Elijah had never heard of a witch who devoured hearts. And she had said “we.” Elijah could sense more of them now, perhaps a dozen creatures like her, lurking in the woods. They were closing in on him, and in spite of his better instincts, he flicked his eyes away from the witch’s for the briefest of seconds, and in that second she struck.

The blow knocked him sideways, and his legs tangled in Ava’s. He fell across her body and then rolled before the witch could pin him again. But she was as fast as she was strong, and she nearly caught him again. Her fingernails raked at his face and arms, seeking the center of his chest while she still held Ava’s heart in her other hand.

He lashed out with a vicious kick as they separated, catching her squarely in the stomach. She bent at the force of his attack, almost doubling over but not quite winded. She lunged for him again, and he heard the rattling of indrawn breath behind him. He ducked her hand and grabbed her by the wrist, spinning her into another witch who had crept up on them.

The two creatures backed away from each other and snarled, but another pair of impossibly strong hands caught Elijah from behind. As he struggled, more creatures slunk out from the shadows. Where were they coming from? And why?

He managed to shake off the witch who held him—a short man with a disturbingly cheerful smile on his face—and smashed his fist into the skull of another, wincing at the sickening crunch of the thin bone around her temple. But she didn’t even flinch, just continued to come at him with half of her skull caved in. Elijah was so shocked that her hand plunged through his flesh and brushed his ribs before he managed to get out of her range.

Holding a hand over the wound in his chest, he feinted one way and then another, trying to divide the dozen of them enough to fight his way out, but to his surprise none of them seemed to be that interested in him anymore. The short witch was smiling again, although not at Elijah. He was turned toward Elijah’s first attacker, who still held Ava’s half-eaten heart. Elijah realized that all the witches were starting at the pulpy mess.

Elijah stood perfectly still, sensing that this was not the moment to strike. He forced himself to watch, although he had a sick feeling about what he was about to witness. The creatures closed their circle around his first attacker, their attention rapt and hungry on the heart. Like a pack of wild beasts, they were turning on their own kind to get at her prize.

She gave a low protective hiss and clutched the heart closer to her chest, prepared to fight for the last scrap of meat. Her flat eyes found Elijah’s again, and her thin lips pulled apart into a ghastly smile. “Soon enough,” she reminded him in her dead, rasping voice, and then the witches struck. They threw themselves at her all at once, like a bursting dam of bared teeth and sharp nails.

Elijah heard the tearing of skin and the crunching of bones from somewhere within the writhing mass of hungry monsters, and he hoped that some of them wouldn’t live through the brawl. But he could still picture the woman who had lunged at him with her skull caved in, and he suspected he couldn’t rely on the resilient beasts to thin their own ranks.

Although Elijah hated to leave a fight, he knew that the smartest move would be to take this opportunity and run. His feet flew over the swamp, startling a flock of birds out of the weeds. He made for home, for the safety of the protection spell and the army that was his family. He needed to figure out what these creatures were before they became an unstoppable threat, and he hoped that the answer was in whatever was left of his study. Even with some of his books lost to last night’s stupid, wasteful fighting, the sources he had collected over the centuries were his best chance of understanding what evil now lurked in the bayou.

- The Originals: The Loss, Chapter 6