And then the door to the pub crashed open and in stepped a gloriously blond Amazon, aiming two gleaming silver pistols at the Monsieur. She was at least six foot six, and every curve on her was exaggerated, her tiny rock hard waist, her bountiful bosoms that pulled at the constraints of her button down shirt, her ass, oh her ass with it's firm and rippled glutes that reminded Swotsy of nothing less than a prize race horse. Her muscled shoulders filled the door frame.

All the little people looked up at her and gasped. As did Swotsy. Poor confused Swotsy, her head spun, her loins burned.

The Monsieur, however narrowed his eyes and stalked the floor. Dwarves scattered to all corners.

There was no time for confusion. Swotsy pulled her weapon, as did all the other police in the room and the Monsieur just laughed.

"Those will not harm me." He tossed the nearest police man into the wall, and he grunted and slid down to the floor, unconscious. The hail of bullets that followed, he just laughed off. When it quieted, and the dwarves all peeked from behind their cover,

The blond goddess spoke. "But mine will. They are silver... that would be poison to your system wouldn't it?"

"The Giant Queen!" they dwarves whispered in awe from their hiding places. "The Giant Queen."

From her great height, the Amazon, looked down upon them and the whispers ended.

"I've got your back, Captain Velkiris. I don't know how you knew what was going on, but I'm ready," Joe said, his trusty gun warm in his hand.

"Stand down, Sargeant," she said, her steely eyes never leaving the Monsieur's. "I sent you in here without knowledge and without the proper equipment. Your bullets will just pass through him. If I had prepared you, if you had known, the Monsieur would never have exposed himself by following you in here. I needed you to be too attractive to his needs. I needed you as bait. And he was, wasn't he, Monsieur?"

The Monsieur hissed.

It was up to Violet. That was the one thing she knew, when the Council introduced her to the black mask and told her all the secrets that hid in Little Hampton Point Valley. That summer, her beauty, which had been considerable to start with, suddenly seemed to entrap every male who looked at her, she knew she had the power to free Joe.

And that night, behind the bar, with their few, brief stolen moments, her heart was breaking, even as she lay twisted in his arms in the shadows, with a brawl going on just outside.

"Joe," she said, and she knew she could do this. "I don't love you." The words were cold and strong, although she was weeping inside. She thought maybe it was the powers of the black mask that allowed her to be not quite human. She looked at his face, flushed from sex and love, and all of a sudden she wanted to bite that throbbing vein in his neck. Her cool evaporated. She leaned in to him to smell the blood pulsing through his body.

"I don't love you, Joe," the words were a vicious hiss as she tried to control the bloodlust. They had warned her, the council, but this was the first time she had felt it. "I won't ever marry you."

"What?" He said, dazed, confused. This did not make sense. What about the summer that seemed to last forever and fill with with joy? "That's not true Vi." He said. He saw her clench her hands together and grit her teeth.

"I was USING you," she spit out, "to make my father jealous. Obviously it worked. I am done with you."

"No, Vi..."

"Yes, I don't ever want to see you again. No one does. Even your mother can't stand to be around you. Why do you think she drinks so much. She tells everyone at the bar what a waste you are when she's on one of her benders and you're not around." Violet had gotten control of herself finally and was spilling all that hunger and heat into her words, watching the reactions on Joe's face. The hunger was feeding off of his pain, but inside, Violet thought that she would never have happiness again. She was not good enough to be happy. She was not good enough to have Joe in her life.

"Face it," she said as she rearranged her clothes and pulled bottle caps out of her mussed hair. "There's no reason for you to even be alive." With that, she stormed off. She ran home and threw herself on the bed to cry and cry and cry.

But he didn't know that. All he knew was that he had to get out of this town. He snuck out the kitchen door (everyone was still watching Bill and Jack brawl, so there were no witnesses) and disappeared into the night. No one ever saw him again...

Until 7 years later.

And here he was, with Violet's arms wrapped around him, watching her sob. And he knew. He knew without knowing how he knew that she really did love him and always had. What he didn't know was why she had lied all those years ago and why she had chased him away.

"What are we going to do?" she asked him, their hearts beating as one as their chests pressed together. "My father has kidnapped our son."

The fury rose in him and his hands itched for his gun. That was when the door burst open.

Randy stood there, covered in blood, holding a gun.

He should have been shocked, he should have reached for that gun in his waist holster, but oddly, what came out of his mouth was, "That's my father's gun."

Randy smiled, cold and hard. "I know. I took it off your brother Clive when I shot him."

"You!" Violet gasped.

"That's right. I'm the Dwarf Catcher. You thought I was too stupid to be a danger. You thought I was so stupid you wouldn't even look at me, not the way you're looking at him," he waved the gun at Joe. "Or the way you look at that freak Swotsy. She's a lesbian, you know, Joe. She's never going give it up to you again."

"You don't know what you're getting into, Randy. Don't listen to the Monsieur. He's using you."

"Oh, no more than I'm using him," Randy said and smiled. "And I do know what I'm getting in to. You bitches on the freak side of town always thought you were better than anyone else, and now I know why. Oh yes. CJ told me all about it, thinking he was saving me. Then I shot him. One more dead dwarf to send to the Monsieur."

While Randy bragged about murder, Joe was getting into position

The Council of the Black Mask

That was when the girls learned about the terrible hunger the Black Mask incited in its daughters.

