A mort-vivant jumped on him as soon as Elijah leapt up through the concealed door in the grass. The witch’s face was a rictus of hunger and fury, and the battle was joined before Elijah could so much as blink. They were just as strong as he had remembered, and perhaps even faster. It lunged again, arms outstretched toward Elijah’s chest, and as he ducked aside he found himself face-to-face with three more.

He wondered for a moment if this was what it was like for a human to be hunted by a vampire, to know that the powerful creature bearing down on him saw him only as a meal. Luckily, Elijah was a great deal more than human. He grabbed one of the monsters by her arm and ducked his shoulder to roll her across his back, throwing her hard to the ground. He twisted the head of another all the way around, hearing her neck shatter as he did. The third got close enough to sink his teeth around Elijah’s collarbone, ripping into the flesh and viciously holding on until another vampire arrived to pull him off. The mort-vivant, an undistinguished-looking man in a wool coat who might have been about thirty, shoved his arm into the vampire’s chest and tore her heart free of her battered rib cage.

Just like before, the other witches seemed to sense the heart. A few of them turned on the one who held it, and the fight grew hopelessly complicated as they all battled for the same thing. Elijah focused on protecting the vampires, freeing those who got cornered and engaging their attackers until his troops could regroup and fight again.

He knew that his side was losing. One vampire after another fell to the morts-vivants, and although a slow trickle of fresh soldiers still came up through the tunnels, he knew those reinforcements would soon run out. Sooner or later the house would be empty except for Klaus and Vivianne—how was that for a wedding night?

Elijah heard a strangled scream to his left, and spun to see a vampire impaled on the arm of a grinning mort-vivant. He sprinted toward them, but Lisette got there first. She had ripped her gown above her knees for freedom of motion, and what was left was so covered in gore that its original yellow color was barely discernible. Her face was grim and focused, and she didn’t hesitate before plunging her own arm through the chest of the dead witch. “How do you like it?” she demanded, twisting her hand and withdrawing the organ. She clutched the mort-vivant’s slimy red heart in her hand, and held it up spitefully in front of his face.

His grin faltered. He lost his grip on the vampire, who staggered away as fast as she could. Her injuries were grave, but they would heal; her attacker wouldn’t be so lucky. The mort-vivant crumpled like burning paper as Elijah watched. He collapsed on the grass with a final, spasmodic twitch, and then lay still.

Lisette studied him for a moment to make sure he wouldn’t rise again, then lifted her head to shout. Her voice was like a hunting horn, cutting smoothly through the noise and chaos of the battle. “Take their hearts!” she cried. “They die without their hearts!”

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 vampires made their way back the mansion, some limping and others carrying wounded comrades. Elijah saw Lisette again, supporting a friend who had lost one of his legs and whispering encouragement to him as they hobbled along. She seemed to feel Elijah’s eyes on her, turning for a moment to smile at him as if all the carnage had been nothing more serious than a picnic on the lawn.

Elijah watched her for a moment longer than he could really explain, then lifted a groaning vampire nearby and started back across the bloody grass. In spite of the long and trying night, he felt energized. The next time the morts-vivants dared to come out into the open, Elijah and his vampires would slaughter them all. With one last satisfied look at the mutilated corpses, Elijah strolled inside the house to rejoin his family.

- The Originals: The Loss, Chapter 12