Monstrous Nights by Genoveva Dimova

Author:Genoveva Dimova
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

20

Asen

The kikimora stood at the threshold, bringing the smell of freshly spilled blood with her. Her feet didn’t touch the ground. They dangled above the floorboards, pale and limp.

She screamed so loudly, Asen’s eardrums vibrated, and it was as if the scream propelled her forwards. She flew towards him. He scrambled backwards until his back hit the wall.

At first, he’d thought the kikimora looked nothing like Boryana. Boryana’s lips had been full and red; the kikimora’s were grey and dry. Boryana’s cheeks had been pink; the kikimora’s were pale hollows framing her gaunt face. Boryana had always cared for her clothes; the kikimora’s white dress was bloodstained and frayed.

Boryana had been very much alive; the kikimora, with its blue-tinged skin and a body that exuded the faint stench of rotting flesh, was not.

Then, the wraith looked at him, and he recognised those eyes. He’d memorised each golden fleck surrounding those irises. He could draw every eyelash from memory. Those were Boryana’s eyes.

The hair was hers, too, and it spilled around her face in a halo of bright fire-engine red.

Just like in the graveyard last winter, Asen couldn’t fight her. All his love for this woman was still there, and what was worse, his guilt for losing her was, too. Now, he had to add the guilt of her catching him kissing Kosara to it. Had she seen it? Did she know?

He was unsure what she wanted of him. His blood? His flesh? His heart? Whatever it was, he simply couldn’t look into those eyes and refuse her.

The kikimora slammed her taloned hands against his chest. The pain made him hiss. The blood quickly soaked through his shirt, colouring it red.

Asen didn’t fight her. If devouring him alive was what would give her peace beyond the grave, he’d gladly let her. It was his fault she was dead in the first place.

But then, in the brief second between the kikimora’s wails, he heard a different voice. Kosara. His eyes caught hers, watching in horror from behind the kikimora’s back. Her lips moved, whispering a single phrase: Please stay with me.

As if he was a dying patient. When the kikimora’s scalpel-sharp nails struck him again, slicing cleanly through his skin, he supposed, in a way, he was.

Asen moved his gaze from Kosara’s terrified face to Boryana’s furious one, and then back to Kosara’s.

Suddenly, guiltily, he realised he wanted to stay. He didn’t want to die.

His death would mean nothing to Boryana, anyway. It hadn’t been him who’d murdered her. It had been her father. Devouring Asen’s heart would do nothing to sate her.

Or at least that was what he told himself. He really didn’t want to die.

Unfortunately, the realisation made no difference. He was too weak, after a night of fighting the mratinyak, to resist the kikimora. He attempted to push her back, his muscles straining, but it was like fighting a steam train. If he trusted himself to remain in control, he would have attempted transforming, but he didn’t trust himself—and wouldn’t have known how to go about it, anyway.

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