Isar from his office window on the thirty-fifth floor of the Tomlin Tower, frustrated at the red tape that prevented him from leaving as soon as he’d liked. The reddening glow of the eastern horizon told him it was almost sunrise. He frowned as he mentally reviewed the recent events that had transpired.

The female from the hundred-year-old “X” file was actually alive and residing in the Pestova residence. Everything seemed normal there, including the fact that the two occupants didn’t seem to be getting along. The second female had disappeared. Well, not exactly…

Over the last day and a half, every surveillance device in the Tabor apartment had inexplicably failed. Taking advantage of the first opportunity to enter the vacant apartment, his operatives had discovered the second female still occupying the premises.

Since every bug was inoperative, there had been no way to ascertain that she was still there. One of his operatives mysteriously died on site, evidently right after discovering the mysterious second female’s presence. An autopsy failed to determine the cause of his death.

‘How is that even possible these days? Every death has a cause!’

The cleanup crew had disinfected the premises before they left, erasing the recorded data from the VR security system for that time period and neutralizing the witness, specifically the second ‘X’ file female, even though she seemed to be in an alcohol-induced comatose state.

‘Never mix alcohol and narcotics, little girl. It could kill you… Won’t people ever learn?’

There were three little things about all of this that nagged at his mind. With one of the two ‘X’ file females dead, his chances of discovering their technological secrets were alarmingly cut in half. Had he known she was still on the premises, he would never have authorized a team to go in.

Alive, the female had value to him. Dead, she was a liability that could possibly be traced back to him or Tomlin Security. Botched operations and dead innocents were frowned upon, usually with silenced nine-millimeter Glocks, using American ammunition.

The second thing was that the young Tabor kids currently leasing the apartment complex hadn’t reported their deceased houseguest to the authorities.

‘Is that mysterious second female dead or isn’t she? Maybe they’re worried about being fingered for illegal narcotics abuse… or maybe, she isn’t even human, and they can’t allow the authorities to have the body! It would give too much away…’

The last and most inexplicable occurrence in the last twenty hours was that six of the fifteen newly installed surveillance devices had already ceased to function. All of the failed devices were located at the front end of the apartment. Those were the six that the second operative had installed after he’d discovered the body of his accomplice. Did he kill his accomplice and install faulty units?

‘I need to have him interrogated. He may be a double agent!’

Blacker reviewed the feed from the surveillance recorders again. He watched, in fast motion, as the cleanup crew came in and packaged up the body for transferal. Each device seemed to simply turn itself off. There was no one near any of the devices during the entire time they were operating.

He watched as the last device in the Tabor’s bedroom shut down. It had been aimed directly at the bed containing the overdosed female. Watching in fast motion was an easy way to detect if there was any motion indicating that she might still be alive. There wasn’t any.

‘She’s surely dead. She hasn’t moved since she was hypoed, but her face didn’t dry out, either. I should’ve had them install an infrared unit there! Damn!’

The infrared unit, while covering most of the bedroom, had been aimed at the bedroom door and had been the first device to fail.

‘Those bugs failing twice can’t be accidental. Somehow, I’m being played! Somebody knows about me and they know about the bugs. If I try to run this operation from here, I’m going to have to get too heavy handed… Everyone will end up dead and I’ll end up with nothing; no secrets, no new technology, and a .9mm hollowpoint in the back of my head!’

“Computer,” Chief Blacker said to no one in particular. “Please notify the Boston office that I will be arriving tomorrow. Set up a meeting with the Chairman of Security. Transfer file ‘Pestova 136’ to Boston, as well; Security Protocol One.”

Chapter 9 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Beth and Tanya climbed out of the bright green limo, dragging Frank between them. Beth looked around, wide-eyed. There were a million lights lining the street – dazzling neon signs, street lamps, marquis and towering multi-lighted billboards. They all buzzed noisily in the back of her head. Beth could close her eyes and point to any one of the larger light displays. Also, there were hundreds of people; all standing three or four deep in line to get into a tired-looking building that appeared ready to collapse and kill them at any moment. The huge, noisy purple and blue neon sign balancing delicately on the roof proclaimed that this was “Renee’s”.

She took a deep breath and braced against the psychic waves of sensual abandonment that radiated from the hundreds of people already inside. She mind-linked with Tanya and Frank, stabilizing her mind by merging their ability to stabilize in a hectic environment like this with her own.

‘There! That’s much better!’

‘Hello? What’s much better?’

‘Hey! I can hear you!’

‘Me, too!’

‘Is this normal?’

‘It is when I’m around…’

‘Wow! How cool is this?’

‘Cool? It’s freezing! Let’s go inside!’

The trio headed for the entrance to the club, arms clasped together. Frank was wearing a buckskin vest over a sheer, transparent nylon shirt. Except for the bottom button, the shirt was open. As they walked, Tanya and Beth played with Frank’s chest hair, running their hands over his chest and cupping his nipples. It was part of the show. He pretended to take it all in stride…

‘These two slut-bods are sooo boring…’

‘Slut-bods? Does that mean what it sounds like?’

‘Who? Me? How sweet!’

‘Just wait’ll we get home, mister…’

Tanya had on a one-piece mini that hung off one shoulder, with stripes of sheer nylon and pink fabric swirling down her body, displaying her ample bosom and (still) slender torso magnificently, stripe by erotic stripe. Her party outfit complemented Frank’s pale green nylon shirt and bright plastic jeans.

Beth could see a plan to gain entrance forming in Tanya’s devious, sexually oriented mind:

Beth pretends to be ‘in need’.

‘What?’

‘Hard up for drugs, darling…’

‘That’s not hard, my eyeballs are still dilated. See? These lights are so bright that I can barely look at them!’

‘Go right up to the guy at the door and wrap yourself around him. Take some of that ‘lust’ floating around in the air and radiate it right through his loins. Let him see your hot costume – your ‘fuck-me-now!’ Phantom dress – maybe let him fondle you… He’ll let us right in.’

It wasn’t necessary to implement Tanya’s plan. Tanya had forgotten that her daughter, Alicia, traveling around the power circles in D.C., had made her and Frank famous by association. They were all Tabors; living rich, secluded lives. Whenever one of them did anything, people paid attention.

They were paying attention now. Someone with a Tri-d unit was recording them. In ten minutes, anyone watching a Tri-d would know that Alicia Burke’s rich, jaded cousin, Frank Tabor III, along with his favorite blond slut-bod, ‘Tootsie’, and a mysterious, dark newcomer, were snagging at Renee’s on Forty-fifth Street in backwater Bozeman.

In addition to that, the door guard recognized them from the Tri-d.

“Hey, Tabor!” the greasy-looking, biker-doorman yelled.

He waved them up to the head of the line, to the aggrieved outcry of several dozen partygoers who had been waiting somewhat longer to get in.

‘Christ! He looks just like his old man did twenty years ago! And Tootsie looks even wetter in person that she does on the vids; a hot-blooded slut-bod to the first!’

“Hey, you got a new one!” the greasy doorman hollered above the raucous noise, referring to the dark haired slut-bod on his left arm.

“Yeah!” Frank yelled back. “She needs snagged, if you sly me, grease!”

A plastic card slid from Frank’s pocket and appeared in the doorman’s hand. The doorman slipped it into his pocket without looking at it.

“In the back, down the stairs on the left,” he yelled, his mouth inches from Frank’s ear.

The door guard could see it in the brunette slut-bod’s dark, sparkling eyes; she was in deep need.

‘Okay! We’re in!’ Frank thought gleefully, still mind-linked to his companions through Beth. ‘The bad guys are in the back, down the stairs and to the left.’

Beth was annoyed that Frank was being so redundant in his directions. She could plainly see where to go in the door guard’s mind when he’d told Frank. The glass doors shut behind them, suddenly creating a zone of relative silence blocking the noise from the street. The glass doors in front of them, however, visibly shook with the sounds reverberating through the old building.

The three of them looked at each other.

‘Ready?’

‘Yep!’

‘Me, too!’

‘Okay, here goes!’

They pushed through the glass doors into the belly of the club. Beth could feel her rib cage vibrating from the music. She was surrounded with swirling, dancing lights illuminating gyrating, lusting bodies. Her mind-link with Frank and Tanya faded as her body joyfully responded to the sounds and smells and sensual movements around her. Someone grabbed her arm and pulled. She willingly followed, swaying into the crowd and disappearing from Tanya’s sight in an instant. The mind-link connecting the three of them disappeared with her.

“Frank! Do you see her?” Tanya yelled frantically to her husband a few inches away. “Where’d she go?”

Neither one could see her, but they knew she was supposed to go make contact with the baddies and see if anyone recognized her from that morning. If not, then they would try another club.

‘I’m glad it’s Monday – at least the crowd’s not too heavy…’

Several times Tanya felt sensations of confusion mixed with sensual excitement swirl through her head. She realized that the mind-link with Beth was still there, faintly, but the noise and the music were drowning it out.

‘It’d probably be a lot stronger if I knew where the fuck she was…’

Over the next half-hour, Frank and Tanya made their way across the crowded dance-floor, finally spying a door that led, presumably, to a quieter area where sex, drugs and any other business you wanted could be transacted. Each thought they spotted Beth’s Phantom dress out on the dance floor a couple of times, but each time she vanished behind partially clad, swirling, gyrating bodies before they could reach her.

‘What a stinking dump!’ Tanya thought disgustedly as they pushed and danced their way across the floor. The further they got from the front of the club, the stronger the scent of pure, raw sex, spilled beer, sweat and vomit thickened the air.

Tanya suddenly felt the distinct sensation of being sexually violated. She looked around. There were couples right on the dance floor, still standing up and dancing, having sex with each other. A couple of girls were embracing each other up against the nearby wall. The dark brunette against the wall was completely naked.

‘Wow! It looks like Blondie’s got her whole hand up inside that underfed little Goth girl! Goodness! They’re both fisting each other! God, I’d sure like to be in the middle of that…’

Pushing Frank ahead of her, Tanya forced her way past the two lesbian lovers and closer to the small door. Suddenly she felt Beth’s mind connect heavily with hers. The sudden sensual flood almost caused Tanya to fall as her own body responded to the pure, raw sexual energy Beth was radiating.

‘I’m… There you are! Wait! I’m almost… Oh, fuck! You’re so good, Dani! I’m coming! Bite me harder! Make me bleed! Oh, yeah… Suck my bloody cunt!’

Beth radiated her orgasm through the mob of dancing, gyrating bodies. Immediately clothes started coming off, exposing naked flesh beautifully illuminated by the spinning colored laser lights gyrating overhead.

Tanya fell back against the wall, her eyes closed, helpless against the orgasmic wave of sensation that radiated through her body. She opened her eyes, breathing heavily, looking for Frank. She needed someone to fuck, right now!

‘You’ll do!’

Tanya gazed at a young boy who was frantically trying to help a girl out of her clothes. His problem was that the girl was also frantic to get out of her skintight outfit and the two were getting in each other’s way. Tanya pulled the boy down to the floor and both she and the girl, now naked from the waist down, attacked him, tearing at his clothes.

An arm wrapped around Tanya’s waist and pulled her up.

‘Hey! I’m trying to get fucked, here!’ Tanya swung around, ready to fight, if necessary. It was Frank. ‘Great! Good old, healthy, horny Frank!’

“Fuck me, baby!” Tanya cried wildly, reaching up and pulling him against her in a passionate embrace.

Someone lifted up her dress from behind and shoved a hand between her legs. Tanya yelped as sharp fingernails dug into her labia, trying to get inside her. The beginnings of her own orgasm gave her the nerve to spread her legs wider, accommodating the unknown stranger’s touch.

Two fingers shoved their way roughly into Tanya’s cunt. A thumb, lightly moistened by the liquid fire flowing out of her pussy, pressed at the entrance to her ass. She arched her back against Frank’s tight embrace and boldly spread her legs wider, letting Frank hold her upright.

“Aaiiieee!” she cried at the ceiling, coming as she felt the unseen stranger’s thumb slip up into her asshole.

Relaxing into Frank’s strong arms, Tanya looked down and around behind her to see who that wonderful hand belonged to.

Kneeling bottomless on the face of her boyfriend, who Tanya had helped pull down to the floor a moment before, was the young girl he had been mauling, one hand holding herself up and the other hand disappearing beneath Tanya’s pink-and-nylon striped rump.

Then Tanya spotted Beth, just a few feet away, naked and riding on her blond lover’s face, radiating another orgasm into the crowd as she sagged against the wall. Beth’s hand was jammed up between her lesbian lover’s legs, returning as much pleasure she was getting.

‘Oh! That was you! You sure didn’t waste any time getting naked!’ Tanya thought at the dark-haired little vampire.

As Beth’s second orgasm radiated through her, Tanya’s attention went to the uncomfortable hardness pressing against her belly as Frank held her tightly by the waist, pulling her against him.

Grinning slyly, Tanya pulled herself up against Frank and kissed him again.

“I’d let you fuck me,” she shouted into his ear, barely audible above the chaos surrounding them, “but somebody’s got her hand up my ass! I guess you’ll have to settle for me sucking you off! We should try to blend in, after all…” She grinned wickedly and licked his cheek.

Already excited by the psychic sexual energy bouncing around the room, Frank’s lust was even more driven by his sweet wife’s joyful admission that ‘somebody’s got their hand up her sweet ass!’ right this very instant!

‘And she wants to blow me!’ He let go of her waist and undid his pants as fast as he could.

‘She’s so horny she’s going to blow me right in front of hundreds of people! Holy Fuck!’

Tanya backed away and bent over so she could reach his hard dick with her mouth. Backing up also put her bottom half within tongue’s reach of the girl behind her. Tanya’s legs quivered as she felt a warm, wet lick travel from her clitoris to her ass. The sudden sensation of the girl’s tongue surprised Tanya so much that she almost raked her teeth against Frank’s hard-on.

