Bertha sprang forward and her poleaxe struck true, straight into the exposed gut of her last surviving family member. Jeff howled and thrashed suddenly, but Bertha wasn’t fast enough to evade his final move. The brother’s fist clipped the sister’s chin, and Bertha shot backward, her green form lifting six feet into the air and crashing into the last unbroken piece of furniture: her mother’s rocking chair.
A sudden bolt of fury blasted into my heart, a kind of animalistic anger filling my veins with fire. Maybe it wasn’t just Bertha’s strength I’d siphoned from our lovemaking because I now possessed a troll’s ferocity.
One rage-filled leap and I was on him.
Jeff let out a deafening bellow as he swung at me. His roar filled the cavern and seemed to shake the very walls. I dodged his fist, but his elbow smashed deep into my gut. I grunted as I slammed the cleaver down into his bicep, its blade biting all the way to the bone but stopping there. He released another roar of pain as he twisted and writhed. The poleaxe still impaled him, so his movements were impeded, and I took advantage.
I held onto the cleaver’s handle with all my might, jumped, and hauled myself up by the weapon like a handhold. I leaped over his wildly swinging arm, and my knees crashed into his chest.
Tearing the blade free, I started hacking and chopping his eyes, mouth, and throat. I targeted any spot where I could sink the broad edge. Jeff screamed on the first few strikes but quickly grew silent. My wrath wasn’t satiated yet, so I continued to strike his skull like a metronome. Jeff’s blood, skull fragments, and brain matter covered me before I ripped the blade free of his flesh a final time and tossed the weapon aside.
I doubted that cleaver would ever have an edge again after the beating I’d just given it.
My chest heaved as I doubled over and sucked in air, my muscles cramping from the constant striking, and my head pounding as the adrenaline wore off. I turned my back on the mangled remnants of the troll. And then—I heard a groan.
“By Lilith!” Bertha swore as her eyes widened, and I whirled around to see Jeff’s skull slowly piecing itself back together.
The troll-who-should-have-been-dead was a bloodied mess, but the potion must have still been in his bloodstream because his wounds were already healing. Whatever was inside those bottles must have been the most powerful invincibility potion in all the fucking realms.
Upon closer inspection, though, I realized his wounds weren’t exactly healing; the fractures in his skull were becoming covered in a glowing yellow substance. The insides of his shattered skull were still visible, and he didn’t have a whole lot of brain left, only enough to let him stand and swagger. Although now a giant lumbering vegetable, he was still dangerous.
Jeff cracked his neck and wrenched the poleaxe from his abdomen. Rather than blood, that same glowing yellow liquid gushed from his stomach. The potion. It must have brought him back to life, but I doubted it would keep him from death for very long. The way the glowing liquid seemed to only cover the wounds made me think that as soon as the potion passed through his bloodstream, he’d die.
But then again, he might only need a few seconds to kill Bertha and me.
My cleaver was still a few feet away, and I dived for it. Jeff got there before me, his entire body psyched up on the world’s greatest potion. He caught hold of the back of my tunic, giving me just a split second to decide what to do next. Punching the monster would just break my hand. Bertha was already coming toward us, but she wouldn’t be able to strike with the rolling pin in time and her poleaxe was too far away.
Beneath the acrid stench of the potion running through his veins, he reeked of blood. I reveled in the aroma of that delicious crimson lifeforce and gritted my teeth as I felt my fangs begin to protrude from my gums.
Then I had an idea.
My mouth raced to Jeff’s throat, and I bit down with every ounce of strength I had left. The strands of flesh in his neck gave way, and then I was drinking him. The action was instinctive, and I became like a dehydrating exile in a desert. The blood tasted sweet, hot, and tainted. Mixed with the potion, I could feel its heady effects in seconds.
Jeff’s legs gave out, but I carried his weight. The potion had infused me with enough strength to easily support his unconscious, slowly dying form. The pulse of his huge heart slowed to a crawl as I consumed him.
When Jeff finally stopped twitching, I pulled my fangs free from his throat and stood, squaring my shoulders as my muscles expanded with new life. The potion was quickly fading, whatever magic it contained having already been expended on Jeff’s resurrection. It had invigorated me, but my wounds from the battle with the imps and trolls remained. Cuts, bruises, and aching muscles made themselves known in a painful chorus.
“Oh, my,” Bertha said as she came over to me and wiped her brother’s blood from my mouth. “You really are a Tainted Elf.”
“That was a first,” I said with a shrug. “At least I can say Jeff was worth something. Where the fuck did your Ma get that potion from? Why didn’t she just sell it? I imagine it would have been worth a lot of coins or whatever your currency is here. And she definitely needed currency. She wouldn’t have tried to sell me if that weren’t the case.”
“Ma was . . . eccentric. None of the bottles beneath her bench were labeled, and Jeff could just as easily have downed a poison.”
“Right.”
