Page 5 of Devil’s Doom (Jaga and the Devil #2)

Chapter five

Milk

I smile without humor. Woland has quite a reputation. “So you do know him. Does he stay in the city?”

He gapes at me, his red eyes filled with utter terror. “Who are you?” he asks shakily. “Why do you say his name like it’s nothing? Please, don’t kill me! I’ll do anything you want, answer all your questions, but please, let me live!”

I roll my eyes. Woland isn’t that scary, and saying his name only cost me a dozen or so wounds to my tongue before I got immune to its curse.

“Well, then answer my questions!” I say to cut through the utopek’s panicked blabbering. “Who is he and where does he stay?”

He grows silent, eying me warily. When he finally speaks, his voice is barely a whisper, and I have to lean closer to hear him.

“He is the leader of the rebellion. Perun’s guards and warriors hunt him day and night. No one knows where he stays, but it isn’t in Slawa. The devil only appears to lead attacks on the fence and then disappears. He has no place to call his own. Perun razed all his temples to the ground so not even ruins remain.”

“Why are you so afraid of him?” I ask. “Isn’t he doing a good thing? Don’t you want the fence to fall?”

The utopek breathes harshly, slimy sweat pouring down his forehead.

“He is ruthless!” he sobs. “He doesn’t just slay people, but their souls, too! He’s powerful enough to cause true death, and he does it to anyone who stands in his way. He’s evil!”

“Well, that sounds like Woland,” I say with a sigh, and the utopek shrieks and covers his face at the sound of the devil’s name. “All right. You’ve answered all my questions. I want one more thing from you.”

He blinks at me wetly, looking so pitiful, I feel a small stab of guilt, but then I remember he tried to rape me, and my guilt disappears.

“W-what do you want?”

“Once I free you, you’re going to bring me a pot. I know your bottomless pond is filled with treasure, and you must have pots in there. I need one that’s big enough to make soup in but small enough for me to carry with ease. Will you do it? Swear on your soul.”

“I swear on my soul,” he says at once. “Please, just let me go! You can gather walnuts here all you want and I’ll never bother you again, I swear.”

I will my invisible pitchfork into nothing, and the utopek scrambles to his feet, racing into the pond. He jumps in with a big splash. A moment later, a black, iron pot shoots out of the water, flying right at my head. I duck to avoid it.

“You just wait,” I mutter angrily, gathering my walnuts. “I’ll come back here once my power is back and I’ll make you regret it.”

The pond is utterly still, and in the east, storm clouds gather. I sigh and trudge back toward the forest, my feet aching, my body weary.

After a cold, rainy night spent in a burrow under a sprawling bush, I’m miserable and angry. Even though the sip of Woland’s blood healed all my shallow wounds and scratches, being homeless takes its toll.

At least I manage to disguise my hair. I don’t dare enter the forest again, and instead, I make a small fire in an abandoned, overgrown orchard, where I cook the walnut shells into a brown dye. My hair is now a few shades darker than normally, but I don’t feel too confident about the result. My eyes still give me away, like they always do.

When no other ideas come to mind, I pick a small branch to transform into a narrow rag that I tie around my head, covering my purple eye. I’ll just pretend I only have one, though I’m afraid the eye patch won’t make me any less conspicuous than my different eye colors.

I spend the day trudging through rain-soaked fields. Huge, dark shapes fly over a few times, hidden behind clouds, and lightning hits somewhere beyond the city, thunder rolling until the ground vibrates beneath my feet.

As I shake from cold and hunger, I wonder if it’s Perun, flying with his dragons and punishing the world. Or is it a battle? Is Woland somewhere out there, fighting the god of thunder and trying to take down his abomination of a fence?

I imagine Woland laughing in the face of the storm, his white teeth flashing in his dark face, his eyes taunting. I imagine the swish of his tail as he gets ready to fight Perun, the most powerful of the gods.

When my heart flutters with an uncomfortable feeling, I have to stop and think before I realize what it is. Worry. Stupid as it is, my heart worries for Woland, and I grit my teeth, trying to exorcise the unwelcome emotion as if it’s an evil spirit.

Begone. Shoo! We hate him, and that’s it!

When the toll rolls through Slawa in the early evening, it takes maybe a quarter of the magic humming in my bones. It’s still taxing, but I am left with enough power to feel confident I’ll survive.

