Tamer: King of Dinosaurs 2 (Michael-Scott Earle) читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги (ч. 3)

“Add this to the list after building the fort,” I sighed.

“We have been lucky so far,” Trel said with a sigh. “All it takes is an animal shitting upstream a few minutes before you gather water, and we will all become sick.”

“Good point,” I said.

“We should have some clay left over after we start the fires in the logs,” Trel continued. “I’ll play around with some funnel designs. It won’t take that much time, even if we just get the first two stages of filters working in the next few days, it will be much safer. If we want to grow our tribe, we’ll have to be able to provide clean water consistently.”

“Yeah, I agree,” I said. “And that’s also why we need the aqueduct. What do you think? Can you build one?”

“I know how to build a pump that will use the momentum of the river to push water uphill,” she said as she gestured up to the trees. “My first thought is to have the pipes go up into the trees and then flow through the canopy to us. The advantage would be that it will be harder for dinosaurs to break, but the disadvantage is that the wind twists the branches, and we might have pipes break. I think the best option would be to make pipes and bury them deep in the ground.”

“So a mile of pipes?” Kacerie said. “That sounds like a lot of work. We’d make them out of clay?”

“Yeah,” Trel said with a shrug. “I’d have to figure out how to craft some sort of template, and we would have to figure out a way to join each pipe piece together. I’ll need some sort of glue, or each piece will need to be finely crafted so that they fit together snugly. I’ll also have to create check valves so we can inspect the line.”

“Check valves?” I asked with concern. This was beginning to sound really complicated, but I was the one that wanted the work done.

“Yeah,” Trel huffed. “Let’s say we lay a mile of the clay pipe, and for some reason, the water stops coming. I won’t know where the issue is, so we’ll have to either find a spot on the ground that is flooded with water, or we’ll have to dig up the full mile again. If I put a check valve every hundred or so feet, I can just open it and see if water comes out. If it does, then I know the break happened closer to our fort, and I can save a lot of time repairing.”

“Damn Trel,” I said with awe. “You are so smart.”

“I am a genius,” she said with a laugh. “I’ve told you many times. Of course, I don’t quite know how we would effectively build these pipes. We will need a lot of them and the check valves. I can have the filters figured out in a few days, but getting the water from the river to our camp will be much harder. I haven’t even talked about making the pump. It needs to be made out of metal, or I need to figure out how to make a clay that can take a lot of pressure. That is the only way it will work.”

“But there is a way?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she said.

“Then we’ll figure it out. I have faith in us.”

“I do too.” Trel smiled at me, and for half a moment I forgot about the horse-sized raptors butchering brontos only three miles away from us.

“Is there anything we can take from the shore here that will allow you to make the filter when you return?” Sheela asked pragmatically, and Trel and I blinked as we looked away from each other.

“Ohh, grab some of those larger leaves growing out of the water on the shore.” Trel pointed at what looked like lily pads, only they were the size of my chest. “Then put some of the larger sand inside of three of them. Bah, I’m excited about the idea so I’ll help you collect some.”

The spider-woman leapt down from Bob’s back and then frantically began scooping up sand from the shore of the river. Sheela and Kacerie grabbed more of the lily pads, but I stayed on top of Bob and gave another glance around the river shore. The trikes didn’t seem to be alarmed by anything, but I still wanted to be able to race away if we needed to, and the new breed of super raptors was making me paranoid.

“I need some finer sand,” Trel said as she held up her leaf. “Sheela, have you seen any sand better than this? The stuff at the lake was actually coarser, so that’s not going to work.”

“The ocean to our west or south has fine sand,” the cat-woman replied. “I journeyed there once. It is about six miles away.”

“I can make a trip and grab some,” I said. “As soon as the walls are built.”

“Hmmm, you and your walls,” Trel said.

“Uhhh. Didn’t you just see those raptors butcher two giant dinosaurs? We need walls right fucking now.”

“Yeah,” she said with a sigh. “Alright. I suppose this will be the best I can do for now. Let’s take it back to the camp, and I’ll puzzle through it for a few hours. Then we’ll burn the logs and start on the wall tomorrow.”

“Alright,” I said. “Everyone mount up and let’s get back home.”

Trel climbed up Bob’s back easily, and then Sheela and Kacerie jumped on Hope. We rode home beside the massive fallen redwood and cut between the ferns. I realized that the forest of super tall trees was actually a blessing. Yeah, our valley was protected by hills on all four sides, but anyone standing on the south, east, and west peaks wouldn’t be able to see our camp clearing because of the redwoods. The north side was the only place where we were really exposed, but it also meant that we’d have a good location for a guard station one day.

We made it back to our camp without a problem, and Galmine untied the door so we could all enter. My head was still killing me, but there was plenty of work to be done, and I couldn’t afford to take any more time off. Trel and Galmine busied themselves with a new water filter funnel design, so I had to figure out what the rest of the team was going to do.

The pair of dead carnos by the work site needed to be moved, so I made Bob and Sonny work together to roll them around our camp and to the far west side of the clearing. It took them about an hour to do, but the commands I sent to them were making my head throb, so I didn’t want to risk ordering them to work quicker.

The sun was getting low in the sky by the time I got the second pair of carno corpses pushed over to the west side, and my brain felt like it had rolled around in sandpaper. I really wanted to sleep, but Sheela and Kacerie had started setting up the clay on the logs inside our wall, and I wanted to assist them.

“You need to rest,” Sheela said as I dropped down from the ladder and grabbed the adze.

“I’ll be fine, we need to get it all ready to go so we can hit it as soon as the sun--” the words caught in my throat as I caught sight of something in the air to our north. The sun was casting an orange glow to the sky, and a thick plume of smoke was visible on the other side of the hill.

“Ahh, shit,” I said, and both Kacerie and Sheela turned.

“It looks far away,” Sheela said.

“It’s a fire?” Kacerie asked.

“Yeah,” I replied, and it felt like my shoulders were each carrying a hundred pounds.

“Isn’t that jungle over there?” the pink-haired woman asked. “How is jungle burning?”

Sheela and I glanced at each other, and then I turned to Kacerie. “There are other survivors, and we think they might be attacking each other.”

“Shit,” Kacerie said as her blue eyes widened. “What do we do?”

“We need to build the wall,” I said as I brought my fingers up to rub my temples.

“But if they are using fire, can’t they burn through our wall? Do you know who these people are? Do you know why they are attacking each other?” Her voice sounded a bit frantic, but I could understand her concerns.

“We can only do what we can do,” I said as I returned my eyes to the distant plume of smoke. “We’ll build our wall, we’ll build our defenses, and we’ll try to save others that come. Eventually, we are going to have a run in with another tribe. I’m just hoping it will lead to peace.”

“But… what if it doesn’t? What if they attack us?” she asked.

“I’m willing to live and let live,” I said, “and I’ll strive to cooperate with others, but if they attack us, then we’ll kill them.”

Chapter 15

I slept like a dead man that night. I told my friends to wake me up for my shift, or at least in between shifts so I could instruct the trikes to keep watch, but morning seemed to arrive the second Galmine wrapped her warm arms around me. In fact, when I woke up, everyone else was out of the hut working already.

