“Really?” I found that hard to believe with Trudie breathing down her neck, and then the storm, and the mer and the elves. It had been an unfortunately eventful trip.
“Well, yeah. I’ve said it before, Kat, but without you there’s something eating at me. Voices that want to be heard. Voices that want me to do things I don’t want to do. And, even with your eye, I can still feel its presence, looming closer and closer. I know I earned it. I chose to follow this path. I invited the darkness in, and you can’t ever get rid of it. Not truly. But, when I’m with you…I don’t feel it so strongly. I feel like I can be human again.”
I stopped, suddenly, and faced my sister. It wasn’t so much her words that stopped me. But the emotions I felt through our eye-connection.
I stabbed Ithalen into the ground and embraced her, holding her tight, until she relaxed in my arms.
“I’m looking forward to the time when this is all over,” I said. “When you don’t have to hide, and I can always be there for you.”
“I know, Kat. Me too.”
I released her and caught her frowning. The feeling of sincere gratitude I felt from her before had been joined by a confusing mixture of other emotions. But before, I could press her, she pointed towards the beach.
“What is that?”
I turned to look at her query. A black mound, glistening with moisture as it lay in the sand.
“Could that be a…seal?” I did not expect to see that.
Candace started towards it, but I stopped her, grabbing her arm.
“Careful,” I warned, sounding and feeling like a parent.
Candace pouted but stopped as I retrieved Ithalen and took the lead towards the seemingly beached seal.
As we approached, I was more and more convinced that it was a seal. Covered in dark, almost black, fur. Too black. As if it was coated in something. Oil, perhaps. Its flippers were damaged, with cuts running along the seams. And its blubber, while still maintaining an excessive girth, seemed somehow hollow. A dead seal, perhaps.
Candace frowned. “Something is wrong.”
“Death is wrong,” I replied. I knew Candace was familiar with death. More familiar than I was, but my maternal instincts took over and I wanted to shield her from this depressing sight.
“I need a closer look,” she said.
So much for shielding her.
Cautiously, I approached the seal, Candace by my side leaning down to peer at it. It was still. Unmoving.
“Probably starved to death,” I suggested.
“Recently, if so,” she replied. “It isn’t rotting.”
She closed her eyes, muttering an incantation as she reached towards it. Then its eye flung open.
I shoved Candace into the sand just as the seal loomed up silently and bit into my arm. My coat didn’t like being chewed and immediately flared up, charring the seal who promptly let go.
I jumped back, helping Candace off the ground as I watched the now convulsing seal begin moving its slug-like body towards us.
“Not dead yet, then!” I yelled, holding Ithalen ready.
“But definitely starving,” Treth added.
Candace remained silent, but her eyes were darting around the seal, analysing it.
I expected the seal, after scaring us away, to flee. Instead, it came charging right at us with a land speed unbecoming of an aquatic mammal.
I stood my ground in front of Candace and lifted Ithalen just in time to catch the seal’s teeth on its blade. In my other hand, I spun Voidshot and aimed it directly at the seal’s brain. I began to pull the trigger.
“No!” Candace called out, just as the seal shifted its weight, pulling me with it onto the surf.
“What do you mean no?” I cried out through gritted teeth, trying to hold back the blubbery mammal while it tried to crush me.
“It’s not dead!” Candace announced.
“I can see that!”
The seal, soundlessly, continued to wrestle with me, crunching its teeth over Ithalen’s blade.
“But it isn’t in control of itself. That slug! That must be it. Some sort of brain parasite.”
“Big stretch…. are you sure you haven’t been watching too much sci-fi?”
Candace ran towards the scuffle, just as the seal released my blade and lashed out towards her. Treth appeared in a flash, knocking the creature back with his shield.
Freed from its grasp, I crawled out from under it.
“How do we stop it?” I asked. Without killing it, being the crucial part.
Candace paused, examining the beast as it moved towards her again. I dive tackled it, rolling with it in the surf as Treth tried to hold it down with me.
