Pa!
A cracking sound exploded.
The leeches that had crawled in through the window were sucking fresh blood and gnawing flesh, when one of them suddenly burst into a lump of sludge, and was immediately devoured by the leeches swarming in behind it.
In that tiny bucket, the leeches seemed endless, throwing themselves forward one after another into the wound. Only after a long while did a single fat leech, black and red twisted together, struggle out and drop into the doctor's hand.
The doctor examined it for a moment, then simply squeezed it to pulp, pouring the blood into his own mouth; his eyes lit up involuntarily.
Like he'd just snorted top-shelf stuff, a jolt of electricity, shuddering, his eyes rolling white as waves of convulsions hit.
Gashes exploded all over his body, like claws had swiped through him, and what seeped out of the wounds wasn't blood, but fistfuls of frozen, deathly-pale blades of ice.
In an instant, he turned into a hedgehog.
