Brea screamed again, and clutched at
the stake in her heart. She tried to pull it out, and howled in agony. A moment
later, it became clear why, as a point on her heart bulged outward and then
tore open, letting a slender young shoot which twisted toward the light and
sprouted leaves.
I grinned triumphantly. I knew
it would work! I’d borrowed a page from the King of Munn, or more accurately
from the book I took from him: the stake Iola had used was one I’d enchanted
with a spell of transference. I’d reasoned that wild magic or no, whatever kept
a vampire’s body moving and healed her wounds had to be some kind of
enchantment–so I enchanted the stake to transfer that spell onto itself.
Brea’s own healing powers were bringing the dead wood of the stake back to life–and
if wood was a good enough symbol of life to be lethal to a vampire, how much
more damaging would a tree growing inside them be?
Getting closer, I could see the
runes I’d carved into the stake were glowing and smoking, but the healing magic
pouring through them was repairing the stake as it went, keeping the spell
intact.
Amazingly, when she saw me, Brea
groaned and flailed her way back to her feet. “Kill… you…” she
gurgled, and took one lurching step toward me.
Iason sank his sword deep into her
remaining shoulder. He struck a second and a third time, until her arm hung
limply, and then he began slashing at the backs of her legs. Brea fell to the
ground and rolled over.
I took advantage of the better angle
this gave me to flood the inside of her heat cavity with fire. I did my best to
avoid the stake, but I couldn’t help but catch some of the shoots twisting
their way through Brea’s veins. It didn’t matter; the more we hurt her, the
more her regenerative powers fought back, and the more the stake drained them from
her.
She flailed and shuddered a few more
times, but it was over. “I won’t… stay dead… forever…” she
hissed with difficulty. “And when… I come… back… you’ll all… be
dead… Dead…”
She stopped and sagged. A moment
later, she shriveled up, until she looked just like the drained corpses she’d
left in Castle Brinksmoor. The only difference was that none of them had a
healthy young sapling growing up through the middle of their chest.
I sagged to the ground.
“Phew!” I said. Then I looked up at Iason and Iola. “You two
aren’t about to kill me or anything, are you?”
They shook their heads. “Her
power over us broke sometime while she was dying,” Iola said. “It
seems your trick worked.”
“And that was pretty cool
making the thing explode like that. Too bad you ruined it with that lame ‘suck
it,’ line.”
“Iola,” I said. “I’m
too tired to kick him. Can you?”
She sat on the grass next to me.
“Normally I would be happy to,” she said, “but if you think
you’re tired, imagine how we feel?”
“Yeah,” said Iason.
“She was going easy on you, remember?”
I looked down at the corpse lying in
the grass between us. “Good thing, too,” I admitted. “If she’d
been serious about killing us… I dunno. I just don’t know.”
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