Pulling teeth

But she could smell some person in him. The asura wasn’t in a hollow, strictly speaking; there was something of the human being left. She didn’t want to kill the person if he wasn’t either evil or completely gone, but getting Splat out of the human would be tricky. There were tales of holy men who could draw out an asura with words from their Almighty, but monsters had a messier alternative.
Pain.
He cocked his fists and she shot in low, wove a dance around his two blows, and vaulted onto his chest. Her deft fingers gripped one of his incisors and she leapt over him.
“Fuck! Fucking fuck!” He clutched his face and Ryn tossed the incisor aside.
“One,” she said. Asura hated pain. They were not accustomed to it. Even the ones who mutilated their flesh preferred to do so with only one toe dipped into the host. As heady and intoxicating as the flesh could be for the pleasures it brought, they didn’t have tolerance for agony. Life granted that tolerance only to creatures who wore their skin each day.
“Are you my new plaything?” he asked, practically singing the last word. But when Ryn advanced, he retreated.
She flew at him again. He tried a punch and missed, his fist crumpling in a car hood.
Ryn’s hand whipped through the air and he shrieked. She twirled around him, then ducked an elbow strike. She tossed away a molar. “Two.”
“Tell me, plaything, what do you— fuck!”
“Three.”
The singing was gone from his voice. “You’re going to run out of teeth eventually, you bitch.”
“You have more than teeth.” The dark was full of things that glittered, but none so bright as Ryn’s eyes.


Chapter 6, Page 77-78