Elijah could feel the shift among his kind as the cry was taken up again and again, spreading to every corner of the battle. Every vampire who heard the words attacked with renewed energy.

They had taken on many losses, and if the vampires hadn’t been outnumbered at the start of the battle they surely were now. But the monsters now had a mortal weakness, and that was all Elijah’s army needed to know.

“Die, bloodsucker,” a voice rasped beside him, and Elijah didn’t blink. He shot out his arm; skin and muscles tore under the force of his blow, and his fingers closed around the monster’s wildly racing heart. Elijah crushed it in his hand as he tore it out, savoring the faint gasp of shock that would be the last sound that ever escaped the mort-vivant’s lips.

Finally, he was able to exact some measure of vengeance for Ava’s untimely death. All of the anger and outrage he had been forced to contain since that night came bursting out of him, and he attacked the morts-vivants with merciless savagery.

The re-dead witches started to pile up, and Elijah could now hear cheers among the screams of pain. The morts-vivants fought hungrily, but there was no doubt that the tide of the battle was turning.

By the time the sun rose, forcing both sides to retreat, the lawns were covered with corpses. Dozens of vampires were lost, but by Elijah’s estimate they had taken at least a hundred of the undead witches with them. The rest of the morts-vivants—three hundred or fewer, he guessed—fled from the lightening sky to the east, melting back into the woods.

- The Originals: The Loss, Chapter 12