Shadow WIngs (Skeleton Key)
Author: JC Andrijeski; Skeleton Key
Date: 2016-06-14T18:30:00+00:00
Publisher: White Sun Press
Rights: Shadow Wings ~ copyright 2016 by JC Andrijeski

A Skeleton Key Novel

by

JC Andrijeski

Copyright © 2016 by JC Andrijeski

Published by White Sun Press

Cover Art & Design by Jennifer Munswami at

J.M. Rising Horse Creations
www.facebook.com/RisingHorseCreations

2015

Ebook Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please visit an official retailer for the work and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

Synopsis for SHADOW WINGS

In a time of great darkness, can Ilana help an angel regain his wings?

Hunting a fallen angel bent on changing human history, Archangel Raguel finds a mysterious key that throws him out of the angelic realms, abruptly turning him human.

He wakes naked in Gorky Park, in 1980s Moscow, wings gone and no ability to communicate with the other side. Picked up for public drunkenness and nudity, he asks for help of KGB Agent Ilana Kopovich, who is investigating a far more gruesome crime––the murder of a half-dozen children whose bodies were left mutilated in Red Square. Little does she know, the murderer she’s hunting is the same demon Raguel wants.

Raguel asks for Ilana’s help, and she quickly realizes she needs him. Together they must stop the demon before he commits his final crime and brings the world to the brink of war.

Praise for JC Andrijeski’s Writing

“Andrijeski delivers a whopper of an action flick...” ~ New Myths

“The sexual tension is scorching...” ~ The Muses Circle

“Amazing characters in an out-of-this-world scenario...” ~ The Indie Bookshelf

“The most impressive display of world-building I have seen in a while.” ~ I (Heart) Reading

Dedicated to my good friend (“Misha”) Mikhail

I am so very glad you have found such a happy life

THE KEY

HE STOOD BEHIND her, close enough to feel her breaths, to feel the currents of her mind and intention, to hear the beating of her fragile human heart. Raguel found comfort there, in what he felt––moreover, it gave him hope.

Hope that he had someone good on his side down here, which wasn’t always the case.

Hope that she might actually help him to stop this thing.

Her heart was good. Not the physical, beating organ under her ribs, but what humans often referred to as “heart,” the home of her soul and the imprint she made on the world. Her heart held integrity, a striving for justice and truth that resonated sharply with Raguel’s own. That was definitely not always the case for those who held a position such as she did. Raguel would go so far as to call it an anomaly, in fact.

As a lead investigator for the Soviet Union’s Committee for State Security––or KGB, as it was more commonly known––she had plenty of opportunities to approach her job differently.

Right now, for Raguel, she served as a reminder. A reminder of the purpose of this particular visit, yes. Also a reminder that human beings, despite their myriad flaws and weaknesses and blindnesses and pettinesses, were not the enemy.

They were the battleground.

They were the real territory over which most of Raguel’s battles were fought.

Every now and then, he grew overly attached to particular pieces of that territory. There had been children he grew fond of. People who suffered or died for their principles. Those who had been unfairly persecuted. Those who had been unfailingly kind and met only cruelty in return.

From the nature of his work in the human world, Raguel often found reasons to be protective of his particular charges. He’d been warned about that tendency in himself––of becoming overly personal at times––by other angels, particularly Mik’hil, the archangel who more or less served as Raguel’s “boss.” He didn’t let himself dwell on that thought now, however.

He had work to do. Anyway, he’d felt enough judgment in his last conversations with Mik’hil around that topic already.

Mik’hil thought he was too fond of this woman.

Raguel knew he might be right.

Still, he could not force himself to address that issue fully, either.

He remained aware of her even now––even though he focused most of his attention on the man sitting across from them both. He knew a part of that hyper-awareness lay in his wish to protect her from this man.

As for the man himself, he did not appear to be a threat, if one looked only through human eyes. After all, he wore handcuffs where he sat in a metal chair inside the small, windowless room in the lower floor of the militsiya building in central Moscow.

A homicide detective, or operativnik here, had been attempting to question the suspect for the past hour or so. He’d made little headway in terms of concrete information.

The tape recorder sitting on the man’s desk continued to record mostly silence. The ribbon wound into the metal carriages had been replaced once already, but most of the words recorded there had belonged to the detective himself, who happened to be a lieutenant colonel. They had given this case to their most senior homicide investigator, but he now appeared bored, and more than a little irritated due to the early hour and the suspect’s lack of cooperation.

The next interrogation would not be recorded, Raguel knew.

Well, not until after the confession had been signed, and the signee likely unable to see through his swollen eyes and face.

He might not even be able to hold the pen on his own by then.

Raguel suspected that the detective was an idiot, unfortunately, despite his senior position and rank within the militsiya. At the very least, he was corrupt in the way most senior militsiya were corrupt, and had received his high-ranking position due to political maneuverings rather than his investigative skill. It was a truly unfortunate state of affairs, given the stakes in this particular case.

It was another reason he felt a wave of gratitude go over him at the presence of the woman.

For Raguel, the woman was his only prayer of a human ally in this.

As for the suspect, he likely relished the thought of the torture and forced confession that would assuredly follow. He was not what he seemed. Moreover, he might be grinning in both of their directions at the moment, but Raguel knew that this man, unlike anyone else in the room, could actually see him––meaning Raguel himself.

He was also quite aware of what Raguel was.

Even as he thought it, the man grinned, licking his lips. He focused on Raguel solely now, ignoring the two human authorities who continued to watch him in frustration.

Then again, the human suspect wasn’t really a human at all.

Moreover, while that chair might be holding his human body in place, the creature inhabiting that body could only be temporarily bound in such a way.

Feeling Raguel’s thoughts, the demon grinned at him wider.

“Worried about your pet, Raguel?”

The creature spoke aloud, using its human voice.

As a result, the woman under Raguel’s fingers jumped. They were the first words the demon had spoken in probably twenty minutes.

It licked the air with its long, human tongue, a disconcerting gesture to the detective sitting there, who grimaced, leaning back in his chair.

“...You should be worried, friend,” the demon added, still staring at Raguel with those too-wide eyes. “You really really should be. She looks positively... delicious.”

Raguel didn’t answer.

The woman stiffened, still unsure if the man spoke to her.

She swiftly realized he spoke about her.

“What do you think, Raguel?” the demon taunted. “Could I get a few deep-throated moans from her before I crushed her skull between my hands?”

Raguel studied those glassy human eyes, barely listening to the specifics of his words. The demon still looked solely at him. He knew the woman in front of him did not see him, meaning Raguel himself, nor did she consciously feel his presence. Therefore, she thought that crazed, half-tilted head and distant look on the demon’s face to be just one more manifestation of his lack of connection with the world.

She was not wrong.

And yet, had she been able to see Raguel himself, she would know that the cuffed prisoner looked him directly in the eyes––not at nothing, as it appeared.

“Do you want to fuck her yourself first, Raguel?” the demon taunted. “You do, don’t you? You want to put your pristine cock in her... watch her moan wrapped in your snowy white wings.” His grin widened. “Well... if you had a cock, I guess. Do you have a cock, Raguel? It has been so many aeons now, I forget...” He made that licking gesture in the air again, staring at the woman’s breasts. “...Maybe I’ll give you a treat later. Maybe I’ll do it for you. Can’t promise I won’t leave marks though, Raguel. Can’t promise I won’t use more than this human form on her, to get the noises out of her I want...”

Raguel didn’t answer that, either.

He felt the woman’s disgust, even as her heart beat a little harder in her chest. She got her fear under control quickly, he noticed. He felt her fear more as an animal response––instinct, not reason––a reflex to the demon’s threat. Her reason-based mind didn’t fear him. She was in law enforcement after all, even if she wasn’t part of the militsiya in the usual sense.

But she didn’t see what Raguel saw.

Their suspect wasn’t simply a mentally-damaged human.

The body he wore had certainly been that, prior to the demon consuming him––but now the body’s spirit was gone, leaving only a shell. The human once there had been shuffled out of the way to make room for the whole of the demon’s corrupted light.

Raguel knew this particular being. Not the previous human inhabitant––the squatter.

The demon itself.

This demon liked to disguise itself, jumping from body to body. Raguel did not look with human eyes, so it made no difference to him, but it made the demon invisible to humans. Raguel focused on the muddy black sludge that darkened its aura, knew the human body it wore as only a vessel––a kind of perverted costume or unwashed set of clothes.

That body would continue to be worn thus, until it was discarded.

The humans, meanwhile, would blame this body for every one of the demon’s crimes. Just as they blamed the last body the demon wore.

Just as they would blame the next one it wore, too.

The demon’s name was Lahash.

Raguel could see the dark span of its wings.

Those black clouds wrapped around every human form they touched. The demon spread its wings tauntingly at him now, from where it crouched in that metal swivel chair, grinning at him. They dimmed and darkened each object they came in contact with, causing the detective sitting nearby to recoil and frown.

Of course, none touched by a demon knew what they reacted to, or even noticed their own reactions on a conscious level most of the time. The demon’s touches acted on them more subtly. They served to distance human minds from one another, to create threads of fear and doubt and disgust. Raguel watched the progression of those shadows now, saw the detective increasingly gaze at both the suspect and the woman suspiciously and with aggression, with negative impressions of himself and the world and every other human being in it.

Demons did so love the power they had, such that it was.

It was a petty power, but disconcertingly effective.

The demon caressed the detective again with those shadowy feathers, running them over his crotch like a sadistic lover. It particularly enjoyed causing suffering while pretending it was fulfilling wishes, Raguel knew. The demon smiled wider when the detective shifted in his chair.

Then the operativnik was looking at the woman beside Raguel.

He stared at her with a dark, aggressive lust.

“Maybe I’ll just get this one and his friends to rape her instead, Raguel,” the demon said. “He certainly feels willing...”

The human detective jumped, right before his face turned bright red.

He jerked his eyes off the woman, glaring at the demon with a scowl.

The demon laughed.

“You want to talk now?” the detective growled. “Let us talk about what happened in Red Square this past night, comrade. Let us talk about the children...”

The demon only grinned at Raguel, acting as if the detective hadn’t spoken at all.

Raguel found these games banal.

The far more interesting thing to him was that the humans had caught the demon at all. The militsiya caught Lahash in the act of conducting its foul works, and now began the process of locking up this body permanently. Perhaps even killing it.

Raguel was not comforted by that thought.

He was, however, made curious by it.

Even now, as the demon sat in handcuffs, locked to the dented metal chair, it grinned at Raguel. Obviously, it was pleased with itself. Moreover, Raguel knew if human law enforcement had caught it, that meant Lahash wanted to be caught.

Watching the demon taunt him with that smile, Raguel wondered why.

Lahash reached out even as Raguel wondered it, using that dark wing to caress the breasts of the woman standing in front of Raguel. It tugged at her sensually, pulling on her, trying to draw her closer to to the man on the chair.

The woman shuddered, filled with self-loathing and fear.

Reflexively, Raguel laid one of his light hands on her shoulder. Expanding his own light, he forced the demon’s shadows to retreat. As he did, he stepped closer to her.

The woman exhaled, exuding a tangible relief.

“You do like this one,” the demon called out, grinning wider. “You like the smell of her cunt, Raguel? Is that it? Maybe you watch her masturbate at night?”

The woman flinched once more, frowning.

That time, she even glanced over her own shoulder, following the demon’s eyes.

She didn’t see Raguel of course, so her expression only grew more puzzled. The office door was closed. They were alone, from her perspective.

The militsiya detective kicked the metal chair where the demon sat.

“Disgusting rat,” he muttered. He raised his voice. “Answer my questions, comrade, for I am losing patience. You will not like me when I lose patience...” When the demon didn’t answer, he raised his voice still more. “Why did you kill them? Why did you leave their bodies in the way that you did? Did you work alone?”

The demon only laughed, staring up at Raguel.

The woman folded her arms in the long wool coat she wore, glancing reflexively over her shoulder a second time. Of course, she neither saw nor felt the angel that time, either. Nor did she feel his wings where he held her protectively––nor the hand resting on her shoulder. Raguel felt her puzzlement at the speaking of his name, however, and that time, she latched onto it.

“Who is Raguel?” she said.

Like the demon, she spoke Russian.

She had a low voice, husky. Something about it caused Raguel to tighten his wings around her form, pulling her deeper against him. She moved at his nudge, stepping back into him, but didn’t notice herself doing it, much less did she know why.

Lahash addressed only Raguel, staring past her shoulder to Raguel’s face.

“...The love of yours, it makes me very sad for you, brother Raguel...” The demon grinned wider, then made a show of sniffing the air where he sat, rattling the chains of his cuffed wrists against the metal seat. “...I understand though, brother. I do. I really really do. I am dying to get my teeth and tongue in her myself... along with other parts of my anatomy...”

He spoke that aloud in his human voice, too, articulating in perfect Russian.

Clearly he did it for the woman’s benefit.

Both the male homicide detective and the female KGB officer grimaced a second time, nearly in unison. That time, the disgust coming off the woman wasn’t aimed at herself.

Even so, Raguel felt her brief annoyance at herself for letting the words of this “crazed animal” get to her. He admired her for the clarity in her mind, her ability to see that she was being toyed with even as she admitted to herself that it elicited an emotional reaction. She did not bother with shame beyond that initial reflex––she assessed that reflex, catalogued the emotional reasons behind it, then moved on.

Raguel admired that, too.

Most humans did not understand their own emotional reactions nearly so well.

Even so, Raguel felt her unease, along with the more clinical, logical areas of her mind, which told her––like his own mind told Raguel––that the demon had orchestrated this capture far more than the militisiya had accomplished it through their superior skill. She’d picked up on that right away. She knew that Lahash had allowed himself to be caught, that somehow his being in custody served him, far more than it did the police.

She did not know what the demon was, of course, but she seemed to understand that there was a deep intelligence there––and a plan of some kind, something more complex than a surface attempt to commit horrifying crimes against children. She knew the crime was meant to shock. She knew the placement of the bodies in Red Square was meant to shock, as well.

And to confound them, given that no witnesses could be found.

She also knew it was a message.

She had not yet decided what kind of message... or for whom.

Raguel wished he could talk to her––directly, that is. Despite the gaps in how they perceived the demon handcuffed to that chair, Raguel suspected they both would benefit greatly from such a conversation. After all, they were both law enforcement.

They simply worked for different realms.

“Won’t you talk to me, Raguel?” The demon raised its voice, its pale blue eyes bloodshot above the smile, its lips cut from repeated blows to the face by militsiya batons and fists. “Stop trying to figure out how you might get into this woman’s pants and talk to me. Won’t you pass the time with me, my painfully earnest friend, while you wait for your Master to call you home?”

Raguel met the demon’s gaze, in spite of himself.

The demon grinned, pleased it had forced Raguel to pay attention to it.

“I know how it must soil you so, to be down here, mingling with the lowlifes and the filthy worlders.” Lahash smiled wider. “I know what a sacrifice it all is... how you simply cannot wait to get back to that pious circle-jerk in the sky so you can all congratulate one another on your wondrousness and fluffy feathers. For nothing’s half so fun as looking down on the rest of us with your smug, sermonizing bullshit, is it? Better than sex, I’m told. Regaling the other dick-less wonders with tales of how you try so hard to save the poor animals from their own blindness and excess, but they simply will not listen...?”

