Page 43 of Dragon 7
The first one crossed the branch toward me with both hands open, reaching to catch me.
His mistake.
I seized the reaching wrist, wrenched it down across the limb, and drove my elbow through the hood where a jaw should sit.
“Ahh!!” He dropped, crashing down through the branches into the dark.
“Get out of my way.”
More gathered.
A woman balanced on a branch. “The Tiger is fine.”
“It doesn’t sound that way.”
“She has made a sacrifice.”
No. Not her. Not for our war.
My heart ached. “What sacrifice would our Tiger ever have to make? We’re the only ones to sacrifice. The enemy is our father.”
“Hiro, please turn around.”
“No!!”
Nyomi. . .what did you do?
Guilt almost suffocated and choked me.
Goddamn it. What did you fucking do?
Two more closed from either side and then attacked.
I went flat to the branch and let them sail over me, then hooked a heel behind the knee of the one on my right and sent him off the edge.
The one on my left twisted in the empty air. The red cape flared like a wing, and he or she landed soft as falling ash three limbs below.
The rest watched and waited.
This is going to get me nowhere.
I didn’t want to kill any of them, but I had to get to Nyomi. Fast, I charged the nearest one, a tall figure who had not yet moved. I feinted high and drove a fist at his throat.
He turned his head a hair's width and my knuckles grazed silk.
I hooked low for his ribs.
His elbow was already there, folding my punch down and away like he had known the angle before I threw it.
“Get out of my way!” I snapped a kick at his knee.
He lifted the leg, let my shin pass under his foot, and set it down again exactly where it had been. He never hit me back. Not once. I threw everything I had at him, and he gave me nothing to break.
The others only flowed around the edges of it, slipping my fists, folding under my kicks.
Another caught my wrists and let the force carry past them.
“Goddamn it!!!” I fell away and landed on the ground.
