Sword Beam

I've been working on a game recently, and I've been wanting to implement a sword beam attack. I have the regular sword attack set up with a "dir" variable, to tell the actor which direction he is facing (0 = up, 1 = left, 2 = down and 3 = right), and then the sword is created each time the "x" button is pressed, the direction it is facing depending on the "dir" variable. Now that all works fine. My question is how to make a separate beam to shoot out of the sword, fly for a while, then destroy itself with a separate animation (which is the same for all four directions), while being able to continue slashing --without more beams shooting-- until the other beam has been destroyed, by hitting a wall or enemy, and so forth. Thanks for anyone's help in advance!