Night falls when I reach the first dwellings at the foot of the mountain. Ramshackle cottages are surrounded by small, scraggly gardens, the paths between the wooden fences muddy from a day of raining. Colorful, cracked pots hang upside down on the sharpened tips of the fence staves.

Firelight flickers in the tiny windows of a few houses, but most of them don’t even have windows. The wet air smells of wood smoke and excrement, a few wooden outhouses radiating pungent stink.

Before, I wondered what they ate in the city. Now I realize eating isn’t a problem as big as shitting, since the outhouses likely overflow. Pity they aren’t bottomless like the utopek’s pond.

Up the hill, some of the roads are paved with uneven stones, but others are mudslides in this weather. I hear distant shouts, an unpleasant cackle that raises the hair on my nape, and a baby’s wail, quickly silenced.

Exhaustion makes me go slow, but I doggedly climb the widest, cobbled road. It winds among the buildings, which stand level in some places, the slope so gentle, it’s not even a slope. As I come higher, however, I encounter a much steeper area. The houses on either side of the road are uneven, their walls tall on one side, while on the other, the roof gables are level with my hips.

These are stone buildings, clearly older and better made than the rickety ones at the foot of the mountain. I suspect the city was always here, but Perun’s decision to tax it so mildly created a wild influx of new people.

It stops raining sometime through the night. Orbs of light, similar to those Woland called forth to light the scene when I got on my knees for him, hover in front of a few better looking dwellings.

People come out now that it stopped raining, despite the late hour. Dark shapes scuttle to the outhouses, someone rummages in a heap of trash, someone laughs, and a distant melody, fast and reckless, floats down the mountain. I look up, and the sky is clear and brilliant with unfamiliar constellations.

Exhaustion tangles between my knees, and I stumble a few times against protruding cobblestones. I don’t know what I’m hoping to find until I notice a brightly lit establishment ahead. It’s a large, rectangular building, taller than its neighbors. Gentle, hypnotic music pours through the open doors, and a few windows upstairs glow with mellow candlelight.

It seems warm and inviting, and my chest tightens with powerful yearning. For food, warmth, peace. A safe place out of the cold, with four walls and a roof to give me shelter.

Outside, long tables sit under an awning, a few people of various races and sizes sprawling on benches and smoking pipes. White smoke curls above them in lazy whorls, their eyes either closed or glassy. The scent drifts to me, diluted by the cool night air. It’s acidic yet sweet, the odor like nothing I’ve ever smelled.

Above the open doors hangs a wooden sign engraved with the shape of a large pair of breasts. Underneath is a smaller sign, depicting a bed.

Curiosity gives me a second wind, so I don’t sway nearly as much when I enter the building. I stop dead in the threshold, taking it in with shock.

Breasts. Naked breasts everywhere. Women with flat noses and deeply set dark eyes, some fat, some slender, yet all with enormous tits, sit at tables, looking around with bored expressions. One leans against a wall, her head lolling back, eyes closed like she’s dozing.

Each of them has two people suckling her breasts. Adult people, or at least I think so. Some of them are similar to mortals, but others aren’t. A big, hulking beast covered in thick white fur sits on the floor by a big-breasted woman, lapping at milk that steadily trickles down her tit and stomach. His muzzle likely prevents him from suckling properly.

A scaly, small being sits on the table, suckling her other breast. She looks old, her hair silver, dark eyes gazing unseeingly into a big fireplace that takes up most of one wall.

“Don’t stand in the entrance, dear,” a rough but not unkind voice says, coming from somewhere around my elbow.

I look down and startle, seeing a short woman looking up with a smile. She has a hump, her body weighed down by her enormous bare breasts, her nose flat, nostrils wide. Her face is creased, but her complexion seems rosy, gold hair graying at the temples. I can’t tell whether she’s young or old.

Milk trickles down the curve of her round tit. The sweet scent coils in my throat, and I swallow a few times, willing myself to speak despite my shock.

“What is this place?” I ask her, shuffling aside to stand by an unoccupied table.

The woman laughs pleasantly, patting my elbow. “Oh, I love a first-timer! This, my dear, is the most famous mamuna bar in all of Slawa. It’s the best place to forget all your worries and leave behind all hardships. For merely three eggs a night, you get all you can drink. We also let rooms for those who never wish to leave.”