We needed to take down another sixty trees, but we also had to begin pushing the prepared vertical logs into the ground. The night of full rest did wonders for my headache, so I was able to command the parasaurs to dig out and push down the trees, while the trikes worked to help lift up and steady the logs we had already cut and drilled with our fire technique. Their horns worked perfectly as support beams, and I figured out a great way to hold the heavy logs vertically so that Trel could drive her dowels through the holes we’d burnt out.

In some ways, our new method that used dowels instead of cordage was way easier. The dowels were simpler to pass up to Trel when she was standing on the top of the logs, and we didn’t experience any actual rope breakage from strands accidentally wound incorrectly. While Trel hammered the top dowels into the holes with a hardened log, I did the same to the bottom pieces with my own makeshift hammer. We quickly had ten logs erected, and I realized we were moving much faster than I had thought.

While Trel and I worked on the wall, Sheela and Kacerie chopped the fire lines in the trees that the parasaurs brought down. It meant that our two teams were working some three hundred yards or so apart, but I sent one of the trikes over to them as protection since Trel and I only needed two to help with our wall.

The whole day we worked, we kept our eyes on the distant smoke to the north.

I’d resisted the urge to ride Bob up the hill and see what was going on. I knew what I would see: the jungle on fire in the distance and little evidence of any real danger close to us. I knew the sight wouldn’t do anything to alleviate my fears, so I had to focus on the only task which would, and that was building the improved wall.

Breakfast, lunch, and dinner was a hunk of carnotaurus. The meat wasn’t as good as the orange bird, but it was a thankful break, and I took all the dinos for a quick drink after we ate our midday meal. The water helped their performance significantly, but I noticed that the parasaurs were starting to lose a bit of weight. On the flip side, they were also looking pretty muscular, and I wondered if there was a better balance between exercise and rest. I was probably pushing them too hard, but there would be plenty of time for them to rest as soon as the wall was built.

We just needed a few more days.

“This is going faster than I expected,” Trel said when we finished putting our fiftieth log up. “We only have ten more with holes that we can put up today.”

“Ugh, so burning the holes for the dowels is our new bottleneck?” I asked.

“Yeah,” she replied as she lowered herself down the wall on her spider legs. “I didn’t plan for the trikes when I first made my estimate. I have an idea though.”

“I like your ideas,” I said as I gestured for her to step into my arms and kiss me.

“Hmmm,” she sighed after we had kissed. “I like your lips. Yes, I have decided that I’m glad I didn’t kill you.”

“You just decided that now?” I chuckled. “Speaking of that, where is the raptor corpse you needed for you--”

“It is behind the hut, wrapped up in my webbing,” she said. “My poison is somewhat like acid. It has destroyed all the bacteria and is liquefying the meat and bones. Also, it isn’t just my brood. It is yours too, sweet Victor.”

“Uhh, yeah,” I said as I smiled at the beautiful woman. I actually wanted to ask her how she produced the silk she used for her clothes, but I figured it could wait until tonight. “Let’s talk about the logs though, since that is a pressing issue, and our brood really isn’t.”

“Ahhh, Victor,” she tisked. “You still do not think I will give birth to our children?”

“I’m willing to try as much as you want to,” I said. “But I know different species can’t breed. Sorry, Trel. I love you, but I just don’t think we can--”

“Shhhh,” she said as she covered my lips with her finger. “Just let me take care of everything. It is my job. Honestly, you aren’t even supposed to be alive right now, so I don’t want you to worry about it.”

“Uhhh. Yeah. Okay. I guess. Sooooooo about those logs? We have a bottleneck.”

“We can be done the day after tomorrow if we take a risk and burn the holes in the group we have waiting to be processed in the forest. Pulling them inside of the fort is limiting us to thirty.”

“What is the worst that can happen?” I asked.

“One of the holes doesn’t burn correctly, but the last two batches have been fine, and we haven’t needed to make any nightly adjustments. Even if one or two burn incorrectly, we’ll still save time. We can just push down more trees.”

“What else bad can happen?” I asked.

“The forest can catch on fire,” Trel said with a shrug. “Again, we’ve been fine for multiple days using the fire to do our top and bottom cuts. I don’t think we’ll have an issue, and we’ll have the wall built the day after tomorrow. We could get it done even faster if you wanted to burn it during the day.”

“No,” I said. “Not during the day. Let’s burn at night. Okay, you’ve convinced me. We’ll burn the top and bottom cuts as well as the holes tonight. It means we’ve got four hours of work to do in an hour before the sun sets, and I need to take the dinos for another drink. I’ll leave the trikes here with you, Kacerie and Sheela, and then make a second trip while a trike and the parasaurs guard you.”

“I’m sure we’ll be fine without your dinosaurs for a few minutes,” Trel said.

“Nope,” I replied. “Remember those raptors? I’m not going to feel safe until our wall is built. Also, we need to talk about the door when I get back.”

“I’ve got some ideas for that,” Trel said. “We’ll talk when you get back.”

Trel and I rode on Nicole’s horns to where Sheela and Kacerie worked. We updated them on our plans to burn the holes in the trees as we also cut the lines, and I gathered up the dinos to head for more water.

“Victor, can I accompany you?” Sheela asked as Nicole lowered her head so that Trel and I could get off her horns.

“Of course,” I said as I commanded Bob to kneel so I could mount him. The cat-woman climbed up to the saddle, wrapped her arms around my waist, and then we set off toward the river.

The trip to the water was quick, but I kept my attention on the ground and thought about digging up a long trench to lay down a clay water pipe. It was going to take a lot of work, and even thinking about the job was making me exhausted.

Fort first, then we could work on everything else. Running water wasn’t going to matter if carnotaurus and raptors attacked us.

“I suppose we should have brought some water jugs to fill up,” I said to Sheela once we made it to the river and my team of dinos started drinking. I’d left Tom and Katie at the work site, and had brought Nicole, Sonny, Cher, and Hope in addition to Bob.

“We have six more jugs full,” Sheela whispered into my ear. She hadn’t let go of my stomach even though we weren’t running.

“I’m just paranoid,” I said.

“But we are alive,” Sheela said. “That may be the reason why.”

“Yeah,” I said as I closed my eyes. Her breath was hot against my ear, and I leaned back into her embrace. I half expected her to let go and put some space between us, but she just seemed to hug me tighter, and I felt her face lay against my shoulder.

“It seems you like hugging me,” I whispered, and I could feel my heart start to race. We’d talked a bunch about our relationship already, but I knew that the loophole for us being together involved me training to fight a battle against a husband that I would never meet.

Sheela didn’t answer. She just let out a long breath and moved her hands up more so she was touching my chest.

“I haven’t been able to train with you,” I whispered. “I will after the wall is built.”

Sheela didn’t speak. Instead, the beautiful blonde woman began to purr as if she actually was a cat. The motion caused my spine and chest to vibrate pleasantly, and I felt my erection straining against my pants.

“I feel like you might have changed your mind,” I whispered, but Sheela didn’t answer.

