Page 33 of The Rusalka and Mr. Right

What’s left of him.

And...

“Sister?” I choke out, the spell of surprise breaking, hurtling me forward at a run.

Another Rusalka looks up at me, skin as pale as mine but eyes far darker, form more skeletal, and her smile stained with blood.

“There you are...betrayer.”

IT’S BEEN A LONG TIMEsince I saw one of my kind. I wonder if I ever looked like that—some spectral, hollow thing, sick yet seductive? I don’t think so... I remember us as being much more beautiful, soft and sleek, water beings meant to tempt a man’s most primal hunger. “Let the human go.”

“Gladly.” The rusalka in front of me drops Todd’s hand—and it falls, wrist up, lifeless. “He tasted rotten, anyway.”

She’s just fed, and yet she’s wheezing and weak, sinking deeper into the water. I toss my phone and sandals on the bank and wade in, shuddering when I look at Todd. Once handsome, his face and throat are now a mangled mass where the rusalka mauled him with her deadly kisses.

“You will pay. This ismyhome. Pine Ridge is safe! A refuge. We do not kill here—don’t you know there are other ways to live?” I demand, shedding my shirt as well. In my bra and leggings, I slide like a seal through the water.

Her laugh is weak and sounds punctured, as though air passes through her ribs instead of her throat. “Ha! Easy ways for you to live, not for the rest of us. You are not feeding our king, and so he grows desperate for sustenance!”

“One little demon not sending him a few souls a month isn’t—”

“One little nothing!” My sister lunges at me as I find my balance on the slippery, soft mud of the river’s floor. “There are so few of us left. Look at me! I’m the only one left with enough strength to make this journey to find you and tell you!”

“Tell me what? How few?” I blink, momentarily stunned into dropping my guard.

“Start sending him souls. Send him dozens, hundreds, quickly! He’s killing us all to raise himself in time for the hunt.”

The hunt? My blood is never as warm as a human’s, but it suddenly goes ice cold. The Hunter’s Moon is when Koshchei returns to this plane from his demonic hibernation, taking his “handmaids” to birth a new crop of servants. He’s a giant parasite who breeds with his own offspring to make more, always to feed his massive appetite for souls.

But there is a Hunter’s Moon every October, and he only rises every few centuries. It can’t be this year. It is too soon. She must be wrong.

“I owe him nothing. I will never send him souls,” I hiss, forcing my sister’s arms down. “What is your name? What... Why did you come here, really? It can’t be simply to find me and tell me off.” I look at the mauled body on the bank and turn pleading eyes back to her. “You can change. Be forgiven. This is a place where you don’t have to take lives to survive. There are hundreds of willing men who gladly share their life force.”Well... a few hundred, anyway. If you eat sparingly. If there’s only one rusalka who needs to be fed.

Even in the midst of the tumult, I realize that I’ve taken myself out of the equation.

I have Kev.

And when he’s gone... When it ends...

Huh. There’s an aching resignation in me, like there was after Gregor died, only this one is much more final. If I can’t have Kev, I don’t want to find others to replace him, even for the sake of my own survival. Maybe that will change in time, but right now, I cannot picture ever sharing my body with another.

“I am Darya, traitor.” Fingernails like claws rake across my arms as she makes another desperate grab for me. “You live here in your clean little strip of river, dressed like a human, while the rest of us have been killed by pollution, by desperate sharks, whales, and seals who can’t catch other prey, by humans and their wars... There are maybe twenty of us left, when there used to be hundreds. If you were still with your sisters, you’d know this! Even if we feed daily, Koshchei is draining us until we’re shadows of ourselves, desperate to rise one last time.”

I shake Darya’s hands off and backhand her with all my might. She sinks below the water with a cry—but in seconds I feel her bony fingers on my ankles, dragging me under and towing me to the bottom, hand working their way up my body until they clamp around my throat.

“I can’t kill you because you are the key to saving us all! Start feeding him now so we can survive another day. He’s already drained some of us to death!” Darya’s knees press into my ribs as she speaks underwater, an easy feat for a rusalka. Her eyes are glittering black pearls in the dark water, insanity and hunger giving her a burst of unexpected strength. “When the Hunter’s Moon rises, so will he—and you will be his lone handmaiden this time—the only one strong enough to bear his seed.” Her grip relaxes as a look of peace settles over her features. “The new spawn will save us. Will help feed him. We’ll survive if you’re quick enough. Most of us will still be alive if you begin to appease him now. Look! Look at my hands.” Darya lifts them from my throat and shoves them in front of my eyes.

They’re no longer simply white. They’re filmed like a frog’s belly, slightly translucent.

She’s telling the truth. Koshchei is draining his spawn to preserve his own life, killing and controlling us from the demon realms as he always does. I’m only immune because I’ve severed the bond by refusing to send him souls. Still, it would be a different story if he were here, in this realm.

“You can live like me,” I whisper, clasping her hands. “Free from him. He can’t steal what you don’t have! He needs souls. Don’t send them to him!” I reach for her face. “The others—”

“The others warned me you were a fool! We knew you took a human lover for pleasure, for months. You abandoned your sisters!” The hands are back to clawing, but her strength fades fast.

I move to the surface with strong, swift kicks, knowing that a weakened rusalka will struggle more on land than water. “I loved him,” I spit as my head breaks the surface, followed closely by hers.

“Marina?” A low, masculine voice calls my name from the area of the footbridge.

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