“I’ve got it! Where’s your dagger?”
“In…thigh…sheathe…” I grunted, the seal on my chest.
Candace ran towards me as I held the seal in a brutal hug, Treth shoving his spectral shield in its mouth to slow its biting.
Candace reached down around my coat and felt around for the dagger, finally retrieving it.
“Hold it still,” she ordered, calmly.
“Doing my best…” I wheezed.
Candace, seemingly not caring about my plight, traced the tip of the knife along the seal’s spine, finally settling just above the neck. As she did so, the seal convulsed. I squeezed tighter, hugging its back with my legs.
Candace bit into its blubber with the knife and made an incision as it flailed in my arm and leg grip. Blood and ooze spilled from the wound and dribbled onto my face. If I hadn’t been hardened by years of hunting undead, I would have gagged. Then, suddenly, I heard a pop. The seal stopped struggling.
“You can let go now,” Candace said, holding something black between her thumb and index finger, like a repulsive used tissue.
I let go of the seal and, after a slight pause, it rolled off me and rushed towards the sea, embracing its rekindled freedom. And probably looking for some fish.
“Brain parasite,” Candace said, triumphant, before throwing it into the sand.
Before I could say anything, my skin turned to gooseflesh as the bone chilling sound of a werewolf howl echoed from across the island. I shot upright, as Candace began running in the direction of Trudie’s howl.
“Treth!” I yelled.
“Roger!” he replied, before I even needed to say anything. He disappeared, teleporting further ahead to investigate the ruckus.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw movement from buildings and side-streets. They were heading towards Trudie’s howl.
I glanced at Candace. She frowned back at me. She’d noticed as well.
Brain parasites. They looked like large black maggots, crossed with leeches. And, if they were on this island…then perhaps it wasn’t a sea witch’s magic that had driven the mer to attack us.
We didn’t stop, as Trudie let out another anxious howl, followed by the sound of crunching stonework.
Treth appeared, running by our side.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It…it’s Kyong. He’s gone mad!”
That explained the sound of walls being pummelled…
Candace and I skidded to a halt as we turned into a crossroads between a military structure and an old grocer.
Locked in a brutal death grip was Kyong in his tiger print gi, wrestling a black werewolf.
“Is that Trudie’s full form?” Candace asked, awed. “She’s kinda cute.”
A long snout of razor-sharp teeth, predatory golden eyes, and fur as dark as night. Yeah, I wouldn’t call Trudie’s wolf cute. But there was a brutal majesty to her.
Kyong attempted to pull back his arm, currently being held by Trudie’s wolf claw, as she snarled, snapping threateningly towards him. His eyes were blank. Like the seal. And the mer.
Pranish stood to the side, incanting something. He stopped as he saw me.
“What’s going on?” he asked, looking between me and Candace.
“Leeches!” I blurted out, eloquently, as I looked anxio
usly towards my comrades fighting.
Pranish looked to Candace for explanation.
“Look for lumps under the flesh, or a black slug on top of it,” she said, clinically. “They’re mind-controlling him.”
Pranish sighed. “And I thought we were done with mind-control.”
Just then, Kyong’s fist slid out of Trudie’s grip and pummelled into her belly. The force of the blow knocked her backwards. Pranish paled and I could see him going through his mental list of spells, anxiously trying to find a solution.
The blow had to have broken a rib, at least, but Trudie skidded to a stop on the road and growled, before charging head-on.
“I’ll find the leech!” I announced, charging alongside my friend.
Kyong, blank eyed and apathetic, glanced between us, before punching the air twice. I ducked, his weaponised fist passing over my head. Trudie took the blow head on, biting into his arm. I heard teeth shatter, but she held on with what remained.
I rounded the confused Kyong and kicked his legs out from under him. Fortunately, the leech lacked the skill that Kyong had and could only use his powers rudimentarily. It had none of his finesse. He fell to the ground, just as he lifted his free arm to punch Trudie. She let go just in time as Kyong punched the air, warping it and causing a sonic boom.