What had changed since the last time we spoke? Was it me commanding my team of dinos to defend our camp against the seven carnos? Was it one of the decisions I’d made about building the camp? I didn’t know for sure, but it seemed obvious that Sheela’s affection had overwhelmed her desire for me to train and fight her husband.

Or maybe I was reading the situation wrong.

Either way, I decided to find out.

I commanded Bob to leave the water, and he walked to the shore of the river. My other team of dinos followed my commands to set up a guarded perimeter around us. Bob knelt on the ground so that we could get down, but Sheela’s face was still pressed into my shoulder. She hadn’t said anything yet, so I wondered if she guessed what I was going to do next.

“Sheela, get down from Bob,” I whispered after I’d turned my mouth into her blonde hair.

“Yes, Victor,” she replied, and then she sighed as she released her hug and slid down Bob’s side.

She stood on the soft grass a few paces from Bob’s leg, and I jumped down so that we faced each other. Her golden eyes met mine, and I could see her nipples pressing up against the tattered material of her bikini top.

“Sheela, take off your clothes,” I said, and her eyes opened a bit wider.

“Yes, Victor,” she whispered as she reached around her back. Her bra fell clear of her chest, and she moved her hands so she covered her nipples.

“Your bottom?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Yes, Victor.” Her eyes didn’t move from mine as she took her hands away from her magnificent breasts.

She slid her fingers down to her bikini bottom and shook her hips from side to side a bit so that she could shimmy out of it. Then she stood with her hands at her sides as her chest heaved with excited breaths.

“You are beautiful,” I whispered, and a small smile spread across her lips.

“Thank you,” she lowered her eyes at last, and a slight blush came to her cheeks.

“Lay down on the grass,” I said.

“Yes, Victor,” she replied and then she followed my orders.

I took a few steps so that I was standing at her feet. Her hair was spread out beneath her head like the dawn light coming from the sun, and her feline eyes seemed to burn with an internal fire.

Her body was trembling, but I knew it wasn’t from the cold.

“Spread open your legs,” I said.

“Yes, Victor,” she replied, and then her muscular legs opened to show me her womanhood. I’d have expected her to be really hairy down there, but her light layer of fur seemed to recede a bit so that the skin around her lips was smooth.

I knelt down between her open legs and lowered my face to her.

I didn’t really know that much about oral sex, but Sheela had admitted she had only been with one lover, so I guessed that I’d probably blow her mind with my meager mouth skills.

I was correct.

She gasped when my tongue first touched her, but it only took half a minute for her gasps of surprise to turn into low throaty moans of pleasure. Her hands gripped my hair to pull me more into her, and her hips began to buck when I brought my fingers in to play with my tongue. Her orgasm came quicker than I expected, and her powerful legs almost ripped my head from my shoulders when she clamped them around my neck.

“Did you like that?” I asked after her body had stopped thrashing.

“Y-y-y-yes, Victor,” she panted. Her eyes were closed now, but she bit one of her fingers and let out a long throaty moan after she finished answering my question.

I was kneeling between her legs now, and she was more than ready for me. Her eyes opened wide again when I unbuckled my belt, and she sat up a bit so that she could watch me slide into her.

Then both of us were moaning.

For a bit, Sheela and I were lost within each other. There were a million things we both needed to worry about, but the only thing I wanted to focus on was her next climax and what I needed to do to bring her there. I still wasn’t that experienced with sex, but I could read the surprised expressions on her face when I did something she liked, so I just kept doing that until she reached an orgasm. I lost track of the time, or how many times she climaxed. We changed positions a few times until I had her on her knees while I entered her from behind. She really enjoyed this position, and it allowed me to grasp her hips and muscular waist while I thrust into her. She let out a growl of ecstasy when I climaxed inside of her, and then we both collapsed on the grass exhausted.

“Victor…” she muttered into my ear as our arms wrapped around each other.

“Yeah?” I asked.

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“I will go with you back to your home,” she said. “If we ever can go back. I will be your woman. You are the strongest man I have ever met.”

“I’d like you to come with me,” I said, “but we can stay here if you’d prefer. I just want you to be happy.”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she just kissed me with surprising passion and then moved to put her skimpy outfit back on.

“Yeah,” I moaned. “I guess we should get back. The sun is about to set.”

“Trel will be angry,” Sheela replied as she smiled at me.

“She’ll be fine. She likes you, and I don’t think she’ll mind sharing.”

“Perhaps,” Sheela said with a shrug. “Maybe I do not care if she is mad.”

“Sheela,” I gasped sarcastically. “Are you finally going to tell Trel to fuck off?”

The blonde woman let out a light laugh, and we both climbed back into Bob’s saddle.

A few minutes later, we were back at the camp. Trel and Kacerie shot us worried looks when we returned, but I waved my hands in a way that indicated I didn’t want to talk about the reason we’d been away for so long. Sheela jumped off Bob, and I left the group to guard my three friends while I rode Bob with the other two trikes to get water. The trip was uneventful, and I returned to find the team putting the last bits of clay on the logs.

“Damn, you all have gotten fast at this,” I said.

“Of course!” Trel beamed at me. “It is actually Kacerie. She isn’t as stupid as I first thought.”

“Hey!” the pink-haired woman shouted from where she put the clay on the last log.

“That’s a compliment!” Trel shouted back. “You are almost as smart as me!”

Kacerie narrowed her eyes at the spider-woman and smirked before she went back to her task.

Sheela was starting the fires on the logs, and I walked with Trel as she moved to the other side of the log.

“What about the door?” I asked as Trel handed me one of our fire making hand drills.

“I’ve got a good solution,” she said as we both set our drills next to the tinder in the chopped out nook of the log. “The logs we are using for the wall are six feet or so in diameter, and my circle design will ensure that they all support each other. However, the door will become the weak part. I’d like to use ten foot wide vertical posts for the entryway. We’ll cut notches in the bottom and then lay a horizontal support beam in the ground--”

“In addition to the dirt?” I asked as I spun the drill in my hand. All of us were practically magicians with the drills by now, and my tinder began smoking in less than ten seconds of me spinning the rod in my hand.

“Yes,” she replied. “It might not be needed, but I want to ensure any horizontal pressure on the door archway will be transmitted to the rest of the wall. I’ll do the same thing at the top of the twin posts. I’ll take another large log and then set it horizontally between them as a brace. The idea is that any pressure on the walls will continue to push through the entire structure instead of being halted by the gap in the door. That will give it strength.”

“Sounds like you are a genius,” I said as I grinned at her.

“Of course!” she giggled before she blew on her tinder. A few seconds later and our wood was burning, so we lit some branches on fire and moved to the next section while we continued our conversation.

“What about the door?” I asked. “You just told me about the arch. We need something to keep dinos, and maybe other people, from coming inside. Are you going to do another horizontally hinged door like you did for our first wall?”

“No. That isn’t going to work anymore.” Trel frowned. “The dinosaurs you have just acquired are too tall. I need to do doors that can be swung on vertical hinges. Ideally, we need two large doors so you can get even larger dinosaurs inside.”

“Can you make it big enough to fit one of those brontos in?” I asked.

“Oh, Victor, you are so cute sometimes. You really do think I’m a genius, don’t you?”

