Chapter 16 : Poison Points
The oak beam split cleanly under the hatchet's edge.
Tyler's father had thrown out a pile of scrap wood from some Lockwood estate renovation project, and Tyler—bless his oblivious heart—had mentioned it during yesterday's training session. I'd shown up at the estate this morning with a story about needing material for a woodworking project.
"Take whatever you want," Tyler had said. "Dad's just going to burn it anyway."
Now the wood sat in piles around the Donovan trailer's cramped workshop—really just a converted corner of the storage shed where Matt's absent father had once pretended to fix things. I'd cleared the cobwebs, set up a makeshift workbench, and started carving.
Stakes.
The first one took forty-five minutes. I had no idea what I was doing—the closest my previous life had come to woodworking was assembling IKEA furniture—but the internet provided basic instructions, and trial-and-error did the rest.
Shave the bark. Shape the body. Taper the point. Test the edge.
The second stake took thirty minutes. The third, twenty.
By early afternoon, I had a dozen weapons laid out on the workbench. Oak stakes, varying lengths between eight and twelve inches, each sharpened to a lethal point. My hands were raw with blisters, my shoulders ached from the repetitive motion, and sawdust covered every surface of the shed.
Worth it.
The next phase was trickier.
I'd been brewing vervain tea for weeks, but the concentration was wrong for weapons. Too diluted. I needed something stronger—something that would make a vampire's blood burn on contact.
The kitchen became a laboratory. I filled a pot with water, added as much dried vervain as would fit, and let it simmer for hours. The liquid that remained was dark, almost black, with an herbal bitterness so intense it made my eyes water.
I poured the concentrate into a plastic container and carried it back to the shed.
The first stake went into the vervain bath at 4 PM. By the time I pulled it out the next morning, the wood had darkened slightly, absorbing the toxin into its grain.
I touched the tip to my tongue—just a brush—and immediately regretted it.
Fire.
The taste exploded across my taste buds, bitter and burning, like someone had lit a match inside my mouth. I spat repeatedly, rinsed with water, and spent the next five minutes coughing as vervain dust from my earlier work irritated my lungs.
Even protection has costs.
But if a simple touch did that to me—a human with vervain already in my system—what would it do to a vampire?
The answer: a lot worse.
I soaked six stakes in the concentrate, leaving the other six plain. Different weapons for different situations. The vervain-infused ones would burn on contact, causing pain and potentially buying seconds of advantage. The plain ones were backup, or for situations where burning might not be strategically useful.
Distribution came next.
Two stakes went into my truck, wedged under the driver's seat where they wouldn't roll or rattle. One went into my work locker at the Grill, hidden beneath a spare apron. Three went to the Lockwood ruins, cached in a waterproof container I buried near my training spot.
The remaining six stayed under my bed, along with a squirt gun I'd filled with the vervain concentrate. Not exactly a sophisticated weapon, but effective. Vampires couldn't dodge water at close range.
I stood in the shed, surveying my work.
Twelve stakes. One squirt gun. A vervain network feeding most of the town.
It wasn't enough. Against an Original, it was nothing. Against even a moderately old vampire, it was barely a speed bump.
But it was something.
I opened my laptop and navigated to a lumber supplier's website. More oak. Different sizes. I'd need to expand the cache before September—before Stefan and Damon Salvatore walked into my life.
The order went through with what remained of my Grill tips. Delivery in five days.
Seventy-five days until Stefan arrives.
The countdown was relentless, but so was I.
I cleaned up the workshop, bandaged my blistered hands, and headed inside to make dinner. Vicki would be home soon—she'd been coming home more regularly lately, a trend I was cautiously optimistic about.
The kitchen still smelled faintly of vervain from the brewing. I opened windows to air it out, then started on pasta—simple, filling, the kind of meal that said someone cares about you without making a big deal about it.
When Vicki walked in at seven, the table was set and the food was ready.
"You're cooking again?" She dropped her bag by the door.
"Someone has to."
She sat across from me, and we ate in comfortable silence. Her eyes were clearer than they'd been a month ago. Her hands were steadier. Small victories.
After dinner, I washed the dishes while she retreated to her room. Music started playing—something softer than her usual angry rock.
I dried my hands, checked the stakes under my bed one more time, and set my alarm for 5 AM.
Tomorrow: training. Caroline. The endless work of preparation.
Twelve stakes. Enough to matter. Not enough to survive a war.
But I was building. Day by day, weapon by weapon, relationship by relationship.
The war was coming. And I intended to be ready.
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