Ten seconds later, they all came together as Beth’s third orgasm psychically radiated out into the room. Beth collapsed down on her lover’s torso, gasping for breath, her legs visibly twitching. Frank spurted into Tanya’s mouth while Tanya came all over the young girl’s hand. The girl ground her pussy into her boyfriend’s face and screamed her orgasm into Tanya’s ass.

The frantic fucking that was going on around them gradually subsided as couples grunted, screamed and cried their orgasms at and into each other. Tanya pulled herself off the hand that seemed to be glued inside her cunt and crawled over to Beth, a few feet away.

The sexy blonde that had been between Beth’s legs was rubbing her blood and cum-slicked face against Beth’s torso like a large cat. She stopped and glared at Tanya, obviously feeling that her territory was being threatened.

Tanya barely had the energy to shout loud enough to be heard over the never-ending, body-shaking pulse of the music, and ignored the other blonde completely.

“Are you okay?” Tanya yelled, trying to make herself heard. “We couldn’t find you! Why’d you disappear like that?”

Beth looked into Tanya’s face, a few inches away, and blinked.

‘You don’t need to shout,’ Beth thought quietly into Tanya’s mind. ‘I can hear what you think.’

To answer Tanya’s question, Beth simply reached down and hugged her newfound companion, then broadcast the last half-hour’s events in her mind so that Tanya could see them.

‘Someone grabs my hand and pulls me into the dancing crowd. It’s a guy, but he’s radiating such joy that I permit him to touch me anyway. Dancing… surrounded by undulating, horny bodies. Somebody grabs me from behind, squeezes my tits, presses her tits into my back… It’s a girl! God, she’s pretty… She looks like you! She dances for me, lusts for me. I mind-link with her, dance with her. Her name’s Dani… We grind ourselves against each other, carry each other into another dimension of orgasmic pleasure… I’m slammed against a wall and she puts her face between my legs. God, she’s pure bliss! Ow! She’s biting me down there! God! She drew blood! I’m coming! Oh, God! She’s sucking blood right out of my cunt – making me cum! Harder! Yes! Bite me harder! Yes! Oooooh, Guuuuhh! … Fuck, that was good. She’s still sucking on me…’

“What happened to your dress?” Tanya wanted to know.

Beth shrugged. It seemed like she just now noticed she was naked.

‘I have no idea…’

Although annoyed with Beth for her total lack of decorum and the loss of an expensive Phantom dress, Tanya helped Beth and her blond lover to their feet. The blonde gazed around, looking around on the floor nearby, a question in her mind about where her clothes were.

Tanya watched as a guy appeared out of the mass of bodies, and dragged Beth’s new lover away. The girl didn’t protest, so she obviously knew him. Tanya put her attention back on Beth.

‘Your shoes are gone, too! Jeez, girl!’

‘Sorry… I couldn’t very well dance with those things on! They just disappear… Wait! I can get everything back!’

Beth closed her eyes, concentrating on the dress and her lost shoes. The dress suddenly appeared beside her, badly mangled and trampled. Tanya held it up. It was filthy. Then the shoes appeared one at a time. One was broken.

‘Oh, well, I don’t mind going barefoot… Those things really hurt my feet!’

‘Barefoot? In here? Okay, but watch where you step!’

Images of spilt beer, vomit, broken glass and sperm all over the floor…

Beth looked at the dress that Tanya was holding up. She frowned and gazed at it more closely.

‘I can fix most of that…’

The material in Tanya’s hand seemed to shimmer and dance as flecks of crud that had been ground into the fiber flaked loose.

‘I didn’t know wet stuff could come loose like that,’ Tanya thought. ‘From now on, you get to do all my laundry!’

‘I learned how to do this from Béla,’ Beth replied, still mind-linked. ‘I can show you a lot of stuff, but probably when we’re not so…’

‘Surrounded?’ Tanya suggested.

Beth nodded. The dress was cleaner now – at least clean enough to wear, barely. She slid it over her head, snagging her arms several times in the slits as Tanya helped pull it down. Beth stood up, still barefoot, and brushed at the dress, straightening up the last few wrinkles in the now not-quite skin-tight garment.

‘There are a few new rips in it, too,’ Beth noticed.

“Your hair’s a mess,” Tanya said, still yelling over the music.

She looked around for a sign indicating where the restrooms were. She saw Frank, looking goofy, but happy, re-fastening his plastic jeans. The girl who had been so intimate with Tanya’s backside had gone somewhere else, along with her seat-cushion boyfriend.

‘I think I would be expected to look like this after an orgy,’ Beth thought back, and grinned. ‘I smell great, too – the perfect disguise…’

Beth picked up her shoes and, her body swaying sensually with the effort of watching where she placed her bare feet on the filthy floor, walked carefully across the remaining few meters to the door and closed it behind her.

“Well, what shall we do, darling, while we wait on yonder damsel in dat-dress?” Tanya said into Frank’s ear.

She rubbed her nearly transparent bodice sensually against Frank’s bare chest and kissed his neck. They were still mind-linked with Beth, this time seeing what Beth was seeing as Beth crept down the stairs.

“I have a great idea,” Frank replied with his usual clueless candor. “Let’s make out! Like you said, we should try to blend in…”

Tanya grinned. ‘Not all his ideas are bad, just most!’

‘I can hear you, darling!’ Frank responded to Tanya’s pretended look of shock.

They began kissing and caressing each other, letting the pounding beat of the music move through their bodies as they swayed and rubbed against each other.

‘Take it easy up there!’ Beth mentally called back to them. ‘I have to be able to think! Remember?’

Tanya smiled and kissed Frank more lightly, this time right on his nose.

“She is a bit of a slut, isn’t she?” Frank offered.

“It’s not her fault,” Tanya replied, defending her. “All the space girls are like that. They seem to be totally obsessed with sex.”

Someone’s standing in front of Beth. He appeared out of nowhere! Weird.

‘Oh! You startled me!’ Beth yelped, acting nervous and unsure of herself.

Beth’s looking in his mind, trying to find out if he recognizes her.

‘Wow! Slut-bod in a ruined Phantom Dress – no shoes… She stinks of sex – must’ve been caught in that instant orgy upstairs. Hello, sweet meat! Can you handle one more?’

He reaches out, grabs the front of her dress in his fist, and slams her against the wall. He grinds his mouth against her teeth, easily holding her hands out and away from her sides as she feebly tries to fight him off, whimpering in fear.

‘Why is she acting so scared?’ Tanya asked. ‘I don’t feel any fear in her mind.’

‘Shut up and watch the show,’ Frank replied, still mind-linked with Tanya through Beth. ‘She can’t be hurt. Why should she be careful? Her mind is sharp, like Béla’s. She’s the cat and he’s the mouse, only he doesn’t know it, yet!’

‘This isn’t the way to the restroom?’ Beth asked, her voice shaking in mock fear.

‘No, slut meat,’ the man sneered in her face. ‘Yer in the wrong place. That’s good fer me, but bad fer you… ’Cause down here, slut meat, I don’t need yer fuckin’ permission!’

A metallic ‘snick’ came from below where her eyes were focused. In his mind, she could feel the wicked switchblade he held. The sharp blade was only an inch from her soft belly. This man didn’t plan on letting her leave.

Beth began breathing more deeply, trying to control her body’s sexual response to the presence of the wicked steel blade. ‘Not now, dammit!’

She licked her lips, acting more nervous than she really was. Being sexually aroused was actually helping.

‘If you’re going to stick that in me,’ Beth whispered hoarsely, radiating lust at the man guarding the hall, ‘try not to make any more rips in my dress – it’s damaged enough, already… and it’s not mine.’

The man raised the knife to her throat. Beth could see in his mind that he’d found a suitable replacement. She wondered who or what she was replacing.

‘Through there!’ he commanded, indicating another door.

As he backed her through the door, Beth found herself in a small room. A ratty mattress was on the floor.

A naked girl was lying on the mattress, curled into a ball. She was filthy dirty and stank of stale male cum and feminine stress. There were dozens of cuts and slashes all over her body. Several were festering.

‘That’s the kind of smell that’s caused by severe stress or terror!’ Tanya noted, still mind-linked with Beth.

The filthy girl on the mattress curled up into a tighter ball, radiating pure horror. She knew she was going to die here, as soon as the evil man with the knife tired of torturing and raping her.

‘And now he’s brought someone else to torture! To replace me! He’s going to make her kill me, like he made me kill… Oh, God! Please forgive me… I never even knew her name!’

There was another smell in the room, as well.

‘Can you smell that?’ Frank mentally asked both girls. ‘That’s what they gave you this morning! Be careful! You’re not immune to that stuff!’

‘Relax, lover boy,’ Beth replied in Frank’s mind. ‘You forget who is the hunter here…’

Image of Beth smiling with big fake canine teeth sticking out of her mouth.

‘Well,’ Tanya mused, ‘a vampire with a sense of humor. Who would have guessed?’

‘So,’ Beth said, appraising the situation. ‘How long has this been going on?’

‘What’s it to you, slut meat?’ the man snarled. ‘Kill her and I won’t kill you! Not yet, anyway…’

He smiled, displaying yellowed teeth rotted brown around the roots. He indicated the knife on the bench. It was for her to murder the girl on the floor.

‘Why didn’t you use this on him?’ Beth asked in the girl’s mind.

Beth saw the answer before she finished asking the question. She had; six times. Each time the monster brutally overpowered her and forced her to carve on her own body with the knife until she couldn’t hold it anymore. Now, the trapped girl was no longer able to even look at it. She couldn’t even think about picking it up.

‘What makes you think you can kill me?’ Beth asked quietly in her captor’s mind.

She wasn’t acting afraid, now. The three of them were in a tiny locked room – a concrete bunker – and Beth had twisted the insides of the door latch with her mind so that it would never operate again. The steel door was thick and shielded. No one could get in or out. For one of them, this would become a tomb.

‘That the way you want it?’ the man asked, his sickly grin widening. ‘Good! I haven’t had a good fight for a long time…’

‘Why do you think this will be good for you?’ Beth asked, taunting him.

The man watched his new acquisition cautiously. She wasn’t tensed up and ready to fight. She wasn’t acting frightened either. She was acting casual; almost… playful.

‘Coy! Does she think I’m going to kiss her with this knife?’

Image of Beth smiling. ‘He’s so easy to read… He’s getting angry. He can’t handle my casual acceptance of him now that he’s murdered and tortured so many others. He’s snarling at me! He’s almost ready!’

Beth took a deep breath and prepared her body for the gift it was about to receive – a hot steel blade slicing deep into her midriff! ‘Yes! It’s been too long!’

Beth mind merged with her killer’s. ‘It’s been too long – for both of us!’

Beth wrapped her arms around his neck as he slashed the knife into her gut and cruelly twisted it. He fell backward with his intended victim’s arms and legs wrapped tightly around him.

Suddenly panicking, he viciously stabbed her several times, slashing deep into her side and her belly with each thrust. Beth responded by radiating her sensual overload throughout the tiny room. The psychic flow washed through him and dissipated into the reinforced concrete walls.

His body responded to hers with a terrible longing. Somehow, he knew that this strange girl had what he needed. He was already inside her mind, experiencing her sensations – the hot knife in her belly, the sensual overload in her body. He couldn’t believe how much she wanted that knife inside her, but he knew how badly he needed to put it there.

Still wrapped around his body, Beth had him backed into the concrete wall, bruising her knees and arms on the hard surface. She loosened her grip on him and pulled back, still holding herself around him with her wrists and ankles, but allowing his sweet, hot blade better access to her torso and breasts.

Sensually mind-linked, they gazed into each other’s eyes. One, a butcher of the weak and helpless; the other, a sexual vampire, both breathing heavily, both ready to give the other what each wanted so badly.

Frank and Tanya watched, helpless, through the mind of the alien female – a mixture of alien concepts and human madness as the two locked away in the tiny room at the bottom of the stairs begin tearing into each other.

Frank and Tanya still mind-linked with Beth, discovering much more than either of them ever realized about the vampire species they thought they understood. They now realized the need for the violence that Béla seemed to attract and her need for the maiming, sensual overload that she had occasionally indulged in.

In only a moment, it was all over.

‘The good vampire always wins against the bad guy,’ Tanya said into Frank’s mind. ‘Don’t you ever watch the Tri-d?’

They discovered the pure pleasure of feeding on the blood of one’s sexual conquest as they fuck each other into unconsciousness. Tanya, the more curious of the two, went exploring a little in Beth’s mind while Beth fed.

She discovered some of the images of Beth and Béla ‘playing’ on the great ship, spending hours and days of their endlessly long journey to earth simply lying next to each other and viciously (playfully?) carving into each other with the most wicked-looking instruments of death.

‘This is how their species play!’ Tanya realized with a gruesome shock.

Then Beth’s mind separated from them, causing Frank and Tanya’s minds to disconnect from each other. The two stared at each other for several minutes. They had known each other for eighty years, but had never been inside each other’s mind until tonight.

“Remind me to thank her for letting me visit you,” Tanya said quietly.

Her voice could barely be heard over the raucous noise of the crowded club, but Frank heard her perfectly, as though she was the only other person in the building.

He smiled at her and pulled her closer. He kissed her tenderly, loving her more, now that he had seen inside her mind, than he had ever loved her before.

‘Step inside the door to where I am,’ Beth spoke into their minds, startling them.

Feeling like they were walking in someone else’s bodies, they approached that all-important little door and stepped through into the…

“This is our bedroom!” Tanya cried, startled beyond belief.

“How did we get here?” Frank asked.

Then he saw the naked girls on the bed. One was covered with fresh blood, getting it all over the new bed. The other was filthy and half-starved with dozens of scabbing wounds all over her body, many of them infected. They both stank. The new girl looked… terrified as she stared, wide-eyed, at Tanya and Frank.

Beth held the half-starved girl in her arms as though protecting her from the…

‘strange people who just suddenly appeared right in front of me!’

