The sight of those strange, pale figures wafting through the black depths didn’t frighten me, not after I had seen rusalki swimming beneath the ice so many winters in a row and they had never tried to harm me. I sensed that, as a fellow woman, the river spirits would treat me far kinder than the soldiers in my company. Even if a vodyanoy might be lurking in those depths, I would have tested my luck by jumping from the bridge, if in doing so, I wouldn’t be abandoning Vanya and Mikhail to certain death.

Ahead, a dripping figure climbed over the stone wall and dropped in our path, landing on all fours. Fish-belly-white skin and hair the color of red algae. The rusalka’s eyes gleamed with a pale silver fluorescence. She had no pupils, only a basin of eerie light against the jaundiced whites. Her face was ethereally beautiful, but her teeth were as slim as curved needles and just as sharp, dozens jutting from her black gums.

Amazed, I froze where I stood. I couldn’t move my feet—it was as though they had taken root.

She was horrifying. She was glorious.

“Kill it!” Lieutenant Dronov screamed, reeling back. “Damn it, kill it!”

A rifle blast exploded in my ears, and the creature collapsed onto her side, revealing a stomach slit through with pulsing gills. She rose again on spidery limbs. Glistening blue blood poured from her midsection.

Mikhail backed away from the rusalka and nearly struck me. His breath hissed through his clenched teeth.

“There are more,” another man cried, looking down into the water. “They’re coming up here!”

Vanya leaned over the stone wall, staring at the river below. He didn’t seem conscious of the other men’s terror. His face shone with awe, his eyes wide and lips parted. What he saw in the water, I didn’t know. Maybe only someone who loved women would know.

“Do something,” Lieutenant Dronov ordered shrilly. “Give them a distraction.”

The soldiers’ eyes roved wildly around us. The weasel-faced man took a step toward me then hesitated. Dronov lunged at Vanya, who had begun to back away from the barrier, and drove him against it instead.

“Let go of me.” Vanya bucked in the man’s grip. Where his boot heels touched, moss and grass spread across the stones. “Damn you, get your rotten hands off me.”

“No!” I cried.

Vanya twisted around in Dronov’s hold, grappling with him. The lieutenant slammed his knee between Vanya’s legs. With a hoarse moan, Vanya collapsed against him.

“No,” Mikhail shouted. “Stop!”

“Don’t,” I screamed as Dronov lifted Vanya. “He doesn’t know how to swim!”

Whatever Dronov had done, it had practically incapacitated Vanya. His face was dead white, and low choking sounds left his mouth like he was going to vomit. His hands loosely grasped at the soldier’s greatcoat, struggling to gain purchase, and then his hips scraped against the stones. Then Dronov gave one hard push, and he was gone.

If Vanya cried out as he fell, the noise was drowned beneath a splash and the thrashing of many limbs.