“What are you doing here?” Mokosz asks, her eyes laughing.
They are as blue as cornflowers, set in the round, fresh face of a young woman. Her hair is bound into a waterfall of tiny golden braids. She’s pretty, as always.
I grit my teeth, my claws aching with the need to rip her heart out and eat it for what she did to Jaga.
But Mokosz is powerful. Immortal. Eating her heart won’t kill her. I don’t know what will, but I vow to find out and do it. Whatever it takes.
“You know me,” I say, keeping my hate contained with great effort. “I love the sound of weeping in the morning. So refreshing.”
Her laughter is tinkling and pretty, eyes hooded seductively as she looks at me.
“I’ve missed you, big man,” she purrs. “Where have you been, hmm?”
She raises her hand to my bare chest, and I knock it aside.
“Don’t touch me.”
I should probably try to be amiable, but I can barely hold myself together. If she so much as breathes on me, I’ll lose it.
Mokosz takes a step back, her eyebrows arched in disapproval. “Now, that was uncalled for,” she says, pretending to be amused, but I see the tension in her jaw. She’s angry.
“Was it? I don’t know where, or ratherin whom, your hands have been. Better keep them to yourself.”
She loses the pretense of amusement and levels me with a cold, disdainful stare. “Maybe you should reconsider. You are quitetestytoday. Are you sure your needs are being met? Because I could empty those aching balls for a smile and a nice word. I like fucking at funerals.”
“Any reason to visit this funeral in particular?” I sneer. “You feel ashamed you didn’t protect these women, even though each probably prayed to you thrice a day?”
“Ashamed?” Mokosz bursts out in a throaty, sensuous laughter that carries over the grieving crowd. “Please. You know me in all senses of the word. You should remember by now that I have no shame.”
Her smile grows private, sly. “Areyouashamed you couldn’t protect your little redhead, then? I heard she’s gone. How dreadful.”
Her lips twist into a moue of fake sympathy, and I freeze my heart, blasting it with the full force of my magic, so it doesn’t pound more rage into my veins.
Would it really be so bad to slice off her head and bury it somewhere she won’t find? Imagine Mokosz running around like a headless chicken.
But of course, that won’t work. She’ll just grow a new head for herself, more splendid than the last.
At least I’m reassured she doesn’t know Jaga’s missing from her grave. I thought that might be the case, since Mokosz rarely checks on her victims. I covered my tracks after digging out my girl.
“Do you know where she is?” I ask, letting some of my fury come through. “Tell me!”
She snickers, preening until her tits almost spill out of her low-cut dress. “How should I know? It’s your little fucktoy. Or was she something more? Interesting. I know for a fact she was fucking Chors, too. Maybe she wasn’t as devoted to you as she should have been. Shame.”
Before I realize what I’m doing, my hands wrap around her throat, and I slam her back into the birch trunk. Mokosz grins. Her airway is squeezed too tight to speak, so she projects her voice at me with magic.
“Ah, I knew you wanted to fuck! See, isn’t it nice? You can’t do this with a bies, can you? They are so fragile, poor things. But I can take it, big boy. I can take your large, furious cock, and everything else you have in store. So come on. Do it.”
I let my hands drop, revolted by her words. I forgot she was like this, playing right into my violence, asking for more. We were a couple for a while, in the loosest sense of the word, andnot once did Mokosz suspect my dual nature, even though she had known me as Weles intimately, too.
She can be so very cunning and so unobservant at the same time. But that’s what happens when someone spends most of their time gazing at their reflection.
The goddess laughs, bringing a hand wet with honey to her throat. She rubs it in, wiping away the burn caused by my grip until her skin is flawless.
“Oh, whatiswith you today?” she asks, clicking her tongue against her teeth. “I wanted to celebrate, and all you do is pout. It’s unattractive, Woland.”
“What are you celebrating?” I ask through clenched teeth.
She trills a light, girly laugh and turns in place until the wide skirts of her green dress flare and bounce.