Raguel didn’t respond.

There was no risk in responding, of course. The woman wouldn’t hear him, any more than she felt his fingers or wings, or saw his body standing just behind her or his face hovering next to hers. But Raguel saw no reason to answer the demon’s taunt.

There was simply no point in engaging these creatures.

Moreover, they enjoyed it a little too much.

Also, despite its pretending to ignore her, Lahash was using Raguel to jab at the woman, to unsettle and unnerve her, mainly because it wished to annoy Raguel. To some extent, it was even working. It worked for the simple reason that the demon was right.

Raguel liked her.

He liked her very much, truthfully.

Shelving that thought a second time, he went back to trying to determine the creature’s angle on allowing itself to be caught.

“Maybe I am sorry,” the demon grinned at him. “Maybe I am so very, very sorry, my lovely Raguel. Maybe I want to see myself sodomized repeatedly in a Soviet gulag to atone for my sins. Perhaps I am hoping to give some humans pleasure in this sad, darkened world they have inherited, just like I tried so very hard to please those children. I tried to please them again. And again. And again...”

The woman grimaced for real that time, stepping back from the demon as she raised a hand to her nose. From her expression, it was like she had smelled something rotten.

The male detective stared at the demon with open repulsion on his face.

“You admit it then?” he said. “You confess to this crime?”

The demon looked only at the woman.

Raguel tightened his grip on her, pulling her closer to his light form. Even so, he more or less ignored the demon’s exact words, trying instead to read the intent he could feel within the shifting sands that made up the demon’s mind.

It was not easy.

The Fallen were still angels, after all, still cut of the same, more complex cloth. Therefore, reading a demon’s mind wasn’t anything like reading a human’s. It was more like reading one of his own, only no openness lived there, no willingness to share, no transparency, no affection. Rather, Raguel found himself faced with flickering, multi-faceted mirrors, interested in him only to better learn how to confuse and misdirect his thoughts.

But Raguel was an archangel.

Because of that, the demon couldn’t make much headway with him, either.

It ended up a stalemate of sorts, with their minds simply too incompatible and yet evenly matched to connect.

Raguel puzzled over why the demon let itself be caught.

The demon’s body could go to jail, like any other human body.

It could die.

The difference was, if its human host died, the demon would continue on. It would find a new home, either in another living being or in some other temporary vessel. Lahash had no reason to fear incarceration or its end. If the demon bored of this particular form, it could merely arrange for its body’s death.

Still, that fact alone did not answer the question at hand.

It did not explain why the demon would waste its time being caught in the first place––particularly given how easily bored a demon was by nature. Moreover, Raguel had no doubt Lahash had enjoyed torturing those poor children. Why would it willingly stop?

Surely, it would not do this simply to puzzle him?

Lahash was a higher-tier demon––the equivalent of the archangels, only twisted into a frequency that consumed rather than generated light. Hater of truth. Bringer of chaos and despair. A demon like Lahash lived to delude, enslave, disempower... darken. It had accomplished those things, in part, through the commission of these crimes.

Yet the results struck Raguel as anti-climatic at best.

Why here? Why now?

Demons did not normally murder like this.

They persuaded and coerced others to murder and cause harm... but rarely did they bother with the act themselves. The closest they came normally was to consume their hosts until they killed themselves, often in a manner calculated to do as much harm to as many loved ones and family members as possible.

But the human Lahash possessed had little to destroy.

The man had been a mental ward patient. Discarded by a society that mostly wanted him dead. Before the hospital, he’d been a pedophile... so already ostracized and causing harm. He’d suffered from a mental disease that kept him in a near-constant and permanent state of delusion. He had no family, no friends––no one even to torment by proxy.

He had no free will to corrupt.

There was no win in this possession for Lahash. Not a direct one, anyway. This man had been all of those things before Lahash ever went near him. Nothing in the world was changed, for good or for bad, in inhabiting one so tormented. Raguel felt compassion for this body, but he also knew it had long been beyond his help.

They would try again to reach him––in the next life perhaps.

Or perhaps, the one after that.

For an angel, time stretched and contracted differently, made up of longer waves. Those waves were broken less by death and life than by nodes and windows and forks and detours. Those disruptions and opportunities might break up and shift courses within a single lifetime. Or, conversely, they might take several lifetimes.

Or a dozen. Or millennia.

Demons thought in similarly elongated patterns, tesselations of black and white, mirrored on the human chess board where pieces were traded and won back and traded and won back again, ad infinitum... or so it would seem to a human. It wasn’t forever, though.

It wouldn’t be––couldn’t be––forever.

Like everything with a beginning, this too would end.

Raguel, like the demon handcuffed to the metal swivel chair in the lower levels of a Moscow police station, remained ever-mindful of that end. He was still watching Lahash, studying those currents darting between them, comparing them to the waves of time and light and infinity that endlessly wove overhead...

When he saw it.

It appeared on a gray metal desk, right before his eyes.

It had not been there––but now it was.

That singular fact drew Raguel’s interest. Held it. Things did not simply appear out of nowhere in the human realm. If they did, it could always be explained. But Raguel had no explanation for this.

No one had placed the object there. Raguel was sure of it.

The object glowed from the metal desk closest to where the female KGB officer stood. Had she reached out a hand, she could have stroked it with her fingers.

The object shone at Raguel. It pulsed at him.

A cold white when he first saw it, it changed as he moved his head, as his angelic eyes altered their perspective. At times it contained faint shimmers of colored light, but when he leaned closer still, it appeared transparent, like glass. He decided it must be of a material that caught the florescent lights strangely, confusing his angelic vision.

It was a key.

He blinked at it, studying it again.

It was most definitely a key.

A glass human skull made up what would be the key’s bow.

Raguel could not stop looking at it, or wondering how the key could have gotten there. Only himself, Lahash, the militsiya homicide detective and the KGB agent were in the room, and the door was closed. Raguel knew the woman had not put the key there. The male police detective was too far away and had not moved from his chair.

The demon itself was certainly too far away.

It struck Raguel, the longer he looked at the key, that it must be a celestial object, not a physical one. The realization came not only from the strangeness of its colorless colors; Raguel felt presence lingering around it, the way that objects carried presence in his home world.

Stepping around the human woman he had been protecting from the demon’s wings, he walked closer to the metal desk. He could have walked through her, of course, to reach the same end, but stepping around her constituted a gesture of politeness. Passing through someone was an intimate act––one he did not wish to engage in without being asked.

Angels exchanged their essences with one another all the time, and more or less freely, but humans were different. Humans were meant to establish a modicum of individual spirit, of free will, of individuality. All of those things required difference––meaning an ability to differentiate oneself from other beings. Humans needed to know themselves as separate, as unique.

That required boundaries.

It also required asking their permission before those boundaries were violated.

It was an understanding Raguel rarely thought about, it was so ingrained.

Minimal interference was always the rule with humans. Minimal to no unrequested contact––unless the call came from someplace higher up the angelic hierarchy. Those rules formed an explicit contract for angels working on this plane. Interactions of any kind were a form of influence, whether they sought a specific outcome or not.

Raguel, like all angels, must wait to be asked.

The fact that Raguel thought about that rule now is something that would occur to him later.

It would also feel like less of a coincidence, less of a footnote, than it had at the time.

At the time, Raguel’s sole focus remained the glass key.

He looked down at the unusual object, trying to interpret the conflicting impressions it evoked. Given the skull’s head making up the key’s bow, he might have thought it would emit darker energies than it did. The fact that it appeared on a table within wing’s-touch of a high-ranking demon only supported that supposition.

But the key didn’t feel dark, per se.

What Raguel felt on the key was significantly more complex.

It felt old to him.

Of course, even that feeling of it being timeless––ancient––might be illusion.

Illusion was a demonic specialty.

In its current form, Lahash would be constrained by the limitations of its human body, however. The demon could not summon a celestial object without leaving its human body, either––which the demon could only do if that body died. Once a possession took hold, a demon was bound, in one way or another, to see it through.

Even knowing all this, Raguel did not touch the key on the desk.

“What is this?” he asked the demon.

Neither the female KGB agent nor the policeman at the scuffed wooden desk looked up when Raguel spoke.

The woman did glance over when the demon answered, however.

“I found it, my feathery friend,” the demon told him, grinning. “As you rightly surmise, I cannot pick it up in this form. Yet it follows me. It follows me, brother. Are you quite sure it is not yours? For I cannot help but wonder if this is so...”

Raguel frowned, staring at the demon’s human face.

Next to him, the woman also frowned, exuding even more puzzlement. Conversely, the male policeman at the desk slumped back into openly bored frustration. He stared at Lahash now as though he’d decided the demon had utterly lost its mind.

Thinking for a few seconds more, Raguel aimed his presence elsewhere.

Mik’hil? He made his words polite. I could use a second pair of eyes.

The familiar presence of the senior archangel pooled around Raguel. Raguel felt Mik’hil understand immediately why he had been summoned. He felt the instant that Mik’hil zeroed in on the strange, glass-like key with the skeleton’s face.

What is it? Mik’hil asked, curiosity whispering off his long, gray and white wings.

Raguel smiled. I had hoped you might illuminate me on that point.

Is that Lahash? Mik’hil focused briefly on the demon handcuffed to the chair.

It is, Raguel affirmed.

What is he doing?

Raguel exhaled celestial dust as he glanced at the demon. I have not yet determined that, he admitted. This body murdered children. Orphans, after sexually abusing their bodies. He left them in a public and very political place, in the middle of Red Square, so conceivably with some more incendiary goal in mind. He left no witnesses, which suggests he used lower demons to erase memories and confuse minds... or else that he has human recruits. It is a lot of trouble to go to, only to allow this body to be caught by humans right after the crime is committed. It is a terrible crime, of course, but does not follow their usual pattern in a case such as this...

Raguel trailed, realizing he was telling Mik’hil what he already knew.

Unfurling his wings, Raguel shrugged.

...Any one of those children might have been a recruitment opportunity in this life, given the trauma inflicted. Instead, Lahash killed them, wasting the opportunity. Then he covered up his tracks, again wasting effort for no direct benefit I can see. It is...

Raguel sought a different word, could not find it.

...Wasteful, he repeated. It does not follow in my mind yet, what Lahash’s greater purpose is. Nor do I understand why he did not simply kill this body prior to it being captured by authorities. It will be more difficult for him to kill it now...

Mik’hil nodded thoughtfully. Could Lahash have wanted these children in a future life? He looked at Raguel, dark eyes shimmering. ...Or just one of them, perhaps?

Raguel sighed. It possible, of course. But I feel some other game here. Something more immediate. Also, it is a risk that we would not get there first. Why waste a sure thing on a risk, when recruitment would be so much simpler now?

What other game do you feel? Mik’hil gave a harder flap of his wings, his mouth firming. What immediate purpose?

Raguel had no answer to that.

Glancing at the woman, he said only, Things are not... stable here right now.

Mik’hil followed his gaze to the KGB officer’s face. Expressionless, he exuded an angel’s grunt, still looking at her. When are ‘things’ ever stable in the human world, Raguel? That is hardly evidence of a difference in this matter.

True, Raguel conceded. Yet more clouds than usual are gathering of late. Gabriel feels the same across the ocean, in America. There is talk of war. He gave Mik’hil a meaningful look. Nuclear war, perhaps.

Mik’hil acknowledged that as well, but did not comment.

Raguel could feel that his silence did not reflect disagreement, more a lack of additional information regarding Raguel’s concerns.

Mik’hil returned his mind to the glass-like key.

You’d better bring it back, he said, after a few more increments. It is definitely not an object created in the human world. This might be some game by the demon, as you suspect. In either case, we cannot simply leave it here. Not without knowing what dangers it contains.

Is it demon-made, do you think? Raguel studied the object with some curiosity, still unable to reconcile the conflicting impressions it emanated. Or is it ours?

He wished the latter to be true.

It felt more true somehow, but he could not trust his impressions of the thing.

Unclear, Mik’hil replied. Perhaps neither.

Raguel nodded, but felt his curiosity deepen.

He felt Mik’hil follow his glance to the woman a second time.

After another pause, he felt Mik’hil smile.

We will satisfy your curiosity, dear Raguel. Bring it back, and we will examine it together. Uriel will have an interest in this too, I suspect.

Yes, brother. And thank you. I will do it now. Raguel reached for that glimmering and glass-like key as he spoke. And perhaps afterwards, I could speak to you and Gabriel about––

But before he could finish that thought...

Everything disappeared.

NEVER COLD BEFORE

RAGUEL GASPS IN pain, eyes open.

He does not know if he opened his eyes, or if they had simply never been closed. He’s never been aware of his eyes before, open or closed, not like this. He’s never been aware of such blinding, white light. He’s never before felt so much and yet so little.

He’s never been so aware of something as time-encapsulated as birth.

His mind fights to assimilate all of those feelings––to make sense of them.

His skin burns. It hurts like fire––like knives forcing their way through a too-thick membrane, forcing him to feel. He feels numb inside that membrane, cut off, abandoned, even as it screams at him. He feels locked down, bound... but the pain forces him into HERE into NOW in a way he’s never experienced either before.

NOW! NOW! NOW!

It hurts NOW!

He had never thought in terms of skin, in terms of hard lines and firm edges. He’s never felt his fingers as individual things, as things that could hurt, individually, that could burn with that same cold and pain, as separate from the rest of him.

He cannot feel his wings.

He stares at his hands, gasping for breath, gasping in pain.

They look like meat... like something dead.

They don’t belong to him.

He fights to feel his wings, to flap his wings, to bring them around himself for warmth...

For he realizes he is cold. He is horribly, mind-shatteringly cold.

But they are gone. His wings are gone.

He is alone.

No other presences live inside him––perhaps for the first time.  No other beings whisper in his mind, warm his thoughts. He feels none of his family’s light. He feels...

Nothing.

He is lost in that nothingness, terrified by it.

He gasps out, paralyzed with the differences, which are now too many to count, too many to catalogue with his slower-moving mind. He stares up at a shocking, pale-blue sky, so high and cloudless he can’t wrap his mind around that either. Everything hurts, but that wash of ice blue, it shocks him with its beauty, nearly brings him to tears. His feelings are muted and lost behind what feels like a pane of glass, he is alone but cannot comprehend how heavy and weighted he feels, how surrounded and claustrophobic and trapped. His wings are gone.

He is bound in meat.

Yet still, there is beauty.

He recognizes these feelings in glimpses and touches––but only because he’s felt the same on human beings a few million times before. He has felt with them and sympathized with them––without really comprehending them at all. This heaviness lived in humans he communicated with, humans he shared himself with and tried to help...

But not like now.

He’s never felt it like he does now.

It is like being chained to the Earth by iron and water.

He hears voices suddenly and they are loud, painfully loud... shrill. He feels nothing at all from the beings making those sounds. He knows nothing of their minds or hearts. He cannot connect to them, or do anything to soften what he hears them shouting above. He does not know their intent. He cannot discern their motives, so he fears them.

That fear washes over him like a physical force.

Again, the simple intensity of that experience paralyzes him.

“How did this idiot get here?” one slurs.

