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disappeared and the stump of his wrist became a flamethrower. Heat rained down on me as I leapt at him and slashed down with my sword. He was quick and stepped back, but I opened up a long wound down his right thigh.
    Loki roared and turned off the flames. His eyes boggled at me as his head twitched. I should have been barbecued but clearly wasn’t. “You can’t burn us, Loki Firestarter,” I said. “We’re all protected.”
    You’re not protected
, I told Oberon with a quick thought.
Get Granuaile out of range
.
    
    Loki waggled a finger at me and squinted. “You are nuh-no construh-uh-ukt,” he stammered. “Dwarf-ff-fffs sssay they don’t nuh-know you. Llllliar!”
    “Who cares what the dwarfs know or don’t know?” I smiled in a fashion that I hoped was unsettling. He was already mentally unstable and might therefore be moresusceptible to intimidation. “All you need to know is this: I’m the guy who’s going to kill you.”
    Loki’s eyes widened and he took a couple of steps back as I advanced. But then his right arm disappeared behind him, he arched his back a bit, and the arm reappeared holding a very long sword that ignited from guard to tip as I watched.
    I frowned. “Now, where, exactly, did you pull that from?” His daughter, Hel, had done something similar; she kept her knife, Famine, lodged between her lower ribs on her left side. She must have learned the trick of using the body as a scabbard from dear old dad. As shape-shifters, they would have the knack.
    badass
, doesn’t it?>
    Oberon, tell Granuaile to talk to the witches. They need to charm Loki if they can
.
    
    Loki’s eyes went dark and he raised his sword.
Hurry, Oberon!
The flaming blade fell, but I wasn’t there. I leapt directly at him again, because the best thing you can do when facing someone with enormous reach is to get inside it. I didn’t hack or stab at him but delivered a straight kick between his hips, right in his center of gravity. He doubled over, let go of the sword as he staggered, and then fell heavily. I heard Polish behind me but kept my eyes on Loki. He shrank and morphed and sprang to his feet—this time as a Vedic demon with blue skin, four arms, and a blade that he pulled directly out of his body in each hand. He smiled with especially sharp teeth and twirled the swords at me, and I didn’t have time to wonder until much later how he’d ever come across that particular form.
    I had to fight my feet not to give ground. It had been quite some time since I’d practiced against more thantwo blades. When I was younger and everyone had a sword, you were more likely to run into that sort of thing. Nowadays you were more likely to run into multiple guns than multiple swords.
    Loki’s newly black eyes shifted from my face to a point over my right shoulder. He blinked hard, blinked harder, shook his head, and his swords stopped moving. He tried to refocus on me but his eyes drew away once more, and this time he flinched backward and dropped a couple of his weapons. The hands slapped at his eye sockets, and then he pressed his palms into them.
    “Nuh! No! Ssstop!”
    Worried about me, he lowered his hands and peeked over his fingers to make sure I wasn’t about to run him through. That’s when Malina stepped in front of me and tossed her hair at him. That did it. His hands dropped, his jaw dropped, and the other two hands still holding swords dropped as well.
    “He’s charmed now,” Malina said over her shoulder, her gaze locked on Loki. “You can kill him and get this over with.”
    “No, we don’t want to kill him,” I said.
    “Why not?”
    “Because if we do, Hel will know it and launch her army out of spite. Ragnarok will begin. Hel would much rather start the show with Loki than without him, see. She has daddy issues and doesn’t want to win without his approval