We followed the sound of water until we reached a shallow pond at the marsh’s edge. As we neared, I caught a glimpse of two figures writhing beneath the surface—the pale gleam of flesh, and then the billowing fold of Mikhail’s coat.

Swearing, Vanya aimed his rifle at the water, but hesitated at the last moment. This close, our weapons were useless. I set mine down, my body moving on its own, and lurched into the water, up to my thighs, up to my shoulders, and under.

Sediment clouded the water, reducing Mikhail and his assailant to mere shadows—thrashing limbs, the sinewy swell of a greenish-white amphibious tail—and then I wrenched Mikhail free. The moment my fingers closed around the creature’s wrist, it jerked away in surprise, and I hauled Mikhail against myself as the monster retreated into deeper waters.

I broke the surface just as a gunshot erupted in my ears, and several meters away, a pool of blood bloomed across the pond’s surface, darkly iridescent like machine oil.

Mikhail hung limp in my arms as I towed him toward the shallows. Jumping into the water, Vanya waded up to his thighs and helped me maneuver Mikhail onto solid ground. Together, we dragged him several paces from the edge.

“What do we do?” I asked frantically, shaking Mikhail’s shoulder. His head lolled to the side, water welling from his parted lips.

Vanya shouldered me aside and leaned down, his hand upon Mikhail’s chest. He tipped Mikhail’s chin up and pressed his lips against his mouth, breathing in until Mikhail’s chest swelled with borrowed air.

“Keep an eye on the water,” Vanya croaked, pulling away to take a breath. “That thing is still in there.”

I settled onto my haunches and snatched Vanya’s rifle from the ground. Blinking silty water from my eyes, I scanned the pond’s still surface. The trail of blood had diminished into an inky haze. We had wounded the creature, but not enough.

At the far end of the pond, a young man rose slowly from the surface. Streams of water raced down his skin, which was a sallow shade of white, dappled gray and green in places, like the belly of a fish that had started to spoil. Droplets caught in the tendrils of greenish-gold hair coiled over his shoulders. His eyes were as brilliantly gold as a frog’s, with the same charcoal flecks, the pupils slantwise.

My breath caught in my throat. A vodyanoy. I had only seen pictures of them before, printed in moldering almanacs and physiology manuals I’d retrieved from the rubble—creatures split open and segmented, their bisected organs rendered in water-stained ink.

The water spirit’s strange beauty couldn’t hide the devastation of his rebirth. Scaly black lesions covered his chest, trailing downward. Some were puckered and circular, others sunken inward. They reminded me of the white gouges of the gunshot wounds that had taken Papa from this world and into the Edge, or the livid scar necklacing Mama’s throat.

Whatever had happened to this vodyanoy during his first death, it had been grotesque. He still wore a warrior’s pauldron upon one shoulder, although the iron was scabbed with rust and the leather strap had begun to rot. In places, flaps of chain mail grew from his blackened scar tissue, the links encrusted in verdigris.