“Maddie?” Frank asked, astounded that he actually recognized this half-starved waif huddling in terror on his bed.

‘She needs fed,’ Beth said in his mind.

“She needs to go to a hospital!” Frank said sternly, correcting their vampiric guest. “How did she get here, anyway? How did we get here?”

‘Simple teleportation,’ Beth replied, looking smug, still speaking in their minds.

Frank realized that Beth was talking in their minds, but not to the girl on the bed.

‘There’s nothing simple about teleportation!’ Frank insisted in his mind, knowing Beth would hear him.

“Maddie?” Tanya said, echoing Frank. “You mean Madelyn Conners, the step-daughter of Nolan Conners, like in Conners Industries? The one that’s been missing for almost two months? The girl that I accepted the case on almost five weeks ago?”

Frank nodded, although he hadn’t known that Conners Industries was a client.

“Do you know how rich we are right now?” Tanya asked, so excited that she could barely stand still. “Conners advanced us two million credits just to procure our services. He offered ten million if we were able to discover what happened to her, twenty if we found her alive! I’ve got a contract, in writing!”

Tanya hugged herself and swirled around the room with joy. Frank went into the living room and called transportation – the limo was still waiting for them at Renee’s. He ordered it to return.

“Line out!” Tanya cried happily. A wall display lit up behind Beth. Electricity buzzed annoyingly in the back of Beth’s head. “Connect me with Nolan Conners of Conners Industries, Priority, family!”

Almost a minute later, the richest man on the West Coast was staring disbelievingly into their bedroom.

“Sir,” Tanya said, trying to keep a professional tone to her voice. “We found your daughter. She’s alive! She was being kept in isolation in a dungeon room under Renee’s. We’re taking her to Memorial Hospital. She’s badly dehydrated, and she’s been tortured, but, with care, she’ll be all right.”

They agreed to meet at the hospital. While Frank and Tanya were fussing around, getting ready to go, Beth held her new charge tenderly in her arms, gently stroking her hair, mind-linked with her, soothing her terror, convincing the girl that her horrible nightmare was really over.

While Beth soothed Madelyn, she stroked her arms, breasts and stomach where Madelyn had been forced to cut herself, rubbing her own spilt blood over Madelyn’s savaged flesh. There was enough fresh blood from the half-healed slashes from Beth’s fatal love tryst with Madelyn’s cruel abductor to begin healing the poor girl’s festering wounds.

In return, Madelyn began licking Beth’s face and neck in gratitude. Beth could see in her mind that Madelyn had been forced to show affection to her (now dead) captor in this fashion, like a dog greeting its master. Beth permitted the activity for a moment, realizing that, by letting Madelyn lick the blood off her face, Madelyn would ingest enough of Beth’s special enzymes to help her begin healing deeper in her body. Then she gently guided Maddie’s mind away from the propitiative behavior, overriding Madelyn’s compulsion to degrade herself in such a manner.

‘God, I’m so embarrassed!’ Maddy thought after Beth erased the pain and drug induced hypnotic command to lick instead of kiss or embrace her captor.

‘It’s all right! I can see what you’ve been through…’

In only a moment, Beth could tell Madelyn was feeling much better. Taking her by the hand, she led her still half-starved guest into the shower closet.

‘You can’t be reunited with your family smelling like that!’

Beth watched for a moment while the girl showered. She felt… strange, more loving and giving than she could remember.

‘Now I know why Béla likes to rescue people…’ thought Beth as she patiently waited for her new friend Maddie to finish showering. ‘Wow! She’s really scrubbing herself down! She’s going to be really hungry when she’s done.’

Dream-walking through the refrigerator at the other end of the apartment, Beth teleported several pieces of fruit onto the bed. ‘The bed’s been fixed! I wonder who did that.’

Then she realized that, of course, Frank and Tanya would have arranged for the bed to be replaced while they were out and away from the apartment.

It was twenty minutes before Madelyn could be convinced to leave her wonderful shower behind and come out to get ready to go. When she saw the fruit on the bed, she dove in, trying to eat several pieces at once. Tanya finally convinced her to throw on something and go with them.

“You can take the food with you!” They left, leaving Beth curled up on the bed, holding her head and crying softly to herself.

The next day had begun.

Chapter 10 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It was Beth’s third day with Frank and Tanya. She had not gotten out of bed since Tanya and Frank took the Conners girl to the hospital. Several hours later, the pair returned to discover their houseguest curled up on the bed, nearly unconscious from the agonizing pain in her head.

“Why is this happening to me?” Beth sobbed weakly. Tanya looked at Frank

“I guess we can give it to her now…” Tanya suggested. “Maybe if we can get her fired up in her ‘sex mode’, she’ll forget that she hurts so bad. Her body does equate pain with sex…”

‘But if that were true, why hasn’t it already done so?’ she wondered.

Tanya dumped the sack that she’d been carrying onto the bed. On the way home, they’d stopped at Tanya’s favorite fetish shop and selected something that she believed might help Beth get through the day.

‘All she needs is enough sensual input to distract her…’ Tanya hoped.

“Are you sure you want this?” Katrina asked.

Twenty-three-year-old Katrina was not only the cashier and daughter of the store’s owner, but she had known the adult Tanya (not Tootsie) for most of her young life. This was not the kind of a device that she associated with a respectable, although sexy woman like Tanya Tabor. Devices like this were developed around fifteen years ago during a short period when an S&M sect began torturing their self-proclaimed slaves with electricity. After a few deaths by vaginal (or anal) electrocution, the sect (but not the device) was outlawed.

“I’m sure,” Tanya smiled. “But it’s not for me, Katie darling. I have someone specifically in mind that who appreciate this particular contraption.”

“Oh! I see,” Katrina replied, surprisingly relieved. “It’s a joke – like a hooter!”

She laughed. Hooters were the modern slang for sexual gags that friends sometimes played on each other.

“Hum? Oh, yes,” Tanya replied, then laughed. “A hooter!”

Tanya would have called it a ‘bag gag’.

‘Different slang for a different time… Sometimes, I really feel old… What’s that phrase Alicia uses? ‘We’re the family outside of time.’ Tres appropriez!’

Tanya had to sit next to groaning and moaning Beth and read the damned instructions on how the thing worked. Beth, unable to reach Tanya’s mind because of the agonizing noise in her head, had to take Tanya at her word that this would be a worthwhile distraction to help her get through the rest of the day.

Following the directions, Tanya greased up the larger piece, a cold, round, metal, dildo-shaped device, and spread Beth’s legs as Beth lay face-down on the bed with her head under the pillows.

“Now, this goes here,” Tanya exclaimed, playfully shoving it up between her new friend’s legs, ignoring the indignant, muffled ‘Yike!’ that emanated from the other end of the bed as the cold, greased metal rod invaded her pussy.

“It gets better, darling,” Tanya promised her tortured friend. “This little round thing goes in the back end. Raise up, now.”

Tanya inserted the two-inch-long silver tube up Beth’s rectum as Beth, head still buried in the pillows, humped her butt up into the air to receive it.

“Now, I’ve got the controls,” Tanya explained, “and you tell me when it’s strong enough. Okay?”

Hearing a pained grunt, Tanya flipped the power switch on.

“Nnnnoooo!” Beth screamed, arching her body high into the air.

Beth was thrashing wildly on the bed, unable to control her body enough to even get at the burning, fiery agony in her belly. The metal tube in her cunt vibrated maddeningly and shot jolts of high voltage electricity to the tube in her ass. The smell of burnt flesh and ozone filled the air. Beth screamed again in agony and radiated an orgasm through the room.

Tanya looked at the lever indicating how many watts of power were being pumped into Beth’s rectum and cunt.

“Holy Shit!” Tanya exclaimed. ‘It’s on maximum!’

She quickly dialed the thing down and Beth collapsed on the bed, sweating profusely. She could still feel the vibrations, but the torturous thing had stopped cooking her cunt.

“Ow…” Beth exclaimed unhappily, tears streaming down her face. “Holy fuck, what is that thing? I like it, but it hurts in my head more than it makes my butt feel good.”

Discouraged, Tanya turned it off and pulled the metal tubes out from between her friend’s legs. ‘After that knife fight last night, I was sure she’d love this…’

Frank had come in from making coffee in the kitchen to watch the display of expected fireworks as his loving wife electrocuted her houseguest’s cunt. He frowned.

‘Why would that hurt in her head when it was frying her cunt?’ he thought, trying to figure out what was wrong with the little vampire. ‘Béla often had headaches in the daytime. It had something to do with the sun, or daylight, but I thought that was because she was a vampire.’

“It’s electromagnetic!” Frank exclaimed suddenly, causing Tanya to jump. “That’s why Béla’s head hurt all the time. I’ll bet that’s what’s wrong with Beth! The sun emits electromagnetic waves! Vampires can’t take the sun! It makes perfect sense!”

“Electromagnetic waves?” Tanya asked, not really believing such a simple phenomenon could cause such misery in anyone, let alone an almost invincible vampire. “You mean, like radio waves? Those are completely harmless, you know.”

“To us, maybe,” Frank nodded, “but it might not be for them. I know a perfect way to test it, too.”

He went into the living room and brought back their portable Tri-d set. Setting it on the bed next to Beth, he quickly programmed it to transmit and turned it on. It took a second to warm up, then began transmitting its signal directly through Beth and into the wall receptors behind her.

Beth screamed and rose up off the bed, her hands holding both sides of her head in a frantic attempt to quell the madness in her skull. She slammed into the wall trying to escape and fell back across the bed, screaming in agony. Frank quickly turned the Tri-d set off as he and Tanya both stared, frightened at Beth’s violent response to the supposedly harmless Tri-d set.

“What the hell is that?” Beth wailed, glaring at these torturous earthlings who had pretended to be her friend. She wanted an explanation right now!

“That,” Frank explained patiently, “means we have to get you underground and shielded.”

Tanya looked at her husband, suddenly understanding what was affecting her newfound friend and lover. Beth, and probably anyone who was a member of her species, was allergic to simple radio waves. That meant Béla and all of her sisters were, too.

“What do you mean, shielded?” Beth asked, trying to put aside the constant screaming in her head. Somehow, it was easier to tolerate now that she had tasted the horrific output of the Tri-d set.

“Radio waves,” Frank replied. “That’s what’s causing all this pain in your head. The sun and every electronic device in existence emits radio waves. You seem to be allergic to them.”

“Allergic?” Beth asked plaintively, not understanding. “You mean like pepper makes you sneeze allergic?”

“No,” Frank continued. “I mean like it makes you very, very sick!”

Beth nodded gently, then instantly regretted it. She lay back on the bed holding her head again, moaning softly.

“I’m going to look for the ship,” Beth uttered, her voice wavering with pain and exhaustion. “There are thought-dampening devices on the ship.” She closed her eyes and tried to seek out the great ship. ‘It’s somewhere in the northern regions…’

Tanya held Beth closely, trying to ease her pain and discomfort as Beth gave up and sobbed helplessly.

“I can’t,” Beth cried. “I can’t do anything! It hurts too much! Please help me… Oh God! It hurts!” After three days, she had reached her limits. She couldn’t stand the pain any more. “I need a thought-dampener…” she whimpered.

“I’ve heard that term before,” Tanya said, thinking hard. She looked up at Frank, hoping he’d remember. “Thought dampeners; where did I hear…”

“Béla!” Frank exclaimed. “Béla couldn’t find Jake because he was inside a thought dampening field. She said it surrounds his cabin in the desert!”

Frank grabbed the tri-d set and carried it back into the living room to its normal location. Reprogramming it to receive power from the living room, he sat down on the couch.

“Open a line to Jake Pestova,” Frank said to the console.

A few seconds later, the console lit up. Béla’s face looked curiously out at him. Her hair was in disarray. Her breasts were bare. She tilted her head and grinned at him.

“Hi, Frank!” she said cheerfully, then she grimaced. “God, this picture box is really noisy! How do you stand it?”

She looked up as Jake nudged his way into the viewfinder.

“Hey, guys!” Jake said, cheerfully. Jake’s torso was also bare. “Guess who I found?”

He grinned sappily into the viewfinder, pointing to Béla with one hand.

A wail from the bedroom distracted Frank. He looked away quickly then returned his attention to the screen in front of him.

“What was that?” Béla wanted to know, immediately concerned.

“Well, ‘that’ is Beth,” Frank explained. “She’s the reason I called. It’s the sun, Béla, it’s killing her.”

He let the information sink into Béla’s mind for a moment, watching as her face changed from happily fucked contentment to horror.

“What?” Jake wanted to know.

Frank listened to Béla and Jake talk for a moment. Béla was explaining that his cabin was somehow shielded from the effects of the sun, which was why she hadn’t thought of the problems it might create for her sister. Béla wanted to bring her to Jake’s cabin. She wanted to make sure it was all right with Jake.

“Well, sure,” Jake replied, “if it’s your sister. Is it the blonde one or the dark-haired one I dreamed about?”

“The dark-haired one,” Béla replied. “Her name is Beth. Don’t you remember?”

‘This is so exasperating!’

“Yeah, I think so,” Jake replied, sounding unsure of himself.

“So, is it okay or not?” Béla asked, insistently.

“Yeah, sure,” Jake said. “I suppose we can go get her…”

Béla closed her eyes. An instant later Beth appeared in the viewscreen lying on the bed behind them, naked. A screech came from the bedroom behind Frank.

“Eeek! Frank! She’s gone!” Tanya screamed. “She just disappeared! I was holding her and she vanished!”

Tanya, frightened and beside herself, fled into the living room where Frank was. She stopped and looked at the Tri-d screen and the three figures displayed in it.

“Oh! Thank God! It’s Béla!” Tanya sighed, relieved to have an explanation.

Béla had powers. She could do things like that. She watched as Beth groggily sat up.

“What happened?” Beth asked, then smiled when she saw her sister.

Beth burst into tears as she hugged her sister in joyous relief.

