Page 41 of Wraith's Revenge

I shifted my grip to free a hand, then grabbed the holy water and uncorked it. As bony fingers curled around Deni’s leg, I threw the contents of the little bottle.

The creature’s sunken flesh instantly began to bubble and burn. As the stench of cooking skin stained the night air, a stream of bubbles rose from deeper in the lake, accompanied by the strangest sound I’d ever heard. It certainly hadn’t come from a human throat.

The thing released Deni’s leg and disappeared under the water. I dragged her the rest of the way up the bank and onto the path, well out of immediate danger if whatever the hell it was in the lake decided to come back.

I quickly felt for a pulse, then checked her breathing. Nothing. I ignored the stab of fear and started CPR, but as I bent to add two quick breaths, the thing around her neck reacted, unlashing at one end and lunging at my face.

I yelped and pushed back, landing hard on my butt several feet away. The magical leech or rope or whatever the hell it was around her neck snapped back and forth like an angry snake for several seconds, then swallowed its own tail and became inert again.

I warily edged forward. A ripple ran through the leech; it was ready and waiting to attack the minute I was close enough.

I hesitated, then crafted a retrieval spell and cast it toward the leech. Once the spell was attached to the creature’s body, I gave a gentle tug. With an odd sort of sucking sound, part of the leech’s body pulled away from Deni’s neck. That’s when I saw the bloody, hair-fine needles running underneath its body.

It really was some sort of leech, but I suspected it was feeding on her energy—her life force—rather than her blood. Her skin was gaunter now that it had been only moments ago, which meant that odd pulse of energy I could feel was the fading echo of Deni’s life being drained away.

I tugged harder on my magical rope. An inch more of the leech came free, then Deni bucked, as if in pain, and sweat popped out across her pale forehead.

The creature was retaliating against my efforts to remove it by attacking its host. Doing anything else might just kill her.

But so would doing nothing.

I dismissed my spell, then uncorked a second bottle of holy water and poured it over the creature.

Nothing happened. It might look and feel evil, but it wasn’t of demonic origin. Perhaps it had simply been enhanced—or more likely, twisted—by magic.

And not dark magic, either, because the holy water would have had some effect in that case.

Sharp footsteps had my gaze darting down the path, although I already knew it was Belle and Samuel.

“Call an ambulance,” I said. “She’s not breathing.”

“Then why aren’t you doing CPR?” Samuel asked as Belle got out her phone.

“Because there’s a fucking leech around her neck.”

“A leech? Flick it off with a—” He cut the rest of the sentence off with a sharp intake of air. “Fuck, it’s a shushunjë.”

“A what?”

He repeated the name. “They’re magically altered leeches developed in the seventeenth century to drain bad energies from a body in much the same way that regular leeches supposedly drained ‘bad’ blood. Unfortunately, the spell worked too well, and the things drained all life energy.”

Meaning they were a medical experiment gone wrong. “What the fuck is it doing here?”

“I don’t know. They’re not native to Australia, and they’re illegal to import.”

He knelt beside her and leaned closer to inspect the leech. Another ripple ran through its body, but it didn’t react any further. Maybe it had been programmed to only retaliate against me.

“You’d better hope that ambulance gets here fast,” he added, “because if she does survive the removal of this thing, she’s going to be in a bad way.”

“They’re ten minutes away, according to the call center,” Belle said.

Which would probably be eight minutes too late.

“How the hell do we get it off Deni’s neck?” she added. Rain—or maybe even sweat—dripped off her nose, and she was puffing hard, which made me feel a little bit better given how much fitter she was than me.

“There’s a removal spell, but it’s complicated because these things have multiple sucker mouths and if you attempt to pull them out—”

“Which I did.”

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