The Minotauress

of intestines back to entry.

'No luck,' he told Ajax. 'A dead end.'

'Maybe they're all dead ends,' Ajax pointed out. 'Maybe she's not even here.'

'I know she's here,' Dean felt assured. He couldn't explain how he knew, he just knew. This place was full of archaic evil, and it was some equally archaic benevolence that whispered its secrets to him, emboldened him with its supereal wisdom. 'Arianne's in there somewhere, and so is the hellish mother and son who've been tearing this town a new asshole.'

'How do you know?' Ajax countered.

'I just do. And I know why they're here, I know what summoned them— vengeance.'

'Vengeance? For what?'

'It's me they want. They've brought their horror here as vengeance against what I've done.'

Ajax smirked as though the words were ridiculous. 'And what's that?'

Dean's voice grated out as if confessing to murder. 'I've cranked more horns out of more cattle heads than anyone in history.'

Dean checked the second set of passages, then the third. Both were clueless dead ends. 'This one,' he said of the fourth, 'has got to be it.'

He stepped in as if entering the esophagus of an immense dead beast, then began moving toward its belly.

««—»»

When Arianne awoke she thought she must be drowning in filth; she didn't breathe as much as gulp great mouthfuls of air. She hung naked, suspended by her wrists, in some low cavern of beslimed wet rock. The old mine, she realized. I'm at the bottom of the mine. No source of light could be detected yet she could see the entails of her surroundings as if through some sort of filter, as if evil had a light of its own. Arianne knew at least that much: it was evil that had brought her to this foul place.

Before her lay piles of dead cattle, some corpses mummified to twisted sacks of leather, others bloated by rot and putrefactive gas, while still more seemed to have melted down to puddles of nameless slop in which maggots churned voraciously. But what stretched beyond was even more vile: a veritable lake of befoulment, as though all the waste of hell had been dumped here. Indeed, this was the place where the Devil emptied his bowels.

And it was from this lake that the woman emerged. Arianne had seen her before, on the night she was nearly killed by Sergeant Lass: a woman who existed not as a being of flesh but a being of darkness, a woman made solid by every evil thought and loathsome desire generated by humankind. She was the lust behind every rape, child- molestation, and act of incest. She was the erection at the groin of every Serbian torturer. She was the synapse which triggered every finger to ever drop napalm on women and children, and the blood that pumped in the hearts of every SS death-camp guard. She was Pasiphae.

She traipsed knee-deep through the liquid filth, bringing her black smile ever closer. Arianne just hung there, watching.

'Not quite the Harlot of Sodom, hmm?' The spectral queen's voice echoed like words cast out in a mountain range. 'All the power you could have over men, and look what you've done with it. You've given it away, and now you are ruled by them.'

'Got any crank? Got any cokesmoke?' Arianne asked. 'I'm stringing out.'

'Not a real woman at all but just a silly little piece of meat for men to drain their loins in.'

'Guess not,' Arianne muttered in dejection. 'So fuck you.'

'So it's only fitting that you shall be the bait for your paramour.'

'My power mower? Bitch, what the fuck're you talking about? Hey, I'll eat your pussy for twenty bucks.'

'And he'll be here soon,' the dark woman promised. 'I can taste him in the air.'

'All right, ten bucks. Shit.'

A hand of purified darkness touched Arianne's nearly breastless bosom, then glided down the rest of her pale dirty skinny junkie body. 'Then my son and I shall feast. You'll be the appetizer, of course. And as for the entree?' Her black hands came away and then reached into a crevice. 'This pair of fresh, fat dumplings—' and from the crevice she withdrew two chubby naked infants.

The Rundstedt Twins! Arianne recognized at once.

'Yes, these two should provide an excellent main course,' the woman remarked, holding the babies to her ebon bosom. They made cute goo-goo-ga-ga noises.

Even Arianne was disgusted. 'You are one whacked-out sick-in-the-head bitch, you know that? What kind of demon-goddess are you, anyway? They're just babies, for God's sake. Leave 'em alone.'

'Oh, we'll leave them alone... after my son and I have sucked their tender innards from their mouths, gobbled their baby-fat, and inhaled their blood.'

'What an asshole,' Arianne complained. 'Only assholes fuck with babies and little kids. If that's all you can do, you better throw in the towel.'

Pasiphae paused as if offended. 'But we'll be saving the best for last,' she promised haughtily. 'Dessert shall be your paramour, this Thesean malefactor, the destroyer who's gone unpunished for far too long.'

There she went with the power mower again. 'Are you talking about my ex-boyfriend Dean? The all-time world horn-cranking champion?'

'Yes!' the woman's voice thundered in timeless anger. 'My son and I will pick him apart a speck at a time until nothing remains!'

Arianne laughed. 'In your dreams, lady. Dean'll wear your ass out. He'll kick you in the twat so hard you'll be coughing up your fuckin' uterus. He's the toughest guy in town, and no pissant little baby-killer is gonna take him down.'

'What my son does to your lover will make Procrustes seem harmless as a shrew.'