“You saved me again.” Beth said, after a moment. “This is getting to be a habit…”

Then she saw Frank and Tanya in the view screen. She looked at them and sniffled while trying to dry her eyes with her hands and arms. Béla reached over, grabbed a cloth and handed it to her sister.

“Ewww!” Beth exclaimed after wiping her face with it. “This has cum all over it!”

Everyone laughed except Béla, who was embarrassed about offering her sister a used cloth to clean up with. Beth looked back at the screen.

“I don’t know what to say,” Beth explained, “except I’m sorry.” She sniffed again; her tears not quite finished with her. “I enjoyed staying with you, at least during the nighttime. That place with all the dancing people was really fun. And, Tanya, I really liked that thing you got me. I could probably tolerate the noise it makes at night. Maybe… Why don’t you keep it for awhile? We could try it again the next time I stay over…”

“Maybe we can come by for a visit, sometime,” Béla interrupted.

Tanya smiled and walked over to Frank. They looked at each other for a second.

“That would be great!” she said. “We’d love to see all of you!”

After assurances that they all looked forward to the upcoming visit, Frank signed off.

Frank, just thinking of something, looked up at his sexy, blonde wife. “I don’t know if Jake’s flier can carry all three of them.”

“It’s Béla,” Tanya said, surprised that she even needed to mention it. “She’ll work it out… and speaking of things to work out; I have a nice numbing salve that needs to be applied to a very sensitive area that somehow got all scratched up last night…”

It had healed, but it would still be fun for him to grease her up. Maybe she would try that new toy herself.

‘Why not? I can divert pain into sex, now, and I heal fast, too. Why should the space girls have all the fun? Then we’ll have a reason for Frank to smear that salve all over me…’

Taking her husband by the hand, Tanya led him back into the bedroom, which they had, for a pleasant change, all to themselves.

Chapter 11 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jake nearly jumped off the bed as Beth appeared right next to him, then, managing to control the shakes Beth’s arrival gave him, he looked back at Béla.

“You’ve learned some new tricks!” he exclaimed.

He already knew she could teleport. She’d supplied breakfast from the ‘fridge, downstairs, without even getting out of bed.

‘Where have I seen that before? I remember! It was that dumb TV show. What was it called?’

Jake laughed as he remembered. “Why don’t you wiggle your upper lip when you do that? I’ll be Darrel and you can be Sam.”

“What?” Béla asked, trying to understand the flat, colorless image in Jake’s head. Then she laughed, “I remember that, and his name was Darrin, I think. The witch was Samantha, but the real witch was the mother-in-law!”

“What are you talking about?” Beth asked, then mentally linked up with her sister.

She laughed and thought into Béla’s mind, ‘Hey! I have my powers back!’

Images of the pain that Beth had been suffering from only a moment before.

“Wow!” Jake said. He looked at the image Beth was broadcasting. “How come it doesn’t hurt you here?”

Beth shrugged her shoulders, drawing Jake’s attention to her breasts as they moved. She didn’t care why it didn’t hurt, she was just grateful that she was free of the pain. ‘But not free from ogling men, I see…’

“Well, you two get to know each other,” Béla told them. “I have something to do…”

Climbing up to the head of the bed, she curled around a couple of pillows and closed her eyes.

“What’s she doing?” Jake asked. “Her ’something to do’ is to take a nap?”

“She’s dream-walking,” Beth explained. “It’s how we visit people who are too far away to reach physically.”

“So… those times when I was dreaming about her,” Jake began. ‘My God! She was really here all those times. I thought I was going insane! She could have told me…’

“She did,” Beth said, gazing at him unsympathetically. “Sometimes, when she came back from dream-walking with you, she’d cry for hours because of the pain she was causing you. And all because you just wouldn’t believe her!

“You humans only believe what you can touch with your hands!” Her voice became more vehement as she spoke. “Your minds are completely dead! All you had to do was believe she was real!”

She resisted the temptation to teleport him into the middle of the hot desert that she sensed was outside. ‘How long would you last out there with no food, no water! You can’t see the heat the sun generates, but it will still cook you!’

“Alright!” Jake cried, “I get it! Stop blasting me with that stuff!

“You think it was easy for me?” Jake said, his voice wavering with emotion. “I would gain her back every night, then I’d lose her again. Each time was as bad as when I lost her in the fire! I couldn’t remember what she said! She’d tell me things, things I knew were important, but it would all get jumbled up with losing her every time I woke up!”

He suddenly felt trapped in the images of waking up without Béla beside him and frantically looked at the head of the bed where she lay sleeping. He breathed a sigh of relief. She was still there.

‘Thank God!’

Beth sat on the bed, thinking. She understood them both a little better, now. Béla and Jake were like two stones she once had, made from magic metal. Turn them one way and you can’t press them together; turn them the other way and you can’t pull them apart.

The magical energy that links them to each other destroys the logic that says, ‘That isn’t possible; you shouldn’t be able to do that…’

“You are lifemates,” Beth said, quietly. “You will always be linked together. The greatest passion, the most heart-rending anxiety, the most agonizing pain, each of you will cause the other. Even if one of you dies, one will still be linked to the other until you are both dead.”

“And then what?” Jake asked, his voice shaking.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to know and this naked broad was starting to scare the hell out of him.

Beth shrugged again. “I don’t know. The Praetor says that a life force can’t be destroyed. I have ideas about what happens after the body dies, but I have no certainty. I never actually paid that much attention to dying people to notice where they go. I will continue; of that, I’m certain. I’m strong enough to live outside my body. Maybe we all are…”

“Life everlasting, hum?” Jake asked.

He was glad Beth wasn’t omnipotent. Even as it was, she was really messing with the way he believed everything worked.

“Do I smell oranges?” Beth asked, sniffing the air.

“Yeah, we were eating some earlier,” Jake replied, glad to change the subject.

Theological ‘discussions’ usually upset him thoroughly. In the past, he had discovered that the more illogical and impossible a religious concept was, the more tightly and violently it was defended.

‘To question another’s beliefs is to threaten the very foundations of that person’s life – no matter what it is they believe. No matter how insane or illogical that belief is, it will be vehemently defended. Islam and Judaism defended themselves into radioactive ash.’

“What?” Beth asked, not wanting to believe the images she was receiving from Jake’s mind.

The Sinai was where her life had begun, too. Despite her long ago travels across Asia and Europe, her first memories were of the desert and the ancient Sumerians. But the savage Semites, who had invaded and wiped out the ancient Sumerians, had finally managed to destroy themselves in their unreasoning vehemence against all other races and creeds.

“It’s all gone?” She’d always thought to go back, someday. The land was still there, after all. But the Semites had even destroyed that, making the land completely and radioactively uninhabitable for the next thousand years.

The oranges were forgotten. Beth’s hungry insides churned in emotional turmoil. She didn’t actually know how she felt; finding out that half the world had died while she was gone. By now, Beth was used to the idea of the end of the world, but it still hurt terribly, knowing it would happen. But the half she remembered was already gone…

‘It’s all going to be destroyed, soon. Perhaps they saved themselves the grief from the knowledge that the entire planet will be consumed…’

“You’re kidding!” Jake exclaimed, still mind-linked with her. “What do you mean consumed?”

Image that Béla had showed Beth. Jake and Béla on the mesa, kneeling in the presence of her father… the Praetor giving her knowledge of the future and her true purpose here on earth.

Jake sat on the bed; his turn to be stunned as he listened and watched Beth’s rendition of what Béla had learned that day. He had been there, too, and now the images were all merging together – the end of the world, the tiny life growing inside Béla, the realization of his own immortality.

‘My God! She was carrying my child when she died!’ Jake suddenly realized, new waves of grief overwhelming him again.

“Jake!” Beth cried, reaching out to him as the wave of emotion rolled through her.

Jake and Beth held each other tightly for a moment, Beth anxiously searching through his mind, trying to discharge the terrible, overwhelming grief that Jake was suffering. After a moment, she had him under better control. At least, he could think, now.

“She’s only barren in her human form,” Jake said, his voice soft at the fleeing sensation of terrible loss. “She’s fertile in her natural…”

“Béla?” Jake asked, gazing up at the head of the bed in newly discovered awe and wonder.

Béla was lying, curled around a pillow. She was still dream-walking, her mind millions of miles away. She looked soft, and loving, and very beautiful. Jake reached out a hand, then stopped, hand in midair, suddenly unwilling to wake her and bring her back into a world where such cruelty as she’d experienced could exist.

‘Am I going to be a father?’ Jake asked himself. ‘How can we bring a child into this world if the world is going to die?’

“I think I need a drink,” Jake said, shakily. He climbed off the bed, barely able to walk. “This has been a hell of a week…”

“Whatever it is you’re getting,” Beth suggested, “get me one, please?”

Beth hadn’t forgotten her ‘guest’ status on this world. She wasn’t at home, anywhere. ‘Nothing belongs to me here! Is this what it feels like to be homesick?’

Her original idea of bumming a ride to earth with Béla and then spending the rest of her eternity here seemed a distant and childish dream, now. There was nothing of her world left. All too soon, there wouldn’t be anything here.

‘Is existence really that pointless? I can’t believe I’m actually missing New Eden…’

Jake brought back two glasses full of whiskey.

Beth grinned as she reached for one. ‘Wow! That’s enough to put me into next week!’

‘Me, too,’ Jake replied. They touched their glasses together and both took a very deep swallow.

An hour later, they were both asleep, Jake curled up against Beth’s backside. They both snored with the abandonment of throats relaxed by too much alcohol. Cum was leaking out of Beth’s butt and down onto the sheets as Jake’s shrinking cock slowly slipped out of her well-lubricated ass. Unseen, but still very much a part of what happened, was the handle of Jake’s hunting knife, buried to the hilt in Beth’s soft belly, two pairs of hands holding it in place as she slowly bled out onto the sheets.

Beth hadn’t intended to make love to Jake, but they started talking about when Jake and Béla first met, and his exciting ‘experiments’; using up an entire quiver of arrows on her, shooting her with his rifle, using his knife on her. All these images aroused Beth too much to control herself, and she’d simply overwhelmed Jake’s feeble human mind with her vampiric lust.

Beth also discovered while mind-linked with Jake that (according to him, anyway), almost any penetration into a female could be sexually stimulating, whether the penetration was made with flesh or metal. She agreed, of course, that it was incredibly stimulating. The demonstration with his knife was all it took… Then they were excitedly fucking while sharing their mental images of making holes in Béla.

When Béla awoke, she lay next to them and watched them sleep for a long time, not quiet understanding the upset she felt. She loved them both dearly, and knew she wasn’t jealous that they had found pleasure with each other. So what was the problem?

‘Why would another woman sleeping with Jake bother me? The other ‘woman’ is my sister; we fuck anyone we want, any time we want, and have never drawn up boundaries between us. Why is it different, now?’

Chapter 12 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“I’m pleased that you saw fit to see me, Chairman,” Chief Blacker said. He bowed formally to the youngish looking man behind the glass desk. “The matter is most urgent, as you can see from the files I’ve sent you.”

“Hmm,” said the man. His name was Hedron. At thirty-six, he was the youngest ever Chairman of the board of Tomlin Corporation, the organization that many Fortune 500 companies depended on to keep Industrial Espionage at a minimum.

Blacker stood uneasily, waiting for a more appropriate response from the man behind the desk. He had the idea that this man knew more than he was letting on.

‘He might already know about the existence of alien technology here on earth. He might try to cut me out of the game…’

“You should be made aware, Mr… Blacker,” the man said, finally, “that the situation has changed during your journey to our… beautiful country.”

He cleared his throat before continuing. “The, um, female… the second one, I mean, has reunited with the original. They are both now at the Pestova residence. It seems that she and the Tabors went on a field mission last night and rescued the daughter of an associate of mine. Evidently, these ‘X’ file females also do field work for Tabor Investigations; another item missing from your report.

“The girl evidently used their special transportation device to extract the victim from her abductor and managed to seal her kidnapper into a bomb shelter built beneath a night club called Renee’s. It’s in Bozeman, a small town in Montana, I believe. The kidnap victim’s name is Maddie Connors, the sole heiress of Conners Industries. I understand that the police are currently trying to burn their way into the bomb shelter. They haven’t had any success, as of yet.

“This is somewhat of an embarrassment to us, Mr. Blacker,” the man continued. “We have been looking for the young lady for almost two months, and a rival agency that you, according to your report, have been monitoring, just walks in with no preamble and plucks her out of an almost impregnable fortress.

“They were successful on their very first sortie, Mr. Blacker. I’ve perused the security tapes at Renee’s. These people knew what their objective was before they even entered the premises. They created an unbelievable diversion, skirted all of their security precautions, then did a complete ‘Judas Goat’ to gain entry to their underground facility and successfully extracted the kidnap victim.

“And I have no idea how they did any of it!” the Chairman concluded, angrily. “I have read your report that you believe these girls belong to an alien species; that they have ‘gifts’ of long life, ‘special’ mental abilities, and a ‘teleportation’ device which they employ to move from place to place.

“Some of these things may be true,” the Chairman conceded, “but I don’t like reading reports that sound like science fiction is necessary to ‘explain’ how something is done. Do you understand? The only part that has been demonstrated to be true is that they have a superior method of transportation! They can move from place to place, seemingly instantaneously.

“That they also have a new method of gaining information is obvious,” the Chairman added. “Their new method could enhance our organization beyond even my imagination to measure it. It also appears that they have developed a method of negating the effects of your thugs standard drug overdose. I want to know how they do it.

“So, Mr. Blacker, you have your assignment. On the table by the door are discs containing an ‘interview’ with the doorman of Renee’s club, the security feeds from there, and reports from our agents for the last twenty-four hours. There is also a disc with the security feeds for the last twenty-four hours from the MAS-DEC system you had secretly installed at the Pestova residence – unbeknownst to your superiors at that time, I might add. The data… is quite interesting.”

