Shadow WIngs (Skeleton Key)

by JC Andrijeski

  Relief once more flooded his expression.

  He threw off the blanket that smelled faintly of cat-piss and bad wine and began taking off the dirty jeans right in front of her.

  Her cheeks flushing hot, Ilana looked away, but waited by the doorway so he could hand her the filthy blanket and jeans. She fully intended to throw them out while he bathed. She would have burned them if she could, but the garbage chute would have to do.

  She couldn’t help sneaking a peek at him when he handed over the clothes.

  He was that same pearl-white all over, she noticed.

  His skin appeared strangely new-looking and unmarked, as if he had been sculpted from that flawless slab of marble recently. She had an urge to lay a hand on that perfect skin, to see if it was warm or cold and as smooth as it looked. Some part of her wanted to be convinced that he was flesh and blood, not from some other world like he’d more or less claimed.

  There really was something so strange and beautiful about him. The strangeness struck her now even more than his beauty.

  She wished she understood what that something was, and why he was having this effect on her. She knew it wasn’t his looks alone. After all, Uri had been a beautiful man. Uri still was beautiful, objectively-speaking, and still young, being in his early thirties and only a few years older than her. Ilana had gone down the path of beautiful men. She had married one.

  So what was it about this man that so fascinated her?

  He looked lost––heartbreakingly so at times.

  Perhaps it was empathy that moved her. He knew about Golunsky. More to the point, he knew things about Ilana herself, things he shouldn’t know. The fact that he knew them anyway and shared personal details about her with that ment back at the station should have disturbed her, angered her even, but somehow did neither.

  Rather, she found herself thinking he’d done it purely out of expediency, like he’d told her. He’d told the officer those things about her the same way he’d told her his real name rather than simply inventing one she would believe.

  Both things served a purpose.

  She was sure he hadn’t done it to harm her, emotionally or otherwise. She had no reason to think that, yet she did. That sureness struck her as strange too.

  Normally, she was a pretty suspicious person. She had to be, given what she was.

  She didn’t realize she’d gone from glancing to staring until the man touched her arm.

  He stroked it when she didn’t pull away.

  In the other room, she’d taken off her suit jacket in addition to her coat, not long after they came inside her apartment. Now she wore only a short-sleeved dark blue blouse over dark pants. When he continued to trace his fingers down her forearm, it was skin to skin, causing a kind of electric shock to run up her arm.

  Jerking her eyes up and off where she’d been staring down at his body, including below the waist, she felt her face flush with a lot more heat, even as she met his gaze.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  But he didn’t seem bothered by her stare.

  Rather, his expression looked relieved again.

  She strongly got the impression it was at least partly from him touching her. Even as she thought it, he began stroking her fingers attached to the arm he wasn’t already touching. He let his hand run up that arm too, squeezing here and there, but not pulling her closer or attempting to touch her anywhere else. It struck her that the contact reassured him in some way.

  It didn’t feel particularly sexual, but she felt a tugging need behind it regardless.

  Still, some part of him responded to either her stare or his hands on her or both––when she glanced down his body a second time, she couldn’t help noticing the physical proof of that response. Flinching a little, she jerked her eyes back up to his face, flushing more.

  “Do you mind if I use the shower now?” he said. “I’m still cold.”

  His voice came out strangely gentle.

  “No,” she blurted. Backing off him at once, she forced him to take his hands off her by creating distance between them. “No, no... of course not. I apologize, comrade. I will dispose of these old clothes.” Still fighting to steady her voice, she avoided his eyes as she jerked her chin towards the cabinet. “There are clean towels in there. Use whatever soap or shampoo you wish... take your time. As much as you want.”

  “Thank you, Ilana.”

  Him using her first name again made her blush harder, but she only nodded.

  Gathering up the bad-smelling blanket and even worse-smelling pants, she retreated from the washroom without looking at him again. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so flustered by proximity to a man, even a naked one.

  But it wasn’t like she invited strange men into her shower on a regular basis––or ever, really––so maybe she didn’t really know herself when it came to such things.

  Either way, she hadn’t missed much in her appraisal of him, no matter how much her mind wandered. Going over details of the naked body she’d glimpsed, even as she headed for the trash chute outside her front door, she found her face and ears flushing even hotter.

  He really was built... quite well.

  Of course, she had few men to compare that to, as far as personal experience. On the other hand, she’d seen a lot of her comrades naked in the military and during KGB operations, so she had perhaps more points of comparison than many women.

  From what she had glimpsed, he was quite...

  Well, quite beautiful all over. More physically intimidating than Uri had been for some reason, and not only due to his size. He was beautiful––a perfectly proportioned form defined by long muscles, broad shoulders, narrow hips, muscular legs.

  She tried to shove the image aside as she dumped his clothes in the chute and closed it with a metal clang. When she got back inside her apartment, she tried to shove her embarrassment aside too, mainly by focusing on why she’d brought him here in the first place. Washing her face and hands in the sink from the filthy clothes, she put water and coffee grounds in her overused upright coffee pot and put it on the gas stove to boil.

