Ethan simply lunged forward. His body moved on its own, driven by the last remnants of adrenaline and desperation. The chair leg in his hand suddenly felt heavy.
Ethan's blood was soaking into the wood fibers, and the wisteria still coursing through his veins was doing the impossible,transforming an ordinary piece of wood into something else.
Roy saw the movement too late.
Crack!
Ethan drove the improvised stake straight into the vampire's chest, exactly where the black heart had been beating a second earlier.
The wood sank in easily, as if into butter. Roy jerked. His eyes widened, not from pain, but from pure, animal surprise.
"What… is this…?"
Roy's blood, thick as tar, gushed from the wound and instantly mixed with Ethan's blood on the surface of the stake.
The air around them crackled.
The wood began to glow, first faintly, then brighter, with a silvery-blue light. The handle in Ethan's hand turned ice-cold, then burning hot.
Roy tried to pull back, but the stake held him like an anchor. The vampire's body started to shake. Black smoke poured from his mouth, carrying hundreds of voices inside it.
"No… no… no…" Roy whispered, but his voice was no longer alone. Hundreds of others screamed, howled, and begged within it.
The stake began to pulse. It was absorbing all the souls Roy had consumed over the centuries,every life he had taken or trapped inside himself, now tearing free from him and being sucked into the wood.
Moans, weeping, and furious screams could be heard. The smoke spiraled around the stake, pouring into it like a funnel.
Roy dropped to his knees. His hands clutched at the improvised weapon, trying to tear it out, but his fingers were already turning black and cracking.
"You… what have you done…!" he rasped, and now several voices spoke at once.
"This… is my power!"
Ethan stood there, gripping the stake with both hands, even though his fingers were bleeding. He looked straight into Roy's eyes, and for the first time that night, there was no fear in his gaze.
"Now it's mine," he said quietly.
"I don't know what I did, but it's definitely mine!"
Roy opened his mouth for one last scream, but instead of a cry, only a torrent of black smoke poured out. His body began to crumble. Skin peeled off in sheets, muscles beneath turning to ash.
His eyes sank inward, becoming empty sockets.
Roy collapsed forward, impaled on the stake like a butterfly on a pin.
The stake darkened to a charred black, as if burned in a furnace. Thin silvery cracks spread across its surface like countless tiny veins. Inside it, a prison had been created.
A prison for hundreds of souls.
Ethan slowly pulled the stake out of the dead body. He stared at the wood. It was no longer just a broken piece of a chair.
Flash, still lying by the wall, rasped:
"Ethan…"
Ethan turned to Flash, holding the new weapon against vampires in his hands.
"It's over. I killed him…" he answered quietly.
Gideon pushed himself up on his elbows, coughing.
"We… we killed him? For real?"
Ethan nodded.
He looked at the black stake in his hand.
"Maybe…"
Bruno, still leaning against the wall, smiled weakly with bloodstained lips.
"Then… let's go. Before… the next monster… comes for this… souvenir."
Ethan gripped the stake tighter. Inside it, something whispered faintly,hundreds of voices trapped within.
The guys slowly gathered themselves and then moved toward the exit.
Behind them, in the hangar, lay Roy's body, an empty shell with not a single soul left inside.
And somewhere in the city, far beyond the ring road, Anna had already felt the death of two vampires.
They dragged themselves out of the hangar through the mangled rear hatch, supporting one another. Bruno barely moved, only occasionally letting out a short, wet groan.
Gideon carried him on his back, barely able to put one foot in front of the other. Ethan walked last, gripping the stake tightly in his right hand, what remained of an ordinary chair leg.
They leaned against the rusty wall of an old container in the shadows between two hangars. At least here the wind wasn't blowing as hard.
Flash was the first to drop into a crouch.
Bullet, his ferret, immediately climbed onto his shoulder and pressed her little muzzle against his neck. Flash looked up at Ethan.
"Come here," he rasped.
"Quickly…"
Ethan approached, swaying. The stake in his hand seemed to grow heavier with every step. He lowered himself beside Flash, leaning his back against the same container.
Flash stared at the stake for a long time. Then he shifted his gaze to Ethan.
"Do you understand what you just did?"
Ethan slowly nodded. Then shook his head.
"I… killed him? The wood… it… absorbed everything."
"Yes," Flash said quietly.
"It absorbed everything, and now it's not just wood anymore."
"It's a curse. Remember I told you it's impossible to truly kill a vampire? Silver bullets can only banish them."
"What you did… is very bad. Pray to God that if this thing is ever destroyed, all those souls don't pour into you. Because you're the one who killed him…"
He reached out and carefully touched the black surface of the stake with his fingertips.
"When an ordinary object kills a vampire while covered in your blood and wisteria…"
"It becomes enchanted. All the souls the vampire has taken throughout his life go into it."
"Thousands, maybe millions. They're all in there now."
Ethan squeezed the stake harder. A faint vibration passed through his palm, as if someone inside had knocked back in response.
"So what now?" Ethan asked Flash.
Flash looked him straight in the eyes.
"If this stake breaks… if it's shattered, burned, cut — anything at all…"
"The souls will break free, and the first one they'll find is you. Because your blood locked them inside."