Knowing he was dismissed, Mr. Blacker bowed and turned toward the door. He was furious. The Chairman was being very generous considering the apparent oversights he’d committed in executing his duties, and the fact that he’d been conducting clandestine operations without upstairs approval. As he stopped and picked up the envelope at the door, he heard the Chairman clear his throat again. He turned back toward the center of the room.

“Yes, Mr. Chairman?” he asked.

‘He can still push that button before I can get out the door… I have to be very careful not to upset him further!’

“Incidentally, all of the security devices that you had installed yesterday in the Tabor’s apartment have inexplicably failed. I thought you might want to know…”

“Um… yes, sir!” Blacker replied nervously. “I’ll find out how they’re doing that, as well.”

Blacker almost ran out of the Chairman’s office. He’d not been that terrified for a very long time and felt he was lucky to get off without any ‘permanent’ problems.

‘I’ve got to get it right, next time!’ he thought to himself, feeling furious at being outmaneuvered by such rank amateurs.

He began to make a list in his head of what he needed to find out. Then he could figure out what to do.

‘They have an advanced security and information gathering technology. They have an advanced transportation device. They have new medical technology. Any one of these would make a fortune for the company that’s able to acquire it. And Hedron wants it all!’

Blacker understood the need that Chairman Hedron felt. He shared that need. He also understood that if the Chairman believed that Blacker was working any angles other than the Chairman’s, that Blacker would become part of the foundation of their next new high-rise.

Blacker punched a code into his private monitor to secure transportation. His next stop was Bozeman, to personally check out the Tabor’s apartment for advanced technology. He would make certain to bring the seekers he needed to ferret out any hidden electromagnetic devices. Then, he would set up headquarters at MAS-DEC in Albuquerque and plan his next step.

Chairman Jake Hedron chuckled to himself. He loved scaring the pants off these little tin-god types. Chief Blacker had been spying on the Tabors for over twenty years. Jake had only discovered Blacker’s personal vendetta four months ago –and that was completely by accident while he was personally checking out the security system of his namesake’s retirement home. It wasn’t difficult to discover what it was that Blacker was seeking by spying on those who had been associated with Project ‘X’.

‘He wants knowledge and immortality!’

It had taken quite a bit of maneuvering to convince Blacker that the Chairman was already conducting his own “X” file investigation and it would be ‘wise’ to join forces with the winning side. The rewards could be quite handsome…

Jake Hedron checked his schedule for the next day. He had a board meeting at ten o’clock, and then he was free for the rest of the day.

“Note Pad,” he spoke to the wall, never having bothered to personalize his personal secretary. “Clear my schedule for the next three days, starting at noon, tomorrow, local time. Secure a transport to meet me at the street level at eleven, or right after my board meeting. Destination will be Washington D.C.”

It was time to apprise Mother of the return of their family’s benefactor, and perhaps have a nice dinner in D.C. with her and her new husband (his new stepfather). He chuckled to himself again, ‘my second stepfather…’

Jake stuck his face into the shaver. He had a date with an exotic redhead. She had information she’d gathered from her very married lover, the CEO of a company that was transporting irradiated produce from some small country east of the Ural Mountains. The company was making far too much profit for what they were transporting, which meant they were also smuggling illegal goods (or, more likely, people).

He quickly went over his schedule in his mind.

‘Date with Crystal, come back here and add her data to our investigation. Go home. Sleep. Board meeting at ten, transport to D.C. at eleven, and dinner with mother.

‘Then I think I’ll go visit Gramps for a day or two and find out how he really took out those bugs… Blacker should be on his way to Albuquerque by then.

‘Oh! I should call now and make sure they’re both out of the apartment tomorrow morning. I don’t need Grams getting an overdose from that creep Blacker and his goons!’

He looked forward to the day when Blacker’s department was eradicated from the corporation forever. But, changing a ruthless corporation’s ideas and methodology took time – and ‘time’ was one thing he had a lot of, just like his mother and his grandparents.

Chapter 13 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Béla was in her fourth month. The little bulge in her tummy was starting to annoy her. She was alone in the house, watching the tri-d. If she sat on the far side of the room, three or four meters away from it, it didn’t bother her so much.

Beth and Jake were gone again. He’d taken his rifle. Beth wore the headgear Béla had asked her father to design for them. Last week, her Praetor had informed her that the devices were finally ready. Béla had sent Beth to fetch them from Deimos.

‘Do you expect me to teleport all the way there? And back?’ Beth had asked, incredulously. ‘I’ll starve to death!’

‘No, silly,’ Béla had replied. ‘Just dream-walk and carry it back – just like we did all those munitions we stole for our games… Remember?’

Beth went to sleep, then woke up a few minutes later and put on one of the helmets that her father had given her. She came downstairs carrying the other one under her arm.

Béla looked up and laughed. “You look like Alanna from Rana.”

“Who?” Beth wanted to know.

Images of a thin, colorful, paper book with primitive drawings in it. A fictitious character named ‘Adam Strange’ is teleported off the surface of earth to a distant planet in another galaxy. There, he meets a beautiful alien woman, Alanna. It was her scientist father’s ‘Zeta’ beam that had transported him to her world. They fall madly in love and then the effect of the beam wears off and he finds himself back on earth, separated from his true love by gazillions of light years.

“That’s really sad,” Beth told her sister. “People read that for entertainment?”

“Not anymore,” Béla said, disparagingly. “Everything’s in tri-d, now, and it’s much, much worse!”

Béla put on the other helmet and looked at her sister.

“Ready?” she asked.

They were about to teleport outside directly into the sunlight; far enough away from the cabin so that the dampening field around the structure would no longer be protecting them from the sun’s electromagnetic radiation.

Beth nodded.

“Okay, here goes!”

They vanished from the cabin and reappeared out by the landing pad. Beth grimaced, expecting the insides of her head to explode. Nothing happened.

“Hey! I’m okay!” she cried.

She looked around, squinting in the brightness surrounding her, happy to be out in the sun again. She turned her face straight up into the sun, her eyes closed against it’s brilliance. Her head still didn’t hurt.

“This is wonderful!” Béla said, smiling. “We can wear these almost anywhere!”

Then she doubled up in pain, holding her stomach. “Holy hell, what’s happening?” Béla cried, dropping to her knees.

Then she realized the pain was coming from her fetus. She teleported back into the shielded safety of the cabin. An instant later, Beth appeared beside her.

“What happened?” Beth cried. “Are you all right?”

“I’m alright,” Béla replied, groaning and holding her belly. “But baby doesn’t seem to like the sun…”

The two sisters sat and stared at each other. Beth now had the freedom to go anywhere she wanted, day or night. Béla was trapped by her unborn baby into staying home during the day. She hadn’t planned on staying home until the baby was born…

“Well, I guess you guys can go on our hunting trip without me,” Béla sighed.

Because of the baby, she hadn’t planned on being a target for Jake, but she had been looking forward to being outside in the sunlight again. It would be another year before the sun settled down enough to take the baby outside.

Jake and Beth had gone ‘hunting’ three times since the arrival of the protective helmets, leaving Béla alone with the Tri-d for entertainment. She was glad that Beth was having fun again, but she definitely felt left out.

After zoning out on the Tri-d for an hour or so, Béla drifted off to sleep.

Something heavy landed on her distended stomach, crushing her awake.

“God, I thought you’d never go to sleep! What is that noisy thing with the weird images coming out of it?”

“Get off me, you idiot!” Béla yelled. “You’re squashing my baby!”

Elaine backed up and sat down on Béla’s legs. Béla was still pinned on the couch.

“Your dream-walking body doesn’t look pregnant,” Elaine replied haughtily. “And thanks! I’m glad to see you, too!”

Elaine sat frowning at her sister for a moment, then reached outside her image of Béla’s living room and pulled a banana back into it. She began peeling it.

“Where do you get bananas in New Eden?” Béla asked, surprised.

“You don’t,” Elaine told her. “This is my dream… I made it up!”

She took a bite. It seemed so real that Béla could even smell it.

“And you know what else?” Elaine asked, cryptically.

She sat, silent, eating her banana.

“Alright! What?” Béla finally demanded after realizing that her ditzy sister was planning on waiting however long it took for Béla to ask.

Elaine swallowed so that she could talk.

“I can take it from my dream and make it real…” Elaine said, her eyebrows raised like she didn’t expect to be believed.

She was right. Béla didn’t believe her! “Like Shit!”

“Really!” Elaine insisted.

She popped the rest of the banana into her mouth and threw the peeling at her smart-ass sister. Then she disappeared.

Béla woke up. There on her chest was the banana peel that Elaine had thrown at her. She looked at it for a long time.

‘What! Do you expect it do disappear?’ a sarcastic voice said in her head. Elaine was still there!

‘How can I hear you when I’m awake?’ Béla asked, projecting her question into the air around her since she couldn’t tell where her sister was.

‘I’ve been practicing, dear sister! I can do a lot of things, now…’

‘Why do I get the idea that you’re mad at me?’ Béla asked, trying to sound innocent.

‘What? Me mad? I have no idea what you’re talking about! Could it be that you haven’t visited me even once since you left? Or, let’s see, could it be that you felt so ‘aggrieved’ with Beth when you thought she was me in the Communal Baths? Or, hmmm. Oh, yes! I had to find out from my Praetor that you’re going to have a baby! You couldn’t even come and tell me that!’ Elaine fumed.

‘Elaine…’ Béla sighed. She had no idea that Elaine was this upset. This had obviously been building for a long time. ‘I’m sorry…’

‘No shit, Sherlock! Like you give a damn about any of us at all! You left me in charge – just dumped everything and took off! Do you want to know how the university is doing? Do you know that the Great Bard Geoffrey got married? To a human, yet! Do you know that we turned your rear courtyard into a greenhouse so we can grow tropical fruit? Just because you like tropical fruit?

‘Yeah! We did! We were going to surprise you when you came back. We found a stasis cell at Southern Depot with pineapples, bananas, oranges, lemons, those little green thingies, and some ugly, awful tasting thing Jeff calls a man go.’

‘Elaine, I’m sorry…’

‘Don’t bother! I’ll be back in five years or so to give you another update! Let me know how your kid turns out!’

Elaine’s presence dissipated. Béla lay on the couch, stunned by Elaine’s vehement outburst. The worst part was;

‘Elaine is right! I haven’t thought about them at all – any of them! And dreamwalking is the easiest thing in the world to do…’

Béla closed her eyes and created an image of Elaine’s parlor in the goddess’ manor.

Elaine lay sobbing on her favorite couch. Jeff was trying to appease her, but she was too miserable.

“She didn’t even care!” Elaine sobbed. “She doesn’t miss us at all! She wasn’t even happy to see me! All she did was yell at me!”

She began sobbing even louder, then she quieted down. Jeff gave up and left her alone. After a moment, Elaine sat up and looked around the room. She sniffed, trying to clear the tears out of her nose without having to wipe.

“Feeling guilty, are you?” she called out into the air, her uneven, angry voice betraying her tears. “I can feel you, you know. I’m a lot more powerful than I was…”

‘What can I do to make up for this?’ Béla asked. ‘I’ve hurt you so badly. And, yes, I am feeling guilty. I forgot you. It’s unforgivable. I don’t know what to say to make things right…’

“Saying ‘I’m sorry’ a million times might make me feel better,” Elaine suggested. She sniffed. “I think about you all the time, you know. Almost everything I do I think ‘Béla would like this’, or ‘She might not approve of this decision’, or…”

‘Elaine,’ Béla interrupted. ‘Please forgive me. I love you. I know you love me or you wouldn’t be so angry with me. Please. Let’s not fight…’

Elaine closed her eyes and rose up out of her body to where her sister floated, dream-walking, in the middle of the room.

‘You still don’t look pregnant,’ she thought to her sister. ‘I know you’re saying all this stuff just so I’ll let you off the hook. You’re like a fish out of water, gasping in the air, hoping I’ll throw you back!’

Béla stared at her sister. She couldn’t believe how cold-hearted Elaine had become.

‘All right, I forgive you,’ Elaine thought. ‘I don’t want to fight with you anymore. Now go away. I hurt when you’re around.’

Béla sadly vanquished her dream image of Elaine’s parlor and sat up. The banana peel was still there. ‘I know a few tricks, too.’

She re-entered her dream-walking state and, as her dream self, picked up the banana peel. Then, creating an image of Elaine’s parlor again, threw the peeling into the image, then vanquished the image.

Béla chuckled sadly to herself, wondering where the banana peel had landed.

Chapter 14 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Hunt

Flying high over her target, she circled slowly, stretching her wings as wide as she could to sustain her weight at this slow speed. She twisted her body slightly, tightening her circle. She smiled to herself, spotting her target several hundred feet below. He was climbing a rocky path, following the easy trail she had left for him.

She closed her eyes, luxuriating in the sudden warmth as the sun came out from behind a cloud and caressed her bare back with its radiance. It was autumn and the air was cool. Soon, it would be too cold to fly, and the hunting game that Jake played with her would have to wait until next spring.

‘Where’d he go?’

Beth banked to the right, changing the direction of her circle, searching the ground for Jake. He had been beneath her just a moment ago…

A searing, white-hot pain ripped through her chest! Then another caught her in the belly, just above her pelvis!

‘Shit! He shot me!’

Beth folded her wings in agony. The intense pain began to dissipate throughout her nervous system as her body went into pain-separation mode. In a few seconds, she was able to stretch her wings out to break her fall. The intense tingling in her nerves from the bullet wounds made her feel incredibly horny. She straightened up, preparing to land.

‘I can’t fly and have an orgasm at the same time…’

Another bullet tore a white-hot path through her back and into her right lung, exploding out through her right breast. Losing her balance, Beth arched her back and crashed into the ground as she came. She flipped over, breaking her right wing.

She lay gasping on the ground for a moment, coughing blood, trembling from her intense orgasm and the pain of her broken limb. After a moment, she was able to move again. She cried out as she forced her broken wing back into an arm, and looked at her arm closely. It would heal without needing to be set. She wildly looked around, searching for her antagonist.