  Only then did she let out a sigh, feeling herself start to relax.

  Combing her fingers through her hair, she pulled out one of the chairs around her kitchen table and sat.

  She pulled over the stack of files she’d dumped there when they first entered. Waiting for the coffee to boil, she sorted through them, thumbing through each briefly to get an idea of the contents. She spread them out on the table one by one, in smaller, neater piles. By the time she had them all sorted according to importance and basic subject-matter, the coffee was ready. Mug in hand, she sat back at the table and began to read, starting with the police report on the murder scene itself.

  Twenty or so minutes later, she was fully immersed.

  That’s probably why she didn’t hear the bathroom door open.

  She didn’t look up until he walked into the kitchen and stood at the edge of the room. When she did, he was glancing around her living room once more, his strangely striped hair wet and slicked back on his head. He looked beautiful that way too, yet strangely more normal. His face still held that silent calm of his though, as if part of his mind lived a thousand miles away.

  She saw him focus on a few photographs hanging on the wall, most of them of her family. His eyes shifted next to the row of china animals that she’d been collecting since she was a child, then a picture of her from her military days, holding an automatic rifle.

  He’d stopped shivering.

  He wore Uri’s long-sleeved thermal shirt and that heavier sweater over the pants. The pants still didn’t fit him quite right, since Uri was a bit thicker around the waist and not quite as tall, but the differences almost worked, causing the pants to hang down low on his hips so that the bottom of the pant legs brushed the tops of his bare feet. He filled out Uri’s clothes better than Uri did, she couldn’t help thinking, even though they clearly hadn’t been made for him.

/>   She glanced at his feet, which were also marble-white.

  “Do you want socks?” she said, looking up.

  He didn’t answer, but walked towards her, his eyes focused on the files spread out on the table. Seeing him staring at the crime scene photos, she shut the folder in front of her with deliberation and met his gaze more levelly.

  “How about some coffee, comrade?”

  “Raguel.” His expression denoted some discomfort, even with the calm. For a few seconds she thought he might speak more, maybe to explain that discomfort, but he never did.

  “How about some coffee, Raguel?” she said, her voice more subdued.

  After a short pause, he nodded.

  She got the sense he wasn’t sure if he wanted it or not.

  Puzzled once more, and feeling awkward although unable to articulate to herself why she felt awkward, she got up and pulled a second mug out of the cabinet over the sink. She poured him a cup of coffee, only glancing back at him once.

  “Milk? Sugar?”

  He hesitated again, then nodded. “Yes.”

  Smiling faintly that time, Ilana shook her head, then made his coffee roughly the way she made her own. She used the pot to top off her own cup at the same time, and then added more milk and sugar to her mug as well.

  It was a privilege to have good coffee––one of the few perks she indulged in as a result of her job. Otherwise, she chose to live more or less proletariat-style, and not all of that was cover. Her apartment was basic, identical to that of most others in the white collar classes and even many of the higher-tier blue collar classes. Her clothes. Her car. She did not call attention to herself. Most of her neighbors thought her a secretary in some segment of the Politiboro and Ilana didn’t dissuade that belief.

  It worked well with her cover as a low-ranked Party analyst and investigator, but it also suited her personality. She’d never been one with much interest in accumulating things.

  When she turned around, placing his coffee in front of the other chair at her kitchen table, the gray-eyed man was watching her, that tauter look on his face.

  “What?” she said, unthinking.

  “It is very frustrating, feeling nothing from you,” he said at once.

  She started a little, even as she’d been straightening from setting down his mug.

  “What does that mean?” she said.

  “––It does not help very much to touch you,” he said, instead of answering her question. He still sounded frustrated. “Although I keep wanting to do that, as well.” He raised his eyes back to hers. “Is that normal? To want to touch so much? Is that a normal impulse for one living in these realms? Or is it specific to humans? For I find I am having trouble not doing it. It is almost a constant compulsion with you. I want to touch you even as I say these words...”

  Thinking, he tilted his head, again as if listening to some faraway sound.

  “I did not want to touch that militsiya officer,” he muttered, speaking more to himself. “So this wanting to touch is perhaps specific to only some persons? It is distracting, whatever it is. But I cannot seem to push it totally from my mind.”

  Caught between amusement at his utter honesty and discomfort and embarrassment at what he’d actually said, Ilana decided she wouldn’t press him for whatever the hell he was talking about. Not right now at least. She sat back in her chair by the kitchen table, then hesitated only another breath before gesturing towards the chair opposite hers.

  “Sit,” she said. “Please.”

  He walked over, stepping carefully. She watched him evaluate the space around him with every move he made, as if he thought his body took up about five times the space it actually did.

  Pulling the chair out gingerly with one muscular hand, he sat in it equally carefully, as if afraid it wouldn’t hold his weight.

  He picked up the cup of coffee with a precision that made her smile.

  “Who are you, comrade?” she said, watching him smell and then sip the strong coffee cautiously. He grimaced openly at the taste, which made her fight not to smile wider. “Who are you, really? Is this an act, this thing you are doing?”

