Soul of the Sword (Shadow of the Fox #2) - Julie Kagawa Page 0,54

one another, mouths began to slither together like eels, individual faces dissolved like ink in water, shifted around and became one. Two enormous eyes opened and stared at me with the malice of a dozen souls, and a single huge mouth gaped like a pit, glittering with hundreds of teeth.

“Neat trick.” I smirked, seeing my reflection in its malignant glare as the single gigantic head loomed over me. “Now things have gotten interesting.”

The head roared and fell toward me like a boulder. I dove aside as it crashed into the earth, mouth snapping and chewing as it thrashed about, turning rocks, dirt and tree branches into mulch. I rolled to my feet and sprinted forward, then drove the point of Kamigoroshi into its huge ear, sinking the blade in to the hilt. The head screamed and jerked away, tearing free of Kamigoroshi. There was a ripping, sucking sound as it rose into the air, leaving a normalsize head impaled on the end of my sword.

I snorted and flung the limp head to the ground, where it melted into the earth. “And the tricks keep coming,” I told the giant face, which whirled around to face me. With a smile, I raised Kamigoroshi and prepared for the next attack. “Do you have any more surprises, or is that the last one?”

It lunged with another roar. Planting my feet, I lifted Kamigoroshi over my head and brought it straight down in front of me, splitting the head right down the middle. Blood flew everywhere, as the face tore in half and flew to either side of me.

A pair of smaller heads thumped to the ground near my feet, eyes unseeing, before dissolving into ethereal goop. But the severed halves of the large head turned on me, becoming two separate faces in midair. I had about a second to be surprised, before they both shot forward and clamped their jaws around my arms, sinking jagged fangs into my flesh.

Pain stabbed through my arms. With a snarl, I jerked back, trying to tear my limbs free. But the teeth were hooked like the jaws of a shark and only sank in deeper. One head had its jaws locked around my forearm, preventing me from using my sword. They rose into the air, taking me with them, and began yanking at my arms like a pair of dogs with a bone between them. Fangs ground against bone and sent flares of agony jolting up my arms.

Through the blinding pain and fury, I could sense Tatsumi’s sudden, grim hope that this was it; that the heads would rip me apart, rip us both apart, forcing my spirit back into Kamigoroshi and sending his soul to whatever afterlife awaited him.

You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Tatsumi? Between yanks by the floating heads, I caught glimpses of the hag sisters on the ground below. The two uninjured ones had their arms raised toward us, a sphere of roiling purple flames forming between them. Don’t get too excited; this is far from over.

With a snarl, I drove my horned forehead into the face on my right arm, bashing it between the eyes as hard as I could. There was a resounding crack as our foreheads met, and the jaws around my arm loosened. I ripped the limb free, just as a ball of balefire smashed into the dazed head, engulfing it with a roar. The head screamed, this time in pain and terror. It split apart, a half dozen heads scattering in different directions, but none could escape the consuming flames. One by one they dropped, shrieking and burning, to the earth and dissolved to cinders on the wind.

My sword arm was free, but the head chewing on my other wrist refused to let go, even though we had drifted back to the earth. I turned, raising Kamigoroshi, and plunged it repeatedly into the head still clinging to my arm, stabbing it at several different angles, until the jaws finally loosened. Wounded and bleeding, the head finally tried to spit me out and fly away, but I shoved my hand deeper into its mouth and grabbed the back of its throat, sinking my claws into the slimy, disgusting tongue.

“Where do you think you’re going?” I growled, and sank Kamigoroshi into one of the huge, staring eyes, ripping it sideways through its skull. Blood sprayed me, and a head dislodged, falling to the earth with a thump.

“You started this fight,” I continued, plunging the blade into the other eye, then yanking