Page 10 of Heart On For Dragon

Be a dumbass and open my mouth before my brain was fully engaged and the very little bit of self-preservation that I actually possessed kicked into gear. “’Bout time you showed up, Asshole. What were you…?”

And that was as far as I got before the Minotaur lifted his head and I got a good look at his face. It was unbelievable, something out of a memory or more precisely, a nightmare.

The unmistakable round, coke-bottle glasses sitting atop the bridge of his extremely wide nose. The watery, almost wimpy, certainly bloodshot pale blue eyes. The sneer of a boy who thought he was smarter than everybody else but never got the chance to prove it because he never got any taller than four-feet-nine or weighed more than ninety-eight pounds dripping wet.

Blinking once, twice, three times, my mouth opened and closed just as many times before the Bull guffawed, “What’s wrong, Cuz? Surprised to see me? Maybe you missed me? Thought I was dead? Thought I was a Null? Didn’t even try to find me when I disappeared? Can’t believe I have Magic? Thought you and your stupid brothers were the only ones with shit parents? Were sure you deserved a life, happiness, aMatemore than anyone else because you were robbed of your birthright?”

Strutting around, the tips of his extra large and unfortunately, in charge horns tearing strips out of the brand new red T-shirt Vi had given me for Valentine's Day right along with the flesh covering the taunt six-pack of my abs, I didn't even feel the pain. Wouldn't have known he was serrating my skin had my blood not been dripping on the floor below. I just couldn't believe my eyes. It couldn't be, could it? It wasn't, was it?

“Harvey?”

"Well, damn, Mick," the cousin I hadn't seen since we were knee-high to a grasshopper sarcastically chuckled. "Good to see you, too. Sorry, it has to be this way, but sometimes shit happens."

“But how are you…?”

“Here? Looking so good? Kicking your ass?” Harvey’s guffawing taunts filled the cavern. “Damn, Dude, you’re seriously dumber than a box of rocks.”

Pushing his glasses back up his nose, the man – no, make that Minotaur – I remembered as a thin, gaunt, little boy who liked to set fire to ants with his many magnifying glasses, collect butterflies and pin them to boards, and who could explain the development of a cockroach nymph with way more detail than anybody ever needed to know, stopped just under my face and looked me in the eye. Shaking his head, Harvey Archer tsked, “Yes, I was a Null, just like my parents – who not unlike yours wanted Magic and Power more than they ever wanted to be good role models or a decent mom and dad, but that’s where the similarities in our stories end. You see, I was…”

Stopping midsentence, his eyes followed a rather large, rather red drop of blood as it fell from the gaping hole in my stomach. Hand shooting out, he caught the droplet on his fingertips with the dexterity of a man who had learned how to expertly maneuver his girth.

Spreading my blood across his fingertips with the pad of his enormous thumb, Harvey once again threw back his head and while looking me right in the eye, ran all four of the tips of all four his fingers across his face. It was a threat, a promise of a slow death, as sure as I was hanging like a ragdoll from the ceiling of his lair.

“Stop the shit, Harvey. Get to the point,” I spat. “I never did anything to you. Hell, I stood up for you, protected you. Let me…”

"You never did anything to me?" He roared, his meaty paws hammering into my stomach, punctuating his next words with absolute clarity. "You. Never. Did.Anything. For. Me. You. Left.”

More punches, his knuckles crunching my ribs, shattering my sternum, making mincemeat of my sternum, his whole body expanded, grew, became even more massive as his final promise echoed through the cave, “And. For. That. You. Will Die.”

---