“Of course,” I said. “I’ll bring the dinos, you figure out how to house them. We are a team.”

“We will need one of those bronto dinosaurs to be able to raise a frame big enough to fit one inside of the door,” she said. “Or I need to build some sort of crane to lift up a log that tall. What I currently have in mind will work with some cord pulleys and your trikes as muscle. Any higher will be more difficult. Not impossible, just more difficult.”

“Got it,” I said. “So how do we build two giant doors on vertical hinges?”

“I have two ideas,” she said as we used our burning branches to light the next logs on fire. “They can both work together, but I will let you decide which we should work on first.”

“Okay,” I said as my cut caught on fire. “One idea is that we do not even bother with a door. Instead, we dig a trench around the entire fort and leave a dirt bridge leading out from our entry.”

“I’m not following you,” I said.

“Look back at our current walls,” she said as she gestured to our camp. “Imagine how hard it would be for aggressive dinos to attack us if there was a six or eight-foot trench around our wall.”

“Hmmm,” I said as I tried to imagine it. “It would be like having an extra six or eight feet of wall.”

“Exactly,” she said. “Our enemies would have to run down the slope into the trench, then climb up the slope to our walls. Meanwhile, we could rain arrows or spears down upon them.”

“If we dug the trenches too deep, wouldn’t that risk the wall posts coming out at the bottom?” I asked.

“We’d put a bit of space from the slope of the trench and the wall,” Trel said. “Maybe three feet or so. But remember that our new wall is joined by dowels. Once we have the door arch erected, there will be no way an enemy can just pull down one of the posts. Even if they dug to the root of our wall, they are all forced together with the dowels that lock between them.”

“Makes sense,” I said as we walked to the next log to burn. Both Sheela and Kacerie had moved next to us so that they could hear Trel’s plans, and we all went to work on lighting the next log ablaze.

“We’ll leave the ground alone at the door, so it makes a land bridge across the trench.”

“The design will filter any group that attacks us into one area,” Sheela said. “I like the idea.”

“Agreed,” I said as I thought through the layout. Trel was pretty much making a “moat” around our castle. And while there wouldn’t be water in the trench, leaving the land raised and leveled at the gate would give us one point where we could leverage our defenses. “What about the gate?”

“That’s a bit of a challenge,” Trel said. “Initially, I thought we might not even need a gate.”

“What?” I asked with surprise.

“We have the group of trikes,” she said as she gestured to Tom, Nicole, and Katie. “And you seem to be on a dinosaur acquiring kick, so I imagine you’ll get more. You’ve taught them how to guard us, so I thought we could just leave a pair at the opening. Nothing will get past their horns, and we’ll be able to come and go easily when you just command them to step aside.”

“Hmmm,” I said as I thought through her plan.

“I do not like the idea,” Sheela said.

“I figured you wouldn’t, and I’ve reconsidered after what I saw at the lake. Those dark raptors are monsters, so we are going to need a door, and the trikes, and maybe a secondary wall that I will have to think through. Walk over with me to the dirt here, and I’ll show you what I was thinking.”

The three of us followed Trel to the side of the burning logs. We had a pile of wood there we were using to help build the fires, and she grabbed a few smaller branches and began to lay them out on the ground.

“Two doors for the gate. Each door made of three thicker vertical posts. We’ll use the dowel method to fill in the space between them with smaller vertical posts that will only extend down half the length of the three thicker posts. Across the back, I’ll tie horizontal logs for more strength.” Trel laid out more logs as she spoke and the design made sense to me.

The design looked a bit like the letter “H” but with one extra vertical post on the side and horizontal posts tied to the face of the door pointing outside.

“How will it stay locked?” Sheela asked.

“Those three posts. We’ll dig holes that they set into. Then we’ll just pull it up and out of the holes when we want to open it, but I’m not liking the design.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“It’s going to be heavy,” Trel said with a shrug. “Each door will probably weigh a few hundred pounds, so I can only make it about eight feet high with posts four feet in diameter. We are going to have to muscle it up and out each time we want to leave. I might be able to craft a pulley system that uses the header of my frame, but that’s only going to help a little with the weight. The issue is that you are the one leaving most often, so we can’t count on dinosaur power to move them open and closed consistently.”

“Do you have any other ideas?” I asked as I puzzled through the problem.

“Plenty,” Trel said, “but they all need metal. Or more time. I can improve on the design in the next few months, but if you want a gate on this fort the day after tomorrow, we either have to do this heavy twin door design, or you are going to have to keep the trikes as sentries.”

“Let’s go with the doors first,” I said. “If they become too hard to move, we’ll just use the trikes, and I’ll see if I can tame a few more. We’ll have to make them guard in shifts, but I can tell I’m starting to wear them all out with the building.”

“I’ll get to work on it tomorrow after we finish preparing the last group of fallen trees,” Trel said, and we went back to work burning this batch of logs.

We finished a bit after the sun had set. I was still a bit worried about leaving all these smoldering logs burning inside of a redwood forest, but I realized I didn’t have much of a choice. We needed to do this to alleviate the potential bottleneck. Trel and I could put these sixty logs up in the trench tomorrow while the parasaurs pushed down the final group of fifty-ish. I felt as if I’d gotten rid of all the possible bottlenecks in our process, and the original plan of six weeks was going to take us just two more days.

We were all exhausted though. It had been a month since Sheela and I took a day off, and even our break of lovemaking at the side of the river had been an exercise. The team ate dinner in silence, and it was apparent that each of us was lost in our own thoughts.

“You are all doing a great job,” I said after we finished eating and decided who would take which watch shift. “We just have two more days of this, and then we can take a bit of a break. We probably won’t ever be able to relax, but having this new fort wall up is going to give us a lot of protection and space. Then I’ll get more dinosaurs and we can work on some comfort projects.”

“I am looking forward to that,” Trel said, as she lifted up a clay funnel to show me. It was part of the water filter design she had crafted with Galmine. “This will be ready for finer sand after we get the wall up and trenches built. Then we will have clean water.”

“Looking forward to it,” I said as I turned to Kacerie. “And your soap.”

“Me too,” the beautiful pink-haired woman smiled at me and then her eyes opened wide with surprise.

A glowing light filled her skin as if she had a spotlight aimed at her. Trel, Sheela, Galmine, and I gasped when a loud popping gun-shot sound cracked.

The light from Kacerie instantly faded and the woman let out a long exhale.

“Ahhhh,” she sighed with pleasure.

“What was that?” I asked, but I already guessed the answer to my own question.

“That was my Lance recharging,” she said as her eyes narrowed.

“Ahh. That’s sooner than expected?”

“Yeah,” she whispered as she turned to look at Trel. Then Kacerie turned to look at Sheela.

There was suddenly a lot of tension in the hut.

“Well…” Kacerie said as she set down her empty plate. The woman stood up gracefully and then flexed the fingers of both her hands as if she was preparing to play the piano. “I guess it’s my watch.”

“Yeah,” I said as I felt a bit of relief pour into my stomach.

“Alright, I’ll wake you up for the second one, Victor.” Kacerie smiled at me, and then she stepped out of the hut.

Trel, Sheela, and I all let out long exhales as soon as she left.

