The gravefang came out of the undergrowth like something fired from a siege weapon — all mass and speed and open jaws, the sound of it arriving at the same moment it did, which was already too late for anything reasonable.
"Renji!"
He was already moving when Ayra screamed it, twisting hard left on pure reflex, and the jaws snapped shut on the space his head had just occupied. He felt the displaced air on his ear. He hit the dirt shoulder-first and rolled and came up with dirt in his mouth and the beast already turning, faster than anything that size had any business being.
It hadn't slowed down at all from the fall. That was new.
