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The soldiers seemed to have figured out that their weapons had no effect on Stheno and Bracken. I was the only one reacting to them, so they focused their attack on me.

Coco’s red eyes found me in the distance. All I could do was hope to keep them off us long enough to get away. When a spear grazed my left shoulder, I blocked out the pain and thanked the powers that be that it hadn’t been my right shoulder, which would have messed up my ability to fight with my axe.

Coco was close, but so too was the army on my heels. With a screech, Coco let loose with a torrent of flames behind me. She couldn’t see the soldiers, but she could apparently see where I was looking. The fire wouldn’t hurt them, but it scared quite a few of them, causing them to stop, drop, and hold up their shields. Some even moved away from us, trying to regroup and strategize.

Coco landed with an earth-rumbling thump. Bracken and Stheno scrambled up onto her closest wing, but I had another spear aimed at my head. I snatched it out of the air and spun, sending it back through the soldier closest to me. He was thrown off his feet, landing on his butt, his face a rictus of pain. When another soldier ripped it out of his stomach, though, the injured soldier shook off the pain and was up and fighting again.

I pulled on my necromantic powers, letting them wrap around me and snake down my arms. My axe and claws were infused with magic, but I was taking on a horde of the dead. I backed up toward Coco while swinging my axe at anyone who came close.

A few soldiers moved in behind me, blocking me from Coco and escape. I heard my people shouting but couldn’t parse what was being said. I was in a frenzy. Jumping, ducking, flipping, I was doing anything and everything to avoid the swords swinging at me.

When my axe or claws made contact with a soldier, even in a non-lethal hit, the ghost disappeared. My magic was working, though it was draining me.

I took another hit to the arm, my right this time. The pain registered but I spun, focused my energy on him, and made his head explode. The soldier beside him slowed, stepping back again, unsure of what was happening. I felt blood running down my arm but ignored it, swinging for the next soldier who was close enough to kill me.

Great-aunt Martha’s voice was in my head, reminding me I had more power than I knew what to do with, that I was in the land of the dead and to draw from it. I did, trying my best to soak it all in. When I felt power coalescing, like Champagne bubbles in my blood, I knew it was working. The problem, though, was focus. I was so busy reacting to everyone circling me, I couldn’t focus.

“Damn it, Sam! Finish them!” I knew I was yelling at myself, but it sounded so much like Clive that I stopped what I was doing, help up both hands, and screamed. The power rolled out of me in an explosion, a mushroom cloud of necromantic energy, if you will.

Almost all the soldiers dropped and then disappeared. They couldn’t shake off my atomic bomb. They disintegrated. I’d feel bad about destroying them later. Right now, I needed to get the hell off the ground.

A few of the stronger soldiers survived. They rolled on the ground, knocked for a loop. Seeing me and Stheno, though, seemed to have reminded them of their mission. As they got to their feet, I ran for Coco’s wing and jumped, throwing myself forward. As I felt Coco start to move, I dragged myself closer to her body. A hand, though, wrapped around my ankle.

Bracken sprang toward me, grabbed my hands and tugged me farther onto Coco’s wing. She took off into the air with one big flap, but the soldier wouldn’t let go. I had the full weight of a grown man trying to rip my leg off. He had me sliding over Coco’s scales, right to the edge of her wing.

Black dots were swimming in my vision. If this asshole didn’t kill me, my own fear of heights was going to make me pass out and fall off this dragon—which might be an entirely unique sentence.

Bracken and Stheno both leapt forward, almost falling off themselves as Coco’s wing began undulating. They each grabbed one of my arms, but the soldier was climbing up my body. I kicked out at him while trying to crush him with my magic. Unfortunately, that atomic bomb seemed to have used up my necromancy for the moment.

The wing was flapping up and down. We were all scrabbling to hang on, all except the soldier whose only mission was to kill me. We grappled and slid, punched and clawed. He was dogged and wouldn’t give up. I tried to kick him off the wing but ended up kicking his sword into the air. I had a moment to pray I didn’t accidentally stab a hole in Coco’s wing. Thankfully, the sword dropped into the darkness below.

The soldier, though, didn’t give the sword a second glance. A dagger was already in his hand, and it was arcing through the air at my chest. I bucked him off, twisting away. His blade came down on my shoulder, the strap of my backpack keeping the blade from punching through to my back.

Screaming, I hit him hard in the face. He flew back but kept a hold on me, dragging me with him to the edge of the wing, as it was on a down beat. Bracken threw a spell, keeping me glued to the wing, but the soldier still had a hold of me. I twisted out of his grip again, punching relentlessly at his head.

As the wing came back up again, he flew into the air, his hand gripping a strap of my backpack. I sat up and with all my might kicked out, nailing him in the gut, trying to knock him off the wing.

It worked. He flew into the air and disappeared over the side. My heart sank into my toes as I saw his hand was still gripped around the strap of my backpack. When he dropped into the dark, he took it with him.

Bracken dragged me to Coco’s body so I wouldn’t be bouncing on her wing, and then got to work, spelling my injury to try to stop the bleeding.

Coco roared, shooting a fireball through the dark cavern. We all moved, trying to see what was happening. I was looking at the ground, assuming there were more soldiers, and missed the real threat.

Stheno shouted, “Down!” and yanked my bad arm. I collapsed onto the wing just as a sleek, metallic bird that had to be five feet long, with a beak like an icepick, flew over the top of us. It shot by like a missile, dropping razor-sharp feathers that cut Coco’s wings.

She screeched in pain as Bracken shouted, “Stymphalian birds!”

Chapter 22

FRICKING BIRDS!

“What the hell is a Stymphalian bird?” I shouted back, scanning the air for more of the assholes.

“Just what they look like,” Stheno said. She was facing away from us with her eye patch up. “Deadly fucking birds. They’re man-eaters. Their beaks are bronze and can pierce any armor. Their feathers are metal and can be launched like arrows. Even their shit is poisonous.”

“Cool. Cool. Cool.” I scanned the air in between wing flaps. Bracken was holding Coco’s sword, her backpack attached to his chest. The fingers of his other hand were swirling, preparing spells. All I had was my axe. I refused to think about the fact that I’d lost my bag, my food, water, and obol along with it. There was no time. We had vicious killer birds to deal with. We had to survive this before I could lose it over being trapped in the Underworld forever.

Two more birds arrowed toward us. Coco breathed fire over them, but it had no effect. If anything, it made them more dangerous because now they were scorching hot as well. One made eye contact with Stheno and then turned to stone, dropping to the ground below.