Shadow WIngs (Skeleton Key)

by JC Andrijeski

She gripped the glass key in her pocket once more, so tightly that the teeth felt like they cut into her palm. Her fingers felt over the glass skull as she tried to decide what to do.

  “...I will be very curious to see what happens to you when you die, Raguel,” the demon added, his grin widening more, creating a distorted mask of Karkoff’s face. “Do you really think you will regrow your wings, my brother? Or will you simply be worm food, like any other human? I am very curious about this, I admit. I will have to visit you often, to watch this process unfold in every particular...”

  “How did you take him?” Ilana said, her voice coldly angry. “Karkoff. I thought they had to be ‘open’ to you in some way for you to take possession?”

  Turning from Raguel, the demon laughed. “You dear, sweet woman! How darling you are! How utterly charming! No wonder Raguel wanted to defile you...” Licking his lips, he grinned wider when Ilana grimaced. “...I could have taken any agent in the KGB, you stupid cunt,” he said then, his voice deeper, cold as ice. “I must say, your idealism really is touching... it is a pity your fellow agents didn’t all have such a high opinion of you.”

  He grinned, winking at her. “Ice cunt. Little miss won’t fuck. Their endearments were quite creative, Ilana. Some of them thought you were horrible to your poor ex-husband...”

  Ilana didn’t rise to his bait. She only stared at the demon pretending to be Karkoff without changing expression.

  “Was it his father?” she said. “You possessed him first, poisoned Karkoff’s mind? Is that how you got him to come over to your way of thinking?”

  “––All of them thought you were fucking this body, of course,” the demon said, ignoring her words. “The ones who resented you most for being such a highly-ranked field agent figured you had to have fucked your way here. Otherwise, how would a cow like you have this job? They didn’t think your own father had that kind of pull in his later years...”

  Again, Ilana didn’t rise.

  At her continued silence, the demon laughed.

  “Ah, you are good, though, aren’t you Agent Kopovich?” Still smiling, he went on almost affectionately. “...To answer your question, recruiting your mentor Karkoff was not difficult. Like his father, Karkoff has no desire for a ‘New Russia.’ All I had to do is show him a glimpse of the future that might come, if Gorbachev was allowed to gain power. A future where the KGB is no more, where Russia is filled with capitalist parasites, where his people are forced into organized crime while the farmers in the countryside slowly starve and go feral without the mechanisms of the state to hold them together...”

  Ilana pressed her lips together, shaking her head. “You lied to him.”

  The demon laughed louder. “Oh, sweet, sweet, Ilana... you are simply adorable, I mean it! I did not lie! I showed him the truth. The same truth that you will sadly not live to see. The same truth you will now help me to prevent.”

  “Whatever you wish to come to pass,” Ilana snapped. “It will be worse!”

  “She is right,” Raguel said, his voice cold from where he sat on the floor. “Whatever you wish upon them, it will be worse than anything they do to themselves.”

  “Always the optimist, aren’t you, Raguel?” The demon grinned. “And perhaps you are right. Perhaps, perhaps... but whatever the truth of what is good or bad for humans, Karkoff could not stomach what I showed him. The thought of losing his beloved KGB, of the Soviet Union falling... of watching all of his life’s work go for naught... it was simply too much for him, I’m afraid. He was all ears when I offered him an alternative. All it took was overlooking the deaths of a few orphan brats and the murder of a known degenerate and pedophile...”

  He grinned at Ilana, winking at her with one of those watery blue eyes.

  “Oh, and...” His voice shifted to a mock regret. “...of course, framing his favorite little KGB agent that he never got to fuck.” The demon smiled wider. “It might make you feel better to know he felt a little sorry about that, Ilana. He maybe even cried a few tears for poor, lovely, sexy Ilana... but his love for you wasn’t enough to sway him, I’m afraid.”

  Ilana glanced down at the Politiburo meeting below, swallowing.

  Her hand gripped the glass key tighter as she fought to think.

