The Minotauress

little street toll. Don't forget about that break I gave you last week.'

'Yeah, some break,' she came back. 'I got to lick the shit out of your asshole.'

Lass' jaw set. He wasn't in the mood for back-talk, especially from a skinny dope-addict. 'Don't make this hard, hon. You can get in and pay the toll, or maybe the next time you fire up a pipe, you'll get a lump of ammonia instead of ice.'

The girl slumped into the cruiser, shut the door.

'That's a smart girl. And all this time I thought you had cum for brains.'

She sat with her arms tightly crossed, chin down. Her bare legs sticking out of the faded cut-off shorts looked white as a grouper-belly in the moonlight. 'I need to cop bad,' she admitted, shivering. 'I need some ice. Like really bad.'

'Well, I can't help ya there, baby,' Lass announced from behind the wheel. 'What happened to that bag I gave ya last week?'

'That was gone in two days.'

'Not my problem.' Lass found one of his hide-outs, a little snip of an old haulage trail. What didn't occur to him, however, was that this long-disused haulage trail was once an auxiliary access lane to the gypsum mine behind Stoddard's Mill.

He parked, let the car idle.

'I'll need twenty for this,' she peeped a demand.

Lass laughed. 'Honeybunch, you seem to be forgetting something. I don't pay for blowjobs. I'm The Man. I'm John Law. You suck my dick for free whenever I tell you to.'

'Okay, a ten!' she nearly shrieked. 'I need to cop some ice!'

'Well then I guess you need to walk your dirty ass to Callisto and buy some from Leonard.'

She shrieked again, 'I can't buy with no money.'

'Then I guess you need to peddle that junkie fuck-hole of yours a little harder, huh?'

'There's no johns out! There's no tricks! Nobody's cruising the strip because of the killings! Goddamn you! I need to score!'

Lass nodded in consideration. 'Okay, I'll give you ten, but this is the only time, understand?'

Suddenly her hands were on him, she was practically panting. 'Yes, yes! Thank you—'

'Here's five,' he said placidly, and then jerked around and punched her in the face. The collision of his fist to her cheek sounded like wet-leather snapping. 'And here's another five... ' A second blow caught her right up under the chin. Her head bobbed like a ball on a spring.

'There's your ten, whore,' he said. He unzipped his fly, pulled out his cock and balls. 'Now, unless you want your skinny body to be found by hunters five years from now, you make nice to Big Mack and the Twins.'

He forced her face to his groin. Frothing blood, she replied, 'That looks like a penis... only smaller. Big Mack and the Twins, huh? More like Little Twig and the Peas.'

Lass frowned. What was wrong with people? Was everyone crazy? His right hand grabbed her throat and squeezed down as effectively as a hose clamp. She convulsed; no gagging sounds could be heard for the force with which he choked her. Her thin faced darkened very quickly, robbed of all blood, and then he forced her head to his lap. The action spurred a spontaneous erection; with his left hand, then, he masturbated. His chest heaved. It didn't take long. Soon his sperm was smearing her mulberry-dark face.

When he was done coming, he released her throat. Arianne flinched back in the seat, her desperate inhalations literally shrieking into her throat.

'See what happens when you sass the Law, young lady?'

She continued to suck the life-breath back into her.

'But, see, some of you cum-pots are just too damn ungrateful for your own good,' Lass continued. 'You don't know no manners and never will. So what I'm sayin', hon, is that you are one stinky junkie this town can sure as shit do without. Think of it as a public service—' and with that, Lass' fist turned in her hair and grabbed a handful. He dragged her squealing from the car, dragged her around in the dirt and rocks awhile, then slipped out his black-walnut billy club with his free hand. 'Time to turn your head into Kibbles ‘N' Bits, snookums. Don't worry, someone'll find your skeleton someday. ‘Oh, what a tragedy! Local prostitute killed by drug dealers! What a mean, nasty world! Bad bad world!''

As Lass had been pulling the girl from the car, however, her foot had inadvertently hit the radio knob, snapping it on.

'A damn fine day, what can I say? Killed some motherfuckin' cops wiff my AK—'

Lass raised his nightstick, prepared to first crush the bridge of her nose and then whip her junkie brain to puree—

The radio blared on: 'Dah motherfuckin' cops, bunch'a motherfuckin' clowns, put the white motherfuckers deep underground!'

The music beat on but before Lass could land his first blow, a maniac blur rushed him, and suddenly he was screaming blood like a water fountain out of his mouth. Some monstrous shape had rushed him, rammed him, and next he was hoisted high off his feet by what felt like a pair of stainless-steel meat-hooks sunk deep in his chest. Lass' arms and legs pinwheeled in mid-air as more blood fountained outward, splattering, and some final thread of reasoning left in his brain deduced that he'd just been gored by a very large bull.

Lass dangled limp. A moment before he died, he looked down and saw that the bull stood on two legs.

CHAPTER NINE

Harney Peak, the state's highest mountainous peak, drifted below the 737's oval window. Dean peered out in something like awe. Of course, he'd seen it before many times but somehow it felt different now. As he continued to gaze out the minuscule window, Dean felt home whispering to him, an eerie notion since home was the place he'd fled with the utmost determination not so many years ago.

Beside him sat Ajax, complaining about not being able to smoke. Given all that Dean had psychologically experienced over the last week, he needed Ajax' counsel for the trip; that's why Dean had sprung for the extra round-trip fare for his sullied friend.