By way of answer, the mutie soundly backhanded the wildly struggling child once across the face. It was a hard blow. Leeloo went instantly limp, a rag doll held off the ground by sixteen inches of light brown hair.
“Bastard!” Dean snarled, thumbing back the blaster’s hammer and jumping to his feet. “I said, let her go, you sack of shit!”
The two-headed scalie did nothing of the kind. Instead, it gathered up the unconscious girl in both hands, holding her by the wrists and ankles, and raised her to its mismatched mouths like an ear of roasted corn.
“Try to bite her and you’re dead meat!” Dean warned.
“Do you really think you can chill me before I chill her?” Baldoona’s adult head asked him with a smirk. From the way the baby head was lopsidedly grinning, it, too, was amused at the idea.
Dean said nothing. His finger tightened on the trigger, taking up the slack to the break point. The cap was about to snap.
“Think you can stop me with just one shot?” the adult head went on. “Because that’s all you’re going to get. And it won’t be enough. In case you forgot, I’ve got two brains, Bed Wetter.”
Dean grimaced, sighting the Browning first at one nasty drooling head, then the other. From the only shot angle he had, he couldn’t hit both with a single 9 mm slug, through one head and into the other, which was the only hope he had of taking out the scalie before it could hurt the girl. He racked his brain, trying to think of what his father would have done in the situation, and came up with a gigantic blank. There were no options as long as the monster had hold of Leeloo.
Baldoona’s adult head licked the unconscious girl’s cheek and ear, tasting her skin, and then smacked its lips appreciatively. “Cinnamon spice, very nice,” it said.
The baby head gibbered and chattered excitedly, puckering its mouth, stretching its neck to the limit, trying to get its lips and then its tiny teeth wrapped around one of the little girl’s bare feet, her sun browned toes, which were just out of its reach.
“No, don’t!” Dean cried, lowering his weapon. “Don’t!”
” ‘Don’t’?” the adult head said, giving him an irritated look. “I’m about to eat this tender little morsel’s face off, and you think I’m interested in your ‘Don’t’?”
“Let her go and take me instead,” Dean told the monster. “You can eat me. I’m bigger than she is. There’s more meat. I won’t fight you, I promise. Just let her go.”
“Yeah, sure…” the adult head said dubiously, opening its mouth, moistening its lips as it prepared to take the first bite.
“Look,” Dean said, “I’ll prove it. I’ll put down my blaster.” He carefully placed the weapon in the dirt at his feet. Parting with the Browning under these circumstances was one of the hardest things the boy had ever had to do. But the memory of what the scalie’s two heads had done to the live pig in the big top was still very fresh in his mind. Dean couldn’t bear to witness it doing that to Leeloo. He needed the scalie to put the girl down. That was step one.
Baldoona smiled with both its wet mouths. “You got yourself a deal, Piss Pants,” the adult head said. The scalie then gently set the still unconscious Leeloo on the ground, smoothing her faded dress, then securely trapping her there by laying its grotesquely fat thigh across the small of her back. It extended both its arms to Dean, then snapped its fingers impatiently at him. “Chow time for Baldoona,” it said.
There had never been a doubt in the boy’s mind that Baldoona would try to double cross him, that it would eat them both, if it could.
Dean’s plan was born of desperation. Get in close enough and use his legs and feet. Get inside the creature’s guard and kick for the heads. Boot the adult head first, then the baby head. Boot them until they were knocked out.
But before he could plant his back foot and get off a kick, the scalie had him fast by the scruff of the neck. It was much quicker than it looked. And much, much stronger. As the fingers vise gripped his neck, Dean realized the monster could break his spine with a sudden twist, like a dog with a rat. And when Baldoona squeezed a little harder, cutting off the blood flow to Dean’s brain, all the strength went out of his legs.