  “Come here, my lovely. It is time,” the demon said. “Remember... if you behave yourself, your angel gets to live. Maybe he will even live long enough for the other angels to find him. Maybe he will even live long enough for them to find a cure for his humanity...”

  The demon reached for her with his free hand, and impulsively, Ilana reached back.

  This time, her hand wasn’t empty.

  In it, she clutched the glass key.

  She stared at the demon’s face, right before their fingers touched, and somehow, in those few seconds before they made contact, she knew. She knew exactly why she’d grabbed the key from the coffee table that morning. As the distance between them closed, she even wondered if it hadn’t been entirely her who decided to do it.

  Maybe another angel had been there, nudging her.

  Whispering in her ear.

  Either way, when she stretched out her hand, some part of her knew, or suspected at least. Some part of her felt relieved enough that she even smiled.

  The demon caught that smile and stared at her, bewilderment touching those blue eyes at the sheer relief in her expression, a faint glimmer of doubt...

  But it was too late.

  His hand already clasped hers.

  Once his skin touched the surface of the glass key...

  Karkoff vanished.

  It happened so quickly, Ilana let out a startled cry.

  The demon disappeared without warning, without preamble... right in front of her eyes. It reminded her of watching a television set being turned off. He winked brighter for the barest millisecond––then that brief flash fell to darkness, leaving an after-image burning behind her eyes. Once that faded, he was just gone.

  There was a hollow thunk while she was still blinking to clear her vision.

  She glanced down and saw the gun he’d been carrying along with hers now resting on the carpeted floor. Karkoff’s clothes had fallen to the floor, too, forming a soft pile just beneath the two guns. Ilana found herself staring down at the pile of clothing and then at the guns, but nothing else that had been Karkoff or the demon remained.

  She wondered where they were now.

  She wondered if Karkoff would wake up in Gorky Park, just like Raguel had––only to a clouded sky, rather than a blue one, as Raguel had done.

  She wondered if the demon would scream at the cold––a cold that reached his own virgin human skin this time, not just the skin of the human he inhabited.

  He wondered if Karkoff would be there, too.

  Some part of her doubted all of that though.

  That part of her suspected the key wouldn’t visit the same place twice.

  ...and demons really weren’t angels, after all, even when they were human.

  A CHOICE

  ILANA FOUND OUT later that she had been right. Well, the part of her that guessed the demon wouldn’t show up in Gorky Park naked like Raguel was right, at least. They still had no idea where Karkoff or the demon had actually gone.

  According to Raguel’s boss, Mik’hil, it didn’t really matter.

  Not for this particular moment in time.

  More importantly from Ilana’s perspective, the demon could no longer help Karkoff or anyone else stave off the true future of the Motherland. According to Mik’hil, that window in time––that moment in history where things could have gone up or gone down, sideways or backwards, the same window Lahash tried to exploit––had closed.

  The demon would be back, of course.

  It was a demon. They always came back. It was what demons do.

  But for now, they had won.

  Mik’hil told them all of this after Ilana sat in front of her new Division head in the KGB, who happened to be her friend, Yakov. He’d brough
t her into his office rather than the prison or the formal interrogation rooms, for which Ilana was extremely grateful. He’d also not separated her from Raguel, for this part of the questioning period, at least.

  That told her that much of this questioning was a mere formality.

  Moreover, when Yakov told her what they had unearthed about Karkoff, following her telling them to look into him, it apparently was enough to convince him that Ilana had been telling the truth. That also was good news.

  Even so, she was already half-exhausted just from explaining what she could of her side of what had occurred.

  She and Raguel had turned themselves in at KGB Headquarters not long after Karkoff disappeared from the soundproof booth.

  After Karkoff’s body disappeared from the sound booth, Ilana found the keys to the handcuffs on Raguel’s wrists among Karkoff’s clothes. They discussed briefly what they should do with Karkoff’s things. In the end, they had left his gun and clothes in a garbage bin outside the Staraya Building. Ilana knew eventually those things would be found, so she did not wipe them of Karkoff’s fingerprints, but decided to let the KGB and the Moscow militsiya make what they would of their presence there.

