Page 34 of The Rusalka and Mr. Right

Leo.

“Look, there are people who can help you, help the others. I—”

“You don’t listen. You don’t learn. Even after we killed your big, clumsy fisherman, you didn’t return to the fold. Stupid bitch,” Darya pants in my face as her lungs struggle to breathe the air above the water. “Koshchei will have fun teaching you your place—and if I live, I will have fun teaching your daughters what they owe their elders for their mother’s sins!”

My eyes no longer see Darya’s bony face, which seems to be growing more emaciated by the minute.

All I can see is Gregor’s face, so white and still, so cold beneath the sheets of ice.

For some reason, I see Kev’s face beside his, and little girls that have his caramel brown skin and laughing smile.

My loves. My daughters.

It doesn’t matter that they can never be, should never be. Something in me breaks, and the demon unleashes.

With a shriek that would put a harpy to shame, I tear into Darya’s shoulder with my teeth, ripping flesh and spitting out foul-tasting blood as I work towards her throat.

Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.

But I’m only a demon, and I break the rules.

“Marina! Marina? Jakob, you’d better get over to the river by campus,” Leo’s voice is a distant whisper over our combined screams and the thrashing that leaves a red sheen on the water.

In seconds, a stocky figure with glowing golden eyes is beside me, pulling Darya’s lifeless body on shore, hauling me up after as I sob and shake.

Leo puts Darya’s body beside Todd’s. “She killed him?”

I nod.

He stares between the limp remains and me. “Family?”

I told you Leo was a quiet sort of man, didn’t I? I nod again.

“Fuck. That’s not good.”

“You have no idea,” I whisper before the tears win again.

Chapter Eleven

“May I please come in?”

It’s three in the morning and some posh old dude with my half-naked girlfriend in his arms is standing at my door.

“Shit, what happened, baby?” I pluck Marina out of the old dude’s arms and she clings to me like a latex glove.

“If I may enter, perhaps I can help explain? I am Jakob Minegold, a friend of Marina’s.”

“Let him in, he’s wonderful,” Marina half-sobs.

“Come in.” I get Marina to the couch, then pull my shirt off and wrap it around her. “Baby, you’re soaking wet and ice cold. I thought you were going to be working at a committee meeting until late, then going back to your place?”

“Koshchei.”

One mumbled word opens up a floodgate of possibilities, none of them good. My mouth dries out as I look at her. Scrapes. Bites? She’s got blood and bruises, and her brand-new shirt is gone...

Bile rises in my throat, and I look at Minegold. “He... Did he hurt her?” I should ask Marina. I’ll have to listen eventually, but I can’t at this second. I can’t ask her that in case she looks me in the eyes and tells me what he did, because I will die. Or I will kill. And I don’t want to leave this planet because Marina is still on it, and I don’t want to rot in some jail while I should be at her side.

“Oh, no, not Koshchei himself. I’m afraid one of his ‘ambassadors’ found Marina near her home and attacked her.”

---