“What’s wrong?” Galmine asked as she picked up Kacerie’s plate.

“For half a moment there, I thought I’d have to bite her,” Trel whispered.

“Same,” Sheela whispered.

“Huh? Who?” Galmine looked around the hut with confusion, and Jinx let out a chirp.

“Kacerie,” I whispered even softer than Trel and Sheela. “She just got her powers back, and we were worried that she might use them on us.”

“Really?” Galmine’s emerald eyes were open wide. “But Kacerie is so nice, she’s been so helpful. I wasn’t worried at all.”

The three of us laughed, and then we all leaned down so we were laying on my sleeping mat.

“Galmine, don’t ever change,” I said. “I love how you are.”

“Don’t worry, Victor,” she said as she crawled over to me. “I will be who I am for you always.”

The gray-skinned woman came into my arms and lay on top of me while Trel moved over to lie against my back. I turned across the fire to look at Sheela, and then I gestured for her to join us. The blonde woman nodded and stepped around the flame to lay opposite of Trel. The three of them cuddled near me made the hut incredibly hot, but I didn’t care. I’d have to wake up for my watch shift in a few hours, and the feel of my lovers’ warm bodies against me while I slept was worth all the work I’d done so far in Dinosaurland.

Chapter 16

The next morning went exactly as I planned. The holes we burned in the logs were all perfect, save for one that Trel said had burned a bit too wide. We ended up using the remainder of our clay to fill the gap between it and the dowel and still used it for the wall.

Scavengers that had feasted on the corpses of the waring birds for the last few days moved onto the corpses of the carnos. The pile of those bodies was all the way on the other side of the clearing though, so we didn’t have to worry about any of the small dinosaurs being near us. I’d actually thought about burying the carno bodies, but it would have been a giant hole, and taken time away from pushing down the trees. I had to balance us getting the wall built with the threat of scavengers.

I still worried about the new species of raptors, and the dark smoke in the distant north. The smoke plumed in the air less than it had yesterday, and I finally took Hope up to the nearest crest of the north hill with Sheela. We got off the parasaur some thirty feet from the top of the ridge and crawled the rest of the way to the top of the slope so that we wouldn’t accidentally be seen. It really didn’t matter though, the smoke was significant, but it seemed to be thirty or maybe forty miles away. It looked like it was near the coast of the beach, but it was too hard to tell.

“A wooden wall isn’t going to stop flames,” I said to Sheela as we watched the distant smoke.

“No,” she said. “Perhaps we can use some of the clay to fortify the walls?”

“That’s a good idea,” I said. “It would be like stucco. I’ll add it to the list, but I’m worried we are going to run out of clay from our spot. We could use mud, but I don’t think it will be as strong.”

“We could also use stone,” Sheela suggested. “We’ll need to find a quarry and cut some.”

“That’s a lot more work,” I said, “but we might have to do that. Let’s go back to camp and work with what we have. The new walls will stop those raptors and keep our dinos safe. We can finish tomorrow if we push hard enough today.”

We rode Hope back down to our camp and continued to build. The parasaurs pushed down more trees, Sheela and Kacerie chopped the branches off and set the cuts for the burns. Trel and I used Katie and Nicole to lift up the logs in the wall while we hammered in the connecting dowels. We’d all become efficient at our tasks, and we’d ended up raising forty-four logs before it was time for lunch.

The women took a break inside the smaller fort while I took the dinos to get their lunch drink. The trip was quick, and I returned to find them cooking our second to last chunk of carnotaurus. We’d be good for tonight, but tomorrow I’d have to get the wall up and also hunt for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Trel and I finished erecting all the available logs a few hours after lunch. It was around the time the parasaurs pushed down the last tree we thought we would need. The wall was about three-fourths built, and it looked all sorts of badass. The posts we’d sunk into the trenches didn’t wiggle at all when I had Tom do a test lean into them, and they were a good fifteen feet tall. We ended up finishing our fort work for that day a few hours ahead of schedule, and I started to feel like everything was falling right into place.

Then I remembered that we needed to make another clay run.

“I will go with you,” Sheela said.

“Me too,” Kacerie said.

“It might be dangerous,” I said. “I’m just going to take Bob, get in, and then get out as fast as I can.”

“That is why you need help,” Sheela said in a way that made me think I wasn’t going to be able to argue with her.

“You’ll need me also,” Kacerie said. “If you do get attacked, I can take out the first two raptors in an instant.”

“Yeah,” I said. “But we only have two spots on the sadd--”

“We can cram together,” Kacerie said. “It only takes us ten minutes or so to ride there. We can all sit on each other’s laps.”

“Take Kacerie,” Trel urged. “I’ll stay here and work on the stand for our filters. Just be quick, or Galmine might worry.”

“Ahh, just Galmine will worry?” I winked at her, and she gave me a quick kiss before she handed us the leaf baskets.

Sheela and Kacerie put the baskets on Bob’s saddle, and then we all climbed on. Kacerie ended up sitting between Sheela and me, but there was just enough room on the saddle for all three of us. I turned the parasaur around toward the northeast side of our valley, ordered the rest of my dinosaur pets to patrol around the fort, and then set off toward the lake.

We made it to the other valley without issue, but I paused near the top of the ridge so that we could carefully study the lake. The water in the main part of the lake was no longer the beautiful turquoise, it was now a dirty rust color that almost made it to the smaller finger lakes closest to us. The area where we got our clay was clear of dinosaurs, but there must have been thirty of the dark red and black raptors lounging on the beach beside the two carcasses of the brontos. Each of them was half eaten, and I was thankful the wind was blowing from the south so that we couldn’t smell the corpses.

“Sheela, what do you think?” I asked.

“They look lethargic,” the cat-woman said. “Half of them are resting and the other half are rutting together. I doubt that they will be looking over to where the clay is, but even if they do see us, I doubt they will give chase because of the ample food they already have.”

“Okay,” I said. “Here is the plan: We’ll ride directly down there and I’ll have Bob crouch near the clay. Kacerie, you are going to stay on his back while Sheela and I scoop. You’ll keep an eye out around us and then tie the baskets when we give them to you. Everyone got it?”

“Yes, Victor,” they said in unison, and then I commanded Bob to run down to the side of the finger where the clay was.

We took the direct route that led down the hill without putting us in the jungle. It meant that the raptors could see us if they bothered to look over in this direction, but I kept my eyes glued to the group across the lake, and none of them seemed to notice us.

Bob skidded to a stop right next to the clay, and I jumped off his back the moment he lowered himself. Sheela and I started flinging clay into the baskets five seconds later, but I kept glancing up toward the other side of the lake.

“I’ll watch them, just go!” Kacerie hissed, and I turned my head back down so that I could focus on putting as much clay in the basket as possible.

As soon as my first one was full, I heaved it up and ran the fifteen feet back to Bob. Kacerie helped me set it on the back part of his saddle, and I sprinted back to the clay while Sheela lifted hers up to Kacerie.

My arms were burning from scooping so fast, but I ignored the pain and forced myself to scoop the clay faster. My second basket was soon full, and I ran it over to Kacerie as Sheela took her second over. We each only had one more to do, and I felt a bit of relief fill my stomach. We were going to be able to get away. Then tomorrow the wall would be built, and we could wait a few days before coming back here.