  Ilana handed over her own gun when they were surrounded by armed guards outside the gatehouse of the KGB building at Lubyanka.

  The skeleton key was confiscated along with the rest of her effects. Yakov looked at it, turning it over in his hands with a puzzled frown before he asked Ilana what it was. She told him it was a family heirloom, something that had belonged to her father, and that seemed to satisfy him. Like everything that had been in her pockets and Raguel’s, it now sat on his desk, along with their passports and the keys to her beat up Lado and her age-crinkled leather wallet.

  Staring at her decades-old wallet, it struck her again that she really did need to spend more of the money she earned on nicer things.

  Yakov asked her another question then, and she pulled her attention off her wallet and the skeleton key long enough to think of an answer that did not include demons possessing KGB agents or angels turned to human beings by mysterious glass keys.

  Halfway through the third or fourth round of asking the same things, over and over––about Golunsky, about Karkoff, about the murdered children, about the asylum and Karkoff’s father and the fact that Karkoff had apparently gone crazy and disappeared after plotting against Gorbachev’s people, about Raguel being found naked in a park that morning, about his questionable ID papers––the man interrogating them, Yakov, suddenly fell silent.

  Then, his eyes rolled back in his head.

  When he blinked at her next, leveling his gaze, his previously dark brown eyes had turned the palest shade of liquid gold.

  Ilana stared at the man sitting there, feeling her chest clench. “Raguel!”

  “It is all right, Ilana.”

  She clutched at Raguel’s arm, half in a panic, trying to decide if they would have to fight their way physically out of the room––when Yakov spoke.

  “Ilana... it is not a demon this time. You are perfectly safe.”

  It was not Yakov’s voice.

  Rather than the gruff voice of Yakov or the guttural voice of the demon, this voice was melodious, deep but musical, warming her with every word. It reminded her much more of Raguel’s voice than the demon’s.

  Even as she thought it, Yakov turned his head, looking at Raguel.

  “Brother Raguel!” Relief filled the hitchhiker’s voice. “I cannot tell you how relieved I am to see you...” A smile curved Yakov’s full lips. “It is very strange, I admit, to see you as a human, brother. No wings. That odd skin. It is quite fascinating, really...”

  “Mik’hil,” Raguel breathed, his voice holding obvious relief. “I had hoped it was you. I thought perhaps Gabriel––”

  “No, no, Gabriel is back on the other continent now, smoothing the transition between Gorbachev and the West.” Mik’hil smiled wider. He continued to look over Raguel’s body, a near wonder reflected in those pale gold eyes. “It really is a remarkable thing. It is you... but not. It is like how you look, but the human form changes you in a million tiny ways. You look quite a bit smaller too... and your eyes. Is it strange for you? It must be, yes?”

  “Yes.” Raguel’s voice held a tauter edge. “Mik’hil, I can see nothing here, so you need to tell us. It is done? Is the window closed?”

  Mik’hil’s stare slid from his body back up to his face and eyes.

  That wonder never left his expression though, and Ilana found herself wondering if Raguel was turning more human when he all but snorted his exasperation at the other angel.

  “Mik’hil... brother, please. An answer.”

  Mik’hil smiled. “It is done, brother... although obviously I must thank you and your friend for that.” He turned his smile towards Ilana, those pale eyes glowing strangely from Yakov’s face. “We would never have gotten there in time. I must thank you, Ilana Kopovich... for stopping Lahash, and for keeping our dear brother Raguel safe.”

  “Did Gabriel find us?” Raguel asked, still cuffed to the chair.

  “Uriel,” Mik’hil said, looking back at him. “We should have looked at Ilana first, of course, but with you gone, everyone was in a panic to figure out what you’d discovered about the time window being targeted. Then, when the demon’s human form showed up dead, we were quite preoccupied with determining if he’d jumped to a new body. We didn’t fully realize what he was up to until the window had already closed. Once it was clear the demon’s plans had been thwarted, we were able to walk backwards and find you with Ilana...”

