Athenian Steel (Book I of the The Hellennium) by P. K. Lentz Page B

fighting, and it did not let the momentary
distraction offered by Demosthenes' interference go to waste.
 One of Eden's blood covered hands found the very rock which
had caved in her skull, picked it up and hurled it at Thalassia,
who was forced to raise an arm to ward it off.  
    The respite thus achieved was brief, but it
was enough to let Eden slip free.  Having done so, the
scrambling, blood-covered thing which had moments ago been a woman
had but one clear goal in mind:  escape .  Getting
her feet under her, the near-headless Eden ran off at speed, gray
cloak and blood-soaked braid trailing behind her.  She ran
west to where, beyond two or three rows of houses, the land fell
off sharply into the sea.
    Leaping to her feet, Thalassia ran after.
 As she went, she reached around behind her, grabbed the
handle of Demosthenes' blade and slid it from her chest to wield it
as though she had just drawn it from a scabbard.  Two swords
in hand, showing no sign of flagging in spite of her fatal wound,
she vanished around the back of a row of empty houses.
    Both women ran at exceptionally high speed.
 Even were Demosthenes so lacking in good judgment as to
attempt chase, he could not have kept up, much less overtaken them.
 Left alone, he stood silent and frozen, watching the place
where they had vanished.  Slowly his gaze went to the blood
pooled in the road, proof that what he had just witnessed was no
delusion.  He looked down at his hands and found them
trembling, glanced around to see if anyone else was near.
 Thankfully, no one was.
    Should he flee?  He quickly decided
there was no point.  If her spun bronze and iron grip had
failed to convince him entirely of the truth of Thalassia's claim
not to be of this world, now there was no room for doubt.  If
a being such as she judged that he had to die, there was no
escaping it.  Better to face his fate like a man than run away
and be hounded to his death by a seething Fury while hoping in vain
for some merciful god to step down from the heavens and save
him.
    He steadied himself, spoke a few words aloud
to Pallas, and he waited for judgment.
    Within a few minutes Thalassia reappeared,
walking slowly with just one sword in her right hand.  In the
left was what looked like a fat, bent branch.  A bright red
stain covered nearly the entire midsection of Thalassia's orange
dress, centered on the wound Demosthenes had inflicted on her, and
her golden skin was everywhere spattered with blood.  She was
as something stepped straight from the depths of Tartaros, and her
icy stare, like her slow but inexorable march, had but one object:
Demosthenes.
    Without breaking her gaze on him, Thalassia
stopped five paces away and threw down the bent branch, which
landed with a strange, soggy flop.
    It was no branch.  It was her defeated
adversary's arm, severed midway between shoulder and elbow.
    There was no time to stare in fresh horror
at that sight, for Thalassia raised the sword's tip and aimed it at
Demosthenes.  “Stay.”
    She did not bother to imbue the word with
any tone of command.  None was needed.
    Dropping to her knees before the severed
arm, she clasped its wrist in her free hand and plunged her sword's
tip into its bicep.  From there she proceeded to slice down
its length, opening the flesh from one end to the other, cutting
down to the bone, as if gutting a fish.  When that was done,
she set down the sword and used her fingers to peel back flesh and
muscle and sinew.  She worked methodically, going from wrist
to bicep, digging through the bloody mess as
if...  searching  it.
    The sight forced Demosthenes to put the back
of one hand to his lips against a stream of acid rising from his
stomach.  Thalassia glanced up and delivered a malign smirk
before resuming her bloody endeavor.
    “Fuck!” she cursed when her fingers had
traveled from one end of the severed limb to the other and back
again, leaving it an unrecognizable mass of meat at the center of a
dark