The pain in my jaw had begun to ebb. I attributed it to the high octane adrenaline injection from Durgan’s threat. To threaten me was one thing, my family? Well, that takes on a whole new level, and to top it off the asshole hurt my dog!
“You don’t understand now, Lawrence,” Durgan sneered. “I can kill you too, just as easily as I can kill him,” he said pointing over to my mostly prone body.
“He’s not quite dead yet,” Gary said, quoting Monty Python as I struggled to gain vertical-ability.
“Did you really just do that Uncle Gary?” Travis asked.
Gary smiled diffidently.
Durgan turned to see me. I was now resting on my knees. I probably could have stood at this point, but I was busy listening to the knitting of the bones in my mouth. It was disturbing. The grinding as molar scraped across canine was akin to biting down hard on fork tines.
Durgan looked at me in alarm as color began to wash back into my face, from winter pale to spring hale. He gave a quick glance to Eliza as if expecting direction, but none was forthcoming.
I put my left foot under me and stood up shakily. I wouldn’t be scaring a Girl Scout, but Durgan looked like he was having second thoughts.
“I broke your jaw, Talbot. Now I’m going to break your spine,” he said as he advanced again.
It hurt like hell to say it but it was worth every snap and pop as I moved my still healing facial bones. “Bring it,” I said as I put my hands up in the old school boxing fashion, fists upside down and all.
I tried to dance around like Muhammad Ali, but I think I looked more like Whitney Houston (you know… can’t dance).
Durgan bull rushed me. I was still operating on something close to seventy-five percent of the old Talbot, but it was way more than he was expecting. So when I side stepped his advance and put everything I could muster into his kidney, his heavy expulsion of air was all I needed to know that I had surprised him and potentially inflicted an iota of damage.
“You should have just stayed down,” Durgan said as he turned. His eyes glowed with a festering heat of hatred and contempt. “I might have made it relatively painless,” he said, advancing but much more slowly and warily.
And without warning he struck, like a cat let loose from a tight trash bag. I didn’t think anything that big could move that fast. His ham-sized fist slammed into my temple. If it hadn’t first caught my upraised fist he would have killed me. Upgrade or not, he would have caved my skull. For the second time I went down, this one with more force than the first. My jaw dislocated as the side of my face bounced from the impact.
“Fuck you Talbot!” Durgan shrieked, standing over my body with his fists by his side, veins bulging out on his neck, his arms throbbing with power.
The pain was intense, but something was happening within me. What started as a ten on the pain index and should have taken days and heavy doses of opiates to alleviate rapidly began to climb down the pain-o-meter. Ten became an eight, which in turn became a five, and then a distant memory at a one or a two.
“And to think I once thought you might be a tough opponent. You ain’t shit!” he screamed.
“You talk too much,” I said as I got my feet back up under me.
If Durgan’s neurons would have just fired a little quicker and he never gave me the chance to get up, then my family would have been doomed. But he just kept watching in amazement as I got completely up onto my feet.
“You should be dead!” he yelled.
“But yet here I am,” I said softly, trying my best to not engage my jaw. A lot easier written than said.
“This can’t be. I’m five times the man I was. You should be dead!” he screamed in consternation, “Eliza, it’s not working. I hit him with everything I had, you promised!”
Eliza looked over to Tomas who never betrayed anything, but the proof was in my unwillingness to die.
“I fear, my pet, that the rules to the game have been changed,” Eliza said.
“What does that mean?” he asked her.
“It means that Michael has cheated and as such our agreement is void,” Eliza said.
“Not true, Eliza,” I said to her. “You said I could not accept help from anyone on this side. You said absolutely nothing about help from your side.”
Eliza was trying to find a loophole in her agreement. I could see the machinations working behind her black eyes. “Very well,” was her grudging response.
Durgan was being unbelievably slow on the uptake of this new information. He could take as long as he desired. I wasn’t waiting for him to figure it out. I swung a roundhouse that started somewhere south of Detroit and struck him flush in the nose. Blood blew in a circle away from the impact. His eyes immediately flooded with tears as he dropped down to his knees.
“Yeah!” BT shouted.
With my other arm I hooked an uppercut that shattered all of Durgan’s front teeth, pieces of which intermingled with the growing puddle of blood pooling on the roof. Durgan began to sag forward. I kneed him in his already destroyed nose; shards of bone drilled into my knee as the impact also drove pieces up into his brain casing.
“Ris ran’t ree happenin,” Durgan said through a jumble of broken teeth.
“Oh, I assure you it is,” I said, punching him in the back of the head as he began to pitch forward.
Durgan was face first on the ground, his ass still up in the air. It was a comical pose but it contained no humor in it.
“This is for Jed,” I said as I reared back and kicked him square in the ribs. At least two snapped as he fell onto his side. “This is for shooting me!” as I kicked him flush in the stomach. The force of the strike rolled him over onto his back, a gale of wind fused with blood expelled from his mouth. “This is for Jen!” I said kicking him in his junk. I thought Jen would appreciate that, being the man hater that she was. I got a sick sort of satisfaction out of that.
“This is for the little kids at Carol’s house!” I cried, bringing my heel up.
“Talbot!” my wife yelled.
I wavered in midair.
“That’s enough! He’s done.”
He should have been dead, he really should have, but we weren’t playing by the same rules any more. As if to prove my point, Durgan began to stir. In a few more minutes he’d probably be fine and I wouldn’t be able to surprise him twice.