Mick Farren - Last Stand of the DNA Cowboys

Heet was not alone. Axel was with him. He whispered something to Diamenti and then handed him two small objects. Diamenti placed them on the table where everyone could see them.

'These were on the body. Do they mean anything to you?'

The Minstrel Boy felt his blood chill. One was a small gold insignia — a tiny sword. The other was a wafer of transparent crystal. He glanced quickly at Renatta. She also looked frightened.

'The sword is the insignia of the Hunters in the Caverns,'he replied. 'The crystal is one of the wafers they give to their designated victims.'

'And you were a designated victim?'

'They hit on me just as I was leaving.'

'They seem to have followed you here.'

The Minstrel Boy did not believe what he was seeing. 'This isn't possible. The Hunters are just a bunch of localized sickos. They couldn't track me across the nothings, let alone employ an urthugee.'

Billy Oblivion was stunned. 'An urthugee?'

Diamenti shot him a hard look. 'We're trying to keep that to ourselves.'

Billy nodded. 'I can understand that. What I don't understand is how come an urthugee is working for these Hunters. Like the Minstrel Boy says, they're just localized sickos.'

Diamenti's face was grave. 'Things change. The kali-rouge Yuba is supposed to last 200,000 years before Shiva is finally slain by the goddess and chaos takes over. Perhaps the goddess has done a deal with the Presence. You can pick up a lot of strange allies in 200,000 years.'

Reave was shaking his head. 'That's ridiculous. All this is legend.'

'What isn't these days?'

'Hell, I don't know.'

'The evidence is on the table.'

Billy picked up the tiny gold sword and turned it between his fingers. 'The immediate question is what you're going to do about this. It's your place — you call the shot.'

Diamenti poured a sizable shot of cognac into his sampling cup. He seemed to be thinking. 'You'll all have to leave here. That goes without saying.'

Billy started to protest. 'Why do Reave and I have to leave? It's only the Minstrel Boy that's in trouble.'

'Can you be sure of that? The world sees you as a trio. All for one, one for all, and the rest of the male bonding rituals.'

'It's those words again.'

Diamenti went on. 'I'm not going to argue about it. I want the three of you out of here inside of forty-eight hours. You're trouble, and that's all the cause I need. If you'll take a piece of good advice, though, I'd stick with each other for the moment. Times are getting rough, and you three always do well in roughtimes. You may not like the idea anymore, but you'll find that you're a lot less vulnerable as a triad.'

The DNA Cowboys were silent. The reunion was beginning to look inevitable.

Diamenti finished his brandy. 'Forty-eight hours. It'd be better if you kept away from the public halls during that time. I don't want any young hopeful trying to score a rep by taking a crack at one of you. To make things easier, I'm going to detail Heet to keep an eye on the three of you, just to make sure there's no more trouble.'

Reave looked Heet up and down. 'I'll feel a whole lot safer.'

Heet grinned. He appeared to have stainless-steel teeth. 'I'll take good care of you boys. There is one thing, though.'

'What's that?'

The grin broadened. 'Don't get me excited. I tend to get lycanthropic fits when I get excited.'

With that, Diamenti and his henchmen left them. The three stared at each other in glum silence.

The Minstrel Boy was the first to speak. 'I'm not sure that I can handle this.'

Reave wearily massaged his temples. 'You were the one who kept saying that it was preordained, that dark forces were at work.'

Billy glared at both of them. 'He knew that he was in the shit, and he wanted to enlist our help to save his ass. Trouble was, he couldn't just come out and say it. He came out with all this mystic crap instead.'

The Minstrel Boy came half out of his chair. 'That's a fucking lie and you know it. How in hell could I know that you two would be here?'

Reave interposed. 'Hold it! Hold it!'

Billy, who had been ready to take on the Minstrel Boy, fell back in his chair. 'All I know is that there ain't no urthugees after me.'

'Can you be sure of that?'

Renatta could not hold back her laughter any longer. 'Will you guys look at yourselves? When are you going to accept that, like it or not, you're back in business?'

Reave sighed. 'She's right. There's no fighting it.'

The Minstrel Boy slowly nodded. Billy Oblivion was the last to give in. Finally he sagged in surrender.

'Damn.'

The Minstrel Boy's wrists and ankles were tied with silk scarves, and his face was covered in makeup. First she had tied him, and then she had very carefully painted his eyes and lips. She had even outlined his nipples in red and purple. She had laughed when he had become a little impatient.

'I'm just making you beautiful for me.'

It was almost like being back in the Caverns. Renatta was straddling his stretched-out body. With total control, she rode him like a trained animal, flicking him with her long, gold false fingernails when he failed to please her. He let out a long, deep-throated gasp, part pain and part pleasure. The bodysuit and the cossack hat had gone, but she had retained the long red boots and the earrings, and the white fur was draped around her shoulders. Her mass of black curly hair hung down over her face, although it was still possible to see her eyes sparkle and her teeth gleam white in the diffused glow. When the Minstrel Boy opened his eyes, he could see multiple reflections of himself in the faceted dome overhead. He watched as Renatta languorously crawled down the length of his torso. He extended his tongue, running it over any part of her that presented itself.

Although Ramilles Diamenti had ordered them out of his realm, for the short time that they had left to them they had been given carte blanche to order the best of everything. Reave and Billy had been introduced to a partying group of very attractive women and had retired to their individual chambers. Renatta had insisted that the Minstrel Boy take the best, specialty equipped love suite that the Voice in the Wilderness had to offer It was in the Round Tower, a large circular chamber with a feeler bed and a bubbling steam pool under a dome of hexagonal mirrors. Something seemed to have really aroused Renatta. Thenwas a razor edge to her sexual hunger that night. The Minstrel Boy could not quite believe that it was just his animal magnetism, and he wondered what exactly it was that had so excited her. Could it be that the idea of making love to one of the famous — and now reunited — DNA Cowboys drove her crazy? A much more sinister idea was that the heat was being generated by the knowledge that he had just killed a man. He had been involved before with women who were turned on by killers. He was never able to quite relax around them. There was always the nagging fear of role reversal.

The Minstrel Boy had no difficulty relaxing on this particular night. The chamber was geared to total creature comfort. There was soft, silver mossfur beneath him, perfume wafted through the air, and the bubbling of the water in the pool blended with high harmonic chimes like the calling of electronic birds. Sleep, as opposed to relaxation, was a different matter. It was a number of hours before Renatta was finally sated and he was able to doze. It was in the middle of that dozing, while he was uneasily dreaming about being hunted across fields of stone by dark figures waving gold swords, that the entry buzzer started sounding impatiently.