The Minotauress

Arianne cackled laughter from where she hung. "He's a big sissy, lady. A big sissy with a tiny dick."

The beast blubbered and sobbed, blubbered and sobbed.

"Harlot!" The demonness glared, grinding obsidian teeth. "Your death will be an exercise in agony," she seethed. "And we'll not wait for your paramour. Better that he come all this way to find you in shreds." Then, to the beast: "Go, my son. Eat her skin off, in tiny bites."

The monster shook out of the despair of his wounded ego, then giantly approached Arianne—

"I don't think so," a voice echoed in the low cavern.

Arianne's eyes popped wide. She shrieked in glee, her skinny junkie legs flailing.

It was Dean!

««—»»

Dean dropped down the last few rungs, landing squarely on his feet. He looked at the monster and didn't flinch. Then he racked a round into the shotgun. "Party's over," he said.

"Oh, no," the shadow woman cooed. "It's only just begun."

Dean aimed and fired, pumping all five magnum shotgun rounds into the beast's huge head. The reports cracked within the cavern: positively ear-splitting bangs. But when the smoke cleared, the woman made of darkness laughed.

The beasts stood unharmed.

"Your puny weapons don't work against us," Pasiphae guttered. "We're older than eons. And it will take a weapon older than eons to defeat us."

Dean spat tobacco juice and shrugged. "I took that possibility into account," he said. "And brought... this... "

He reached around and withdrew something hooked to the back of his belt. He held it up into the evil supernatural light for all to see.

His torque-plier, his... horn-crankers.

The beast continued to mewl in terror, and even its mother paused in hesitation.

"Come and get it, Bessie," Dean said.

"Kill him!" the woman shouted at her son. "Charge him and use your mighty horns to dig his guts out!"

But the beast cowered, stepping back.

"Just as I thought," Dean commented. He twirled the horn-crankers in his hands, clicking, like a fancy butterfly knife. "You're only the big bad-ass monster when it comes to killing kids. Ain't got the balls to take on a real man."

It boo-hoo'd further, tears streaming, looking at its mother for comfort.

"KILL HIM!" the goddess shouted. "What are you? A EUNUCH?"

The beast shook its great oxen head, snot flying. Then it lowered its awl-sharp horns and charged.

Dean laughed with gusto, took one step to the left, and landed the plier onto a horn. With the greatest of ease, then—

kreeeee-CRUNCH!

—he cranked the horn out of the man-animal's head.

"NOOOOO!" the woman shrieked.

"Yes," Dean retorted. He clapped the horn-crankers, and the horn dropped to the filth-carpeted floor. The half-human thing continued to sob outright, cowering back into a corner of rock, the minuscule penis voiding piss in sheer terror.

"WAIT!" Pasiphae shouted. "Spare my son—I beg thee!"

"Tongue my balls," Dean retorted.

"I'll offer a bargain." Her dead-black eyes somehow glowed. "I will trade you your lover in exchange for my son. And as further incentive... I'll give you these." Her bone-shadowed figure fluttered backward, then seemed to pluck something from the rock's cragged face. She pulled out two naked babies—the missing Rundstedt Twins. "Your lover and the babies—for my son."

Dean sucked his wad of Skoal, thinking. "Naaaa."

"Dean!" Arianne shouted.

"Relax, hon," Dean assured. "I'll get you out of here and the twins, and I'll put the drop on this bitch and her pug-ugly bull-looking kid." He grinned at Pasiphae. "I know the secret now."

Pasiphae held the twins aloft. They rowed their chubby arms and legs in the air, goo-gooing and ga-ga-ing. "I'll kill these babies!" she warned.

"No you won't," Dean attested, "because you'll be dead before you can even think about it."

"What makes you so sure," her bottomless voice inquired.

"Because, like I said, I know the secret now."

"And what secret is that?"

Indeed, Dean remembered, some twenty years hence: the bright morning on the ranch and his father showing him how it was done. Their horns are their power, son, he'd told the very young Dean Lohan. So ya gotta take that power, take it right away from 'em...

"Its horns are its power," Dean repeated to the obsidian bitch. "But they're your power too, aren't they?"

The shadow-woman just stood there, holding the twins up high. She made no answer.

In a movement too rapid to be properly recorded by the naked eye, Dean twirled in a blur, slapped the horn-crankers on the monster's remaining horn, and—

kreeeee-CRUNCH!

—tugged it out as easily as a candle from a cupcake. Suddenly the lake of filth began to bubble... and Pasiphae began to shriek.