The girl sputtered.

Dawg kicked her back on her butt and stood up, buckling his jeans again. “Say you love it, cunt!”

The girl spat Dawg’s cum out on the floor and glared at him in silence.

Fat Joey watched Top Dawg finish with his buckle, and then turned to see the Dark Man watching this little scene play out, his eyes in the shadows of his face like slivers of a broken mirror.

Top Dawg smiled, first at the girl, then at the Dark Man, and said the words that sent Joey’s guts to icy churning. “Come and get her, boys.”

Not one of the big dogs moved. Ratchet didn’t even look away from his close study of his hands, and Ratchet’s knuckles where they closed around his bottle of beer were white as marble. The Cow-Boy was showing the whites of his eyes all around like a crazed horse, and he looked as though he might spring up and kick the girl away if Top Dawg nudged her towards him. Fat Joey could taste copper in his mouth; he thought he was tasting an omen of his own death.

There was a low shuffle of movement at the edges of the room. Low dogs and a handful of brothers were circling, aware that the order was disrupted and not sure how to proceed from here. The Pack was all about dominance and Order, with a big ‘o’. Passing out a bitch was done a hundred times and it all went the same way. First Top Dawg sprung her, then the Cow-Boy, Ratchet and Fat Joey. After him, the Pack dogs. Then, and only if the Dawg permitted it, the low dogs got a go. After the bitch was had, there came a christening, either beer or piss, and then she got her collar, and a tag if she was private stock.

The Dark Man was playing the game. He’d given Dawg his girl, or at least, the girl’s mouth. And Dawg had done his part.

Cow-Boy, Ratchet, and Joey were still as death. None of them looked at Dawg. None of them looked at the Dark Man.

Of the road brothers, only Heck, Ross, and Juicer looked anything like enthusiastic. The rest looked downright green. But the low dogs, stupid fuckers to a man, the low dogs were wanting it.

Finally, Heck stepped up to the plate and took careful hold of the girl’s shoulder, almost patting her as he looked queasily back over his shoulder at the Dark Man’s booth. He pulled over a chair, sat down and sprung his stubby cock and waited. The girl glanced around, and the Dark Man held her gaze for a moment before going back to his map. Finally, with a miserable-looking sigh, she latched onto Heck and went to work.

After Heck, there was Juicer, who went as fast he could and went clear over to the other side of the room when he was done, where he sat down at a booth and pulled out his knife in nervous silence. Ross took her next, using her hair for handholds and humping her face, all the while sending swift, ambitious little glances at the Dawg. Hagen was the first of the low dogs, naturally, and he put some effort into it, slapping the girl around a little first and then tossing off in her hair to make Dawg roar laughter. Then there was Shiley, and then Shooter, and then Ross again, who yanked her up by the hair and came on her tits this time, working at the piercings there as he told her to rub it in good, it was good for keeping steel lubed up.

This won the first and only remark from the Dark Man during the entire event, and he did it without ever looking up: “You rip those out and I will pull out your beating heart and show it to you.”

Ross dropped the girl and jumped back, banging into Ratchet’s chair in the process, and Ratchet punched him in the head so fast and so hard that Ross was probably unconscious even before Ratchet’s knuckles left his head. Ross hit the ground and Ratchet stomped on him three times, like a man killing a rattler, his teeth bared and spit flying as he panted, then shoved himself back and went rapidly to the bar for more beer.

No one else moved, and Top Dawg, once more furious, ordered Sue Eye to come over and make the girl eat her out. Sue-Eye flat-out refused, even after she took two rights to the face, but then Rosie Harper came over to the table, plopped herself down on the edge of it and spread her legs so you could see all the way up to the back of her throat.

“Do it,” the Dawg snarled, and when the girl didn’t move, he grabbed her by the hair, pulled her across the floor and shoved her face into Rosie’s sour snatch. “Do it, and you better get her off or I’ll put a boot up your ass!”

The Dark Man looked up for a few seconds, still ignoring the Dawg, but watching his girl work on Rosie for a while before glancing at the door and then returning to his map.

The girl sounded like she was starting to cry. One of her hands curled convulsively into a fist, beating slow and not hard at the table while the other pushed at Rosie’s soft belly. She was trying to struggle back, but she quit when the Dawg punched her, once in each kidney, and after a few more seconds, Rosie announced the girl was munching carpet. Rosie kept a play-by-play to the amusement of the few low dogs still into this scene before finally shivering herself to a good cream, and then Dawg hauled the girl back by the hair and threw her facedown on the center table.

“Come on, Hagen,” he called. “I know you still got some in you! Eating Rosie’s thirsty work!”

And Hagen, grinning at the opportunity, came right up with his dick in his hand and pumped it into the girl’s mouth, already humping away.

“Now then,” the Dawg said with vicious good humor. He flipped up the girl’s skirt and gave the round, white cheeks of the girl’s heart-shaped ass a few good smacks, then wedged her legs apart (the Dark Man’s head came up again, and the Cow-Boy stood up and went to the furthest window) and put his hand right up her pussy.

“Jesus Christ!” Dawg said, his face contorting with what looked like genuine shock. “What, have you got a fucking hardware store up here?” He pumped his hand, and Fat Joey could hear the muffled jingle of metal. “What’s this? Oh fucking Christ, that’s a fucking tampon!” The Dawg yanked his hand back and wiped thin traces of blood on the girl’s thighs with exaggerated distaste. “All right, little girl. Funny fucking joke. You just won yourself an ass-banging.”

“Oh Jesus, no,” Fat Joey heard someone whisper. It was probably himself. He tried to move his chair back, and the legs stuck on a floorboard. He struggled with it, looking back over one shoulder in time to see the Dark Man slide out of his booth and casually stride towards the center table.

It was a testament to the sheer unspoken terror in the room that not one brother skinned a gun and shot the Dark Man. It was a greater testament that at least three backed away.

The Dark Man came up right behind Top Dawg, one arm swinging back with the length of his stride and coming up oddly-curled, kept coming up, rising until it was level with the back of Dawg’s head and only a few inches away. There was a sound, no louder and no scarier than the sound of Dawg slapping the girl’s ass, and the top of Dawg’s head blew away in a red mist.

Things happened very fast after that.

The Dark Man guided Dawg’s slumping corpse down onto the table beside his girl and then reached over and pulled the gun from Hagen’s hip and blew a hole through Hagen’s mouth. The Dark Man spun unhurriedly, his leather coat swirling out and flapping back down around his knees. He raised a gun in each hand, posed like Christ on the crucifix, and shot Charlie as the bartender came up with his shotgun. Charlie sank below the bar with a clatter just as the Dark Man fired his other gun three times at the brothers who had tried to skin. Then he brought both hands together, movie-style, and plugged away two-handed at the Pack dogs who had surged towards the door, and kept right on firing until that kill zone was emptied.

The Dark Man spun, raising one arm over the top of Fat Joey’s head, close enough that Fat Joey could feel the sleeves of his coat brushing over his hair, and fired again. Fat Joey stared at the sleek, black lines of the coat against the Dark Man’s hairless, powerful chest and listened to bodies hit the wooden floor. He kept thinking how much like a movie this was, even as the Dark Man put a hole in the head of every dog that had drawn on him. There were four.