The voice sounds drunk, bored, but he is also nearly shouting. Raguel cannot discern anything it truly feels. The words are painfully loud to his virgin ears, deafening in their indifference to him.

“...Did you see where he took off his clothes? Where are they?”

“No.” Tension vibrates the second voice. Is it excitement? Fear? Disgust? Raguel cannot tell. “He is only here, like now... naked. Look at how white he is! He is like snow! Do you think he is sick...? Some kind of mutant? An albino?”

A third voice holds humor, a stronger slur of alcohol. “Who cares?”

A fourth voice speaks up––excited, jabbering. Too excited.

“Did you see that? Did you see it? This guy... he is just here suddenly! Like, poof! He appears out of nowhere! Then he is lying there like that, looking like demons scratch at his eyes... like something tore his lungs out!”

Raguel flinches at the mention of demons. When he looks around though, he sees nothing, feels nothing, good or bad.

If demons are there, they are invisible to him.

The voice grows more shrill, more excited. “I swear it! I saw it with my own eyes! It was magic that brought him here! Magic! Did no one else SEE that?”

Another man laughs, and it is a cold laugh. Disconnected.

“Been drinking turpentine again, Dmitri?” he scoffs.

“No! I swear upon my heart I saw it! I did! I saw it!”

Raguel is still trying to feel his way through this world. But there is no way to do it, not in this form. He is blind deaf and dumb––lost inside this suit of meat and chained to the earth.

He hears something, loud, coming out of his chest.

It pounds into him, slamming into bone and flesh and blood.

“Look at him!” the first one slurs. A face looms over Raguel, red and puffy and wrapped partway in a scarf. “What is wrong with this fool? He is scared out of his mind!”

That thing in Raguel pounds harder.

Whatever that thing is, it hurts.

The pain is something new as well, new as the cold snow on his bare skin, the shocking blue of the sky, the heaviness of his arms and hands and the loud voices from people whose faces look blurred to him, and who he can’t feel with any part of his mind or spirit.

His wings are gone.

Suddenly, he understands. It is his heart, he realizes.

That thing that hurts inside his chest is his heart.

Something in that simple realization breaks the dream.

Lying on the frozen wet ground, staring up at a high, winter sky, his skin burning from the first cold he’s ever felt––

Raguel begins to scream.

ILANA

ILANA KOPOVICH FROWNED, staring over her shoulder at the grinning officer standing behind her. He clearly wasn’t CID, or Moscow Criminal Investigations. Militsiya, sure, but she pegged him for patrol, possibly mounted police.

Which made her wonder what he was doing in this part of the building at all.

He had walked up behind her while she bent over the borrowed desk she’d been temporarily assigned at Petrovka 38, the main building of the city’s militia. From the way he grinned, staring openly at her ass as she turned around, she could only guess this man had no idea who she was.

Not only in terms of her undercover role––none of the regular law enforcement officers should be aware she worked for the KGB. No, he clearly had not heard even who she was officially, meaning the title she passed as her general cover.

Only a complete jackass would leer at an official of the Party like this. Particularly a high-ranked official here to assess the political ramifications of a gruesome crime committed virtually on the front door of the Kremlin.

Of course, this hungover-looking country boy with the scraggly beard and the bad body odor might be just such a jackass.

In Ilana’s experience, they definitely existed.

She strongly suspected he did not know her alias, however. He must think she was militsiya too, and assumed she held a lower rank than he, that she worked in social services or some other clerical capacity, like most women in the Moscow police.

Either way, his eyes raked down her like she was some woman on the street he wanted to pay for sex. He blew on his hands without taking his eyes off her figure, stamping mud off his feet from a late winter storm.

Ilana frowned, glancing down at the water he’d left on the floor.

He grinned wider when her eyes flickered back up. That idiot smile didn’t waver even when her frown deepened at the slowness of his answer to her question.

“He asked for me?” she repeated, trying to get a response out of him again. She was unable to keep the puzzlement out of her voice. “Some drunk fool you found naked in Gorky Park knew me by name? He knew I was here, at the police station?”

“Da. He definitely knows you.” The uniformed officer spoke humorously, grinning wider, before he seemed to see something in her face and think better of whatever he’d been about to say. “...He asks for comrade Ilana Kopovich. That is you, da? He wishes to speak to you. He knew your name, where you live, that you are a Party Officer in Special Projects.” The smile crept out a tiny bit more. “...He knows other things too, comrade. That you are divorced. Your clothing size. A birth mark ‘like Japanese islands’ on your right leg...”

He traced the location on his own thigh with thick fingers, winking at her.

She gaped, blinking at him in surprise.

Passing deliberately over the birthmark thing, she frowned deeper.

So this bearded moron did know who she was. He simply thought the fact that he could imagine her naked gave him the right to talk to her like a prostitute. Shoving that aside in some irritation, she focused back on what he’d actually told her.

They’d picked up some drunk lunatic in the park who asked for her by name.

Whoever that lunatic was, he’d called her a “Party Officer in Special Projects.”

That was language sometimes used internally to reference her connection to the KGB. Ilana’s stated position was as a Communist Party officer for the Politburo, here to assess any political ramifications of the child murders. She did not come here as a KGB investigator, not officially. The KGB had grown increasingly aware of the corruption worsening throughout different levels of the militsiya. Even more than before, KGB agents sometimes used someone like Ilana versus going openly to the police and announcing who they were.

Often, they did both.

In other words, using that “Special Projects” language was dangerous. Someone smarter than this idiot might know what it actually meant.

“He knows where I live?” she said after a pause. “Your Gorky Park drunk?”

The man nodded, once more blowing on his hands. “He rattles off your address like it belongs to his mother, comrade.” Hesitating, he added more deferentially, “...Comrade Officer Kopovich.”

It had to be Uri, her ex.

Her fingers tightened into fists at her sides. The more she thought about it, the more she realized there was no other explanation. How drunk would he have to be though, to end up naked in Gorky Park in February? Babbling about “Special Projects” for the Party?

But yes, given the details he’d known about her, it was the only thing that made sense.

It troubled her that Uri had somehow learned of her role as KGB. It could only be new knowledge for him, since he hadn’t known of her KGB role while they were married. He certainly hadn’t gotten the information from Ilana herself.

Anyway, she knew Uri. He wouldn’t be able to keep his mouth shut. Especially not during some of their drag-down fights.

If he didn’t learn silence, he would disappear for real one of these days.

Sighing, she combed fingers through her long, dirty-blond hair, then shouldered on her wool coat. She checked her pocket for keys, looped her purse over one shoulder, then gathered up the copies of files she’d just procured from the lead homicide detective’s desk. She’d asked for and received copies of everything they had procured so far on the psychopathic child-murderer, Golunksy, including the tapes from the interviews she’d just witnessed.

The detective seemed annoyed with her for asking, but he hadn’t argued. Truthfully, he’d been acting strangely towards her since the interview with Golunsky, and she had no idea why.

Perhaps it was Golunsky’s jab about the detective raping her?

Somehow, Ilana got the feeling it was something else, though.

She would have liked to ask him about it, or at least talk to him to see if she could discern the problem herself, but he’d disappeared not long after the interview ended.

Sighing as she shoved that out of her mind for now, she looked back at the militsiya officer.

“Lead on, comrade,” she said to the bearded policeman.

She would need to do damage control on the Uri thing first. Which likely meant going to Party headquarters and talking to Karkoff, her superior officer. The thought annoyed her in terms of wasted time, but did not worry her particularly.

Karkoff would be reasonable.

He would let Ilana try to handle Uri herself. The first time, at least.

But she had to tell him.

She’d already planned to take the criminal investigation materials off-site, to peruse them in more detail before she handed those off to Karkoff as well, along with her recommendations on how to proceed. She’d intended to take them back home where she could pore over the details and drink decent coffee––eventually make herself lunch.

Regardless of the Uri thing, and Karkoff himself, she needed to come up with a strategy on how to roll the murders up the ladder. That included making a decision as to whether she thought KGB should be conducting their own parallel investigation alongside that by the Criminal Investigations Department or CID.

Ilana had her doubts as to whether the child-murderer Golunsky harbored any motives that were political, whatever his reasons for leaving the bodies in Red Square. That didn’t mean he didn’t have other motives, however––beyond simply being crazy and degenerate. It also didn’t mean he wasn’t working with other people. Something definitely felt off in his capture.

Something felt off regarding a number of details around this case.

Anyway, in the Soviet Union, everything was politics.

The Party could be incredibly touchy these days. Ever since things had gotten more heated again in their “cold” war with the United States, some in the Kremlin saw foreign enemies everywhere. They could also be touchy when it came to motive-less, psychosis-based murders, if only for reasons of public relations. They would want the crime solved fast, but they would also be eager to point the blame elsewhere. Meaning outside of Moscow itself.

Which meant she would have to handle this thing with care.

If not, the whole investigation might get derailed––or worse, turn into a witch hunt with the Party leaders insisting it was outside agitators or American spies. They might decide Golunsky was just a patsy for some group of dissidents or foreign terrorists.

That was especially true now, with increasing murmurs around General Secretary Chernenko’s health deteriorating. Many said he would need to be replaced soon, now that he lived at the hospital pretty much full time.

Ilana normally  avoided such discussions, even in the abstract.

Still, she was not deaf, dumb and blind.

Moreover, to work in the KGB, one had to be mindful of political currents. And whatever the exact truth of these rumors about General Secretary Chernenko and his health, she knew now was not a good time to publicize murders of this kind. The Western media in particular would enjoy the story a little too much––and the Party normally got good press off the seemingly endless parade of psychopathic killers produced by the capitalistic United States.

Perhaps she could convince her superiors to prosecute Golunsky publicly as a foreigner, but stress his insanity rather than politics. For he clearly was insane, and from his papers she knew he was Polish by birth. They might be able to stretch that, say he was raised too far from the loving arms of Russia, that he was an insurgent and a loner and a lunatic.

Political maneuverings of this kind did not interest Ilana really. She got no joy out of making this look like something it was not. But she was also a pragmatist. To her, the issue was how to get Golunsky behind bars. Or possibly shot.

She could not let this monster back out on the streets to murder more innocent babies.

That being said, to sell Golunsky as a crazed Polish malcontent contained its own set of problems. There were those in the hierarchy who would want to commit resources to that angle, to follow this “evidence of terrorism” to its source. Like any political body, the Kremlin was not devoid of opportunists who would try to use this story for their own ends.

Nor, sadly, was it entirely devoid of idiots who would believe it and panic.

Sighing as she thought about the challenges she would face in selling this thing––no matter which direction she chose––she found her irritation at her ex-husband worsening.

She followed the uniformed officer through a maze of hallways leading down into the station’s cluster of temporary holding cells. Neither of them spoke. They only paused briefly while she showed her badge to the guard watching over the cell block when prompted, nodding to him when he smiled before following the cop, or “ment” silently inside.

When they entered the cement block area that housed the general population, Ilana found herself faced with a row of iron-barred segments. Most contained dirty, tattooed men smoking unfiltered cheap Russian cigarettes, their hands resting on the edges of the bars as they watched her and the cop enter. A few catcalled when they noticed her sex in the wool overcoat, and nearly all of them winked and spoke to her as she passed.

She did not spare them a glance.

Following the ment down the right-hand corridor, her mind remained full of Uri and what she would possibly say to him, given his likely condition.

When she reached the cell at the far end of the row, however, and followed the gesturing hand of the young militia officer, she stopped in her tracks.

It was not Uri who stared back at her from inside that cell.

Instead she found herself looking at a man she had never before seen in her life.

RAGUEL

HIS LOOKS MIGHT have stopped Ilana in her tracks all on their own, truthfully.

He was beautiful, this man.

Uri was very attractive too, of course––handsome enough that he got stares on the street when they’d still been together. Handsome enough to be annoying with it at times, truthfully, despite his own jealous rages about her and any man she so much as smiled at. Tall, dark-haired, with a booming laugh, dark brown eyes, a strong jaw, Uri looked like a model in Western clothing advertisements.

She’d found Uri unbelievably sexy when they first met in school.

But this man in the Moscow holding cell was a different kind of beauty altogether.

He almost didn’t look real to Ilana. If Uri made her think of a clothing model, this man looked more like a stone statue, something created wholly from an artist’s mind and hands and chisel. His beauty bordered on otherworldly.

He looked up at her face when they approached his cage, ignoring the officer with her.

His gray eyes shone faintly under the florescent overheads, contrasting strangely with his streaked, white-blond hair. His hair itself didn’t look real either––it had odd lines of black and dark gray woven into that white color, and while it couldn’t possibly be natural, she found herself thinking that it didn’t look dyed, either.

Something about his beauty also appeared ageless.

Ilana found she couldn’t pinpoint an age for him at all, even though she tried––postulating several possibilities from mid-twenties all the way up to his forties depending on how she looked at him. His face was entirely unlined, but somehow it wasn’t a young face, in spite of that.

Looking at his features in more detail, she found that inhuman beauty striking her again, so much so that she had difficulty looking away.

High, perfect cheekbones framed either side of a well-formed mouth, a strong jaw, those stunning, crystal-gray eyes. Yet nothing about him fit or made sense. His Adonis-like looks contrasted sharply with his clothes, which were those of a penniless vagrant. He looked like he’d been dressed with clothing they’d found in a garbage bin.

She remembered then––perhaps they had. He’d been found in Gorky Park naked.

He still wasn’t fully dressed.

His chalk-white chest wore no shirt, but she saw well-defined muscles. He’d partly wrapped his upper body in a ratty gray blanket filled with holes and moth-eaten around the edges, but it didn’t cover him entirely. The dirt-stained jeans were at least two sizes too large around the waist and several inches too short for his height. Covered in holes and worn to threads at the knees, the jeans didn’t look very warm, even apart from how they fit him.

His feet were bare, his toes white verging on blue, and hairless.

The man shivered nonstop as he stared up at her.

His face remained utterly serene––strangely calm under all of that shivering. Particularly so, given where he was and his predicament. He appeared in no way drunk or otherwise intoxicated. Apart from that violent, uncontrollable shivering, he did not appear to move at all.

Still, from the look on his face as he watched her from the cement floor, he did know her. She saw a flicker of recognition there, the second he met her gaze.

More than that, she saw relief.

“Ilana,” he said, even as she thought it.

So much of that relief filled his voice, it startled her.

“...You are here. At last. Thank you.”

He also spoke perfect Russian.

Once he had, she realized she hadn’t expected him to––certainly not without a foreigner’s accent. There was something strange about his voice and cadence, something overly precise perhaps, but his accent was that of a regular Muscovite.

He could be an academic, perhaps––a scholar.

“I do not know him,” Ilana said, speaking to the militsiya officer but unable to tear her eyes off the imprisoned man’s face. “You are sure this is the man you told me about?”

The officer gave her a startled look. “Comrade? He just said your name––”

“I know what he said!” Ilana snapped, turning. “I am telling you... I do not know him!”

The militsiya officer stared at her, taken aback.

“Ilana, I must speak with you,” the man on the floor said, as if he’d caught nothing of their exchange. “It is extremely urgent... it cannot wait.”