"No they are too young," Bitsy had argued before the council introduced the mask to Violet and Swotsy early that summer. And the council had nodded, knowing what a heavy price the mask demanded.

That was when Sister Margaret stood up.

This was the Black Council, and it was the one place that Sister Margaret could be free of the secrets that plagued her life.

"This is the only thing I have to give my daughter," her voice echoed in the suddenly quiet room. "For eighteen years I have had to hide the fact that I even bore a child. Even her name that I gave her has been forgotten for that ridiculous nick name. Swotsy Mondy." She spat on the floor in disgust. "I seduced Gideon Stone would be the answer to the blood price, but his blood and his seed was too weak. Magdalena was wrong."

Magdalena, Rowena's aged and still beautiful mother shook her head. "We were never sure about him. It was your own yearning, Margaret."

Sister Margaret frowned, and even that did not dissipate her loveliness. "Neither was that Bill the answer!" she spat.

"He was never the man that I thought he could be," Alice said. Then looked sister Margaret in the eye, "But I know that you still wanted to be chosen for him. Don't you deny it. You always wanted him, even when just a girl."

Margaret looked away.

"Bill was not the answer to our struggle," Magdalena said. "Wilma's son, Alice's son, and your secret daughter Swot-- Monica, they were the result of our risk. All for naught. The hunger remains for human blood. My prophecy was wrong and I am sorry for it. I must have misread the signs."

"But my son..." Alice said. "He could be the key!"

"We cannot depend on another man to remove the curse of the blood lust from the blessing of beauty. We must do this ourselves. The girls must be introduced, and the boy--"

Magdalena stood up. They all had to look down to see her, but that did not matter.
"The boy must leave," Magdalena said and the women of the council...

The Mask's Black Secret

What the hell was that?” Swotsy scanned the evening gloom.

“Cats. Just a bunch of cats. This whole town is filled with godamned cats.”

“Yeah, well, looks more like rats to me. If those little fur balls are cats, they’re the smallest ones I’ve ever seen. What are they, pygmies?”

Violet looked at her and then began to laugh. She bent over double, coughing as she sucked in the cold air. Despite the pain she couldn't stop and howled even louder.

“And what, may I ask, is so funny?” Swotsy was in no laughing mood. The situation was coming apart at the seams and it looked like Violet might be doing the same.

“Not pygmies.” Violet tried to stand upright, but didn’t manage. Her entire frame shook with manic laughter. “Those are, they’re . . . dwarf cats,” she finally choked out and then burst into tears.

Joe sat by himself, stretched out on a town square bench, hidden behind a cluster of snow-clad maple trees. It was cold, biting cold, but somehow it didn’t register with him in the least. His mind was far from snow and cold. The tiny piece of paper he held in his frozen fingers fluttered carelessly in the wind, a miniature white flag.

He had a nasty burning sensation in his stomach, as if he’d eaten lava for lunch. It briefly crossed his mind that he might get sick; that he might in fact vomit. He took a deep breath. The air was glacial, yet his mind was on fire. He felt like he’d been strung up in a furnace and hung out to burn. Slowely. ‘I’ve gone to Hell’, he mumbled out loud to no-one. Pearls of sweat beaded across his forehead.

That last ingredient in the beauty facial. The Black Mask. It couldn’t be and yet there it was, written in the unmistakable flowing script of his mother. No wonder she had kept it a secret. Christ, not secret by half enough. Dwarf juice. Crème de Nain. It couldn’t be, yet . . . A hormone, an enzyme, a molecule – what did he know? Something particular to the dwarf metabolism, something unique. Something found only there. Alice probably didn’t know exactly what it was either. It was just something that worked. The final ingredient leading her down the path to preternatural beauty.

His mind turned over, puzzling pieces falling into place like a bang-up Tetris session. But of course! Gideon Stone. Murdered. The papers had mentioned that he looked more like a prune than a human being when they found him. Sucked dry, a mere husk. And now Joe had uncovered the culprit. His mother, his own loving mother. Loving? Had he said that, thought it? She had murdered Gideon Stone - mariticide. She had milked Stone's diminutive body of its precious life fluids, like he was some kind of chemical cow. But not only Stone. Surely there had been other ‘suppliers’ as well. Ten, twenty; how many? It was too awful to imagine. How many batches of that evil concoction had she brewed over the years? A witch, that’s what she was, straight out of Macbeth. Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble. Those chemistry classes at night school when he was a kid; it had seemed so absurd at the time. Not now. And the circus, of course – a plentiful supply of ‘small people’ for her to sample from. Yes, all falling into place, the blocks tucking snugly together, arranging themselves into a horrendous satanic structure. And then it dawned on him. Why had they moved here in the first place? What did this sleepy little town have to offer that a hundred others couldn’t give more of? One thing and one thing only. Dwarves, this town was chockfull of dwarves.

Bill

That's right, Bill.

The guy who had started this whole mess before most of the current players were even born.

Bill, Joe's father. Bill. Clive's own father.

No one knew that Clive was Joe's older half brother. No one knew that Bill had left Clive's mom when she had born a baby who was a monster.

He rubbed the weight of the gun through the fabric.

When Bill had left Joe and his mom, and coming running back to Wilma and Clive, Clive couldn't take it. All he could think about was poor little Joe, all alone. Abandoned just like Clive had been.

That's why, as soon as he was old enough, he had moved to Little Hamptonpoint Valley, and befriended that lonely kid.

Now, he knew it was time for everything to come out and everyone to