‘I can’t see him! Where the hell is he?’

Beth stood up, breathing deeply, holding her torn breast with her left hand. Her lung had healed enough so that she was no longer choking on her own blood. Her right shoulder blade was broken, too.

‘That must’ve happened when he shot me in the back…’

She still couldn’t see him. She began moving, climbing unsteadily away from where she remembered the last shots came from, turning her head from side to side as she searched. Beth ached to turn around and stretch her arms wide, letting Jake make many, many sexy holes in her with that sweet, beautiful rifle, but there was no game in that. She had to earn the holes Jake put in her by trying not to get shot.

‘How weird is that?’

Breathing heavily, she rested against a boulder. ‘Where the hell is he?’

She wished she could mind-link with him and discover his plans, but the fancy little helmet that protected her from the sun also prevented her from being able to feel Jake’s mind so she could out-smart or out-maneuver him.

Her arm was almost healed enough so that she could take flight again. Her shattered shoulder blade had grown back together, as well. She could feel a strange tingling deep in her right shoulder as her body reabsorbed excess bone tissue.

Forming her wings, again, she cried out as a tiny chip came loose from her shoulder blade and cut into a muscle. After a moment, the pain was gone and her shoulder blade was back in its proper shape. She squatted down and leaped into the air.

Catching herself on her wings, she savagely reached for altitude. Then she was falling as a white-hot trail of fire struck her back and exploded out her belly. She twisted around, trying to keep from hitting the earth face first. Jake was only a hundred feet away.

She could see the fiery spit of his rifle, then a hole appeared just under her rib cage accompanied by the now wonderfully familiar fiery sensation tearing through her body. Another spit from his rifle and another agonizing fiery hole in her belly. She cried out in agony and orgasm, then struck the ground, still trying to fly backwards and flipped over twice, lengthwise.

Beth lay twisted on the ground, her wings broken beneath her. She writhed, trying to get her broken wings to reform into arms. Her lungs had been ruptured again and she was coughing blood. Her belly and breasts were bloody from the wonderful holes Jake put in her. She was coming so hard that even the pain in her broken wings felt wonderful.

She turned her head and watched Jake approach. He walked a few steps toward her, then raised his beautiful rifle. She heard the sensual shout it made against her eardrums and felt her body shudder with the impact as another white-hot bullet tore lovingly through her flesh, causing her to come again, even harder.

Jake walked up to Beth and circled around. Beth watched him, panting heavily and coughing blood. Every few seconds, she would cry out, the victim of another orgasm shuddering through her ruined body and radiating into the air around her.

“I missed a spot,” Jake said casually.

He kneeled down and pressed the barrel of the rifle against the side of her undamaged left breast, just under her armpit. The rifle butt almost touched the ground as he held it so that its fiery discharge would carve a trail of pain and agony clear across the front of her chest, through both of her breasts.

Jake pulled the trigger and watched Beth’s breast explode as the bullet tore through her tender flesh, shattered her breastbone and passed through her almost healed right breast, rupturing it again. Beth screamed in agony, twisting on the ground, then shook as she radiated another orgasm.

Jake’s was so horny and his cock pressed against his jeans so painfully that he couldn’t wait any longer. That last orgasm she radiated almost made him come in his jeans as the sensual wave passed through him. He stooped down himself between her legs and quickly unfastened his jeans, letting them drop down to his ankles. Then he had his cock inside her sweet, hot cunt. He could feel her cunt contract as she radiated yet another orgasm through him. It only took him a few strokes, then he was pumping load after hot, sticky load of cum into her sweet, wet pussy.

“And here’s what you’ve been waiting for, you hungry, luscious cunt,” Jake panted, as he sat up and pulled himself out.

Beth watched him pick up his rifle through her pain-filled eyes, having another orgasm just at the thought of what he was going to do to her. She arched her back into the air, coming again as she felt cold steel against her pussy lips.

Then her whole body erupted with ecstatic agony as the beautiful rifle spit its hot fire into her cunt. The fire from the muzzle cooked her pussy lips while the bullet tore a fiery trail of agony through her cunt, into her womb and up into her belly. It passed through her rib cage, tore through her right lung and shattered her collarbone as it exited.

Beth screamed in agony as the white-hot trail of pain ripped through her. Her ruined cunt twitched in orgasm as she came again.

“Again!” she screamed. “Do it again!”

Jake put the barrel of the rifle against her clitoris and pressed it down. Beth shook as the pressure against her sensitive, swollen little clit made her come again.

“Yes!” Beth cried, delirious with ecstasy. “Put it right there! Blow me apart! Do it!”

She screamed as her pelvic bone was blown into tiny pieces. The bullet tore through her belly, out her buttocks and into the ground. Her body shook as she came. Her nervous system was so overloaded that she was coming constantly, now.

“Again…” she gasped.

Jake knew she would keep asking for more until he ran out of ammunition or she passed out, whichever came first. Her orgasms were making him horny again as they radiated through him.

‘I’ve already fucked you, sweet slut! This hard-on is for Béla!’

He decided to end the game. Holding the rifle butt against his biceps, he pointed the barrel down at Beth’s belly. It didn’t look so sweet and tender any more – it looked like very bloody ground meat. He pulled the trigger, creating another little geyser of blood and gore that spattered down on her torn and broken body. Beth shuddered at the impact, almost too unconscious to feel it, but still radiating orgasms with each shot he pumped into her.

He fired again, choosing another smooth patch of her sweet flesh to destroy. He was running out of smooth female flesh. Each time they went ‘hunting’ he needed more ammunition to finish her off. She was getting stronger and harder to kill with every hunt. Another orgasm radiated out from her dying body.

Jake walked around to her right side. ‘Ah!’ Her entire torso was sweetly smooth and undamaged from her rib cage to her hip. He loaded his last five shells into his rifle. Beth weakly turned her head toward him and moved her lips.

“More…” she whispered, then spit up some blood.

Gasping weakly, she waited for him to finish her off. She wasn’t even trying to get her broken wings out from underneath her any more. It was time for her to die.

‘I’m ready! Do me…’ Beth thought at him, but he couldn’t hear her through the helmet.

Jeff walked away about ten feet, then turned around and put his rifle to his shoulder. His emptied it into the right side of her body, beginning by shattering her right hip, then moving up her sweet torso, putting the last shell into her rib cage at the same level as her heart.

When he began firing, Beth twisted and writhed, arching her back into the air in her agony, radiating multiple orgasms.

With his last shot, she radiated the sudden pain of the bullet rupturing her lungs and heart along with her dying orgasm and collapsed to the ground. Jake walked over to her body and, grasping a bloody handful of broken wing, pulled her over onto her stomach. Then he straightened her wings out so that they would heal properly.

‘I’ve finished with you ’til next time, sweet slut. It’s time to get home and give what’s left to Béla. She’ll be lonely.’

Like he had each time he and Beth had going ‘hunting’ before, he left her torn, mutilated body lying in its own pooling blood and hiked back to his flitter by himself.

He wasn’t worried about leaving her bloodied carcass behind. The other two times he’d hunted her, she had actually beat him home, teleporting directly into her own bed in Jake’s guestroom. After the first time, Jake covered the bed with plastic sheeting before they went hunting.

Béla looked up as Jake opened the door. She’d heard the flitter land, vibrating the floor as Jake drove it into the underground garage. She could smell blood and sweat on his clothes.

‘Beth’s blood! Jake’s sweat!’ Béla thought, becoming aroused at the smell of him. ‘God! He smells so good – so… horny!’

Béla rose from the couch and greeted him with a kiss, pressing her bare breasts and belly against his wet and bloody shirt. Inhaling deeply, she greedily absorbed the scents that told the story of his hunt with Beth.

‘He shot her down! He fucked her! He killed her!’

Becoming more aroused by the scent of Beth’s sex and her dried blood on Jake’s clothes, Béla yanked on Jake’s belt. She wanted him still sweaty and dirty from the hunt. The belt came loose in her hands.

“Hey!” she exclaimed, excitedly. “Look what I did!”

Jake looked down and laughed. The belt buckle actually came undone in her hands, just like it was supposed to. As Béla eagerly pulled his jeans open, Beth’s scent on his cock assaulted her nostrils, making her even more aroused. She intended to lick every drop of Beth’s scent off of him before she let him fuck her.

Jake let her suck eagerly on his cock for a moment, then moved to pull himself out of her mouth. He’d spent the afternoon shooting and fucking Beth. Now, he wanted more than just to come in Béla’s mouth. He wanted to fuck her in all of her orifices. But first, he wanted to juice her up really good with his tongue. Béla, feeling his intention, allowed herself to be picked up and carried back to the couch.

“Remember to chew your food, darling,” she whispered throatily as he spread her legs and began licking and kissing her inner thighs.

She closed her eyes and put her hands in his hair as his warm mouth and wet tongue found their way to their throbbing, sensitive little target. Then he was licking and chewing on her clitoris and she was shooting her juices all over his chin, neck and chest.

As Béla came, she mind-linked with him so they could share the sensations he was causing her to experience in addition to the orgasm she radiated through the room. As Jake chewed on her tender cunt-flesh and her clitoris, he showed her his images of this afternoon’s ‘Beth Hunt’.

Jake follows her trail up the side of the slope; rifle cocked and ready to spit its hot fire into a sweet, sexy, vampire body. A shadow appears on the ground ahead of him for an instant.

‘She’s airborne!’ Jake rolls to one side into the shadow of a boulder, searching the sky for the hot-blooded little vampire. Taking careful aim at her sweet, naked belly, he squeezes the trigger. The rifle spits its hot fire into her chest, and again into her sweet, soft belly.

Beth folds and falls out of the sky, seemingly mortally wounded. Then she recovers and begins flying away from him. He sights along his rifle barrel and puts a hot, sweet bullet into her bare back, bringing her crashing down to the ground. He can feel his dick getting hard from the thought of the orgasmic agony he’s causing her.

Béla came again as she watched Beth fall out of the sky, wishing it were she receiving the loving attention of Jake’s fiery rifle. Her whole body shook in orgasm as she imagined what Beth had experienced.

Jake scrambles back down the trail he’d been climbing, staying close to the ground and out of sight. He stays down, traveling slowly toward where he saw Beth slam into the ground. There are a lot of places where she can hide. He’s not sure where she is.

There! A sudden flurry of movement as Beth takes to the sky! Jake aims his rifle, her back an easy target. He lovingly squeezes the trigger, sending another jolt of hot fire into her sweet body. Beth spins around, flying backwards for a moment. Jake puts two more loving holes into her soft belly, knocking her to the ground, once again.

Béla was having one long, constant orgasm as she watched Beth take all that lovely hot lead into her body.

Beth hits the ground on her back, crushing her wings and flipping completely over, landing with her full weight on her broken wings. Jake knows she is through fleeing. She can’t even get up. He takes a few more steps, then raises his rifle and shoots Beth again, just to make sure she stays put.

Béla can feel Jake’s arousal from his wonderful hunt. She watches, coming constantly, as he shoots Beth’s tits off (that’s one of Beth’s very favorite things, I remember), then drops down between her legs and fucks her.

Béla came again as she watched Jake fuck Beth in his image of the hunt. Jake was moving up Béla’s body, now, chewing on her belly and her breasts, then he shoved his hard cock into Béla’s wet cunt. Béla arched her back to receive him, crying out in another orgasm. Jake pulled out and shoved his juiced-up cock into her ass. He spurted his come deep into her ass as she came again.

They both relaxed, totally sated at last. Béla fell asleep with Jake still inside her. After a few moments, Jake climbed off of her and sighed, wishing he could stay and fuck her again, but there are limits to human endurance. Besides, he needed to clean his rifle for the next ‘Beth Hunt’ and check over the flitter to make sure it stayed operational.

‘I have two of the hottest chicks on the planet’ Jake thought to himself, sighing with complete satisfaction. ‘Life doesn’t get any better than this!’

Smiling to himself, he headed through the door underneath the staircase.

‘Always something to do… Later, I’m going to take Béla upstairs, put her in the Jacuzzi and fuck her ‘til midnight…’

Chapter 15 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Tanya screamed as she came. Frank turned down the electricity on the device buried inside her to let her relax for a moment. They’d been having fun with their new toy for a month, now, and Tanya wasn’t tired of it yet. She loved having her pussy and rear end cooked with raw electricity. With that pain dispersal trick she’d learned from Beth, she could tolerate, and loved to experience, an incredible amount of physical abuse to her sexual organs now.

Frank was happy, too. Tanya let him fist fuck her as often as he wanted to, now. Before the vampire sisters had arrived, Tanya was too sensitive to allow much experimentation beyond normal fucking and sucking, although they occasionally played with matches and cigarette ash. Other than that, having a dick in her ass and a dildo in her pussy at the same time was about as far as she would go. Both of them being mind-linked to Beth and sharing her sexual murder of that serial killer helped their sex life, too.

Now, Tanya was ‘experiment crazy’, wanting to try just about anything short of explosive devices. Last week, she’d convinced Frank to drop burning pieces of cloth on her belly while he electrocuted her with that device she’d purchased for Beth. She came so hard that now she was in love with fire. She even burnt her breasts on the kitchen stove, just to experience the sensation.

After that, she began smoking again, mostly so she could play with the hot ashes.

‘It’s not like Béla’s blood will let me die of cancer…’ she reasoned.

But she didn’t smoke for the pleasure of the drug. Instead, she would lie in bed and light the little white cylinder, take a few puffs, then she would press the lit end against some part of her body, usually one of her nipples or her clitoris, crying out in pleasure as she came.

Not satisfied with that, she took one of Frank’s cotton undershirts while he at work and slashed it lengthwise into long strands. Then she tied the strands together to make three or four cotton ‘ropes’ that hung down almost to her waist. Then she lit them, one at a time, letting the sweet, hot fire scorch her rib cage and breasts as she masturbated furiously while standing in the middle of the kitchen floor so she wouldn’t accidentally set fire to anything important.