“I processed him myself,” the police officer said, his voice slightly wounded now. “It is him, comrade Kopovich. I was there when he first asked for you––”

“Ilana!” The man on the floor continued to ignore the ment, looking only at her. “I am sorry I told him those things about you, but I needed to see you right away. It could not wait. It was all I could think of to get you here quickly––”

“Be silent!” she snapped, turning on him.

“I cannot be silent, Ilana. I cannot––”

“I do not know you, comrade!”

He looked startled.

He glanced at the male officer for the first time, then back at her.

“I know that.” His voice reflected his surprise. “But it should be equally obvious that I do know you. I need your help, Ilana, please. Please... help me. I beg you.”

She swallowed, struck somehow by the depth of feeling in his words.

Moreover, he looked at her like he really did know her.

Somehow, the sheer certainty in his eyes brought up a fear she’d never experienced before, at least not since she’d been a child. Something wasn’t quite normal in the way he looked at her. He looked through her almost. Like he not only knew her, but he knew her better than others did, better than even those closest to her.

Perhaps even better than Ilana herself did.

He’d known of the birthmark on her thigh. He’d described it. He knew her clothing size, where she lived. He knew what and who she was. He even knew she was here to look at a case.

But how? How could he possibly know these things?

She knew it was not personal. She could not have slept with this man. Just the thought made her face heat, and anyway, it was not like her to do this. She had not been with anyone but Uri since university.

She’d been thinking about it again lately, yes, contemplating an affair at least, but so far hadn’t been able to move past that gun-shy thing left over from Uri turning into someone she didn’t recognize as soon as the ink was dry on their marriage certificate.

But it’s not like she ever drank so much, or had been with so many men as to forget any of them––much less someone like this man, with his riveting smoky eyes and that heavy jaw. So that was out of the question. It left only one thing.

He had to be a spook.

Perhaps he came from a rival faction in the KGB. Which meant he had to be from somewhere else, or based out of somewhere else at least. Some place far enough from Moscow that they would not have crossed paths.

Unless he was American. In which case, he had mastered the accent to a disturbing degree. Perhaps he had a parent born in Moscow, or was a sleeper agent of some kind.

He rose abruptly to his feet as she continued to think.

Throwing the blanket off his shoulders, he walked directly to the bars, so swiftly and deliberately she found herself backing away in reflex. When he reached the bars, he did not hesitate. He reached through for her, his hands outstretched.

Somehow, she felt his desperation to touch her.

For the first time, she also saw the fear in him. She saw it in his face and eyes––it practically emanated from his skin.

“I need you,” he said. “But I can also help you, Ilana. You need me too. You do not yet know it, but I promise you... you need my help.”

She winced again. Maybe it was how he said her name.

Maybe it was him saying he needed her... or what she felt when he said it.

“I need your help with what, comrade?” She held his gaze warily. Her reactions to this man were frightening her. To her logical mind, they bordered on delusional, and Ilana was not prone to delusion. She was also not the type to moon over handsome men.

“Golunsky,” he said at once. “I can help you with Golunsky.”

She felt her throat tighten.

That time, a feeling of unreality washed over her, along with a harder suspicion. No one knew about Golunsky. He’d been picked up that morning, early, in the pre-dawn hours. But even that didn’t explain the totality of her reaction.

Something in how this beautiful man said Golunsky’s name struck her at a deeper level than she could articulate to herself. It wasn’t fear she heard in his voice, not that time. Well, not fear of Golunsky at least. But it was... something.

An added knowledge.

“Let me help you, Ilana,” the man said, his voice lower. “Please. We could help one another with this. Do not leave me in here. It will be bad for you, for me... for many people, if you do. I must have your help. Please, Ilana... please. More depends on it than you know.”

She could not hold his gaze.

Turning, she spoke to the militsiya officer instead, ignoring the blond-haired man still reaching for her through the metal bars.

“What is his name?” She clutched the files she carried tighter to her chest. She could not trust herself to look back at the prisoner’s face, or the depth of feeling in his eyes. She felt her heart beating too fast in her chest. “Who is he? Where is he from?”

“He did not give us a name, comrade.”

“Where are his papers?”

“There were no papers.”

She stared up at the face of the militsiya officer. “No papers? That is not possible.”

The officer shrugged, disinterest on his face. “He was naked, comrade.”

Ilana’s jaw clenched briefly, but her shoulders relaxed. “Ah. And he refused to give you his name or address to find them?”

The officer smiled indulgently. Clearly he did not believe Ilana that she and the man in the cell did not know one another. Given their reactions to seeing one another, Ilana could almost understand his skepticism, but it still infuriated her.

She opened her mouth to speak, but the ment cut her off.

“––He tells us he has no name that will mean anything to us, comrade Kopovich.” The officer shook his head to show what he thought of that idea. “He says that it ‘will not benefit us’ to know it, that it would only benefit you.”

“Me?” Frowning harder, she turned, once more studying the man in the cell. She still avoided direct eye-contact. “You! You just agreed I do not know you. You still think your name will mean something to me?”

The beautiful man hesitated, glancing at the officer. Then he looked back at Ilana. His eyes serious, he nodded, the motion barely perceptible.

“Yes,” he said only.

“Tell it to me,” she demanded. “At once. And tell us where you live.”

Again, the man in the cell glanced at the other officer.

Clearly, he did not wish to speak with the militsiya officer present.

When Ilana glanced back at the ment herself, the man smirked.

He inclined his head. “Your friend here explained that he could not share his name with us for fear of ‘confusing the issue’ of who he is and why he was found the way he was.” The ment gave her another knowing smirk. “...Then he would only ask for you. He would not tell us any more about himself. He told us only about you.”

“You have fingerprinted him?”

The man exhaled impatiently. “Yes, comrade, of course. But you know it will take days to find him that way, if not weeks.” He gave her another of those oily smiles, winking. “You are certain you have no name to share with us, Party Comrade Kopovich? It would certainly save us a great deal of time and trouble. Perhaps you could whisper it in my ear? I will say I got it from him during interrogations...”

Ilana gave him a cold look. “Are you implying I would jeopardize an ongoing murder investigation by refusing to provide critical information if I had it?”

“Murder?” The officer let out a surprised laugh. “He was drunk and naked in the park!”

Ilana frowned, but said nothing that time, looking back at the cage.

It struck her that this ment prick likely knew nothing of Golunsky either.

“Who is this ‘Golunsky’?” the ment said, even as Ilana thought it.

Ilana didn’t answer.

When the silence continued for a few beats more, the officer shrugged, frowning delicately as he held up his hands.

“Comrade, I meant no offense,” he said. “I am thinking you are knowing this man. That you are married to someone else, maybe... that you have good reason to keep such a knowledge to yourself. I am thinking maybe you saw him last night, and he got too drunk. I am thinking you left and he is upset, da? That he ends up in the park, with no clothes? I am thinking he knows why you are here today from these things, maybe...?”

Ilana’s felt her lips press into a hard line. Hard enough that she nearly broke the skin with her teeth. “What is your name, comrade?”

The militsiya officer jerked his eyes to hers, startled.

Studying her gaze, he visibly blanched, growing whiter under the scruff of his beard. As he looked at her, he seemed to remember himself again, as if he’d once more forgotten that she belonged to the Party and might not be exactly who she claimed to be.

“I apologize, comrade.” That time, his voice came out humble. He gave her a short bow, clicking his heels, his words formally polite. “I meant my words only as an offer to be discreet. And a desire to dismiss this man, if he is only here for drinking too much vodka and fucking the wrong hooker in the park.”

She grimaced slightly but didn’t lower her gaze. “The assumption that I would refuse to aid you in those endeavors is rather offensive, don’t you agree?”

“Of course, comrade. Of course.” The man exhaled, holding up his hands. “Do you really think he knows something about a case? Or is it just bullshit?”

His tone had gone back to cop to cop––or cop to Party, perhaps, which suited Ilana just fine. She felt her hackles lower.

“I do not know,” she said, exhaling herself. “But it is strange. This whole thing is strange. This knowing about me, knowing that I would be here at all...” She glanced at the man on the other side of those iron bars. “It is not something I can afford to ignore right now.”

“You think he is with the Party too?”

Ilana gave the militsiya officer a grim look. “If he is, I’ve never seen him before.”

Her eyes drifted back towards the cell as she said it. Folding her arms tighter around the folders she held, she studied the prisoner’s face, frowning. Something in her couldn’t make herself believe this man could be Golunsky’s accomplice. If he really did know something about the murders, perhaps he was some kind of witness? He did say she would need him to solve the crime. Perhaps Karkoff was right to send her here.

Perhaps these murders were political after all.

The thought made her tired.

As for him, the prisoner, he seemed to be watching her and the police officer with an unusual intensity of concentration. He looked almost as if he strained for the sound of faraway music––like he listened to not only their words, but to something else. Something he couldn’t quite hear, but desperately wanted to hear.

Ilana did not know what this man’s issue was with her, but for some reason, she could not simply leave him here, in this cell. Nor could she process him in the usual way.

Yet she could not decide what to do with him.

As she stood there, still hesitating, the other man spoke.

That time his voice was low, almost a murmur.

“Ilana,” he breathed. “Come here. Please. I will not hurt you. Come here, Ilana. There is something I must tell you. It is important...”

She found herself wanting to do as he asked.

She would be a fool to approach a prisoner’s cell, even one picked up for something minor like lewd and drunken behavior. Yet somehow, she found herself pulled into those gray eyes.

“Please, Ilana,” he said, softer still. That look in his eyes tugged on her more. “Please. There is something about me you must know. We cannot waste any more time...”

Before she’d consciously made the decision, she moved, jerking towards the cell. In a single heart beat, she’d closed the distance between them.

“Comrade!” the militsiya officer said, alarmed. He seemed about to reach for her, then remembered that she might be his superior and pulled his hand sharply away. “Comrade! I implore you to not approach him! It is not safe! He could be dangerous...”

But Ilana had already reached the iron bars.

The man caught hold of her arms once she did. He did not hold her roughly, but his grip was strong, firm. Insistent. He pulled her towards him. His skin was ice-cold, but his hands also strangely soft under their obvious strength.

Once she was close enough to him, he murmured softly in her ear.

“I am Raguel.” His breath caressed her ear. “I am Raguel. I was in the room when he spoke my name to you. I was there. It is how I know these things. I am Raguel...”

She drew away, staring at him.

“It is true,” he breathed, still soft.

She shook her head. “That is not possible.”

“It is possible. It is the only explanation, Ilana.”

She let out a humorless laugh. “That is no explanation at all, comrade... it is an impossibility. No one else was in that room. None but the three of us. I know this.”

The beautiful man met her gaze. He frowned slightly, as if trying to decide what else to say.

In the end, he remained silent.

She continued to study those smoked-crystal eyes. “No one was there, Comrade. No one. What you say...” She shook her head. “No. I was there. I know this.”

Again, he did not answer.

He only watched her face, his gray eyes still, yet filled with ever more infinitely subtle layers. Up close they were even more stunning than they had been from a distance. They really did glow faintly with light, like translucent crystal.

She watched him study her face, as if willing her to put it together, to remember exactly what transpired in that detective’s office.

Raguel.

She remembered the name, of course.

She also remembered that she’d been alone in that room, with the officer and Golunsky. She remembered Golunsky speaking to someone behind her, taunting her.

Talking about wings. About feathers. About sex.

He’d used her, Ilana, to taunt that other person.

She suspected he’d also used that other person to taunt her.

It struck her as strange at the time, how convincing he had been. Golunsky spoke with such feeling, such conviction to that other person. She’d dismissed his words as insanity, of course, but she’d wondered what they meant to the man himself. There’d been a bizarre religious cast to some of it, or perhaps a metaphysical one. Truthfully, she’d gotten the impression Golunsky thought he was talking to an angel, based on some of what he’d said. He’d mentioned wings, feathers, referenced heaven and even God himself at one point...

Now she found herself face to face with someone who not only knew about the contents of that conversation, but claimed to have been there. She knew that was not true. The room had been empty, windowless. No one could have heard them through the walls or doors. She’d checked the room for additional surveillance besides the standard version––so had Obnizov, the homicide detective. Could they have missed it? She thought it unlikely.

Thinking harder, she tried to recall more specifics of what Golunsky had said.

But unpacking that conversation could wait, too.

Right now, she had to deal with this person calling himself “Raguel.” Whatever his source of information, the gray-eyed man was lying to her right now. He had to be lying.

Yet somehow, she didn’t believe he was.

“I will take him,” she found herself saying, speaking louder, to the ment standing behind her. “Release him. I will determine who he is. Not here... at Party Headquarters.”

When she turned her head, the bearded police officer looked dumbstruck.

“Do you have him charged with anything?” she said, her voice a touch sharper. “Officially, I mean? Or is he here only for what you’ve said... being found naked in Gorky Park? For knowing who I am? For asking to see me?”

“Public drunkenness and indecency––”

“Yet he is clearly not drunk.”

The ment blinked in surprise. “He would have to be drunk, da?” Staring between her and the man in the iron-barred cage, he scratched his beard with thick fingers. “Are you saying he is crazy, comrade?”

She motioned towards the man in the cell, ignoring his hands wrapped around her arms. “I am saying he is not drunk. Did you smell alcohol on him?”

“No, but––”

“Well, there is not enough on him that you cannot release him to me.” She bit her lip, then lied, again without really knowing why. “...I wish to question him on behalf of the Party. Given the nature of the crime he referenced, there is some political discretion required until we determine his exact involvement.” She glanced at the officer, saw the skepticism in his eyes and decided to ignore it. “...If he is aware of me, and of my case, I need to question him. Alone. Under the auspices of the Party...” she repeated, to emphasize the point. “Not the militsiya.”

“You want me to release him?” The man still sounded dumbstruck.

“To the Party, yes.” She made her voice colder and slower, as if she were speaking to a dim-witted child. “Is that a problem, comrade? Of course you may clear it with whomever you must on your end. I will wait.”

The man looked at her, again blanching at the implied muscle in her words.

“That is not necessary, comrade Kopovich,” he said, his words crisp. He saluted her, then gave another short bow. “As you say, he is not drunk. He is no longer naked. I see no reason to hold him for this. I will handle the paperwork personally.”

“Thank you, comrade. I appreciate you not slowing my work.”

She turned back towards the cell. It occurred to her only then that the gray-eyed man still held her arms in his muscular hands. Looking down at where he gripped her, she glanced up with a frown and once more found herself meeting his gaze.

“You can let go now, comrade,” she said. “I will take you with me, as you asked.”

Relief filled his expression. “Thank you, Ilana. Thank you.”

“You and I will talk, da?” She made her voice cold, harsh with authority. “No more of these games, da? Just truth?”

The implied threat seemed to go right past him.

“Of course, Ilana.” He massaged her arms through her coat with his fingers. “Of course. I will tell you whatever you wish. Anything.”

He sounded so openly relieved that time, she couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Instead she looked down at where he continued to touch her...

And swallowed, in spite of herself.

THE IMPORTANCE OF NAMES

THE TRIP TO see Karkoff would have to wait.

Unable to think of a better place, Ilana brought him back with her, to her apartment.

She knew how foolish that was. She did it anyway.

Now she could only think about the myriad reasons as to why it was foolish.

