Nina’s sprint had carried her past Seb’s body and out of slashing reach. At this distance the bitch couldn’t miss and Nina couldn’t duck, and the decision made itself in an icy drench of terror. Nina kept running, two more sprinting steps, and as the third shot tore into the night, she flung herself into the embrace of the lake.
THE COLD STABBED her through with a thousand tiny silver knives. The iron tang of lake water invaded her eyes, her ears, her nose. Panic clawed Nina almost blind, the sensation of water moving through her hair. She had not sunk herself under the surface of even a bathtub since the day she’d turned sixteen, lying half drowned on the frozen surface of the Old Man as her father slurred, You’re a rusalka, the lake won’t hurt you. Nina opened her mouth to scream—she couldn’t help it—and the lake shoved its way down her throat like a claw of ice.
Panic and you drown, rusalka bitch, her father snarled, and somehow she got her limbs under control even as her mind melted with terror. She could swim—there wasn’t a child who grew up on the Old Man who couldn’t—and she pushed herself forward, wriggling like a lake seal. Up to the surface, lungs bursting, air searing fire-hot as she gulped it in.
The terrifying sound of another shot.
Nina dove under the surface again, not sure if she’d been hit or not—the fear held her in such an electric grip, there was no room for fresh pain to report. Bullet grazed or not, there was a stark choice in the middle of this thicket of horror: struggle out to the deeper lake, out of range, until the water numbed her limbs and she sank into exhaustion and cold, which would not take long . . . or thrash here in utter panic like a U-2 pinioned in the white glare of a searchlight and be shot at every time she surfaced. Or—
Nina jackknifed underwater, flipping before she could change her mind and kicking blindly back in the direction of the dock. Lungs almost exploding again, she slipped between the pilings, kicking up off the soft mud, surfacing in a silent sucking gasp for air. The dock was built low to the water; there wasn’t even ten centimeters’ clearance between the surface of the lake and the underside of the boards above. Nina clung to the piling, a splinter piercing her hand like a needle, head tilted back to keep her mouth above the water. Her limbs were already numbing. The pine boards creaked overhead, and there was the sound of metal clicking on metal.
She is standing right above me, Nina thought, and she is reloading. If she fired straight down between her feet into the dock, the bullet would take Nina through the eye.
Terror shattered her like new ice.
Let go, the lake whispered. Sink into the blue. Let the rusalka have you.
Disjointed images fluttered like bad film. Yelena’s laughing face. Little Galya muttering in a terrified monotone, We’re not going to drown. Her father, baring his yellowing teeth. Comrade Stalin, his mustache and his heavy feral scent . . . Nina tread water to keep her face above the frigid surface, listening to the blue-eyed huntress shift her feet just centimeters above as the lake continued to croon.
Let go, Ninochka.
She kept moving her legs, but she couldn’t feel them.
Let go. Let the rusalka have you. She’s the first night witch, the one who comes from the lake with ice-cold arms and a kiss that kills.
No, Nina thought. I am the rusalka. Born from a lake to find home in the sky, come back to the lake.
Then die here in your lake. Easier here than up above at her hands.
No, Nina thought again. I may fear water, but to fight a Nazi in the dark of the moon holds no terror for me.
She had no idea how long she hung there in the dark prism of Lake Rusalka, face tilted above the water, fingers fighting for a grip on the slimy pilings, numbed feet spasming to keep her afloat, as the blue-eyed huntress above kept watch. Only minutes, surely. It felt like hours.
Over the lapping of the water Nina heard the woman call out in German. Even Nina understood the three simple, desperate words.
“Where are you?”
Nina clamped her chattering teeth.
The woman’s shoes shuffled. Her breath came unevenly. Nina heard the hiss of pain. I cut her. The red line opening across the nape of the