Last night, they’d spent several hours building a device that would clamp painfully onto both her breasts that could be connected electrically to the apartment’s power grid. She burnt her breasts black with it while Frank fucked her in the ass. It took her breasts almost an hour to heal. While they were healing, they were extraordinarily sensitive and Tanya made Frank stick pins into her nipples while he cooked her pussy and ass with the electrical device.

Sticking pins into her tender nipps gave her another idea. After Frank left for work this morning, she quickly finished her financial stuff, then found a board and a jar of nails in the repair shed on the roof of the complex. She brought them back down to the kitchen, along with a hammer, and hammered all the nails into the entire length of the board so that the sharp ends were sticking an inch or so out the other side. Then she nailed it on the wall with the sharp pointy parts sticking out.

She smiled as she imagined the wonderful things she was going to do to herself with that simple board. She stroked her clitoris with her fingers, arousing herself until her body was tingling with sexual excitement. Then she pressed her left breast against the board, hissing as she forced the sharp nails into her tender flesh.

She moaned softly as she came, then backed away and did the same to her other breast. Moving carefully, she made certain that one of the sharp little nail points went right into the center of her hard little nipple. After she came again, she pressed the entire length of her body against the board, making little holes all the way up and down her chest and torso. Then she twisted her upper body from side to side, repeatedly pressing her breasts, one at a time, into the tips of the nails, puncturing them until she came again.

After that, she pulled the board off the wall and laid it down on the kitchen floor with the sharp nails sticking upward.

‘This is too hard to do, standing up!’

Tanya lay down next to it and positioned her body carefully so that she could roll over onto the board and not get nails stuck in her face or neck. She rolled over onto the nails, gasping as they penetrated into her left breast, her rib cage and the length of her torso, down to her hipbone. Breathing heavily, with incredible sensations flowing through her body, she carefully reached down and began to masturbate.

After she came again, she carefully disengaged herself from the bloodied nails piercing into her flesh.

‘This is wonderful! I’ve got to do the other side, now!’

When Frank came home, Tanya greeted him, naked, happily displaying the half-healed nail holes in her breasts and belly.

“Well,” Frank said, appraising the situation and his wife’s condition. “I guess we’ll have to build a wall of spikes into your new playroom.”

They were having their own place built outside of town with the money they’d received from Conners Industries for the rescue of the CEO’s stepdaughter.

The new house, already half-built, would have a soundproofed room right in the middle of it that would have installed into it most of the ideas that Tanya’s horny little mind had come up with to keep herself entertained.

A special shower with a standard, rotating shower mechanism, except that instead of a showerhead, it would have a special gas nozzle that emitted a tiny, concentrated flame that would blaze fiery little designs into her flesh as it spun around, moving up and down her body.

The only other item she’d envisioned, so far, was a rounded bench, shaped like a saddle with that wonderful electrical device she’d bought for Beth implanted into the seat.

And now, it would also have a wall of spikes that she could lean against and puncture her sensitive breasts and belly.

“I think we should make it so that could be vertical or horizontal,” Tanya suggested. “That way I could lie on it if I wanted…”

She was getting aroused again just thinking about it. Coming up with a new use for the board, she led Frank out into the kitchen.

She kissed him passionately, rubbing her tender, half-healed breasts against his rough jacket.

“Take off your clothes, baby,” she cooed. “I want you to fuck me…”

Frank loved it when Tanya talked dirty. Even after eighty years, it made him incredibly horny. This time, she was not just talking dirty, she smelled dirty – like she’d been fucking herself all afternoon.

Then he had his clothes off and Tanya was sucking on his cock, making sure it was good and hard.

“Before we start, darling,” Frank said, huskily, “I want a mouth-full of that cunt-juice you’ve been stirring up all afternoon. It should be hot and musky by now!”

Tanya’s took a deep breath, looking forward to her sexual release.

‘Your head between my legs? Of course, darling!’

“But you have to promise to bite me down there!” Tanya insisted.

Frank wasn’t worried. Tanya was always very verbal in telling him what she wanted. She came twice while Frank chewed on her clitoris and pussy lips. When she could move again, she sucked him hard again, then rolled over onto the board of nails. Then she had Frank shove his dick into her ass and fuck her.

“Harder!” she cried.

Frank rammed his cock in and out of her ass, ramming her body harder against the nails penetrating her breast and belly. The violent fucking motion caused the nails to rip her flesh where they were embedded, causing her more sensation. Then she was coming again – one long, constant orgasm.

‘Yes! Oh, God! This is what I live for…’

Frank gave one, final, violent shove into her ass with his cock, then spurted his salty cum into her. In addition to the beautiful, fiery pain the nails were causing in her torn breasts and belly, Frank’s salty cum stung where he’d scoured her insides from reaming her so hard.

He started to collapse down on top of her, like he usually did after sex, then remembered that she was lying on a bed on nails. He staggered back to his feet and looked down at her. There was blood seeping out from under her torso. Gently, he coaxed her to roll over, off the board and onto her back. His eyes widened as he saw the damage she’d done to herself.

“Holy shit!” Frank exclaimed. “Are you alright?”

Where each nail had penetrated about a half-inch into her flesh, the force of their fucking had caused the nasty little points to tear and severely damage her skin as she was jarred back and forth on them. Tanya looked down at her torn and bloodied body.

“It feels great, Hon,” she said breathlessly, half laughing at his reaction to her violent sexuality. “It’ll heal. I’ve been doing this all afternoon… I must’ve come fifty times, today.”

“Oh,” said Frank, acting strangely dispersed. “Then… what do you need me for?”

Tanya gazed lovingly into Frank’s eyes, suddenly realizing what was wrong.

“I came, and I came,” Tanya told him, sitting up. “Then I had to do it again. I needed your cock in my ass to finish me off… to make me complete. I can come constantly. But if you’re not there, just coming isn’t enough. I need you… to complete me.”

Frank looked unconvinced. Tanya got to her feet, using the kitchen table to steady her as she stood up. She kissed him, rubbing her tender, bloodied breasts against his hairy chest and put her arms around his neck.

“I can come a hundred times with all these homemade toys,” she told him quietly. “But, afterwards, I’m still horny. I’m still not satisfied. You only need to fuck me once, and I feel complete…”

She kissed him passionately, “satisfied…”

She kissed him again, pushing her tongue into his mouth, “contented…”

She ground her lips against his and began twisting her blood-slick torso against him. She could feel his body responding to hers, making her even more horny. After a moment, they both broke their passionate embrace, coming up for air.

“So,” Frank said, huskily, “you’re satisfied, now, hmm?”

He pulled her tighter against him, moving so that his half-hard cock brushed against her pussy.

“Hell, no!” Tanya exclaimed. “I need you to fuck me again!”

Frank laughed at her surprisingly verbal response.

“You want to lay down on the board again?” Frank asked.

He was willing to let her if she wanted the extra stimulation the board would provide.

‘My horny little wife mutilating herself for sexual pleasure is going to taking some getting used to…’

“Um,” Tanya thought for a few seconds. “No, I don’t need it. Not now that you’re here…”

She realized that Frank considered her obsession with sexual mutilation as some kind of competition with his own sexuality. Although he had agreed to let Tanya design a playroom specifically for her sexual pleasure into their new home, he wasn’t real happy about it and considered the whole thing a threat to their relationship. He was hoping she’d get bored with all this wild stuff after a while… They could always let the vampire girls play there.

That was another thing. They’d studied how the electronics in Jake’s cabin shielded the girls from the sun’s radio emissions and designed a similar ‘radiation’ shield into their new home. That way Beth and Béla, and Béla’s unborn child, could be comfortable there, day or night.

Tanya led Frank into the bedroom, then sat him down on the bed and knelt down in front of him. Taking his half-hard cock in his hands, she looked up into his face as he gazed down on her. She kissed the end of his cock, then took it into her mouth, swirling her tongue around its tip. Frank moaned quietly and watched her work.

After a moment, Frank’s cock was so hard that it was difficult not to twitch his hips and begin fucking her face. He reached down to pull Tanya up, then stopped when Tanya grunted a protest and moved sideways, slightly.

‘She wants to suck me off!’ he realized. ‘That means it’s okay for me to fuck her face!’

He reached down and dug his fingers into her luscious blond hair. Little by little, they exchanged their roles from ‘her sucking on him’ to ‘him fucking her face’. Soon, he was holding the sides of her head while ramming his cock into the back of her throat causing her to choke every few seconds as she tried to keep breathing.

“You want me to come in your mouth?” he asked, his voice strained with desire.

“Um-hum,” Tanya replied, nodding her head slightly.

She changed her position to align her throat and neck with the inside of her mouth so Frank could shove his cock even further into her face. Then Frank’s pelvis was mashed against her nose and mouth with his cock halfway down her throat. Then his cock jerked in her mouth as cum spurted down the back of her throat and directly into her stomach.

She felt his cum fill her throat and slide down her esophagus. She dug her fingers deeper into her pussy, trying to finish herself off.

‘Almost there… if I don’t choke, everything’ll be fine… Yes! I’m coming!’

As Frank relaxed from his orgasm, he noticed Tanya’s furious hand motion between her legs.

“Do you want me to help?” he asked.

Then she was jerking and grunting as she came. Then she sighed and her body relaxed. After a moment, she climbed up on the bed with him and curled herself around his back. He sat on the bed, surrounded by his loving wife as she kissed her way up the side of his right thigh. She sighed contentedly and looked up into his face.

“I love you,” she said. “You don’t need to worry. I might spend a lot of time in my little sex sanctuary that you’re building for me, but only when you aren’t around. When you’re here, I want to be with you, no matter what we’re doing.”

Frank smiled down at her. “I know. In my head, I know. I just get weird sometimes when I see you perched on some machine that’s making you come fifty times and I can only make you come once or twice.”

Tanya kissed him again. “How many times is really not the point. I’ll take two times from you to fifty times from some lifeless machine.”

She sat up and stretched.

“Oops!” she gasped, putting her hand down between her legs. “I need a towel… or maybe a tongue?”

Frank took the hint and rolled onto his back. Tanya swung her legs over, out of his way, first, then twisted her body back and over his head and expertly planted a knee on each side of his head. Then she scooted over to lie on him while he began to tongue out her leaking pussy.

“Umm… that feels good….” she crooned, sighing softly.

It occurred to her that when Frank was between her legs, she didn’t need any other stimulation. She only became obsessed with sex when he wasn’t there to give it to her.

‘I must be in love… After eighty years, I still lust after my husband!’

After a few moments, she moaned softly as she came. Then she switched ends and licked her cum off her husband’s face.

‘Wow! That’s strong! I really need a bath!’

“You could have said something…” Tanya admonished him.

“About what?” Frank asked, innocently smiling.

“About my… um… smell? My taste?” Tanya said, hesitating.

‘You know damned well ‘what’!’

“I like the way you smell,” Frank told her. “And your taste will be in my mouth and throat at least until tomorrow, and then I can get it renewed for another day.”

They both laughed, Tanya, a little self-consciously.

“Besides, if I complained about lapping up the cum from all the orgasms you’ve had today, I wouldn’t get any more for a least a week…”

Tanya hit him with a pillow. Then they were wrestling playfully on the bed, laughing like the teenagers they appeared to be.

Tanya’s puncture wounds from writhing around on the board of nails had healed, leaving brownish dried flakes of blood which brushed off easily. Underneath was soft, pink skin; very sensitive to the touch of Frank’s fingers, tongue and lips. Pinned to the bed, she humped herself against Frank’s thigh as he sucked and chewed gently on her right breast while he playfully twisted her left nipple with his fingers.

Then they were making love; Frank pumping in and out of her hot, wet pussy while Tanya moaned, coming over and over as she was crushed into the bed.

The pizza they ordered was actually hot. When Tanya bit into the end of hers, the entire topping of mozzarella and mushrooms pulled off and slopped down, burning her chin and her bare breastbone.

“Aaiii!” Tanya shrieked, jumping off the bed and brushing the hot, sticky stuff off her body while Frank rolled on the bed and laughed at her.

“What’s so damned funny?” she wanted to know.

“Well, you make toast out of your tits and set your cunt on fire, but a slice of hot pizza does you in,” Frank chuckled.

Tanya actually blushed. “Well, I wasn’t expecting it.”

‘I do like to burn myself, don’t I?’

She took another piece out of the box and smeared it on her breasts, gritting her teeth and hissing to keep herself from crying out. Breathing heavily to keep from shaking, she lay down next to Frank.

“You have to eat this,” she told him.

Frank looked down at the mess on her chest and tossed his slice back into the box. Then he licked, bit and sucked every bit of mozzarella and mushroom off her chest that he could reach.

Then she smeared another piece between her legs. He ate that, too. She came four more times.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” Frank asked.

He lay back on the bed, his hard dick pointing straight up. Tanya chuckled and grabbed a piece of pizza out of the box. It had cooled off a lot and didn’t stick to his dick as well as she wanted it to, but when she cleaned it off, she found the cream filling that hadn’t been in the other pieces.

They lay beside each other, both sticky with pizza, saliva and cum.

“I’ve been thinking,” Tanya said. “Despite the fact that you complain about my use of artificial devices to get me off, there are a few that you like using on me; like that electric cunt cooker I bought for Beth. And I know, from watching how fast your cock springs up, that you like helping me with stuff I can’t do by myself, like cooking my tits with that thing you made for me last night, or setting me on fire to burn my pussy hair off – stuff like that!”

“And your point?” Frank asked, wondering what dark path she was traveling down, now.

We haven’t tried acid, yet,” Tanya said, revealing that she’d thought of an exciting new way to torture herself sexually. “There’s muratic acid for the Jacuzzi. You can funnel it right into my pussy.”

Her belly twitched in anticipation of the agony that was going to cause.

Frank laughed, “Now?”