For one thing, the man was a giant. Although she looked him over carefully while he remained in that cell and after he caught hold of her through those iron bars, she had somehow managed to miss the sheer size of him. Perhaps it was the way he sat on that cell floor, folded into himself on the cement, shivering, that conveyed a kind of diminishment. Perhaps even after he stood, he still appeared vulnerable to her––so much so that she’d missed something crucial about his actual physical dimensions.

Whatever the reason, that illusion dropped when the cell door slid open.

It opened with a pained screech and the man stepped outside his cage and into the cement corridor. He towered over her with broad shoulders and a heavily muscled chest. He had slim hips, long legs and he walked cautiously, almost as if he worried he might break things if he got too close to anything. When she motioned to the officer, clicking her fingers and pointing for him to retrieve the prisoner’s blanket from the cell floor, the gray-eyed man wrapped that natty thing around the giant’s shoulders again, having to reach up with a small hop to do it.

The blanket no longer made him look small.

That particular illusion was entirely broken.

Ilana found herself staring at that chest for a few seconds too long. Hesitating, yes, as she rethought what she was doing and whether it was particularly wise––but if she were being totally honest with herself, that wasn’t the only reason or even the main reason she stared.

He really was breathtakingly beautiful.

Anyway, she had a gun.

“You are sure you would not like an escort, comrade Kopovich?” the police officer said politely, as if noticing her bewilderment at the man’s size.

He wasn’t wrong in making the offer, so she did not take offense. Her naked vagrant from Gorky Park had to weigh two of her, if not more.

Even so, she scowled and flushed, feeling caught.

She yanked her calm veneer back however, and refused the ment’s offer, although it crossed her mind later to wonder why she had refused. For whatever reason, she was determined to take her mystery man alone. Obviously he wanted that too, but Ilana knew his wishes weren’t her only reason for doing it. They weren’t even her main reason for doing it.

Ilana herself desired to speak to him in private.

But why?

Granted, he intrigued her. And yes, he was beautiful. But her wanting to be alone with him didn’t feel sexual. Had he manipulated her with his seeming vulnerability? Why had she taken him outside official channels totally, versus bringing him back to the Party holding cells, as she’d told the militsiya officer she intended? Why had she been so instinctively resistant to the idea of processing him through the Party hierarchy at all?

At the time, she was forced to admit, she reacted with pure emotion.

To do so was not like her. At all.

“I won’t require your assistance, comrade,” she’d said crisply to the ment. “We will be fine together on our own, will we not, my friend?” The last she directed towards gray-eyes, who still looked around with a borderline lost look on his face, like he couldn’t understand where he was, or how he had gotten there.

When he didn’t look over right away, Ilana cleared her throat.

“Comrade?” she said politely. “We are not going to have a problem together, are we?”

His eyes clicked back to meet hers.

“A problem, Ilana?” Surprise touched his deep voice. “What kind of problem?”

She flushed slightly at his words, which still sounded so cultured they might be rehearsed. And why did he so insist on calling her only by her first name? Something about that felt overly intimate in some way.

“You don’t plan to hurt me, do you, comrade?” she said, fighting to inject humor in her words. “To take advantage of my trusting nature? To try and escape me before we can talk?”

His jaw loosened. He looked positively stunned as he stared. “Hurt you? Of course I would not hurt you. Why would you ask me that, Ilana?”

He sounded so stricken she fought a smile. “Good, good. It is only a question, comrade. Please take no offense.”

The man calling himself Raguel glanced around at the cement block row of holding cells. As he did, he made another faint frown, right before he moved closer to where she stood. She watched him, puzzled, as he laid a hand on her shoulder, as if for reassurance.

Fighting her puzzlement at his seeming familiarity, she glanced back at the bearded officer, her expression flat.

“You see? We are old friends already,” she said.

The bearded police officer continued to look between her and the half-dressed man skeptically, but after another glance at Ilana’s face, he only nodded, the scowl barely visible on his lips. Ilana knew he didn’t believe her that they did not know one another––not anymore, if he ever had. Not given how the prisoner acted towards her.

She no longer cared what he thought, however.

She was more worried about what she would tell her own people.

She wondered how she would possibly explain this to Karkoff.

She briefly considered calling in to Karkoff right then, from the station. Deciding to wait at least until she got back to her apartment and questioned the man on her own first, she turned and began to walk, not bothering to check if the strange man followed.

He did follow her, though.

He followed her all the way to her car without speaking.

He stood there on the freezing cold asphalt with his bare feet, shivering while she unlocked her beat-up, dingy yellow VAZ-2101 sedan, what most Russians called a Zhiguli and what the rest of the world called a Lada. The car used to be gold but the Moscow streets were punishing, leaving it rusted and pock-marked from the harsh weather and smog and with most of its original color faded. It was a common problem in Moscow.

Glancing down at his feet, she wished she had shoes to give him, but figured for now it was better to get him off the street and warm. Still, it was a good reminder to make him comfortable and clothed before she questioned him in earnest.

She watched with faint amusement as the tall man folded himself inside her car, somehow making himself small again to get inside. Then she was in the driver’s seat and they were heading to her apartment complex located in a residential bloc a dozen kilometers outside of central Moscow.

They didn’t talk during the drive.

Ilana decided she would try and put him at ease first, give him food and coffee and clean clothes––treat him like a regular person and not a caged animal. In her experience that was more likely to yield her useful information than the opposite.

Besides, he was still shivering so hard his teeth chattered loudly as she drove.

She cranked up the Zhiguli’s tired heater to full, making herself sweat under her heavy coat, but it didn’t seem to help very much. He was so cold it was making her feel cold. He acted as though the weather was completely foreign to him, like he’d never experienced the end of a Moscow winter before.

If that were true, he must have been in sheer hell a month ago.

He was close enough to Uri’s size that she should be able to give him things out of the boxes of personal belongings Uri repeatedly refused to pick up from her place. She knew Uri left his things there on purpose––likely so he’d have an excuse to drop by when she wasn’t expecting it, or an excuse to be angry with her when she eventually threw them out.

It would serve him right if she gave a few articles to this man.

She’d always hated that streak of passive-aggression in her ex-husband.

Ilana found herself looking at the man sitting in the seat next to her as she thought about Uri and his box of clothes. She watched him stare out the windows, his face now holding a tension on the surface. He continued to clutch the ratty blanket around his broad shoulders, but something in his expression really hit at her.

He looked like a man trying to wake from a bad dream.

He gazed numbly out at the gray winter landscape like he couldn’t quite take it in––or maybe like he didn’t quite believe it was real. Perhaps he just didn’t want to believe it was real. Whatever the case, he seemed almost in a state of shock about where he was.

Yet, oddly, he didn’t seem to be at all uncomfortable with her.

She even got the impression her presence comforted him here, in this world that struck him as so alien. She got the impression he’d wanted to touch her a few times, too. He glanced at her off and on while she drove, at her hands and legs and arms.

She’d seen him hesitate, as if thinking about it, but he never once reached for her like he had while they were still at the militsiya station.

She only spoke to him after they’d parked and left the car and were ascending the stairs inside her block-like apartment building. Identifiable by number only, Ilana’s building stood inside a massive complex of identical-looking cement block buildings that stretched further than the eye could see.

At the end of winter, like now, everything inside and outside of those buildings appeared gray and white and black. The one exception might be clothes hanging on lines, whipping dry in the cold wind tunneling between buildings and providing sharp bits of color.

“So can you tell me your real name now?” She said it casually as she ascended the stairs, separating her house key from the rest of the keys on her keyring. She didn’t look at him.

“Raguel,” he said.

She glanced back, in spite of herself. “I said your real name, comrade.”

When he didn’t speak, she prodded him again.

“Where did you hear this name? How did you know about Raguel?”

He met her gaze as she looked down at him that time, both of them still climbing the stairs. Ilana had her keys and the files clutched awkwardly between her arms and hands and fingers but didn’t slow her steps in her heeled leather boots. His gray eyes seemed to shine faintly, even in the darkness of the narrow stairwell as he followed her up.

“I first heard it when I was born,” he said simply. “It is my name.”

Ilana frowned, but didn’t answer. Shaking off the dozen or so questions that rose at his odd speech, she settled on the most immediate one.

“Why would you not give this name to them, if it is your real name?” she said. “Why not the other militsiya? Why give it only to me?”

“You are not militsiya,” he said.

She tensed, but kept it off her face. “Yes,” she said only. “Is that why?”

He didn’t answer. Not at first.

When she didn’t break the quiet, he sighed.

“I knew the name would have no meaning to them,” he said. “None that was relevant.”

Ilana frowned, still walking in her high-heeled boots. “But you give it to me? Why?”

“The meaning for you would be relevant.” He paused, then exhaled again, as if in defeat. “This will sound calculating, because it is. I hoped that telling you would help you understand why I needed to speak to you. Additionally, I hoped it would help you find me credible. I thought it more likely to save time, to convince you I was telling the truth about knowing who Golunsky is. Which I will do once we are inside closed doors and able to speak in more detail.”

She smiled in spite of herself, shaking her head. “All right.” Still thinking, she glanced back at him again. “What is your last name, Raguel?”

“I do not have one.”

She stopped dead that time, on the landing of her floor.

“You don’t have one.” She watched as he descended the last few steps to reach her side. “What does that mean?”

For the first time, he gave her a faint smile, tinged with wry humor. She couldn’t help noticing how different his face looked when his lips curved.

“I told you,” he said. “My name is not particularly helpful. Not here. Not in your world. You had a relevant context for it, so I gave it to you. I am being transparent about my motives, Ilana. I desire for you to find me credible. If I did not have those motives and you had not had that context, I would have given you a different name.”

“A different name?” Her voice sharpened more. “Like what? What name would you give?”

He shrugged. “I would have chosen one appropriate to this time and this place. I would have given you a name solely so that you would have something to call me. I know how important names are to people in this world.”

“My world?” she said. “This world? You’ve said that twice now.” Her frown grew more genuine, as did her concern. “What ‘world’ would that be, Comrade?”

That time, he didn’t answer at all.

He simply watched her face, his gray eyes faintly glowing.

Deciding to let it go for now, she turned from him to walk down her floor’s corridor, past a row of numbered, green-painted doors. She stopped when she reached her own. Inserting the key into the lock, it struck her again how foolhardy this was, to not only let a complete stranger know where she lived but to bring him willingly into her home. Even with her training, her superiors would not approve of this, not without knowing why she had done it.

Karkoff would not approve.

He trusted her, however.

All of this ran through her mind even as she swung open the door on her modest apartment and led him inside. Raguel followed cautiously, again looking around as if afraid he might break something or knock something over by his very presence.

Her apartment was reasonably clean, so that was a bonus.

Opening the curtains to let in the cool winter sunlight, she turned on the gas heater first, still conscious of her guest’s discomfort. She motioned for him to sit on the flower-patterned couch in her main living room while she hung up her coat and turned on the kitchen light, exposing her lime green refrigerator and porcelain sink near the center cutting board.

She brought him the box of clothes first, pulling out articles to show him until he’d found a few he seemed to approve of, or at least did not actively disapprove of. Given that he still shivered like he couldn’t get his body under control, even on her couch with her heater blasting, it didn’t surprise her that he focused on warmth––taking dark wool pants, a thick thermal shirt and an even heavier sweater out of the pile of Uri’s more casual, off-work clothes.

When he’d finished picking out articles, she brought him to her bathroom and showed him how to work the hot water and the shower. He acted as though he’d never used one of those before either, but he seemed to get the hang of the thing quickly. Once she got the water hot out of the rattling heater, she saw understanding hit him for real.

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.

No, she could not do it.

She needed to try and discern if he had family somewhere. Which meant more time wasted, more time from her investigation while she figured out what her options were without putting him somewhere terrible, from which he might never return.

She knew what she probably should do with him.

Meaning, she knew what Karkoff would say.

Karkoff would tell her to bring him in to KGB headquarters at Lubyanka.

Given what he’d known about her and about Golunsky, they would question him, even if she told them he was mentally ill. If her new friend refused to talk, or gave them gibberish answers like this, about angels and demons and heavenly realms, they would torture him.

They would do it for days perhaps, hoping that might loosen his tongue.

As for how he knew those things about her, she might never know the truth. It was possibly Uri, or possibly someone else taunting her through this man’s insanity. Either way, keeping him here was out of the question, given his state of mind.

Or it should have been, at least.

Even as she sat there, thinking all of these things with utter certainty, she did not act. She only sat there with him at her kitchen table as he told her his crazy stories. She didn’t escort him to her door, or back inside her dingy yellow Lada. She listened, not nodding or answering, while her coffee sat at her elbow, slowly getting cold.

She didn’t want KGB interrogators getting their hands on this man. Despite his obvious insanity, something about him still struck her as deeply kind.

So when he finally fell silent, she spoke before she knew she meant to.

“What makes you think this... demon... did this...” Ilana hesitated, fighting for words. “...This thing to you? Turned you human? Was it not due to this strange key you found, as you said? What makes you think the demon is behind it?”

The man calling himself the Archangel Raguel shook his head.

His gray eyes met hers, and again she struggled to retain her objectivity. The intensity behind his stare made it difficult to hold his gaze without falling into it.

“I do not know.” He exhaled, leaning back in his chair. “...Not for sure. But I think I am right that he is behind this somehow. It is the only thing that makes sense.”

Raguel’s perfect lips curved in a frown. He continued in that equally precise Russian, which still sounded more like it came from one of Ilana’s University professors than from a lunatic found naked and screaming in Gorky Park.

“...But I think I am right,” he continued. “Lahash wished for me to pick up that key. He taunted me, trying to get me to take it. I did not see it at the time, but it is clear now. I would never have thought any demon-created object could have that kind of power, though. Not over one such as me. I was more concerned for the danger it posed a human who might find it.”

“And this... Lahash...”

“You call him Golunsky, yes,” Raguel said, giving her another of those penetrating stares. “This has to be part of some larger plan of his. He is plotting something. Perhaps something big.” He continued to hold her gaze, his eyes serious. “I think you were wrong in that, Ilana. I know you did not think his motives were political during the interrogations, and I understand why, but you are only half right, I suspect.”

Ilana froze at his casual mention of her thoughts.

Raguel didn’t seem to notice.

“...It is possible he wanted me out of the way. It is equally possibly he wished to distract my brethren with what happened to me down here. They are certainly looking for me by now. They will be looking for an angel though, not a human. It might take them a long time to think to look for me as a human being...”

“But your boss, this...” She fought to remember the names.

“Mik’hil,” Raguel said.

He didn’t pronounce the name like the Russian version that was similar, but at least it was borderline familiar.

“...Mikhail. He did not think this object was demon-made?” she said.

Raguel frowned, taking another sip of the coffee. “He did not know. But it must be, do you not think? To have done this to me?”

Ilana fought not to frown.

She didn’t answer him, not at first.

She did not want to anger him. Nor did she––for less explicable reasons––really want to hurt his feelings. But something in her face must have caught his attention in a relevant way finally, because he leaned back in his chair, letting out an audible sigh.

“I can’t read anything you’re thinking in this form,” he said, exhaling again, his frustration more audible. “But I strongly suspect you’ve decided I’m mentally impaired. That will not help us make progress in dealing with our immediate problems, I’m afraid.”

He studied her with those gray eyes.

