Lady of Poison_ The Priests - Bruce R. Cordell [105]
He yelled, "Gunny, herd them out this way-into the sunlight."
Ususi unleashed a spray of magical bolts that traced wildly arcing trajectories through the air. Many of the bolts found their mark in Damanda's flesh. The vampire was undeterred in her fight with Gunggari and Elowen, but she spared a smoldering glance for the wizard in the doorway. Ususi screamed, threw her hands before her eyes, and fell back.
Marrec hoped that glance wouldn't prove to be trouble later. He knew about the domineering gaze of vampires.
Elowen growled, "I'll keep this one pinned-help Marrec with that other, one." Gunggari danced back, his warclub landing a parting shot to Damanda's head, which was absorbed with a grunt of pain.
Dymondheart seemed to grab Damanda's attention more than the dizheri. She didn't merely absorb Elowen's swift swings-she deflected, ducked, and spun to avoid taking a cut.
Gunggari was upon Bonehammer, smashing with an unrestrained fury that momentarily startled the vampire. Marrec saw his chance, ducked under his foe's guard, and came up on the other side.
"Now!" yelled Marrec, hoping to coordinate his activity with Gunggari's.
He and the Oslander dashed themselves directly into Bonehammer. Marrec threw his arms about his foe, who promptly turned his head and sank his fangs directly into Marrec's neck.
A fire blossomed there, and a weakness. The weakness felt something like his loss of contact with Lurue, but more immediate and far, far more lethal.
Though his strength seemed to be flowing from him, with Gunggari's help he forced the vampire back, step by step, into the larger, ruined chamber.
The angle of the sunlight was becoming extreme. A few minutes more, maybe less, and the sun would be down, but such questions no longer mattered for Bonehammer.
Marrec and Gunggari forced the struggling, biting vampire directly into a reddening shaft of pure sunlight.
"Damanda!" screamed Bonehammer, as he released his bite on Marrec's neck. –
He began to thrash, so violently and fast that neither man could maintain his hold, but it was no longer necessary to hold him. Bonehammer was speared in place by the shaft of sunlight.
Their foe's whipping limbs moved so quickly that Marrec could barely discern them. Smoke coiled off the vampire's skin, and a reddish radiance peeked from Bonehammer's open mouth, his nostrils, from behind his eyes, and even from his fingernails. The next instant all burned through. The fire that had been ignited inside reached the surface. A flash of all-consuming heat and red light left nothing behind but ash and disintegrating fragments of skull and spine. Even that smoked away a second later.
Marrec sagged. He worried that the vampire's bite would reveal itself as a debilitating, life-draining wound, but he didn't fall. There was still Damanda.
"Let's bring the other one out," he whispered to Gunggari, though the Oslander was already half way back to the fight where Elowen kept the blightlord at bay.
Marrec spared a glance for Ash. The girl remained standing where they had appeared, looking completely out of place in the darkening ruin. The last shafts of light penetrating the building dimmed still further and were finally extinguished. The sun had set.
Marrec stumbled back to the door, bypassing Ususi along the way. She stood shaking her head back and forth, as if trying to throw off a hallucination. Trouble. He could tell. Damanda…
Back in the sealed antechamber, Elowen had the blightlord backed into a corner. The vampire feared that blade; its sap was suffused with pure sunlight, and Marrec perceived it was also made of wood. He couldn't imagine a better weapon to use against a vampire.
"Cleave her, Elowen-she can't heal Dymondheart's blows. You can slay her outright."
Between gritted teeth, parrying Damanda's blows, Elowen said, "What do you think I'm trying to do?"
Gunggari