“Well, it needs a good cleaning,” Tanya said in her sexiest voice. “Especially after the good cleaning you just gave it…”

Frank went out to the storage room where supplies for the pool and Jacuzzi were kept. He brought back a gallon jug. Tanya’s eyes widened.

“I don’t think we should use that much,” she suggested, nervously licking her lips. “At least, not the first time. Probably a few ounces will do me…”

Frank poured some into a smaller container, blinking his eyes and holding his breath at the toxic aroma that wafted from the bottle. Then he carefully poured a small amount into a water bottle. The bottle lip was narrow enough to fit inside her.

“You know, once I douche you with this stuff,” Frank warned her, “I won’t be able to get it out. You’re going to be screaming your head off for quite a while. This shit is really mean!”

“Maybe you should gag me,” Tanya suggested. “Or, better yet, maybe you should just pour some on me so I get the idea of how much I can take…”

She was breathing heavily, now, anticipating an evening of pure torture and ecstasy.

“Sure,” Frank agreed. He wasn’t sure he wanted to mutilate his wife’s body that way, but he knew she would heal. “Where do you want me to pour it?”

Tanya lay back on the bed, then scooted around so that the entire length of her body was available along the foot of the bed.

“You can just sprinkle it on me,” she told him, her eyes gleaming with excitement. “Start with my nipples…”

She cupped her breasts together and rubbed her thumbs over her hard nipples, making them even harder.

“They look like little erasers, don’t they?” she crooned. “Dribble a few drops on one and erase it, will you, please?”

Her voice shook with fear and excitement.

Frank carefully turned the bottle sideways, watching the noxious liquid move toward the opening at the top. Then a few drops flowed out, dribbling onto Tanya’s breast. White steam rose from the bubbling foam. Tanya shrieked, then twisted away, rubbing her burnt breast on the bedcovers. She sat on the bed, shaking and sobbing.

“That was too much,” she said shakily when she was finally able to talk. Frank started to put the toxic acid away, assuming that Tanya had finally realized her limits.

“Maybe we should start with just a drop,” she said, surprising him completely.

“What?” Frank exclaimed. “You just terrified everyone within half a mile! I’m surprised the police aren’t pounding on the door! And you want to try it again?”

Tanya nodded. “I came really hard…”

Frank sighed. She wanted to do it again, a drop at a time, this time.

“Wait’l I find an eyedropper,” Frank told her, sounding sullen.

‘It’s better this way, anyway… less likely to spill the noxious stuff all over everything.’

After a moment, he came back. He poured some of the acid into a tiny bottle that had a glass dipstick built into the bottom of the lid. The little glass knob on the end would only pick up a drop or two at a time.

“Okay, I’ve got one,” he told her.

He was getting horny again, but wasn’t about to stick his dick into any part of her that had muratic acid in it, no matter how much he loved her.

Tanya lay back down across the foot of the bed. Frank noticed that the acid burn on her breast had already healed. There wasn’t even a scar – just a little redness.

“Same target, darling?” Frank asked, candidly.

Tanya spread her sexy legs and began rubbing her burnt-bare pussy with her hand.

“I want you to put it right on my clit,” she said, huskily. Her body was shaking. Her belly twitched as she came. “I’m coming just thinking about it!”

“Well, try to hold still,” Frank admonished her.

He dipped the little glass wand into the bottle and drew it back out, carefully watching the single drop of noxious liquid as it pooled around the bottom of the wand. Carefully moving his hand, he touched the wand to Tanya’s engorged clitoris. It immediately started to bubble as the acid ate into her tender flesh.

Tanya’s hand almost knocked the wand out of Frank’s hand as she grabbed her crotch and curled up into a ball. She screamed through gritted teeth, trying not to make too much noise as she shook violently on the bed. In seconds, she was shining with moisture as her body tried to cool itself down.

After a moment, she relaxed and fell back on the bed, panting heavily.

“Oh, holy fuck! That was intense!” she sighed, still trembling. “I came so hard…”

“I want to see the damage,” Frank said, putting the bottle down on the dresser and forcing her legs apart.

Her clitoris was still there. He couldn’t see where she’d been burned.

“It burnt completely away, then it grew back!” Tanya told him. “I’ve never experienced anything like that! This must be how the space girls feel when they blow up parts of their bodies.”

“They do what?” Frank asked, not believing that anyone would even consider doing something that stupid.

“When we were at Renee’s with Beth, we were mind-linked with her. I… well, I kind’ve snooped into some of her memories and I came up with a doozy! Beth and Béla had a sex game they played. They played it for days and weeks at a time while their space ship was traveling from Jupiter to here. They mutilated each other, just for the thrill of it, with knives, guns, grenades…”

“Grenades?” Frank asked, eyes wide and eyebrows raised in disbelief.

“Yes!” Tanya insisted. “But, their favorite ‘toy’ was blasting caps! The kind used to make dynamite explode!”

“Jesus Christ!” Frank exclaimed. “What did they do?”

“They put them in each other’s cunts, Frank,” Tanya said, deadly serious. “They blew their cunts up just for the fun of doing it!”

“And you want to try this?” Frank asked, hoping desperately that she’d say ‘no’.

“I don’t know,” Tanya said quietly. “I’ve thought about it. After I’ve felt you dissolve my clit and felt it grow back, I’m thinking more about it. Can you imagine deliberately destroying a part of your body just to feel the sensation of it regenerating?”

“We already do that,” Frank said. “You cook your cunt every day with that device you bought for Beth. It regenerates and you do it again. How much more destruction are we talking about here?”

“Complete destruction of my sexual organs, Frank,” Tanya said, her voice unsteady with emotion. “Blowing up my cunt!”

“Just for the fun of it?” Frank asked.

He was beginning to realize that Tanya really wanted to do this.

“Yes,” Tanya insisted. “I think so, anyway. It’ll grow back. Part of the sexual sensation of it all is feeling it regenerate.”

“But, darling,” Frank argued, “your body is human. You only have a little vampire blood in you. It takes you a lot longer to regenerate that it does one of them. In the meantime, you could bleed to death.”

“I know,” Tanya admitted. “That’s what makes me hesitant about it. Let’s stick with the muratic acid for awhile. Maybe I can train my body to regenerate faster…”

While they’d been talking, Tanya had been rubbing herself between her legs. She shook with another orgasm, excited by the erotic images of sexual mutilation in her mind.

“You want more acid now?” Frank asked.

Tanya nodded, breathing heavily from her orgasm.

“A drop on each nipple, if you would,” Tanya asked politely, “then wherever you want to put it… You don’t need to stop just because I curl up into a little ball this time. I’ve had bigger orgasms since we started with this stuff than I’ve ever had in my whole life. I want to see how far I can go.

“So,” she continued, her voice shaking with, perhaps a little fear, but with a lot of anticipation, “as long as I’m conscious, keep dribbling it on me. Understand?”

Frank nodded. He understood what she wanted, but he had reservations on how much he was going to listen to her.

“Promise me you won’t stop!” Tanya insisted, seeing his uncertainty. “I really want this. Burn me until I pass out! Please?”

“I promise,” Frank said solemnly. “I’ll burn you with this acid until you can’t feel it anymore. But, I’d better get the bigger bottle back in here. Even at a rate of a drop at a time, it might take more than this little vial to satiate you.”

Tanya smiled nervously, realizing he understood.

‘Well, that’s what life mates are for, right?’

She lay on the bed, waiting for Frank to return. She couldn’t stop trembling in her excitement. In a moment, he was back.

“Ready?” he asked.

Tanya nodded.

“Okay, I guess we’ll start with your nipples and go down from there,” he told her.

Tanya braced herself and arched her back a little, presenting a slightly easier target for the little glass wand in Frank’s hand. Her neck muscles tensed and her body shook with the agony of the single drop that Frank touched against her nipple. Then he moved his hand and touched another drop of acid to her other nipple.

Tanya gasped, feeling her body react sexually to the agonizing stimulation.

“It’s working!” she gasped. “I can feel it in my cunt!”

Frank took the hint and made her clitoris his next stop. He dipped the glass wand into the vial of acid and touched it to her clitoris for a second time. Tanya was whimpering, now. Her body shook as she tried to control the pain.

“I can take more!” she said shakily. “Put some on my belly!”

Frank obeyed, dipping the wand into the vial and touching it to her belly several times.

“It’s starting to feel really good, Frank,” Tanya said, her voice even more uneven. “Pour some on my pussy. Let it run down the crack of my ass!”

Frank turned the vial, allowing a few drops to dribble out onto her pussy lips. Tanya’s flesh steamed as the liquid touched it. A high, keening sound escaped her throat as she fought to keep from screaming as her cunt and asshole bubbled in the acid bath. She was shaking violently. After a moment, she settled down.

“What’s it look like down there?” she asked. “I can feel it regenerating. Can you see it?”

Frank nodded.

“Want me to do it again?” Frank asked.

Tanya nodded. Frank poured the last few drops out of the vial and onto her raw, bloody cunt. Tanya cut off her scream, using every ounce of her will to keep from shrieking. She grabbed her cunt, burning her fingers, then quickly let go.

‘Touching it burns even worse!’

“Are you coming?” Frank asked.

Tanya nodded tersely, her entire body rigid from the agony the burning acid was causing between her legs.

‘So long as she’s having an orgasm… Isn’t that the point of this little experiment?’ Frank thought, trying to justify what he was doing to her.

After another moment, Tanya relaxed. She was shimmering with sweat from head to toe and breathing heavily from her orgasmic exertion.

“Want more?” Frank asked.

He was pretty sure what her answer would be.

“You made a promise, remember?” she gasped, surprising him completely.

“Alright,” Frank said, simply.

He picked up a funnel he’d brought in earlier, not really intending to use it, but just to make Tanya think he might. Now, he was going to use it after all.

“I’m going to fill your sweet pussy with muratic acid, babe,” Frank told her, flatly. “We’re going to dissolve your cunt from the inside out and you’re going to re-grow it.”

Frank poured a small amount of acid into the tiny vial, nearly filling it. Tanya was stroking her pussy vigorously, trying to make herself horny enough to go through with this insane idea. Her body was shaking with a mixture of terror and sexual stimulation.

Frank placed the small funnel against her labia, gently stroking it up and down her pussy lips, getting her used to the idea of its hard presence against her soft, warm flesh, then he began moving it in and out, gently fucking her with the funnel. He pressed it into her cunt as far as he could, stretching her pussy lips as the wide end pressed into her body.

Gazing down into the funnel, Frank could see the inside of her cunt. Tanya was very wet and her pussy was a beautiful, glistening, pale pink. He fucked her with the funnel another moment or two until her belly was shaking with orgasmic anticipation.

“I’m ready,” she said, her voice shaking with near terror.

With one quick motion, Frank poured the tiny vial of acid into the funnel and pulled it out of her cunt. He watched as every muscle in Tanya’s body contracted in intense agony. She couldn’t even draw breath to scream.

Tanya shook violently for a moment; her eyes rolling up in her head. Blood came out of her mouth where she bit her tongue like she was being electrocuted. Then she passed out completely.

Frank looked between her legs as Tanya lay unconscious on the bed. Blood mixed with muratic acid was leaking out and burning its way down the crack of her ass. The smell of the acid and dissolving flesh permeated the room, making him gag. His eyes were watering as some of the acid bubbled into its gaseous state.

He had poured less than a single ounce of the acid into her pussy. He was glad that he hadn’t listened to her – she’d wanted him to upend a water bottle full of the acid and let it gurgle into her.

‘That would have killed her for sure!’

As Tanya lay unconscious on the bed, Frank checked to make sure she was breathing. There wasn’t much else he could do. He wasn’t about to take her to a hospital and explain what happened to them. He only hoped this tiny amount of acid didn’t kill her. At least, she’d stopped bleeding. As near as he could tell, her regenerating tissue was fighting a winning battle against the acidic residue that was still present in her pussy.

‘I could rinse it out, I suppose,’ Frank thought to himself, then decided not to. ‘This is part of the experiment. She has to regenerate. She wants to train her body to be like the vampire girls.’

He really couldn’t blame her. Tanya was an extraordinarily sexual woman, especially this last month since Beth’s visit. She wanted to grow, sexually. She wanted to experience ultimate sensation. He suspected that she just accomplished that, moments ago, when he poured the muratic acid into her pussy.

After a while, Tanya began breathing more easily. She was asleep, now, not simply unconscious. Frank took a deep breath.

‘She’s going to recover. I wonder what she’s going to tell me about what she experienced.’

Even though he understood her drive for ultimate sensation, Frank feared the worst was certain to happen. ‘Tanya’s going to end up blowing herself into little pieces just to find out what it feels like…’

An hour later, he checked between Tanya’s legs again. Her pussy was almost completely re-grown. There was no trace of muratic acid. He bravely stuck his finger in there just to make sure. She’d fought her battle and won. Frank climbed onto the bed next to her, put his arm around her waist and went to sleep.

~~~~~

It was morning. Tanya sat up and moaned, “God, am I stiff! Every muscle in my body hurts…”

Frank got up and vanished through the bedroom door. When he came back, Tanya was touching herself gently between her legs.

“It’s all new!” she exclaimed. “I can feel it! I have a fresh, new pussy, just aching to be violated.”

She looked up at Frank. “Would you like to be the very first to violate my fresh, new cunt, my love?”

Frank’s dick responded almost before he could say ‘yes!’

“I want to be violated,” Tanya whispered. “Fuck me. Take my cherry, then put your hand into me and rupture my cum-filled cunt. I hope you cause me incredible pain and sweet, sweet agony…”

She could feel her juices flowing already as girl-cum began to leak down the crack of her ass.

‘And the weekend is only beginning…’

Frank’s cock was raging as he listened to her talk. She’d never talked that dirty before. He loved it.

‘I’ve created a monster…’

But it was a monster that he was going to enjoy fucking, torturing, maiming and mutilating for a long, long time.

End of Part 1

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