Page 157 of Devil's Doom

What did she say? Half an hour? That’s impossible.

“I’ve wasted enough time.”

I still haven’t said a word, haven’t managed to get my breathing under control, when my entire body spasms with a new torture. Mokosz lets go of my hair, and if not for the plants keeping me upright, I would have fallen to the ground.

My head hangs low, because I have no strength to support it. There’s something wrong with my chest. Slowly and with great effort, I focus my vision.

A knife. That’s what’s wrong. A handle of a knife sticks out from my chest right where my heart is.

My heart that doesn’t beat.

I blink, wondering distractedlyhowit’s possible for me to still be here. Mokosz growls and reaches in, her dainty fingers wrapping around the knife. She yanks it out. I scream with my last breath, and then without it, my mouth wide open, a silent scream bleeding into the night.

The agony peaks and washes away. My heart gives a painful beat. Then another.

“No.” Mokosz sounds cold and furious.

Everything swirls in my mind like a bad dream. She suffocated me for half an hour. She stuck me with a knife, right through the heart. And I am still here.

“Oh, the devil,” she growls. “Playing a god now, is he? Making bieses immortal? I’ll catch him myself, you just wait. I’ll bury him alive, just as I will you.”

She grabs my jaw, her nails digging in. I don’t see her, just a blurry outline of her face. She spits at me in rage.

“So he made you immortal, huh? That won’t help you! You’ll be just like Swietowit, buried forever, alive yet trapped, suffering for eternity! That’s what you get for giving immortality to those who don’t deserve it!”

She lets go, and I take a shuddering breath, unable to understand what’s going on. Plants tear out of the ground around me, thicker and stronger than the ones she used already. They pile on top of me, wrapping and squeezing. Again, they rip down my throat, and I suffocate, the desperation of trying to take a breath sending me into a panic.

I’m dragged down, lower and lower, the earth cracking open beneath me. I try to scream from terror, but the plants won’t let me. The world shakes and groans, and I feel it, a horrendous weight of the earth burying me alive, hiding me so well, no one will ever find me.

At last, it’s quiet. My eyes are closed, wet, cold things wrapped around my face. It’s colder here, and I shiver. My heart beats laboriously, each thud coming later than the last one.

Awareness slips away from me. There is pain, there is the horrible inability to breathe, and the worst of all, the trap. I cannot move. I cannot speak.

And I’ll never be free again.

Chapter fifty-three

Weles

I come awake with a start, trying to take a breath. For a few moments, I don’t understand what’s happening. I suffocate, my entire body splitting with pain. My tired heart gives a heavy thud, and I have a distinct feeling that it hasn’t beaten for a while.

Pain fills my mind and body, and I want to cry, but with no breath, I can’t. Drowning in suffering, I drift away in my grave, wrapped up in plants that are so full of life.

The next time I wake, it’s worse. The moment my heart beats, my entire body explodes with pain. There is still no air, but I push myself to stay awake longer. Maybe there is a way out. There always was until now.

Wasn’t there?

The third time I wake, I wish for death. I hate Woland more than ever before. How could he take mortality away from me? The cruel, evil beast.

It goes on like this forever. I drift off to sleep and startle awake, time and again. The pain stays sharp, filling every part of my body with needles and crushing heaviness. It tears me apart. I wish for just a sip of air. Just one tear to ease my suffering.

Strangely, when it happens a dozen times or so, I seem to get used to it. It’s not easier, exactly. I just accept it. Being buried alive with no air and escape is my fate now. There is no time in here, or at least, it feels like there isn’t. Maybe Mokosz trapped me in a place without time. Or maybe I cannot perceive it, with no regular heartbeat to measure out the seconds.

As I get used to the torture, I start thinking. Here and there, after I startle awake and go through the worst of it, I can handle a few thoughts. They take effort. A mind devoid of air is a clunky, slow animal. Words are hard to grasp. I can’t build sentences. Complexity eludes me.

And yet, after an eternity of laborious awakenings, I have a thought.

And the thought is,What’s that weight next to my heart?

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