Then I heard a screech drift toward us from the other side of the lake.

“Shit!” Kacerie hissed.

I didn’t bother looking up, I needed four more scoops to fill up the basket, and I got them done as Kacerie whispered to us.

“They see us! Shit! Go! Go! Hurry!”

Sheela was already dashing back to Bob, and I followed right behind her as soon as I put my last handful of clay in the basket. Kacerie was still trying to tie the fourth basket down, but she gave up and grabbed Sheela’s before taking mine. As soon as I could, I jumped back up into my seat and then turned to face the other side of the lake. There were a group of four raptors sprinting around the lake’s edge, and they were letting out angry squawks that cut through the still valley air.

“Tie them down!” I growled as I glanced over to see Sheela and Kacerie struggling with the baskets.

“I’m trying!” the pink-haired woman hissed frantically. “If you go now, we’ll lose them!”

“Fuck!” I growled as I turned back to the raptors. It took about a minute for me to push Bob around the lake, and I guessed that the four raptors chasing us could go just as fast.

Maybe even faster since they didn’t have three people riding on their backs.

“Come on!”

“Go!” Sheela and Kacerie shouted in unison, and I commanded Bob to speed away. My big friend didn’t need much encouragement, and he tore away from the shore of the lake as if his ass was on fire. We sprinted up the hill and then wrapped around into our jungle quickly, but I still heard the sounds of the raptors screaming behind us.

We reached the first river, and I debated my options as I wiped the wind-sting from my eyes. I knew our pursuers were fast, but I wondered how well they could track by smell. If I took Bob straight back to our camp, would the massive raptors be able to follow us? That would be a nightmare since I didn’t think I’d be able to win a fight with four of them and keep all my dinos alive. The battle could set us back a few days.

It could even mean that the entire pack learned of our camp, and then it would just be a matter of time before they killed us.

Instead of heading straight back, I could push through the river a bit, take it downstream, go in and out of it a bit, and hope the raptors lost Bob’s scent. The risk with the plan was that they could just catch up to us, and that would also be a tough battle. Thankfully, Kacerie had her two Lances ready, and Sheela had her Critical Strike, but it would still leave one of the fuckers fighting against Bob, and I didn’t think my big buddy would get out of that unscathed.

But it was still the least risky of our options, so I decided to go with it.

I pushed him into the river and urged him to plow through it as fast as he could. I didn’t know if the parasaurus understood exactly how my plan was supposed to work, but he took to swimming with the current faster than I thought he would, and we were quickly away from the spot where we normally forded the water.

The walls of a ravine closed in around us as Bob swam downstream, and I strained my ears to hear the sound of the chasing raptors.

“They are getting closer!” Sheela hissed, and I cursed under my breath. I didn’t see any way we could get out of the river in the next two hundred yards, so I was now betting on the raptors not thinking we went into the water.

“Kacerie, get your Lance ready,” I said.

“I’m ready,” she said over the roar of the water. We all gasped when Bob’s head briefly disappeared under the waves of the river, but he popped back up a few seconds later, and then let out a loud toot of distress.

“Shhh! Bob! Come on, man!” I doubted that the raptors could hear him toot over the water, but I didn’t want to risk it.

I just needed him to keep swimming for a few minutes, get past the walls of the ravine, and then we could run on the shore for a bit.

A wave surged over a boulder and soaked my shirt, but none of the water got on Kacerie and Sheela. I glanced back to make sure that the baskets were okay, and it looked like the water wasn’t getting close to them.

We waited silently while Bob swam with the current, and I prayed the raptors wouldn’t figure out where we went and chase after us.

“I think we have lost them,” Sheela said after what felt like ten minutes, and I let out a sigh of relief.

The river fed out of the ravine, and we came to a spot where Bob could get onto the shore. I steered him out of the water and then ran him down the east side of the river for about a mile. I actually went about a quarter mile past the spot where the fallen redwood tree was, but then I doubled backed into the river, and then let him get a drink before I pushed him back to camp.

I dropped Sheela and Kacerie with the clay at our workstation in the forest and then commanded the trikes to come patrol the surrounding area. As soon as Tom, Nicole, and Katie were in place, I ran Bob back to our fort and then ran inside to talk to Trel. She was getting her clay funnel on top of a tripod of long poles of three inch diameter wood, but she turned to me with a questioning look.

“We were seen by the raptors,” I said. “They followed us into this valley, but we lost them in the river.”

“Ugh,” Trel sighed.

“Yeah,” I said. “We need to finish the wall tonight, or we might not have a tomorrow.”

Chapter 17

“Are you sure they’ll keep searching for us?” Trel asked me as we both walked out of the fort and got onto Bob.

“No,” I said. “They might give up and go back into the lake valley so they can just eat the rest of the two brontos, but four of the fuckers chased us at least two miles, and they wouldn’t have done that unless they were interested in hunting us down.”

“Even if we start burning the logs right now, it will still take six or so hours for them to finish,” Trel said before I commanded Bob to run back to the work site.

“We have to make it go faster,” I said as soon as we reached the site. “How do we do it?”

“Ugh,” she groaned as we got off Bob and jogged over to where Kacerie and Sheela were setting the clay. “There is a way, but it’s risky. Also, aren’t you worried about potential enemies seeing the smoke?”

“We’ve got two or three hours before sunset,” I said. “I’m more worried about the raptors. What’s this other way?”

“The sap,” Trel said as she pointed to one of the closest giant redwoods. “It will burn quick and hot. If we can get the fire started with it, and then add some slowly as it burns, I think we might push the timetable up. We won’t be able to do it with all the logs, but if we do it with twenty, then we can work them into the walls while the others burn. Then we’ll save some time.”

“Victor, do you really wish to work out here once darkness falls?” Sheela asked. “The raptors could sneak up on us then.”

“I’m worried about that, of course,” I said. “But if they find our camp tonight, they are going to do some damage to our dinos, then we won’t be able to build tomorrow. This needs to happen now. Are you three with me?”

“Of course,” Sheela said with a quick nod.

“Yep! Let’s get it done,” Kacerie said.

“You are a slave driver,” Trel moaned, “but life will be more relaxed with the wall up. Then you can pay more attention to me instead of worrying about getting attacked. I will work through the night if needed.”

“We need a way to grab this sap,” I said.

“Someone needs to collect it quickly,” Trel said. “And they can’t touch it. Since they won’t be able to bring their hands close to the fire. We might need to collect it with a stick or something.”

“I will go get a plate,” Sheela said. “Then I will ride around on Hope, get as much as I can, and return. Which logs should we burn first?”

“These,” Trel said as she gestured to the stack. “We’ll start on the others first, but they’ll be done last.”

We went to work with a frantic energy. Sheela jumped on Hope and darted away while Kacerie continued to lay clay. Trel and I began to burn the logs after Kacerie, and the pink-haired woman managed to stay ahead of us since we had to set up the fire for all the holes and vertical cuts.

