bedeviled & beyond 07 - beset & bewildered by Sam Cheever

were almost on us.
    Slayer tensed, his muscles turning to iron beneath my hands. “Gerch should be here by now.”
    Realizing he was right, I scanned the area around the charred castle and saw empty air, with only the usual layers of smog overlaying the gray skies. “That’s not good.”
    Slayer sighed. “No. And neither is that.”
    The handful of dragoyles we’d seen approaching had multiplied tenfold as, in twos and threes they dropped from the smog layer above our heads and formed into straight lines facing us. They stopped mid-air, their small wings easily keeping them afloat on the smoggy sky.
    But it wasn’t the sight of the nasty looking creatures with smoke billowing from flaring nostrils that turned my blood to ice. It was the dark eyed devil sitting astride the lead dragoyle, looking larger than I remembered him and twice as fierce.
    I swallowed hard.
    Slayer glanced over his shoulder. “Looks like the ex came to say Hey .”
    My lips opened but nothing came out except air. Something low in my body tightened at the sight of Torre. I hadn’t cast eyes on him for months and, despite my protestations to the contrary. I’d missed him. A lot. “We need...” The words were wrenched from my throat as if dragged through the jaws of a vise. I cleared my throat and tried again. “We need to get out of here.”
    Slayer nodded, but I could tell by the look he gave me that he was wondering if my inclination to flee had to do with being badly outnumbered, or due to the fact that my pitiful heart was in danger of being sliced into ribbons again.
    “Now, Slayer.”
    His thighs tightened on the red and the big reptile’s head flew up, fire sheering through the smog. With a flap of its huge wings, the dragon speared skyward like an arrow.
    Slayer’s arm covered mine around his waist. “Hold on, Darma.”
    “Why? What’s...?”
    Energy prickled against my skin. Like an army of fire ants nibbling their way down my arms. The world spun upside down without warning and I screamed as the red dropped belly up for several beats before rolling upright again and taking off like a shot. I wondered that we’d stayed on the thing’s back but the surge of energy I’d felt probably meant Slayer had something to do with that.
    “Sorry, Princess. Our only hope was to reverse course the fastest way possible.”
    A shout went up behind us and the air suddenly throbbed under the wings of hundreds of dragoyles in pursuit.
    “Whatever, let’s just get out of here.” My nerves fizzed under a dread so heavy it made me nauseous. Thick, smoky air beat us in the face like a physical force as we flew back toward the mountains, where we’d slipped through the barrier of one plane into another. Despite the dragon’s determined impetus, forward motion through the charcoal smog was like swimming against a determined tide. We seemed to be moving slower and slower with every passing moment.
    Another shout sounded, Torre’s deep voice flowing over me like dread, and I realized they were right on our heels.
    “Can’t we go any faster?” I shouted into the haze.
    Slayer barked something to the red in its own language and the creature beat its wings against the air, its sides heaving from the effort.
    The Hades mountain range rose into a smoky sky, too far away to save us. The moment I realized it would come too late was the moment my worst fears were realized.
    A roar...the snap of something whipping toward me on the air...and Slayer’s outraged cry as a lasso of sparkling energy wrapped itself around me and yanked me from the dragon’s back.
    Super-heated air enveloped me as I left Slayer’s protective bubble. Scorching heat sizzled in my chest when I sucked in a terrified breath, burning its way through my body. I couldn’t even scream. The agony of the boiling air against my unaccustomed skin was beyond endurance. I was burning alive without fire.
    My mouth came open and my body writhed as the air roasted me alive.
    Then I slammed