“Do you intend to turn me in to your superiors?” he said. “Or to a mental institution?”

When the silence stretched, Ilana shrugged.

“Would you consider letting me go, instead?” he said, weaving his fingers together on the table. “I would rather do this with you... I would much rather do it with you, frankly. But it is better that I do it alone than not at all.”

The silence stretched longer that time.

At the end of that one, it was Ilana’s turn to sigh.

“Your mental state is not my problem, comrade,” she said, giving him a grim smile. “Not if you intend me no harm. Not if you do not pose a danger to anyone else. But if you are right about Golunsky having a political motive, it becomes my problem. And that you would offer this information to me puts me in a difficult situation.”

“Because you are obligated to turn me in to your superiors in the KGB?”

Ilana stared, her jaw dropping. She’d almost forgotten his mention of “Special Projects” to that idiot ment. He really did know where she worked.

Raguel noticed, but did not wait for her to speak. He held up a hand.

“I am sorry,” he said. “I know it disturbs you that I know these things, but I do not have time to play human games with this. That is what you meant, yes? That you are obligated to turn me in, since I told you I am aware of a possible political crime about to be committed?”

She closed her mouth with a snap.

“Yes,” she said simply.

“But if you think I’m insane, then that is just a formality for you, is it not? You won’t even look into the possibility that I might be right about Golunsky, will you, given that?” Raguel folded his muscular arms, made more bulky by the sweater he wore. “So it does not even help to get you back working on the political angles of the case, if you turn me in?”

Ilana found herself staring, in spite of herself, trying to make sense of his words. When she didn’t answer for a few seconds more, Raguel exhaled.

“So this is it?” he said. “You will humor me and then take me back to that jail cell and forget I said anything?” Raguel watched her, his expression rock-still. “That, or you will take me to your superiors to torture to find out how I knew so much about you... and why I would claim Golunsky had political ties? Or possibly, if you are feeling pity for me, you will take me to a social worker or a psychologist. None of which helps me. Or you, for that matter.”

Her frown deepened. She was a little unnerved to have him repeat her own thoughts back to her a second time. “What would you have me do, comrade?”

“I would have you hear me that human politics are not a demon’s concern,” Raguel said, leaning over the table once more. “They are a tool, Ilana, nothing more. He would harm you as human beings. He does not care about your politics. He does not care anything about your quarrel with the United States... or the even more quiet wars you conduct within your own borders. Or within your own government.”

Puzzled, she stared at him. “What is the difference?”

Raguel narrowed his gaze. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, what is the difference between something being political versus politics being used as a tool for a specific end?” Ilana said.

He exhaled. “A great deal, if you waste time worrying about the wrong people and things.” He continued to watch her face, his gray eyes a darker, smokier crystal now. “You could give Lahash time to make his move. He could act before I return to a form where I could actually stop him. Or he could simply find someone to kill him in prison––allowing him to jump bodies and making it impossible for me to find him at all down here.”

She smiled faintly in spite of herself, folding her own arms and copying his body posture without really thinking about it. “This is what worries you about this scenario? That I might not follow the investigation into Golunsky’s political affiliations? That I might ‘waste time,’ as you put it? Versus helping you to stop him?”

He frowned at her openly. “What else should worry me, Ilana?”

“Prison, perhaps?” She arched an eyebrow at him. “Torture? Confinement in a mental institution? All three? Have you done time in a real Russian prison, comrade? I suspect if you had, you would be more concerned about that problem of yours than you are about whatever Golunsky might do.”

“Perhaps I trust that you will not let such a terrible thing happen to me, Ilana.”

She glanced up, expecting humor, but his eyes remained crystal-still.

“And why would I do that?” she said, grunting.

She avoided his eyes as she said it, however.

As for him, he didn’t answer, not even with a shrug. He continued to watch her face instead, that intense scrutiny verging on unnerving now.

Ilana ended up being the one who looked away that time, too.

“Or perhaps that is not my priority, regardless,” he added, softer.

Sighing in frustration, she shook her head, pushing her long hair over one shoulder. “At this rate, I am thinking I would not have to tell them anything about you,” she muttered. “You seem to have no problem sharing this information freely on your own. Have you totally forgotten what country we live in, comrade?” She looked up, verging on annoyed now for some reason. “I found you in a jail cell. Why on earth should I think you would not simply return to another jail cell on your own, regardless of what I did or did not do?”

When she met his gaze that time, he smiled faintly.

Enough that she knew he had read her meaning, even before he spoke.

“Thank you, Ilana,” he said.

“Do not thank me yet,” she warned.

He only smiled wider, however.

Ilana exhaled again in frustration when she realized maybe he was right. He didn’t really have to worry––not about her, at least. She intended to do her best to make sure he didn’t end up in a place like that. But to do so, she would be breaking the rules.

Granted, she had much more latitude to break those rules than most, but she wasn’t totally immune to them, either. And since there was absolutely no way he could know she would be willing to break these rules for him, his disinterest in his own fate made her wonder about him all over again. Who the hell was this man, really? How did he know so much?

Why Golunsky?

“The birthmark, comrade?” she said, even as she thought it. “How did you come to know me so well? I do not remember making your acquaintance before.”

Even as the words left her lips, she wondered why she hadn’t thought to ask that question before. Really, it should have been the first thing out of her lips when they’d met on either side of those iron bars. It definitely should have come up before now––and definitely before she brought him into her home and gave him a clean towel and new clothes to wear.

He could be stalking her. Or hell, he really could be working for Uri.

But she didn’t believe either of those things, which only frustrated her more.

She had zero reasons to trust him, yet she did. She had zero reasons to keep him here with her, yet she already knew she wanted to. More than wanted to––she’d already more than half-decided to do it. He intrigued her, but he also struck her as an inherently trustworthy person, and the second part frightened her much more than the first.

She couldn’t defend any of those beliefs or decisions logically, yet they felt absolutely right and true. Something about the simplicity of that unnerved her... perhaps because it was so utterly foreign to her. Living in the Soviet Union made everyone paranoid. It was just one of those truths no one bothered to comment on, other than in jest.

They had not been raised in an environment where trust was rewarded.

Despite that, she could not make herself believe that he might hurt her. She could not make herself believe he would ever cause an innocent person deliberate harm. She knew that, without having any possible way of knowing it. He would never harm anyone unless it was for the greater good, no matter what they did to him.

He really did feel like some kind of protector, or guardian.

Worse, she already felt responsible for him.

“How do you know my body, comrade?” she said, her voice more pointed.

“I saw it. As an angel.”

“Your duties in catching Golunsky required you to see me naked?”

She saw a faint tension develop between his eyebrows. From his face, she wondered if the question had occurred to him before.

“No,” he said finally, looking at her. “I liked you.”

“You liked me?”

“Yes.” He paused. For a second he looked as if he might elaborate on that.

He didn’t.

“...I got close to you initially because of Golunsky,” he said instead, averting his gaze as he shifted the topic smoothly. “Later, I realized you were one of the few connected to this case who might be able to help me. I was concerned when I felt you decide no political motive was likely... I thought it might cause you to drop the case. I also feared it might cause the police to stop looking. And to stop preparing for additional incidents.”

Meeting her gaze again, he shrugged.

“...Although, you are right, of course. There is no political motive. Not the way your government would define it. The demon’s goals center more around destabilization, panic, delusion, paranoia. He would want you to harm yourselves... to spread fear and aggression so that you would attack your own kind. There is much more suffering when humans are burdened with the guilt of causing death, in addition to the rest. And as for why now...”

His gray eyes turned a shade darker.

“...Change is coming, Ilana. To Russia. To the world.”

She paused the motion of her arm and hand, halting where she’d been about to take a sip of her coffee. Finishing the gesture, she grimaced when she realized it was stone cold. Standing, she walked to the sink and dumped what was left in her mug. Rinsing it out with water, she contemplated making more, then decided it could wait.

Leaning her hands on the porcelain sink, she didn’t look back when she spoke.

“What do you mean?” she said.

“Change is coming. We have seen it. It could be disrupted of course... there is always free will, and disruption is always possible. But change is very likely... and it is likely to happen soon. Within the next decade, which in angelic time is practically now.”

“But what change? What are you speaking of?”

“Russia will once more open its doors.”

She turned, staring at him. “Words like that could get you in trouble, comrade.”

“They are not a threat. Simply the truth.”

“How could you possibly know that?” She bit her lip. “And why would you say such a thing to me, knowing what I am?”

Raguel leaned back in his chair. His expression remained serene, even reassuring.

“I wish only for the happiness of your people, Ilana.” His voice and eyes held so much sincerity she could only stare at him. “The world changes. Angels do not do this... your people do. Time. Fate. Karma... whatever you wish to call it. We try to help when these things come, but we do not create them, any more than we create time itself. We call these things ‘windows,’ or ‘nodes’ in the timeline. A big one is coming. We have all seen it. It is why so many of us are down here right now. It is why Lahash is here, too.”

She thought about his words.

Again, she felt much more behind them than she could articulate clearly to herself.

“You think this demon... what? Will actually destroy Mother Russia?”

Raguel shook his head. “I think it will try to plunge Russia back into darkness and fear if it could. I think it would prevent this change if it could––create a backlash that returns Russia to an age of repression. It has been trying already, both here and across the ocean. My brethren have been working with the leaders in the United States, trying to calm the more warlike rhetoric, to keep things from escalating more. But The Fallen have people there, too...”

“How?” She clutched the sink harder. “What would these ‘Fallen’ do?”

Raguel shrugged, his eyes untouched by her anger. “Cause war, perhaps? A security clamp-down on your own population? Both?”

“The Motherland must do what it must to protect itself!”

Raguel sighed. “You would not want this, Ilana.” His voice grew heartbreakingly gentle. “Do you really wish to see the work-camps full of artists and scholars once more? Its brightest thinkers sent to work camps like Stalin’s gulag simply for threatening a leadership made up of power-hungry bullies and those afraid of the future?”

He continued to hold her gaze, his gray eyes calm.

“The next generations of Russia are meant to work at the forefront of science and technology,” he said, still gentle. “Create great art... compete on all of the stages of the world, in every field. More than that, they are meant to join the rest of the world... to live and breathe in the light of day. Travel freely. Learn about other cultures, other ways of living. Usher in a new world with the rest of your species.”

Still watching her, he paused, resting his hands on the top of the table.

“I am not talking about bringing change, Ilana. I am saying change is happening. I am saying the demon would twist this historical moment to a dark place if it could. Turn it against Russia. Turn it against the world. In the end, it is not about countries, Ilana. It is not about wars. It is about the human race... it is about all of you. Together.”

Ilana thought about his words.

Spoken to the wrong person, they would be enough to earn him time in a work camp.

But Raguel was right. Things were changing.

His words felt true. The change happened silently, but it was all around her. Her own bosses and leaders were already reacting to that change, for good and for ill.

But it was more than that, too. The rest of what lived there, behind his words, nearly brought tears to her eyes. Again, she could not have articulated why.

What he saw, the way he saw her and her people––there was love there.

She felt that love, and it felt both deeply personal and yet extended to all people.

She also felt a faint, half-remembered spark of her own. She felt what Raguel pointed to, that thread of humanity that tied her with people all over the world. Not only other Russians––but all of them. All of them were her people.

He was right. One could not make such a thing happen.

It took all of them to do that. Together.

Something else he said struck her as true as well. There were moments in any confluence of events that could be pivotal. They could be manipulated, nudged, influenced. That line could be bent upwards... or it could be knocked down. Ilana had seen that, too.

She had seen it in her own life.

Shaking her head to get the clouds from behind her eyes, she clenched her jaw, placing her mug in the sink with more force than necessary.

“You think this is about Chernenko, then?” she said. She glanced over her shoulder at him, biting the inside of her cheek. “About who will replace him? You think this... Lahash... would put the wrong person in power?”

“It is possible. Perhaps even likely.”

Sighing, she walked back to him, back to the table.

She sat in the chair opposite his, leaning her arms on her lime green kitchen table. She fought to clear her mind, to think, conscious that something about this man was affecting her way of viewing her world so much it terrified her. Studying those fathomless gray eyes, she found herself knowing one thing with utter certainty.

Whatever he was, angel or not––he was different somehow.

At she thought it, it hit her that some part of her actually believed him.

She believed he might not be human. She couldn’t make sense of the angel thing. She knew nothing of religion. Both of her parents had been staunch atheists under Soviet Russia, right up until the moments of their deaths––and Ilana had been, as well.

But there was definitely something... well, different... about him.

She tried not to be distracted by his odd confession that he “liked” her. Some part of her wondered though. She wondered what that word even meant to him, given what he claimed to be. Tugging her hair back over a shoulder, she sighed again, rubbing her face with both hands.

“You are saying whatever comes next, it is meant to change history?” she said next, looking up. “Perhaps to change the mood of things so that a different leader might be chosen? Someone other than who the Party would have wanted?”

“Yes. It is possible.”

“What do you think that will look like? Where would we start?”

Raguel shrugged. “This thing with the United States seems the most likely. But there are other things... internal problems, factions within your government. Within the KGB too, da? Economic problems? I know there is disagreement with how Poland is being handled...”

Ilana exhaled in frustration. “You are describing the normal state of my government, comrade...”

Raguel inclined his head. “Yes. But something could push those things into much sharper extremes, Ilana. There are tipping points here, just like anywhere.”

She shook her head. At this point, she knew she fought herself as much as him.

More, perhaps. For better or worse, she found herself believing him. At the very least, she’d decided to follow him down his rabbit hole a ways further.

Exhaling, she forced herself to think, frowning. “From everything you are saying, it sounds more like a disruption inside Russia. If the military or KGB perceived a credible anti-Soviet threat of some kind––particularly one with capitalist backing––it would likely get very ugly right now. It would ignite paranoia at least. There would be opportunists who would want this... those opposed to economic reform, and so on.” Still thinking, she met his gaze. “Where do you think this thing will start? Where will your ‘demon’ light his match?”

Leaning back in his chair, Raguel exhaled all at once, like he’d held a breath and only now let it go. Combing a hand through his streaky, white-blond hair, he tilted his chin towards the ceiling and sighed again. When he looked at her next, he was smiling. It was a tired smile, but a depth of feeling lived there, along with more of that intense relief.

It struck her that he was relieved beyond words that she wanted to talk to him about this.

“This is where I need your help, Ilana,” he said, that relief reaching his voice. “I do not know what Lahash might do next. The conditions are there for numerous different possibilities, as you said. But in what order? What will be the flash point?”

She grimaced, but didn’t argue with his basic premise.

Instead she found she was still thinking. After a few more minutes, she nodded, more to herself that time.

“We start with the children,” she said slowly. “That was his first move, da? How is it connected? Could it be the beginning of something larger?”

Raguel looked down at the table, smoothing his damp hair again when it fell in his face. That relief once more pulsed off him, brief but intense.

“I have thought about this. It is possible he wanted to begin by inciting fear, paranoia... or even misdirection. That would explain the location of the bodies.” He met her gaze. “It is also possible I was the intended audience for that killing. He made it gruesome enough and public enough to get my attention. Perhaps he wished to draw me closer, so he could make me human? Get me out of the way for whatever he is planning?”

“Why you?” Her lips pursed in a humorless smile. “You are in charge of dead children?”