Sheela returned some half hour later with a surprisingly massive glob of sap sitting on one of our plates. It was about skull size, and I saw that she had used one of our other plates to scrape it off the trees and onto her platter. Trel showed her how to place it on the log, and then we carefully set it afire. The sap burned far hotter than I expected and we actually had to take a step back from the log because of the heat.

It also produced a thick plume of black smoke.

“You sure you want to do this?” Trel asked me.

“Too late now,” I said as I stepped back more from the foul smelling fire. “The sun is almost down, so maybe no one will notice. Let’s keep moving.”

“You got it,” Trel said. She and Sheela went to work on the first batch of trees, and I continued on the original plan of lighting the remaining ones.

The sun was just a sliver of orange on top of the western mountains when we finished lighting all the fires. It meant that anyone looking in our direction would have only seen the smoke for less than an hour.

“Okay, we are in luck,” Trel said when I circled back to her and Sheela. “This is burning much faster than I thought. We’ll be ready with this first batch of logs in a few minutes.”

“That’s great!” I said as I commanded the parasaurs to approach us and get ready.

“Sheela is going to get more sap and put it on the rest so that we speed it all up,” Trel continued. “I know how you hate bottlenecks. I think we’ll be able to get the logs in the trench with zero downtime.”

“Trel, you are amazing,” I said.

“Oh I know,” she laughed. “But I wouldn’t be this brilliant if you weren’t always pushing me to design and build new things. Sheela, Kacerie, and Galmine also help.”

“Are you actually giving me credit for something?” Kacerie snickered.

“If you want to make me happy, you’ll have some soap made tomorrow.”

“Oh, I’ll get right on that.” Kacerie gestured to the pile of flaming logs and rolled her bright eyes.

“Good!” Trel said as she clapped her hands together. “Have I told you before that I am a duchess? I need to have regular baths.”

“Sometimes I can’t tell if you are joking or not,” Kacerie sighed. “But yeah, I’m looking forward to making some soap. Tomorrow or the next day.”

“That log looks ready,” I said as I pointed to one of the first ones Sheela had put sap on. “It’s still smoking, but let’s get it over to the trikes.

Sonny followed my orders and rolled the log over to the trench. It stopped smoking by the time it got to the wall, and he was able to position it in a way so that Katie and Nicole could get their horns under it. Then the trikes lifted it up, and Trel and I went to work hammering our dowels into it.

The next log was ready as soon as we were done with the first, and the rest of the night blurred into an almost endless process of hammering in dowels, fetching logs, lifting, and hammering in more dowels.

The darkness became thick, but my eyes adjusted to the light of the twin moons, and we kept working.

My shoulders started to shake with exhaustion, but I forced myself to keep hammering, and we kept working.

My mouth burned with hunger, and I could sense that the other three women were skating on the edge of exhaustion, but I told them all to drink water, and we kept working.

Then we were setting in the thick logs that would make our new fort’s entry, and I realized we were almost done.

“The one on the top will be tricky,” Trel said as she blinked and rubbed her fingers across her sleepy eyes.

“I’ll have Bob and Sonny lift it up,” I said as I ordered the exhausted dinos to move over to the last thick log. I’d been thinking about how to do it and figured that it would be best if the parasaurs pushed it onto the trike’s lowered horns first. Then I had the trikes lift up their heads together so they brought the log up like a moving shelf. Then the two parasaurs would roll the log the rest of the way up the vertical pillars before it slid into place at the top.

The plan worked flawlessly, and we all let out a long sigh of accomplishment.

“Now the doors,” Trel said as she pointed to the rectangular frames she had already crafted.

“Sheela, let’s lift them in place,” I said, and we both moved to the first door. We were both beyond exhausted, but we managed to muscle the first one into place together. We hadn’t dug out the holes for the posts to slide into yet, but the door looked like it would work. We moved the next one into place, and then Trel asked us to secure them with four logs that braced the whole ordeal.

“Is that it?” Kacerie asked as soon as we had pushed the last brace up.

“Yeah,” Trel said. “That’s it.”

My vision flashed, and I blinked open my Eye-Q. Structures now said “3”. It was good progress, but I wondered what our camp would look like when it said “10” or “100”.

“Good job, team,” I said as relief flooded my stomach. “Now we’ve got about an acre and a half of space. We can build a farm, more huts, a--”

“Bathhouse,” Trel interrupted me.

“Yeah, sure. I feel a lot safer now. I hope you all do too.”

“Yes,” Sheela said. “Thank you for pushing us, Victor. We are all safe because of you.” The cat-woman smiled at me, and I gestured for her to come closer so I could hug her. She did so, and our lips met for a lasting kiss.

“Hey, when did that happen?” Trel asked. “And where is my kiss?”

“Come here,” I said and the obsidian-haired beauty stepped into my chest so she could kiss me.

“Well, I’ve just got hugs,” Kacerie said as she opened her arms to me. “You have saved my life a bunch, and I feel like we really have a chance.”

“Get in here,” I said to her as Trel and Sheela stepped aside for the pink-haired woman. Kacerie threw her arms around me and then surprised me by actually grabbing my chin and kissing me. It was a quick movement, but her tongue explored the inside of my mouth a bit before she broke it off.

My Eye-Q flashed again, but I didn’t need to check it to know what it would say. Kacerie had been a bit of a rocky start, but she was committed to me now. I was hoping our friendship would develop more, but first, I wanted to sleep for two days.

“The dinos need water, but they will have to wait until tomorrow morning,” I said. “Plan for tomorrow is just hunting and getting water. It will be a light day. Cool?”

The three women agreed, and we walked the hundred feet back toward the entrance of our smaller camp.

We’d almost made it there when half a dozen beams of light filled up the night sky in all directions.

“Shit,” I said as I turned my head around in an attempt to judge how far away all the pillars of light were. They were all different colors. Red, blue, orange, pink, green, and purple, but there was a pillar of light to our east that was silver in color.

This one looked as if it was maybe only a mile away.

“Victor, I know what you are thinking,” Trel groaned.

“We need to go,” I said as I commanded the exhausted dinosaurs to stand.

“No! It’s late! You’ve been working all night! There will be more of them.”

“How hard would this have been without Kacerie?” I asked as I gestured to the wall. “We have big plans. We need more people. I need to make a run for it.”

“I will go with you,” Sheela said.

“So will I,” Kacerie said. “You saved me. I want to save someone else.”

“Fine!” Trel stomped her foot. “I’ll go--”

“You don’t have to,” I said as I mounted up on Bob.

“Maybe I want to? You’ll get into trouble without me.”

“Alright. Grab your spear. Kacerie and Sheela on Hope. Trel’s with me. Those four raptors might have gone back to the lake valley, but they could be around. Also, the people that just arrived on Dinosaurland would be confused so they could attack us first and ask questions later. Get ready to fight. Kacerie, you use your Lance first, then Sheela will use her Critical Strike, and then I’ll bring Tom and Bob into play, we’ll leave Nicole and Katie guarding the door. Got it?”

The three women nodded, and then I helped Trel get into the seat behind me. We made the quick trip to the new gate, jumped off our dinos, lifted the doors away, and then climbed back on our mounts. I commanded Katie and Nicole to stand abreast at the entryway and guard, and then we rode as quickly as we could toward the silver pillar of light.