  Raguel sounded puzzled. “You did not check Ilana first? You knew I was with her in that police station.”

  “Yes,” Mik’hil conceded. “Then you vanished out of the angelic realms right in front of me, Raguel... I had no idea where you would be, or in what form. I had angels checking other dimensions for signs of you... other worlds. I knew you wouldn’t be dead, but I had no idea if the demon had found some way to imprison you temporarily.”

  Raguel nodded, his puzzlement fading. “I see.”

  “We could only devote some of our resources to finding you while the window was still open, Raguel.” Mik’hil smiled. “You forget what it is like up here. The things obvious where you are, they seem much less so where we are from... just like the reverse is true there. We saw the demon jump bodies and were trying to discern where it had gone. The demon was smart. He had been whispering to Karkoff via his father for quite some time. He had been whispering to many in the Kremlin... and at KGB headquarters. He had all of his work in place, in terms of who would take power once Gorbachev and his people were out of the way. The assassination was the end of his work, not the beginning. He had done all of this months before he possessed Golunsky.”

  Raguel nodded.

  He looked at Ilana then, and she saw a sadder look touch his gray eyes.

  “And me?” Raguel hesitated, then tore his eyes off Ilana, looking back at Mik’hil. “Do you have a way to bring me back?”

  Mik’hil smiled. That time, the smile was knowing.

  “You can come back any time you like, Raguel. I suspect you already know that, though. Just as I suspect it has always been your choice to stay exactly where you are.”

  “Meaning what?” Ilana looked between them, confused.

  It occurred to her only then that she hadn’t let go of Raguel. She still held his arm in both hands where her wrists were cuffed in front of her.

  Mik’hil smiled wider.

  “You are eternal, Raguel,” the archangel said. “A demon cannot kill you by making you briefly human. Nor can a key, no matter how special it is.”

  As he spoke, Ilana glanced at the glass key sitting on Yakov’s desk.

  It vanished slowly as she watched.

  “...We will have to take that with us, I’m afraid,” Mik’hil added, that humor still in his eyes. “Before it can cause any more mischief down there.”

  Ilana swallowed, then l
ooked back at Yakov/Mik’hil.

  “How will he return then? How does Raguel go back to being an angel, if there is no key, and no way for him to touch it, even if it were here?”

  Mik’hil smiled, looking between them.

  “When that human body dies, Raguel will return to us.” Pausing, Mik’hil smiled wider, holding out his hands. “That can happen today if you like, brother Raguel.” Pausing deliberately, he added, “...Or it can happen in a week. Or five years. Or ten. Or even another sixty.”

  He made his voice more meaningful again.

  “...You are eternal, Raguel.”

  Raguel glanced at Ilana, that tension in his eyes dissipating the longer he looked at her. He didn’t look away from her face when he next spoke to Mik’hil.

  “Will we go to prison here?” he asked, still looking at her eyes. “Either of us? For this thing that Lahash has done?”

  Mik’hil smiled again. “I think I can say with certainty that prison is extremely unlikely for either of you, my brother. For these events, at least. Steps have already been taken to prevent this... for both of you. Call it a thank you from the angelic realms.”

  Raguel nodded, still looking at Ilana’s face.

  It didn’t occur to her until then that the look on his face was a question.

  Once she understood the question, she turned to look at Mik’hil in Yakov’s body.

  “Can you spare him for a little while?” she said, quirking an eyebrow. “Would it be all right for him to stay human for a bit longer? Or will the heavens burn without my Raguel there, to keep the peace and to hunt demons?”

  Mik’hil smiled, his gold eyes shining a bit brighter.

  When he spoke next, she heard nothing but love in his words.

  “We will miss him greatly,” he said. “But yes, we can spare him.”

  She nodded, glancing hesitantly back at Raguel.

  “Then perhaps I can convince him to stay for a little while?” she said, asking the question herself that time as she studied his gray eyes. “If you can spare him, comrade Archangel... and if he is willing... then I might have a use for him here.”