Soul of the Sword (Shadow of the Fox #2) - Julie Kagawa Page 0,114

me with a grim, murderous expression on her face. I recognized that look. She had finally wearied of toying with her prey and was coming in for the kill. “Fighting me,” the yuki onna continued in a soft, lethal voice, “is as futile as trying to cut down a blizzard. I am not flesh and blood—I am cold given life. And I am everywhere.”

White flakes swirled around her, a whirlwind whipping through the air. As she spoke, it split apart, becoming two, four, eight separate whirlwinds that surrounded me. Abruptly, the winds died, fading away, leaving me surrounded by eight identical snow maidens, each pointing a lethal ice yari in my direction.

“It is time for you to die, Hakaimono,” the yuki onnas said, eight identical voices chiming as one, “like all the mortals before you. They thought they could survive the storm, and the cold, and the ice, and their frozen bodies lie beneath the snow, preserved for all time.” The snow maidens twirled their spears, and the wind around us whipped into a gale. “And now, you can join them!”

They flew at me all at once, blinding flashes of white against the snow. I lashed out with Kamigoroshi, cutting two from the air at once, then whipping the blade around to slice down another pair. With piercing cries, they dissolved into flurries and vanished.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t kill them all.

Screaming pain ripped through my body, as four ice spears slammed into me, grating against bone and slicing through flesh as they plunged deep. I felt the razor points pierce my ribs, my shoulder, my thigh and back, skewering me like a straw doll, and clenched my jaw to keep from howling.

I slumped against the spears and heard the yuki onnas’ high-pitched laughter. “You see?” they mocked, and three of them vanished into swirling white powder. The last yuki onna bared her teeth in a savage grin, the blade of the yari sunk deep in my shoulder. “You cannot win against cold itself, Hakaimono. Your blood and flesh will freeze, and you will die, frozen on my spear, for all time.”

Raising my head, I met her gaze and smiled.

“I think you’re forgetting something,” I told her, making her brows drop sharply into a frown. “Winter is not eternal. It fades to spring, then dies to summer, every year. Your cold can kill, freeze flesh and turn things to ice, but fire and heat will drive it back, and melt you into a puddle that evaporates on the wind.”

I took a breath, feeling the ice spears dissolve, as my blood welled and began streaming to the ground, hissing and leaving holes where it struck. Putting my free hand to my stomach, I grinned at the scowling yuki onna.

“Winter is not forever,” I told her. “Nothing in this realm endures. But Jigoku…Jigoku is eternal. And the fires that burn through my homeland would melt this place in a heartbeat. I carry the fires of Jigoku in my veins, and it’s more than hot enough to deal with your ice!”

I flung out my hand, and a spray of dark, steaming blood hit the yuki onna in the face. It sizzled where it touched, melting holes in the pale, delicate skin, burning through her robe like fire on paper. The snow maiden screamed, a high-pitched keen that caused icicles to surge out of the ground at my feet. She released the spear and brought both hands to her face, snow swirling around her, trying to heal the gaping burn marks. I raised Kamigoroshi, as purple fire erupted along the sword edge, and brought it slashing down through the yuki onna, splitting her in two. This time, she didn’t explode or vanish in a puff of snow. The edges where I cut her in half caught fire, indigo flames consuming her from the bottom up as she shrieked and writhed in the conflagration, hair and sleeves flailing wildly, and finally dissolved into ash.

Gritting my teeth, I slumped and knelt in the snow as the last of the ice spears melted away and my blood leaked in rivers to the ground. Dammit, I didn’t have time for such distractions. This wouldn’t kill me, but even I had to recover a bit from being run through with giant icicles. The confrontation had reminded me again how very fragile mortal bodies really were. The Ghost of the North was an ancient yuki onna who had killed hundreds of humans, freezing entire armies in place and leaving the floor of