  He glanced up. “What thing?”

  Still smiling, she shook her head, puzzled. “This.” She waved a hand at him, as if his very presence should be obvious enough. “You. What is this? Is this a joke on me?”

  He studied her face for a few seconds more, then let out a kind of grunt. “Is it the name again? You people are very hung up on the names of things.” Thinking, he took another sip of the coffee. He grimaced less that time, but still seemed shocked at the strong taste. Staring out over her kitchen, he subdued his voice. “I suppose my people are concerned with what to call things, as well. Names are important where I am from, too.”

  “‘Your people?’ ‘My people’?” She frowned, but still more in puzzlement and frustration than anger. She picked up her own coffee, blowing steam off the surface. She did make it strong. It was how she liked it.

  “If you’re going to constantly reference being from elsewhere,” she said. “You are going to have to tell me where it is you are from. You have no accent. Can you explain this to me?”

  “You would not believe me if I told you,” he said.

  She stared at him, believing him for some reason about that, too. Well, she believed that he believed it––well enough that she wondered if that wasn’t the best place to start.

  “What do you know about Golunsky?” She leaned back in her chair, her voice more official, cop-like. “You say you can help me with this case? How?”

  Those stunning gray eyes focused on her, and she swore she saw clouds in them, like they were alive as separate beings, different somehow from the rest of him.

  He seemed to come to a decision as she watched.

  “He is one of The Fallen,” he said.

  She stared at him. “The Fallen?”

  “Yes.”

  The name meant nothing to her. Even so, something in how he said it, or perhaps what she felt behind his words, hit at her in a way she couldn’t articulate––just like when he’d spoken Golunsky’s name in that jail cell. Just like how his eyes hit at her now and that strangeness about him and the overly calm expression on his face.

  Forcing herself to smile, she shook her head minutely as she sipped her coffee.

  “What does that mean, Raguel?” she said.

  “It means a lot of things, Ilana.” He leaned his muscular arms on the table. He gave her another of those bottomless stares. “But right now, more than anything, it means it is absolutely imperative that you not let him die, whether by his own hand or another’s.”

  When she only sat there, staring in puzzlement, Raguel leaned closer. Reaching out cautiously, he rested a heavy hand on her arm, closing his fingers around her skin. The contact caused her to flinch, but she didn’t pull away and he didn’t let go.

  He studied her gaze, his gray eyes serious. “I’ll never find him again, not in this form. And without him, I doubt I will ever again be what I was. Not until this body dies, at least.” He made his words more deliberate. “If that happens, then whatever this is, Ilana, whatever he is doing or about to do... I won’t be able to stop it. And neither will you.”

  ANGELS AND DEMONS

  MOST OF WHAT he said after that made little sense.

  He told her he was an angel.

  An Archangel, by the name of Raguel.

  He told her Golunsky had once been an angel, too.

  At some point, way back in the ancient times of their race, the being that now inhabited Golunsky had chosen a different path. Now it was a demon, what Raguel called one of The Fallen. According to Raguel, that demon and those like it wished to destroy what their brethren had created––namely, humanity itself. They wanted this partly out of revenge for being expelled from the angelic realms. They also wanted it due to an ideological split––one centered around how much of the angelic realms they were willing to share with the younger races once they came
of age, and views on free will and its importance.

  The Fallen wanted the angelic realms back, of course.

  They were also a bit more fuzzy on the concept of human free will.

  But––and this part was less clear to Ilana––the Fallen had to destroy the newer races to re-conquer the heavens. According to Raguel, The Fallen viewed human destruction as a form of “recruitment.” It was as if, by its very extinction, humanity would somehow swell their ranks.

  In other words, Ilana’s new and very beautiful friend, Raguel, was crazy.

  It disappointed her, that he would turn out to be a regular lunatic.

  It disappointed her a lot, truthfully. Enough that she listened to his elaborate narrative for far longer than she should have done, given what she had on her plate.

  She only thought of the practical problems his insanity presented afterwards.

  She’d let a crazy person into her house. She’d fed and clothed a bona fide lunatic, one who definitely couldn’t help her with Golunsky.

  Moreover, she’d taken him from the militsiya cell block without papers or documentation of any kind. She’d basically told the arresting officer to “lose” any evidence of his initial arrest, as well as the fact that he’d been found in Moscow without identification papers.

  That meant she’d have to bring him in to be assessed by mental health personnel under a different pretext, and inform them they would have to investigate his identity themselves. None of that posed an insurmountable problem, or even particularly difficult one. Yet it would cut valuable time from her day––a day she’d already wasted a good chunk of by bringing him here in the first place.

  Worse, she felt that strange but intense empathy for him still.

  She didn’t want to see anything bad happen to him––which meant she couldn’t just dump him somewhere and make him someone else’s problem. Given how the KGB often used mental hospitals to manage dissidents, she was well aware of the system she’d be leaving him inside. He might never get out, not without help.