Misery County

Chapter 21 - Part 4

"I brought my own little box of sunshine, bitch," Eric said as he pointed the high-power ultraviolet lamp in her direction.

She screeched in pain as her eyes melted under the fire.

"That's always been your weakness, hasn't it?" Eric said with a victorious laugh. "So close to immortal, and yet you can't even catch a few rays without..." He looked over her quivering form. "...bursting into flames, apparently. I am loving the light show, though. I give it a B+."

Nevena stopped flailing and turned to face Eric, her sudden failure to respond to the conflagration distressing him more than the fact that he'd just realized that the fire was spreading to the rugs and furniture of the room.

"You're dead," she hissed through damaged vocal chords, launching herself through the air directly at him.

Not expecting an attack from her in the state she was in, an unprepared Eric reflexively pulled the lamp up in front of him. Nevena made contact with it, knocking him over onto his back. The flames coming off her legs burned into Eric's jeans as she held him down with her body weight. The heat around him had built up, not only from the flaming body above him, but also from the fire that had spread to the curtains on two sides of the room. At the rate the inferno was growing, it wouldn't be long until he wouldn't need an angry vampire to end his life.

Choosing to tackle one problem at a time, Eric held the business end of the lamp right up to Nevena's face. It seemed to work. She screeched and rolled off him, and he immediately tended to the fire on his legs, beating it off with his hands. Miraculously, it hadn't burned all the way through his cheap, grocery store-bought denims yet. One point for sturdy Vietnamese manufacturing.

From his side, Nevena let out another screech and began scrambling toward him, so he too turned in the opposite direction and began moving as fast as he could go on all fours. By the time he realized that he was no longer pointing the lamp at her, she had one burning hand wrapped around his ankle.

"Why... won't... you... fucking... die...?" He punctuated each word with a kick at her face using his free foot.

The once-beautiful features on her face were completely destroyed by that point, yet she persisted. Eric wondered how much physical damage the fire would need to do for her to stop functioning. Would the total destruction of her musculature be enough to stop her, or would she still move, driven by some supernatural force? Now without eyes, would she be effectively blinded if her ears were destroyed? Eric decided there was one way to find out.

Willing to sacrifice his left ankle, which had been in the fiery grip of the burning wraith for far too long, he stopped kicking at her face and instead pulled himself closer to her, placing the ultraviolet lamp right up to her right ear canal.

A tortured scream echoed through the room as a wooden stand on the closest wall collapsed under the fire. The room was getting more and more enveloped by the wild blaze, but in spite of this, it seemed like the tables had turned – Nevena had let go of Eric and was now trying to crawl away.

"Nope, I'm not quite done with you yet," he said after a quick look at his ruined ankle. There was nothing he could do about that now, so jumping on his other foot, he lurched forward to where the vampire was. Hopping around to avoid the fire coming off her as well as the fire on the rug, he got into the right position and held the lamp over her left ear canal. That was it. She curled up into a ball and held nearly skeletonized hands up to the sides of her head. Her lipless mouth was opened in a scream, but her throat was far to devastated by fire to make any sound.

A hobbled Eric looked at the scene around him. The inferno had spread to the neighboring rooms. The whole house was now burning, as far as he could tell, but that didn't make his victory any less sweet. He would burn the whole county down if it meant ending this unholy menace once and for all.