The Minotauress

that bothered him, not by any avenue of logic. It was deeper than that. It was a ghost's whisper, or an idea seen on the surface of a rippling brook. It was an abstraction he could not decrypt. Yeah, he thought. All this from a guy who's probably got a split-personality. He wearily rubbed his face, and when his gaze inched back up the windshield—

His bones turned to ice. 'FUCK!' he shouted. 'LOOK!'

'WHAT!' Ajax shouted in startlement.

'Right there! Look! A woman!' Then Dean jumped out of the vehicle and crazily dashed into the woods. Ajax huffed after him.

'I saw her! Right here!' Dean was nearly shrieking when Ajax caught up. They stood just a few yard beyond the dell, amongst stands of pine and maple trees.

'You saw who?' Ajax asked.

Dean simmered down, pressing his fists to his thighs. 'A woman,' he said more calmly. 'She was standing right here, looking right at us.'

'Uh-huh. A woman. Standing in the woods.' Ajax lit another cigarette, spewed smoke. 'Well, what did this woman look like?'

'She—' Dean's thoughts stumbled. How could he say it? 'She was... dark.'

'Dark? A black woman, you mean.'

'No. Dark like... smoke. Like wood-smoke.'

Ajax gave him a long look.

'But she was real!' Dean insisted. 'Fictile darkness, tangible black ether—something from the cosmos, I think.'

Ajax' long look got longer fast.

'She was naked, grinning at us as she ran her hands up her breasts. But her eyes glowed, like smudge-pots. She was—she was... a personification of evil.'

Ajax nodded, stroking his beard. 'Uh... huh.'

'And then I ran right up to her and... she disappeared.'

'Got'cha.'

Dean grimaced. It was no use. He knew how crazy he must sound but—damn it!—he also knew what he saw.

'Look Dean, you're under a lot of stress with your dad being in the hospital and all, and—'

Before Ajax could go on, though, the rumbling storm clouds overhead broke wide open, and an instant later, rain fell in sheets. They ran back to the 4x4 and fell into it, drenched. The vehicle rocked when they slammed the doors shut.

Ajax didn't say anything; he just shook his head, the wet cigarette still sticking out of his mouth.

'I know it sounds crazy,' Dean confirmed, 'but that's what I saw. There was a woman in the woods.'

'Yeah, fictile darkness. Tangible black ether from the cosmos. Why, she was even the very personification of evil... . You know, Dean. They have medication for things like this. Now... can we just go home?'

Dean pulled off, the wipers thumping. The rain fell so hard it diluted all view out the windshield. Dean could only accelerate a few miles per hour to keep from driving off the road. The only saving grace was the lightning, which alternately illuminated the roadway with its fulgent whiplashes of light. The rain fell so hard, in fact, that it was nearly deafening inside the cab.

When Dean turned the corner onto Main Street—

'FUCK! LOOK!'

—he slammed the brakes and fishtailed to a stop on the gleaming asphalt.

'What now?' Ajax bellowed.

'There... was a woman in the road,' Dean said.

'And let me guess. She was fictile darkness, she was tangible black ether—'

'No, no,' Dean said. 'Just a woman, lying in the road.' He jumped out of the truck. This time Ajax didn't bother getting out. Why waste another perfectly good cigarette? But ahead of him, in the deluge, he could see Dean bending over in the headlight beams, as if to pick something up in the road. And a moment later he trudged back, popped the back door, and slid something into the seat.

Ajax turned on the dome light, then craned around and looked into the back seat. 'Holy shit! It is a woman,' he saw.

It was a woman indeed who lay across the seat, sodden with rain, shoes long gone, lank hair hanging in drenched strings over her face. Skinny legs and wet cut-off jeans, lemon tits beneath the trashy colorless halter. She looked emaciated, white as an embalmed corpse.

'Is she dead?' Ajax asked.

Dean pressed two fingers to her throat. 'No, thank God. She's got a pulse.'

Then Dean pushed the wet clots of hair out of her face. He gasped.

'Oh holy Christ,' he guttered, his eyes wide as an owl's. 'It's Arianne.'

CHAPTER TEN

Pasiphae slipped through the teeming night, the cleansing rain running in rivulets down her stygian breasts. More rivulets tickled her underworld pussy, and summoned radiant sensations right up through her subcarnate guts. She passed through the trees, indeed, like smoke, yet any living thing she passed—bugs, tree frogs, small mammals—died in her poisoned wake.

She couldn't help it, her daedelic hand set an elegant finger into the groove of her cunt, and rubbed. Each further supernal step touched off effusive, drooling orgasms as she progressed back toward her son's beautifully foul demense.

Children for my child, she thought. Babies for my baby...

The wares of her orgasms slickened her long black legs. Desire filled her shadow-black tits, and her nipples stood out to delicious pinpoints.

She was winning, wasn't she? She was bringing recompense with a terrible, swift blow. Her eyes burned out into the night, and her smile felt like fire in her mouth.

Pasiphae was ecstatic, for tonight she had seen him.

Tonight she had seen the malefactor.