He gave a delicate shrug.

“Where I am from, I am what you would call law enforcement,” he said, returning her smile with an enigmatic one of his own. “...It is my specialty, you could say. I control the demon population in the human realms... as much as such a thing is possible. I do not do this alone and it is not all I do, but I spend much of my time on it. I also lead others in this task. I particularly look at crimes by The Fallen which might have far-reaching ramifications for large numbers of human beings.” Sighing, he added, “I confess, I wonder now if this whole thing with the children and Golunsky was just to put the key in my hands.”

“Do you still have the key?” Ilana said.

Raguel gave her a puzzled look. “No.”

“Where is it?”

He frowned, as if the thought hadn’t occurred to him.

“It is a celestial object––” he began.

“I thought that was inconclusive,” she said. “The key’s origins... I thought you did not know yet, what it was? You or your boss? Wasn’t that the point of taking it?”

He stared at her, as if thinking.

“If it exists down here, it is likely either at the police station or the park,” she said. “Did you look for it in the park?”

Frowning harder, he shook his head again. “No.” Rueful, he added, “I was a little preoccupied with suddenly being human and naked and arrested. And so cold I could not think about anything else at first.” He gave her another of those smiles. “There is no ‘cold’ where I am from, Ilana. And I admit, my mind is somewhat... different... here. It does not operate the same as where I am from. I am still adjusting to those differences.”

Nodding, she found herself deciding.

“Then we will start there.” She nodded more firmly. “Da. We will go back to the park. We will look for your key first.”

She rose to her feet, only glancing down at his face once she had straightened. She was surprised to see another, more emotional flush of relief there, along with a look that might have made her blush under different circumstances.

When she averted her gaze, shouldering on her suit jacket from where she’d left it on the back of her kitchen chair, he stood slowly to follow her. He walked around the table towards her, watching as she buttoned the front of her jacket.

Then something else occurred to her, and she looked down at his feet.

“Shoes,” she muttered. “We must find you shoes first, comrade. And I do not think Uri’s will fit you. He has strangely small feet...”

He glanced down, following her eyes to his overly white feet where they poked out from below the pants. She was still looking at them, wincing at how cold they looked... when he reached for her. He moved quickly, impulsively.

For reasons she couldn’t explain, Ilana didn’t try to evade his hands.

She let him take hold of her arms, then tug her gently closer.

She continued to accommodate him when he slid his arms around her. After the barest pause, she wrapped her own arms around him. Still holding her around the back with one muscular arm, he began to touch her with his other hand. He reached up, pushing her hair carefully off her shoulder and neck, as he had seen her do herself.

Then he began exploring her cautiously with his hands. With the arm and hand wrapped around her, he massaged her back and neck and shoulder while he touched the rest of her with his other hand. He started with her face and throat and collarbones then slid his fingers down her side to her thigh, massaging her there slowly before he moved to the small of her back.

He leaned his body against hers as he exhaled in more relief. She closed her eyes when he didn’t stop, leaning against him in return.

Neither of them spoke.

She continued to stand there, silent, as he slid a hand down her arm, pulling it off him gently so he could caress her hand and fingers. She glanced up when he did, watching a complex expression tighten his face as he massaged her palm and wrist. She continued to watch his eyes as he traced the lines of her thumb and fingers. Heat emanated off him now, but she found she only wanted to press closer to him.

For a long-feeling handful of minutes, they just stood there together.

She didn’t let herself think about her motives––not for either of them.

THERE IS NO RELIGION IN THE MOTHERLAND

SHE MANAGED TO find him some socks and slippers that more or less fit, also left behind by Uri. The latter were more than a size too small for the taller Raguel, but they would serve until she could get him in the car and to an actual store.

She put off asking him the questions nagging at her, even now.

She put off asking even those questions that aligned with his crazy story.

Like what he intended to do if they found this key. Like how she would contact him if he disappeared once more, turning back into the angel he claimed to be.

Like how they would stop Golunsky from doing whatever he had planned if she couldn’t speak to Raguel in his angelic form. Well, assuming Golunsky actually had something planned, being in custody of the Moscow city militia.

There was no way Raguel’s crazy story could be true, of course, but she realized some part of her turned over the details of what he’d told her anyway.

But... and it was a very big but... if Raguel was telling the truth, where did that leave her?

If Golunsky really was a demon, as Raguel claimed, how did one arrest a demon?

How did one stop a dark plot by a demon?

From what Raguel told her, a demon could manipulate whole groups of people at one time, as well as individuals. It that were true, the demon could have ignited a conspiracy of some kind already. An apolitical conspiracy disguised as a political one.

The demon could be fanning flames within the Party, or even within certain branches of the government by playing on tensions that already existed.

Raguel was right––the conditions were there. Those fights were already happening.

The “window,” as Raguel called it, was open.

How could she possibly do anything about that?

She, Ilana, was not an angel. She could help Raguel look for where the demon might unfold his plans, but what could she do about it, even if they found it? Would she approach her superiors and tell them they could not react aggressively to a perceived security threat because they were very possibly being manipulated by a demon?

Angel or no, Raguel was not giving her much to work with.

All of this turned slowly in her mind as she stood with a friend of hers, a woman who ran a state shoe outlet with her husband at the Kitai-gorod GUM store facing Red Square. Her friend, Tasha, kept looking at her periodically and raising her eyebrows as she watched Raguel get his feet measured by her husband.

Ilana could tell Tasha was dying to ask about her mysterious friend, who she’d only briefly introduced to them both as a “work colleague.” In fact, calling that introduction brief might even be an understatement. She’d barely muttered his name before handing him over to Tasha’s husband to get him fitted for new shoes.

From the purse-lipped but humor-laden smile Tasha aimed at Raguel’s body and face, she had clearly noticed Ilana’s angelic friend was more than a little easy on the eyes.

When Ilana refused to answer her meaningful stares, Tasha stepped closer and nudged her sharply with an elbow.

“Well? Who is he? Who is your friend?”

“He’s helping me with a... a work issue.”

“Uh-huh. A work issue.” She smirked. “Isn’t that Uri’s sweater he’s wearing?”

Ilana felt her face warm. “It is.” She quirked an eyebrow at her friend. “Should I be disturbed that you noticed that, Tasha?”

But Tasha wasn’t to be distracted. “So this beautiful specimen of Russian maleness.... he had reason to change his clothing at your place? How intriguing.”

Ilana rolled her eyes, but felt her face heat more.

Folding her arms, she didn’t answer.

Tasha laughed. “What did you do to his shoes? Do I even want to know?”

Ilana saw Raguel glance up, as if he’d heard that last part.

“Shut up, Tasha.”

“He definitely likes you, Ilana,” Tasha whispered back. When Ilana gave her a warning look, Tasha only winked. “He looks at you a lot. He tries to do it carefully, very stealthy in his small glances, but Miss Tasha sees all. Including him staring at your ass when you took off your coat, Ilana dearest...”

Ilana flushed warmer still. “Can we discuss this thing later, Tasha?”

“Oh certainly, my friend. Certainly. We can discuss this ‘thing’ whenever you wish...”

Ilana scowled, but Tasha only flipped her long dark hair over one shoulder, laughing louder. Ilana couldn’t help noticing that Tasha looked as fashionable as always in a forest green jacket and skirt. Certainly better than Ilana herself did in her dusty black, two-year-old suit jacket and boots. Maybe she should take more advantage of the perks of her position.

At least buy herself some better clothes.

“Maybe you and your friend want to get drinks with us later?” Tasha prompted, still grinning at her. “I could ask him these questions myself? I find myself quite... stimulated... by the idea of interrogating him personally.”

Ilana snorted. “You are ridiculous, Tasha.”

“Come now, don’t be greedy. Grigor is curious too, I can tell.”

“I think we will be working,” Ilana muttered, still watching Raguel where he bent over the shoes with Tasha’s husband. “Perhaps another day.”

“I will take you up on that. I wish to hear all about this ‘work problem’ of yours that comrade handsome with the sex-eyes insists on helping you with personally...”

Ilana snorted again in spite of herself.

Again, Raguel glanced back at the two of them. That time, Tasha noticed his glance as well, but only laughed, rubbing her friend’s shoulder affectionately with one hand.

They’d found black leather dress shoes that fit Raguel by then. As soon as they’d settled accounts, Ilana found herself ushering him out the door as quickly as she could before Tasha could embarrass her for real. Raguel watched her hand over the rubles and then take the receipt from Tasha’s husband with a frown on his face, however.

As they walked out the door, he spoke to her in a low voice.

“I have no way to pay you, Ilana,” he said.

Shouldering on her coat, she waved this off, not bothering to answer.

He followed her in silence.

He didn’t try to speak to her again until they were outside the GUM store altogether. By then, they’d walked half of the long block back to where she’d left her used-to-be-gold Zhiguli parked on the snow-dusted street.

“Ilana.” He caught hold of her arm, right as she’d been reaching for the door handle to her driver’s side door. “We should talk about this.”

She exhaled, looking up at him. She felt her cheeks heat involuntarily when she saw that intense gaze of his focused on hers, worry etched in his frown.

“Do not trouble yourself about this, comrade,” she said, dismissive as she averted her gaze. “It is only shoes. You needed them. It is done.”

“But I’ll need to eat in this form, as well.” He spoke as if these things had only just occurred to him. “...I have no place to sleep. If I sleep outside, I will be even colder than I was this morning. I will also likely be arrested again.” He swallowed, tightening his hold on her arm. “I do not wish to sleep outside, Ilana.”

Ilana found herself staring out over the street, watching the traffic pass.

She hadn’t thought about any of these things consciously yet, but it occurred to her that she’d already made up her mind. She simply hadn’t admitted as much to herself, much less to him. Feeling herself flush warmer, she fought an inexplicable wave of irritation at him. It occurred to her that her irritation came from him forcing her to speak that assumption aloud.

“You will stay with me,” she said, not looking at him.

His fingers tightened on her arm. “You don’t mind?” He sounded openly relieved.

“No. I do not mind.”

“I am a criminal though,” he said.

She smiled at that. She couldn’t help it. Shaking her head, she exhaled some of that humor in a snort. “If you are what you say, then I should help you, da? As a fellow law enforcement officer, at the very least? And even if you are human now, will I not go to hell if I do not side with the Angels?”

He smiled, shaking his head in return.

“There is no religion in the Motherland,” he reminded her gravely.

She heard the faint humor in his words a second time, and rolled her eyes.

“Get in the car, comrade,” she said, smiling in spite of herself as she jerked open the driver’s side door. Before she could slide in however, he wrapped his arm around her again. That time, he lowered his head before she could react and kissed her on the mouth.

She got the sense it was impulsive, like before.

Or compulsive, perhaps.

Unplanned at the very least.

Maybe she was wrong, though. Maybe it was planned––maybe he’d thought about it beforehand––even back in her apartment when she started all this by staring at him when he was naked. Whatever he’d been thinking, when he raised his head briefly to look at her, all she saw in his eyes was surprise.

Then that look in his eyes darkened.

He kissed her again, harder that time.

That time, when she let him, he used his tongue.

As soon as she parted her lips, he pressed the length of his body against hers, pushing her into the car door and tightening his arm around her back. His hand wrapped into her hair when he kissed her a third time, and that time, he squeezed her even tighter against him. She found herself gasping by the end of that kiss, then she had her hand on his chest, pushing him back slightly, separating them before he could kiss her again.

“Hey,” she murmured. “We are working, yes?”

Breathing harder, he nodded, meeting her gaze. His eyes were slightly out of focus. “Yes,” he said, breathless. “I apologize. I was briefly... overcome.”

She laughed. “Overcome? Do I want to know by what?”

“Gratitude perhaps?” he said, giving her a faint smile. “I could say something else, but gratitude is probably more accurate.”

“So that was a thank you?” She found herself shaking her head, smiling up at him in spite of herself. “Because that was more enthusiastic than strictly necessary, comrade.”

He returned her smile, but that other look never left his eyes.

She felt her cheeks warm when he continued to stare down at her. He hadn’t moved his lower body from hers, and she was uncomfortably aware of him pressing deliberately into the V where her legs met. Even as her mind drifted back there, he pressed against her harder, letting out a low sound when she pressed back.

“I want to do that thing with you,” he said, gruff, by her ear. “Sex. The demon was not wrong.”

She stared up at him, sure she’d misheard him.

Or misunderstood him perhaps.

But she hadn’t done either. She knew she hadn’t.

“I didn’t fully understand then,” he added, his voice still low. “Why it was I followed you like I did. Such things appear... different. In that form.”

“Different?” she snorted, hiding her embarrassment. “How?”

“Less physical,” he said at once. “Less immediate, I suppose.”

Still watching him study her face, she let out another half-laugh in spite of herself. “I will give you credit, comrade,” she said, disentangling herself partly from his embrace, even as it hit her that her knees were actually weak from kissing him. “...If this is all some elaborate come-on for sex, it is by far the most original one I have ever encountered. I would hazard a guess that it might be the most original of all male pick-up attempts...”

“Is that a no?”

Biting her lip, she shook her head. “No.”

“Is it a yes?”

Shoving lightly at his chest, she rolled her eyes. “No. Do not push your luck, comrade Archangel.”

He smiled, his eyes on her mouth a beat too long before they returned to hers. “But I thought you wished to be helpful to the angels?” he said, smiling wider.

She burst out in another laugh, caught off guard by his humor again.

Controlling her own smile, she answered in mock-seriousness. “We have already established this, too, da? There is no religion in the Motherland. You said this yourself.”

“Ah, of course,” he said. “How could I forget?”

He gave her a final squeeze then released her after he said it, smiling when she let out a surprised gasp. Ilana found herself holding onto the car door to stay upright after he let go. She followed him with her eyes as he walked around to the passenger side, and as he folded himself back inside her beat-up vehicle.

Then she shook her head, wondering again just exactly what it was she was doing.

Glancing back towards the arched opening that led into the glass doors of the GUM department store, she did a double-take when she saw her friend Tasha standing there. Her friend smoked a cigarette in the alcove just on the other side of the arch, her elbow propped on her arm where it folded over her chest. A smile played at her full lips as she quirked an eyebrow in Ilana’s direction.

Clearly she’d seen the kissing.

Ilana’s suspicion was confirmed when her friend grinned, then made kissy-lips to the cold air. She burst out in a laugh when Ilana made an obscene gesture in return before climbing back into her weather-worn car.

“I am surrounded by smart-Alecs,” she muttered, slamming the car door.

GORKY PARK

THEY CROSSED THE Moscow River, heading south and away from the Kremlin.

They reached the park after only a few minutes more.

They did not speak while she drove.

He kept a hand on her leg. It startled her when he first placed it there, but he left it after studying her expression and seeing her nod. His hand still weighed there now, heavy and warm, but he didn’t do anything else with it that was overly distracting. Truthfully, she was beginning to find the contact almost as comforting as he seemed to.

In any case, she was thinking about her work again.

She would need to call in soon. Her boss, Karkoff, would want to know what to tell his superiors. He would want to hear her opinion about whether they should open a political investigation on Golunsky or leave it with the militia. He would want to know if there was any risk to the Party and how they might spin this thing, if so. More to the point, he would want to know if they should be expecting more incidents.

