Page 8 of Heart On For Dragon

“It’s a cave,” Bernie scoffed, her hooves making atippity-tap, tippity-tapas she traipsed to the far side of the cavern. “Not a boat, Violet. If it was a boat, I would’ve already abandoned ship.”

“Whatever,” Vi huffed. “You know what I mean. We should be working together to figure out where we are and how we got here instead of…”

"Instead of trying to find out if the God of Love has been turned into a mummy? I know Valentine's Day is already over, but we're gonna need him again. And what about Aphrodite – his Mommy Dearest. Are you gonna tell her that you left her baby boy in a cave covered in muck?" Bernie plopped her bodacious booty on the floor, let her head fall to the side, and harrumphed, "Hell, yes you are. 'Cause I'm damned sure not gonna be the messenger for that journey into the bowels of motherly love gone wrong." Throwing her hands in the air, she added, "But by all means, tell us what to do, Vi? What's your plan? How do we…"

“Oh, my great Lord of Hell, do you people ever shut up?”

The voice was tinny and nasally but somehow also had a deep resonance that sounded like the feedback from a speaker with the bass jacked up too high. Booming as if it was on surround sound, coming from every direction, the reverberating declaration echoed off the rocks, circled around itself and blasted right back in a continuous loop that bore into my brain, not unlike a jackhammer beating at concrete.

Holding on tight to my little Witch, I spun one way and then the other letting Esau’s enhanced vision and preternatural senses search for our captor as the very same bastard taunted, “Where’s the fear? The cowering? The begging for your lives? Has no one ever taught you to be victims? Why do you have to ruin everything? I’ve been planning thisforever!Why are you people such… such… Assholes?!”

"I know that voice,"Violet whispered directly into my mind, taking the words right out of my mouth.

“Me, too,”I agreed“But from where? We need to keep him talking.”Not waiting for an answer from Vi, I yelled aloud, “Show yourself. Come out and face me. You got us here. The least you can do is show us who you are and give us an explanation.”

Listening to my own voice echoing through the vast tunnels of the underground labyrinth my Dragon King was quickly mapping, I was just about to demand again when a blast of Magic so black and so strong, not to mention, hideously noxious, hit me square in the chest like a pile of bricks fired out of a tennis ball launcher. Holding Violet as tight to my body as I could, just waiting for my back to hit the hard, cold rock behind me, another blast came careening from the opposite direction, and just like that my gorgeous Mate was ripped from my arms.

Flying one way as she flew the other, I roared, “VIOLET!” at the same time that she yelled, “MICK!” Shockingly, Bernie also screamed, “VI! MICK! WHAT THE HELL?!”

Moving so fast the rocks on either side were nothing but a blur, my only concern was my Mate. The faster I flew, the fuzzier my vision became until I couldn’t so much as see the nose on my face, much less where my little Witch had gone.

Was Violet okay? Why had she stopped yelling? What was happening and why wasn’t Esau jumping into action and saving my ass as he had so many times before? Something was very, very wrong and I was very, very pissed.

“Old Man!”I yelled, waiting less than a second before hollering again.“Esau, you there? What’s happening? Why aren’t you…?”

“I’m locked down tighter than Princess Periwinkle’s chastity belt on Prom Night at the Fairy Mound. I got nothing. That last blast of…”

“Stop! Stop! Stop!”I bellowed, trying with every ounce of my own Magic, strength in my body, and prayer I’d ever prayed to halt my backward motion. I could feel the cold, sterile lifelessness of the granite wall right behind me and the doom it carried. I was about to be smooshed flatter than Lovebugs on a windshield in June and all I could do was roar,“ESAU!”

And that was all she wrote.

No time for a breath or a roar. Hell, I didn’t even have time to tuck and roll. Instantly, everything became crystal clear as I was spun around more times than I could count like an ax thrown from a Berserker’s hand at the Annual Supernatural Games and Fete.

Thankfully, I stopped a split-second before barfing up the egg sandwich and coffee I’d had for breakfast. Regrettably, I was facing forward and could now see where I was going. Trust me, knowing what’s about to happen is not always all it’s cracked up to be.

Hurdling headfirst towards a boulder rivaling the Rock of Gibraltar, I opened my mouth to tell Violet that I loved her one last time when the massive stone I was about to be irrevocably joined with started to shimmy and shake. Stretching and snapping back lengthways then from side-to-side, I swore I was looking in a funhouse mirror.

In and out of focus, the constant distortion making it hard for me to figure out which way was up, I opened my mouth to demand my captor stop this taunting bullshit, when the scent of rotten eggs, my brothers' dirty gym socks, and a heaping, steaming pile of good old fashioned horse shit filled my mouth, throat, and lungs. Sadly, I’d been inhaling when it happened, and there wasn't one damned thing I could do to stop the process. Not only was I going to become a fossil long before my time, but I was also going to gag to death on a scent worse than MacElfresh's Pig Farm in the middle of August.

No! None of this shit was on my bucket list. I was Dragon. Hear me roar. I was supposed to die on the battlefield, or better yet, in bed after making love to Violet for the hundred-millionth time. I was supposed to live to a ripe old age of a million-and-fifty-two with kids, and grandkids, and great-grandkids, and… oh, you get the picture.

Smashing into a big fucking rock after being kidnapped from Cloud Nine while visiting my Mate for the first time in more years than I wanted to think about had never been in the plan. It was utter bullshit, and I was pissed.

No, I was more than pissed. I was fit to be tied, flyin' off the handle, and so mad I could chew up nails and spit out a barbed wire fence. As soon as I got my hands on the bastard responsible for the mess we were in, I was going to rip off his left arm and beat him black and blue with it.

Which is why, I opened my mouth one more time despite the horrendous stench and snarled, "Bring it on, Asshole. Cats may have nine lives, but Dragons live forever. I'm gonna…"

Unfortunately, my big finish, my pièce de resistance was cut off, stopped short, and completely thwarted as I literally passed through seven feet of thick, gray and black sparkling granite, not unlike a drill bit through wood. Exiting the other side after what seemed like forever, I spit and sputtered and hacked up enough pebbles and dust to make a nice walkway through the garden at the Brown Family Mansion. As if that wasn’t enough, I coughed and hacked up sharp little pieces of shale and nuggets of geodes. There was absolutely no doubt that I resembled a goldfish spatting out the multi-colored rocks at the bottom of his tank.

Head bouncing off a pile of rocks, my left shoulder hit a stone ledge, my ass flew over my head, and in an embarrassing turn of events, I did what felt like the most awkward somersault ever rolled. Sliding ass over tea kettle across the gritty, grimy floor, I finally got onto my stomach, shoved the heels of my hands into the dirt beneath me, and used every ounce of muscle in every fiber of my being to come to a screeching halt.

Literally kissing the bottom step of a set of perfectly crafted, highly shined, and eerily glowing stairs, my eyes rolled upward and what I saw had me hissing, “Dip my balls in buttermilk and serve ‘em with gravy, that’s a fuckin’ throne of skulls.”

Springing to my feet while ignoring the fact that I felt like a piece of taffy fresh out of the puller, I could feel the power of Esau’s Magic thrumming through my veins. The Old Guy was pissed and loaded for bear and any other time I would’ve sat back and watched the show. As happy as I was that our enchantment was back, there was nowhere to aim the fire, nobody to watch go up in flames.

We were alone. Or so I thought…

“You see anything, E?”

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