Page 7 of Devil's Doom

I lurch to the side with a breathless cry, avoiding the boy’s outstretched hands—hands that are now tipped with crimson claws. He misses me by a hair and turns fast to lunge again. Barely slipping out of his reach, I rush ahead, in the direction he came from. Behind me, the child snarls, and I glance back. A mistake. I stumble from shock.

A beautiful, sweet child before, the creature now looks like a beast. Its eyes are dark, its mouth a maw stretching in an ugly grin that reveals black, sharp teeth. Its proportions are off, its movements jerky, until it drops to all fours.

With both hands and legs propelling it toward me, the beast grows faster. I shriek from fear, stumbling ahead in sheer panic. There is something so utterly wrong about a seemingly human child running like that, its ungainly body not made for going on all fours, and yet so much faster this way.

My lungs burn, my muscles protesting the speed, but I don’t dare stop. Even though I have a weapon, I don’t have the courage to fight. My magic was just taken, and I don’t even know what sort of bies it is.

“I could use some protection right now!” I wheeze out, jumping over a half-rotten tree trunk that bars the path.

No swarm of bees descends to stop the bies from hurting me. I stumble against a stone and curse, hot shivers racing down my spine when I hear a vicious snarl at my heels. I risk a quick look back.

The bies is almost on me. The sweet childlike façade is gone, even that lovely golden hair falling away in oily clumps. It's small, beady-eyed, its skin mottled red and purple. It hisses when our eyes lock, and I grit my teeth.

I won’t outrun it. It’s faster than me.

“What are you?” I spit, desperately trying to go faster.

If I am to win this fight, I need an advantage. A brief moment to get in position and aim my blade is probably all I’ll get.

The creature doesn’t answer. I brace myself, flying down the path with desperation until my lungs almost give out. That’s when I stop and turn.

“Strike true,” I grit out, reaching for the dregs of my magic swirling lazily in my marrow. “Through the heart.”

The reluctant, weak threads of magic wrap around my wrist and slip between my fingers desperately clutching my weapon. The bies chuffs in delight, running straight at me. Its legs are no longer human but rather foxlike, with prominent joints that bend the wrong way.

It lands and pushes away from the path in a strong, fluid leap. I focus on aiming as my power tears free, agony in its wake.

My entire body shakes from effort, but my hand on the knife is steady, guided by my magic. When the bies is almost on me, I cut up, the blade sinking into its chest. It goes in easily, right between two ribs.

The bies makes no sound as it lands on the path, completely still. I jump away, leaving my knife embedded deep inside it. Wracked by violent shivers, I fall to my hands and knees, gasping in shallow, hacking breaths.

My chest heaves with the purest agony. There’s a hole inside me, deep and cavernous, and it feels like nothing will ever fill it again. My heart beats in a sputtering rhythm, tapping against my aching ribs.

When the fight against my weakness grows futile, I fall to my side and just lie there, struggling to breathe. I am too weak to open my eyes, and so I hope with all my might the bies is dead. If it somehow survived the stab through the heart, it’s over. It will kill me.

With my last strength, I close my fingers around the pendant on my throat. It’s Woland’s collateral, the deceitful proof of his good will, and my only weapon against him. Filled with his blood, the pendant is my only way of hiding from him. Without it, Woland’s magic will find me at once.

As the world grows dark, consciousness draining from my mind, I promise myself to always keep it on. Even if I’m about to die. I’ll never let the devil find me, so help me Perun and all gods.

I wake up in the middle of the night, shivering from the cold. My coarse dress barely covers me, and my body is sticky with old, cool sweat. I do my best to be strong, and still, a whimper escapes through my clenched teeth when I sit up.

Everything hurts. My chest throbs with raw pain, and my body feels way too heavy for me to move. I swallow and swallow, the bitter taste of old fear sitting deep in my throat.

When I finally gather enough strength to look around, I immediately notice the bies that attacked me. It lies in a lifeless heap in the grass, its body shrunken, black eyes unseeing. I crawl closer, hissing with every agonizing move.

“Poroniec,” I mutter under my breath, taking in the childlike proportions of its body. “Is that what you were?”

I couldn’t think straight in the grip of panic, but now, it’s obvious. A poroniec, a bies made from a baby miscarried in violent circumstances or by an evil mother, shows up in the form of a beautiful child, then attacks when its prey comes close. It drinks mortal blood and eats viscera, preferably female wombs and hearts.

The two best ways to kill it are beheading and a blade through the heart. A poroniec is said to be strong, fast, and almost impossible to avoid. Disguised as a lovely child, the bies has the element of surprise on its side.

I gulp deep breaths until my body is steady enough, then grit my teeth and pull out my knife. The blade glistens darkly under the sparse moonlight, and I wipe it on the grass with shaking hands.

So much for the protection promised me by the King of Bees. I scoff under my breath, but it comes out broken and pitiful. I wish I could go home.

The night is dark and cold, the forest around me vast. I was never afraid of the woods after dark, but then, I always had a home to go back to, small and poor as it was. Now, I don’t even have that.

For a ridiculous, painful moment, tears burn my eyes. I growl at myself and wipe them with angry swipes of my knuckles. Crying won’t do me any good, and I’ll have plenty of time to feel sorry for myself when I’m dead.

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