She winks, as if it’s a clever joke, but it flies right over my head. I nod in thanks for her explanation, my wide eyes roaming. A mortal-looking woman with whorls of blue tattoos curling up her arms suckles a fat mamuna’s nipple with abandon, moaning and caressing the large, veiny breast. By the next table, the white, furry beast changes position, and I gulp when I see he has an erection, red and shaped like a dog’s. His short tail thumps the floor.

The hypnotic music mixes with sighs of pleasure, and in my exhaustion, the scene gains a dreamy quality. The warm light of the orbs makes everything look hazy and comfortable. My mouth waters. I haven’t eaten since morning, and I only drank rainwater that gathered in my pot on my way through the city.

“It’s a sight, isn’t it?” my companion asks pleasantly, not bothered by my silence. “If you don’t care for mamuna milk, we have poppy powder to smoke. It’s more intense and the effects don’t linger like the milk, but some prefer it.”

So that’s what I saw outside. I look around, trying to gather my wits and remember what I know about mamunas. They steal ancestral souls and sometimes kidnap babies, and… Yes, they seduce mortal men in the wild and get them drunk on their milk. Mamunas make milk constantly, and their breasts hurt if they aren’t suckled often enough.

But their milk is a drug that makes mortals stupid and lazy. The tales I heard were always told as warnings. People who go with mamunas, the tales cautioned, are never the same after. They always yearn for that warmth of their addictive milk and the magical tits to press their face to. With time, they grow apathetic, their unhappiness driving them to madness or even death.

I swallow thickly, honing in on the blissful expression on the tattooed woman. She looks utterly relaxed and happy.

Then again, she most likely isn’t mortal, I remind myself. None of these people are. Maybe mamuna milk affects them differently. Like a strong drink or hot wine. Regardless, I shouldn’t have any. I can’t afford even a moment of relaxation right now.

“Do you have rooms to let? And food—food that’s not milk?” I ask, still staring at the tattooed woman. I am fascinated by her absolute abandon and the unabashed pleasure she takes from suckling on a breast. She’s almost like a happy baby, and yet so decidedly not.

“Oh, of course, dear. The cleanest rooms in all of Slawa, right here. It’s three eggs for a night, and we’ll throw in a supper and breakfast, plus a tub of hot water. You can stay with us however long you need, as long as you pay each night. Come to the bar.”

I follow her hunching form in a daze, walking between tables occupied by mamunas and their suckling clients. No one pays me attention, the mamunas lethargic, the patrons completely lost in the frenzy of feeding.

My guide walks behind the bar, which is so tall, she disappears from sight. A moment later, there is a grunt of effort, and she emerges. As she rummages in a drawer, clinging metallically, I glance over the bar top. She’s standing on a wide stool.

“The emerald room is free, dear,” she says, putting a big, simple key tied with a green ribbon on the counter. “It matches your eye. Now, here are the eggs. Hardboiled, please. I can tell if the yolks are runny.”

She gives me a stern look, and I stare at the three chicken eggs resting in a small, black basket in front of me. The shells are greenish and dappled with brown spots.

Right. Trading magic.

“I’m new,” I confess, looking at her steadily. “Could you please explain what I’m supposed to do?”

She doesn’t miss a beat, her face growing more wrinkles as she gives me a sleek smile.

“Of course. You hold an egg in both palms, like so,” she begins, cradling an egg in her cupped hands, “and focus on putting your magic inside. Then simply let it flow. Easy. See, the magic is like heat, and it will boil the egg. That’s how we’ll know it worked.”

“Thank you.”

I put my knife and pot on the bar and take an egg, eyeing it dubiously. I don’t know how much magic boiling one egg will take, not to mention three. But I desperately need to eat and sleep, so I have to try. I take a deep breath and look at the egg in my hands without blinking.

Flow, I order my magic. My palms grow hot, and suddenly, the egg cracks in my hands, so hot, I nearly drop it.

“Now, that’s a spirited girl!” the mamuna says, giving me a toothy smile as she snatches the egg from my hand. “Two more, dear.”

Someone huffs with amusement behind me. I turn to see a tall, red-haired man, who watches me with a smirk. His startlingly blue eyes are lined with purple shadows, two fangs peeking from underneath his full upper lip. I swallow, remembering Czeslawa in the forest. She looked much more beastly than him, but I know he is the same thing she was.

This man is an upir.