“Treth! Where’s the leech?” I asked, hastily scanning the prone Kyong, even as he began lifting himself up.
Trudie let out a low growl, and I turned towards where she was looking.
“I think we have other problems…” Treth commented.
Running towards us was a veritable horde of desiccated, twisted humans and mer. Some were covered in black pustules, where multiple leeches must have burrowed under the skin.
And leading them all was a woman with long flowing hair, the colour of the sea, with pale blue skin. Her flesh pulsated with black, oozing leeches.
She levelled her hand at us and a jet of water appeared from the air, knocking me to the ground and causing my coat to hiss in frustration.
Guess we’d found the sea witch.
Before I could even plan my next move, Kyong was looming over me. I rolled, just as he punched a crater into the road. Some sharp shrapnel skinned my cheek.
A black furry blur impacted with Kyong as he pulled his fist back for another blow. Using Trudie’s distraction, I lifted myself up. Just as the horde of leech-mutants reached us. I ducked as a man with oozing black goo coming out of his mouth lashed out at me, following through with a swift kick to push him away.
A gust of power pushed him and a group of mer, elves and humans away. I turned to see Pranish and Candace, incanting in unison.
“Get…Kyong…free…” Candace strained, in between spells. “We’ll…handle…them.”
With a gesture of lobbing a baseball, Pranish threw an invisible wave of force at the oncoming mutants. The sea witch responded with a wave of water, seemingly appearing from the In Between itself. Candace lifted a shield just in time, sparing the two mages a dip.
Trudie was holding onto Kyong’s back, throwing off his balance, but his thrashing was getting too much. I charged him, dive tackling him to the ground. A wave of force hit me as I lay atop him, and I landed on my backside.
Trudie, holding back her need to thrash our friend, tried to get on top of him, just as I saw a rippling in the air.
“Trudie!” I yelled. Too late.
Kyong’s force magic burst towards my friend like a point-blank shotgun blast, knocking her across the street and into a throng of mutants.
Pranish saw his girlfriend go flying and his incantations dropped. He went running after her, his eyes glowing with magical rage and fear. Just as Kyong burst towards him with shocking speed. Too fast for me to even react.
Pranish tried to incant a shield spell. Too slow. Kyong held his fist aloft, ready to deliver a lethal blow. And then hit an invisible wall, rebounding off it.
Pranish glanced towards Candace, who grinned triumphantly, before using the shield to catapult Kyong and some mutants towards me. I dodged the falling bodies, before catching Kyong in mid-flight. Before he could recover, I turned him over onto his back. He struggled, but Treth helped hold him down.
I didn’t see any black slugs on his neck. I ripped open the back of his gi. There it was! Oozing and pulsing on his back. Not yet fully burrowed in. I sliced most of the leech off with Ithalen, causing Kyong to convulse, before digging the point into the crater the leech had made into his flesh. Like cutting out a tick, I ripped the leech, teeth and all, out of his back. His body went limp.
One problem out of the way. I looked at the horde surrounding us.
A hundred more to go.
The booming of waves impacting with a magical shield, caused me to lift my head up from the unconscious Kyong. The sea witch was gesturing robotically, calling forth magical waves to thud against Candace and Pranish’s force field. Trudie, receding into a naked human form, was struggling to get up. Even her eyes weren’t gold anymore.
“Cover me!” I ordered Treth, who manifested just in time to block a blow from a mutant mer. It didn’t even look confused as its claw rebounded against nothing.
I lifted Kyong’s arm around my shoulder and, with Treth’s support, carried him towards my cornered friends.
The sea witch didn’t end the watery onslaught, unleashing waves and waves upon the barrier. Cracks were forming in the translucent shield. It wouldn’t last forever!
I dropped Kyong, close enough so the mages could defend him, and charged the sea witch.
She noticed me at the last second, raising a shield of salt water that deflected a blow from Ithalen. I ducked low as she let out a shotgun blast of water but slipped as water sprayed out from below her feet. Mutants fell on me, not caring about the fire from my sputtering coat, just as Treth exploded into a beam of golden light, spinning his sword and shield around to knock the mutants back.