I prayed that we weren’t too late, but I also prayed that we’d be able to help the new arrivals without any sort of violence.

I pushed Bob into the lead of our pack as we darted through the massive redwoods. The wind carried the scent of pine needles, mud, and new dew. I’d never felt as free as I did when riding on the back of a dinosaur, but this quick recovery mission was bringing me a sensation I hadn’t felt since I’d saved Kacerie. It was as if a part of my soul was shouting a war cry, and I kind of hoped we would run into something that we could fight. It was a ridiculous thought for sure, but I was in command of five massive dinosaurs, and three capable warrior women.

I wasn’t exhausted anymore.

I wanted to flex my muscles and claim these new arrivals for my tribe. I wanted to dominate and control my territory. I wanted to prove that I wasn’t just Victor Shelby, dog-catcher and loser. I wanted to be Victor Shelby, King of Dinosaurland.

Shadows danced across the ground of the forest. The canopy of trees couldn’t keep all the moon and starlight out. The silver beam of light was getting closer, but I didn’t quite know how long it would last. With Kacerie, it had vanished just as soon as she stepped away from it, but I hadn’t paid attention during my own arrival.

Then the light vanished, and I let out a curse. I still had a guess as to where it was located, but it was going to be a bit harder finding the person in the darkness.

Then I heard the shriek up ahead, and I gritted my teeth.

“Go, Bob!” I shouted. The parasaur let out a long low toot that sounded like a Viking war horn, and I heard Hope, Sonny, and Cher echo with their own long toots. Bob pushed his head down lower, raised his tail a bit, and Trel let out a yell of surprise as the parasaur kicked it up to ludicrous speed.

We hit the river where we would normally cross to head to the lake. I saw two figures with their backs to us and the rushing water. The moonlight illuminated them perfectly, but my eyes couldn’t really focus on the arrivals because I saw four dark shapes herding them. It was the four raptor fuckers that had chased us out of the lake valley.

I was close enough for my Eye-Q to identify them as Utahraptor ostrommaysorum, but then Bob was plowing through the water, and we were almost on the other side of the shore.

“Kacerie!” I shouted, and the sound of two sonic booms hit my ears a second after twin beams of light disintegrated the pair of raptors on the left. A moment after the blinding flash illuminated the river, I heard Sheela grunt, and I felt the air hiss as a spear flew by my head. The weapon slammed into the head of the leftmost raptor still standing, and it tumbled backward. That just left one more, but the big asshole wasn’t prepared for a charging parasaur. The Utahraptor might have been the size of a horse, but Bob was as big as two elephants standing in a line, and the darkly feathered bastard screeched when my pal clipped him with his shoulder. The raptor went down, and Trel’s spear hit him right in the stomach as we passed.

I’d already sent the “plow” command to Tom, and the trike had his horns leveled. I twisted my head around so that I could see the battle, but there really wasn’t one. The raptor tried to get up, but Tom’s horns shish kabobed him. Raptor number four let out a screech, but it turned into a death rattle almost instantly, and his body twitched as Tom raised his head to display the featured trophy. I sent him the command to get rid of it, and the trike twisted his head to the side violently. The raptor was flung free and finished its death twitches on the ground some fifty feet away.

I turned Bob around and commanded the dinos to walk toward the two figures. A half moment later we stood around them, and I got a good look at their features.

They were both women as far as I could tell. The one on the left caught my eyes first. She looked almost human, except that she floated two feet off the floor as if she was some sort of psychic superhero powering up for battle. Her hair also floated upward as if she was actually swimming in liquid instead of air. The hair was long and the color of mercury with bright white highlights. Her skin was also a gleaming color, like the white gold or silver of a new piece of jewelry. Her eyes were red, but it was hard to tell their exact shade in the light of the moon. She was barefoot, and her human-looking feet pointed toward the ground as she floated. The silver-woman wore a tight-fitting suit with the stomach and the underside of her boobs exposed. Her stomach was seriously toned, and I had no doubt that she could keep up with Sheela in a sit-up contest.

The other woman looked less human. Her skin seemed to be a pale green, with scales, and multicolored gemstones on her forehead and the bridge of her nose. Her face appeared human; other than the scales, gemstones, and large reptilian eyes. Her mouth had full lips, her cheekbones were elevated and rounded, and her neck arched as if she was used to posing for magazine covers. She stood on two slender legs that also looked human in shape, and her graceful arms were also of similar human proportion. Her ears were long and pointed like a fantasy elf, and she wore dangly earrings on each one. She wore a tight-fitting pair of what resembled black yoga pants, and a frilly jacket with a deep V-neck to show off nice looking breasts. She did have a long mane of green hair that fell down one shoulder, and dozens of flowers were braided into the length.

Were the overlords behind Dinosaurland only abducting beautiful women? Yeah, they were alien, but I couldn’t deny that they were both crazy hot. Even the one with scales and reptile eyes held my interest. She could have easily have been a supermodel wearing cosplay makeup.

The two women stared at me, the dinosaurs, and my friends for a few seconds. I couldn’t quite read their alien facial expressions, but it looked as if they were terrified, or confused, or in shock.

I knew the feeling.

I opened my mouth to speak, but the floating silver women spoke first.

“Who are you?” she said as she pointed at me. Her voice had a beautiful ethereal quality as if she was singing every word into a cave, but only recording and playing back the last whispers of the echo.

“I’m Victor. Come with me if you want to live.” I realized that my voice totally sounded like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but that was okay.

I was becoming a badass.

End of book 2.

Thank you for reading this novel! What was your favorite part of Tamer? Which woman do you like the best? Do you want to read another Tamer novel? Let me know in your review!

A letter from the author:

Dear reader, if you REALLY want to read the next Tamer novel- We’ve got a bit of bad news for you. Unfortunately, Amazon will not tell you when book 3 comes out. They also won’t tell you when book 4, 5, 6 etc... are published. You’ll probably never know about our next books, and you’ll be left wondering what happened to Victor, Sheela, Galmine, and Trel. That’s rather tragic.

There is good news though! There are three ways you can find out when the next book is published:

1) You join Michael-Scott’s mailing list by clicking here. When you join, you’ll also get his fantasy novella Rose Boy for free-- as well as concept art for his best selling Star Justice series.

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3) You follow Michael-Scott on Amazon. You can do this by going to the store page of this book and clicking on the Follow button that is under their pictures. If you follow us, Amazon will send you an email when we publish a book. You’ll just have to make sure you check the emails they send.

Doing any of these, or all three for best results, will ensure you find out about our next book when it is published. If you don’t, Amazon will never tell you about our next release. Please take a few seconds to do one of these so that you’ll be able to join Victor, Sheela, Trel, and Galmine on their next adventure.

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Editing by Ginger Earle, Nick Kuhns, Diane Velasquez, Deborah Haggitt, Jacqueline Miles (who also edits my audio books), Debbie Elholm, Holly Lenz, Wanda Jewell, Cody Elyko, Jay Taylor, Lucas Luvith, Anthony DePaolo, and Kenneth Smith.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.