I jumped back up, attempting to kick out at the sea witch’s legs. My foot met a wall of water, which grabbed me and threw me into the wall. I rolled, cushioning the blow but still getting winded.
The horde pressed up against the shield, now enveloping Kyong. Trudie was trying to transform back but could only manage to grow some fur.
Back against the wall. Even if we wanted to kill them, we couldn’t even accomplish that at this rate.
Too many of them. And then this witch providing sorcerous support.
If only there was a way to get rid of the leeches without having to cut them out? Or at least incapacitate the host?
My eyes widened as I had an idea. I deflected a blow from a mer’s claw with the flat of Ithalen and then sprinted between the bodies towards the sea witch, who had renewed her attacks on the mages and the shield.
The brain parasites took over the brain, but they didn’t replace it. Which meant that the host’s brain was still necessary to function.
I dove under a united attack by some mutants, letting them collide into each other. The sea witch spotted me, and raised a wall of water in defence. I turned, running past her.
The back of her head was open.
They might control the host. But only if the host was conscious.
With the flat of my blade, I delivered a pulverising blow to the back of the sea witch’s head. She stumbled forward, almost disbelieving. The wall of water dropped, disappearing into the tarmac, before she fell.
“Make an opening!” I yelled to the mages, as I dragged the sea witch with me.
Mutants fell on the shield as it opened to let me in and then closed behind me.
Candace and Pranish couldn’t speak, but I could see by the throbbing veins on their foreheads and the hoarseness in their voices that they didn’t have much longer.
“Is this the witch?” Trudie croaked, her voice deepening as she tried to morph.
I nodded. “It is. But I don’t think she’s the cause of this.”
I examined her body, realising she was naked, but had no genitalia. A fae
. A water nymph, possibly. And her body was engorged with parasites. Too many to cut out. She’d bleed out, fae or not.
She was a victim just as much as all the other mutants. She didn’t deserve to die.
“Hold her down,” I ordered. Trudie staggered over and held the witch’s arms down, just as her eyes started to open.
I placed my left hand on her forehead and my right on her heart. I felt the leeches writhe at my touch. Slithering beneath her pallid blue flesh. Consuming her. Rotting her.
I couldn’t cut them out. And Candace and Pranish couldn’t use their magic to heal her if I tried. This world was too dark. And despite all their power, they were too weak.
But that didn’t mean there was nothing I could do.
I closed my eyes, blocking out the sound of combat and chaos around me. I focused on the moist skin underneath my fingertips. And the feeling of wrongness writhing underneath.
Disease, curses, parasites…they were not meant to be there. They could be purified. And this being could be healed. I had to believe that.
I felt a golden warmth emanate from that spot in my mind where Treth, Gorgo and the other spirits resided. And words sprung to my lips. Words I recognised but did not understand. I had said similar words before, when I had saved Senegal’s life and temporarily cured him of lycanthropy.
The witch writhed as I incanted, and I opened my eyes. A golden circle of light surrounded us, infusing me with purifying energy. I channelled that energy through my fingertips, and it infused the arteries and very essence of the witch. With every pulse of gold, her body went into spasms, as the black leeches oozed out of her mouth, fleeing the purifying fire. But, even as they slithered, they withered away and turned into dry husks, the remaining ash dispersing in the wind.
Trudie’s eyes went wide as I put my entire being into my work. Even Candace and Pranish stopped their incanting, their now silent mouths falling agape. The horde balked at the golden light and fled. Their united footsteps caused the ground to rumble as they retreated into their hiding holes.
More and more leeches escaped the witch. How many had hijacked her body? And how painful must it have been to live with their immense weight?
I felt tears fall in a golden cascade. Somehow, my sadness at this creature’s plight made the purifying magic even more brilliant, as my voice rose into a chorus of countless voices.
The Silver Star (Kat Drummond Book 11) Page 18