She wasn’t sure how to answer those questions now.

Glancing at the profile of Raguel as she drove, she decided those answers could possibly wait another few hours.

She pulled into a parking lot off Krimsky Val, then directly up to the main entrance to the enormous, if somewhat dilapidated Gorky Park with its Stalinist entryway columns. She parked as close as she could get to the second set of pillars, the ones that led into the park itself. Since it was morning still, and a weekday, she found a spot right by the gate.

Climbing out of the Lada and slamming the door with a loud squeak, she tugged her coat more tightly around her, feeling the sharp remnants of winter more than she had been for the past few days. She stared up at a clump of dark, leaf-less branches. Most of the trees she could see were not evergreens and had lost their leaves months ago. Black, stick-like arms rose up from their frozen trunks, giving the wooded paths a bleak appearance, like a row of specters guarding over a dead world.

Or perhaps Ilana had simply spent too much time that morning thinking about demons.

Regardless, she knew it might be more than a month before this year’s new leaves began to appear. When they did, it would transform the park entirely.

Gorky Park had fallen on hard times in the past decades, with most of the park rides now rickety and rusted, and borderline unsafe. The cement rimming the ponds was cracked and benches were dirty and often inhabited by homeless vets, criminals and the mentally ill.

She knew the city militsiya worked to keep out illegal vendors and drug addicts and drunks, but it was an upkeep solution, not a lasting one.

She glanced at Raguel at the thought, remembering how he’d started his day. She wondered who found him screaming. Perhaps locals or drunks or petty criminals had found him here, followed swiftly by annoyed city militsiya.

It was not a good introduction to Moscow––or to this world, really.

Ilana still had a fondness for this park in summertime, however.

Even in the dead of winter, it had its charms. Ice skating happened every year as soon as the pond froze over enough, and locals came bundled up and happy for weekend outings. They would skate and eat meat pies and drink vodka and hot cocoa with their families, and eventually make it home cold and wet and exhausted but happy.

This time of year, it had a desolate feel.

She gave Raguel another glance, watching him look down the center walkway of the park past the Stalinist architecture of the entrance pillars. His eyes found the fountain at the end of that row––although of course it wasn’t switched on now, and wouldn’t be for months yet––then shifted to the right, towards the river.

“Do you remember where you were?” she said.

He gave her a grim look. “I will recognize it.”

She bit her lip, stifling a snort. She followed when he began to walk, still shaking her head. “Do you have any idea how big this park is, comrade?”

“I will find it,” he assured her. “There was water nearby.”

“A lot of water? Or a little?”

He came to a stop. Turning, he gave her a questioning look.

Ilana shrugged with one shoulder, pointing to their left, which was roughly east.

“There is a small pond.” She pointed straight ahead, due south. “...There is a much larger lake.” She pointed to an object closer. “You see the fountain already. It, too, has a basin that is likely mostly thawed.” She swung her arm all the way to the right, aiming her hand roughly west, where he had been looking before. “...There is also the river. All of these contain water. Several of them are very large, comrade Archangel. As is this park.”

Raguel nodded, as if thinking. He didn’t seem to hear her sarcasm.

Or perhaps he simply ignored it.

“Small water,” he said after a pause.

“Small like a large fountain?” she pressed. “Or small like a small lake?”

“The pond.” He glanced in the direction of the fountain. “It is not that. There were trees nearby. Tall trees.”

“Was it frozen?”

He thought about that too. “We will go to whichever of the two ponds or lakes is closest,” he decided. “We will walk around each one until I find the area I remember. Then we work from there. Is that acceptable to you, Ilana?”

She blinked, inexplicably fighting a smile. “It is.”

He nodded, his crystal eyes holding a distance again.

She followed him to their left, watching as he aimed his feet in the direction of the smaller body of water, what locals referred to only as “Little Pond.”

She shoved her hands deep in the pockets of her ankle-length coat, her boots thudding on the hard pavement in the area of the pillars, then growing quieter as they entered the tree-lined walk. She saw a few stubborn drifts of snow on the dirt below shaded trunks, but most of the ground was bare and hard-looking.

Glancing up at the dark branches of the looming trees, she kept Raguel in her peripheral vision as she scanned the paths and trees for other human beings. She didn’t see many. A few walkers, but all on different paths and none very close. Most people she saw fell into one of the rough categories of semi-permanent residents of the park.

They all ignored her and Raguel, immersed inside their own ecosystems.

Several of the cleaner-looking pedestrians had large dogs with them on leashes. Most didn’t come alone but walked in small groups, their breaths pluming in the air as they talked amongst themselves. Thinking about how quiet it was, she glanced behind them as well, but saw no one in that direction at all. It crossed her mind to check her watch.

It was still only eleven o’clock.

She had nearly forgotten just how early she’d been called out to check on the Golunsky matter. They had likely found Raguel not long after dawn.

Stifling a yawn at the thought and wishing she’d brought a thermos of fresh coffee with her from her apartment, she pulled a set of scuffed leather gloves out of her pocket and proceeded to put them on. Watching Raguel stuff his hands deeper into the pockets of the long coat he wore––her father’s this time, not Uri’s––she found herself wishing she’d thought to buy him gloves at GUM as well. As for the coat, it had only sat in her closet since her father’s funeral anyway, so she was happy to put it to good use.

Perhaps she could find her father’s gloves to give Raguel, as well.

She could almost hear her mother’s voice inside her mind as she thought it.

You are adopting this man now, Ilanova? Really? Simply because he is handsome? I thought you were a smart girl. Is this what smart girls do?

Smiling faintly, Ilana gazed out over the half-thawed pond visible just ahead. A dozen or so steps more and she emerged from the line of trees and into the clearing. To her left, a cluster of dingy paddle boats had been left tied to a short dock by the crumbling cement rim, half-frozen in place by the receding ice.

A caretaker would probably have to answer for those, come spring.

She looked back over the patchy ice on the water and the evergreen trees in the distance, when Raguel called to her.

She hadn’t even seen him walk away.

When she turned, he was already a dozen yards from the pond, in a small clearing surrounded by trees. He appeared to be looking around on the ground.

He sank gracefully to one knee on the wet ground as she watched. Lowering his second knee with that same mechanical precision, he began feeling over the frozen ground with his bare hands. Ilana walked over to him briskly right as he began fumbling around a small snow drift, still without gloves or even using his coat sleeve.

Reaching his side, she frowned at how pink his fingers were already.

“Let me do that.” She nudged his shoulder with her thigh to stop him. When he looked up at her, puzzled, she showed him her gloved hands. “Use your eyes, comrade. I will use these. Get up. Please. My hands are cold just watching you.”

He hesitated, then rose back to his feet with that same fluid grace, allowing them to switch places. As she felt over the ground, he proceeded to stalk around her, making increasingly wide circles as he stared intently at the ground.

“What does it look like?” she said, still using her gloved hands carefully.

He described an old-fashioned lever-lock key, glass in appearance, with a skull in the place of the key’s bow. She gave him a puzzled look at the skull part, and his lips grew taut.

“I realize how it sounds.” He gave her a direct, grimmer look, tinged with a faint smile. “I must say, you’ve taken a lot of things quite well today, Ilana––things that would sound nothing but ridiculous to most humans. In this case, however, I am afraid we must not get our hopes up. Remember, this is likely not an Earth object at all. There is a good chance I won’t see it in this form... and neither will you.”

Sighing a bit, he went back to peering at the ground.

“...I wanted to come here when you suggested it, because I agree we should eliminate the possibility. But I do not think we should spend too much time with this. Talking to the demon is unlikely to yield anything of use to us, either. But I suppose we will have to do that next, for the same reason. Once we’ve checked the detective’s office for the key, as well.”

“Talk to Golunsky?” Still kneeling on the wet ground, she stared up at him, frowning. “You imagine I could easily arrange a little chat between you and a suspected murderer, Raguel? In a militsiya prison? Is that it?”

He looked surprised. “Of course.”

Letting out another humorless snort, she turned back to feel over the cold ground. Even with her coat and the gloves, kneeling on the frozen earth was starting to seep that cold into her bones and skin. She slid forward on her knees, still feeling with her hands, when her fingers closed over something smooth and hard.

She grasped it, lifting it up, more surprised than anything.

“Hey!” she said, sitting back on her heels. “I have it.”

“What?”

Shock altered his voice. He walked swiftly to her, kneeling beside her and resting a hand on her shoulder to peer into her hands. She brushed the object off with her gloved fingers and indeed saw it was a glass key with a skull’s head at the end.

No wonder no one had found it. It was completely transparent, so wouldn’t show up much at all against the snow, or even the bare ground.

“It is kind of pretty, do you not think?” she said. “Even with the death’s head.”

“Where?” he said, his voice doubtful. “Where is it?”

Frowning, she looked up, meeting his gaze. His face was only a few inches from hers, his fingers still wrapped around her shoulder.

“It is right in my hand, comrade.”

“Where?”

She held it up, exhaling. “Right here? Are you blind?”

Looking at his face, watching him squint at the key she held in her fingers, his expression bewildered, she glanced between him and the key.

“Can you really not see it?” she said.

“No,” he said.

Staring at him in bewilderment, she frowned harder. “Hold out your hand.”

Obediently, he held his hand out flat at once.

She placed the key on his bare palm...

And it fell right through his living flesh.

“`Tchyo za ga`lima!” She lurched back, moving away from the key like it had burned a hole through his skin. Sprawling back on the snow, she stared at Raguel’s still-outstretched hand, then down at the key, panting. “That is impossible! Who did this? How?”

He lowered his hand, watching her, puzzled.

“What happened?” he said. “What is wrong, Ilana?”

“The key!” She pointed at his hand, then down at the snow. “It went through you! It passed through you, like you are a ghost!” Pulling herself back up to her knees, she caught hold of his hand, reassuring herself that it was still there. Feeling over his arm and then his shoulders and neck and face, she met his gaze, only to find him watching her, his gray eyes puzzled, but holding a faint thread of humor.

“I am still here, Ilana.” He smiled. “Do you still see it? The key?”

She stared at him, struggling with his seeming inability to discern the import of her words.

“Did you not hear me, comrade?” she snapped. “It passed through you! Like you were not there at all! Like you are not made of flesh!”

His frown deepened, as did his voice. “I heard you. Can you still see the key, Ilana?”

She stared from one of his eyes to the other before the words penetrated. Then she looked down at the patch of snow on the dark earth.

The key stood on top of it, glinting faintly in the sunlight that dappled the snow.

“Yes,” she said.

“Then bring it.” He glanced around them, his eyes sharper. “I am thinking I was not meant to have help in finding this, Ilana. We are attracting attention.”

Ilana turned, scanning the trees and the area by the pond.

He was right. They were being watched, and by more than one pair of eyes.

The hairs on the back of her neck rose, even as she scrambled hastily back to her feet. She felt something sinister in those stares, although she couldn’t pinpoint why. She also got the feeling of more eyes on them than she could see––like most of the things watching them were as invisible to her as the key was to Raguel.

Looking back at the snow, she reached out tentatively with her hand, picking the key up gingerly in her gloved fingers. It remained solid.

“Try to touch it again,” she said to Raguel.

“Ilana, not here.”

“Just quickly,” she insisted. “Just try to touch it. I am holding it out right now.”

She held the key towards him, her palm flat, so that the key’s teeth faced him, the glass skull resting on the mound of her hand. Raguel laid his hand flat on top of her fingers, grasping her wrist as if the key wasn’t there at all. The added pressure should have pressed the glass key deeper into her skin and flesh, but it did not.

Where his hand was, the key simply... wasn’t.

She let out another string of curse words in Russian.

“How is that possible?” She breathed out clouds of steam, feeling like she was breathing too much, feeling light-headed again.

She met his gaze, and his puzzlement returned.

“I told you I was an angel.” His voice came out deliberate, calm, patient. “I told you I was an Archangel, Ilana... and that this key is likely what turned me human. It is not an Earth-made object. It cannot be. It will not behave as one, either.”

“So why can I see it?” she said. “Why can I touch it?”

He exhaled. “I do not know.”

“Is it the demon? Did he do this?”

“It could be gods or demons or angels,” he said simply. “There is no way to know. Not right now, Ilana.”

He rose gracefully back to his feet.

She waited for him to say more, to explain more about what had just happened, but he didn’t. He was still looking down, studying her expression with no expression of his own, when he politely extended a hand.

She hesitated only a breath before she took it with the hand not gripping the key. Forcing out a held breath, trying to get her thudding heart under control, she let him help her to her feet.

She didn’t let go of him once she was standing.

“Put it in your pocket,” he advised her. “The key, Ilana. You should not hold it where it is visible. I suspect that is what is attracting attention.”

Again, she found herself looking around.

Seeing the number of people now watching them, alarm exploded in her. It was not rational. It was gut-level, visceral. She had a gun. She was KGB. They would not dare to attack her if she flashed her credentials, and if they did prior to that, chances were, she could handle it unless they were truly overrun, or if some of them happened to be armed––which was highly unlikely. Even militsiya were not allowed to carry guns off-duty.

Even knowing all that, she found herself looking from face to face, recognizing some from the clusters of vagrants they’d passed in the trees, as well as a few of those pedestrians she’d seen earlier, walking their dogs. Her panic didn’t lessen––although again, it was totally irrational.

These were just ordinary people.

Even those who likely lived in Gorky Park looked less like hardened criminals and more like addicts and vagrants. Noticing that didn’t calm her, however––if anything, it heightened her paranoia. Seeing them all together, people who would never normally interact or even stand so closely to one another, now clustered together in mismatched, motley groups––staring at them silently––she felt her alarm turn almost animal.

Still following the strange crowd with her eyes, she backed out of the clearing instinctively, moving closer to the trees as her breathing began to accelerate.

Raguel followed her silently.

“Who are they?” she said as she walked with long strides. “What do they want?”

“Who those people are does not matter, Ilana,” he said.

“But what do they want? Why are they staring at us?”

“I suspect one or more demons is using them to keep an eye on this place.”

“Why?” she snapped. “Because of the key? Why not just take it themselves? Throw it in the lake, if they don’t want anyone else to have it?”

“I do not know. But I suspect it is because they can’t.” Raguel’s voice hardened, growing grim, more warrior-like. “I also suspect they are not happy at all that you found the key for me... that I did not come back here alone.” He gripped her hand tighter. “Come, Ilana. It is unlikely they will attack, but I do not wish to risk it. Not while I am in this form. Let us go. Faster, da?”

When he picked up his pace to a brisk jog, she did the same.

She glanced around them a second time, her eyes stopping on a few more faces that she could now see pacing them on the path parallel to where they walked through the trees.

Ordinary people. They were ordinary people, but something was wrong in those stares. Some of them were too far away from her to see their eyes clearly––some were so far away all she saw were dark wool coats and hats––but she could feel it. She could feel that wrongness, and for the first time in longer than she could remember, she was afraid.

She heard footsteps from closer then and turned. A group emerged from a different path, one that led to the small school behind the pond. They looked like they might even belong to the school in some way, and wore clean coats and boot. The closest of these, a gray-haired woman with a slack face, stared openly at Ilana, her mouth strangely ajar.

Raguel broke into a run, pulling her at an angle to avoid them.

“Ilana, come.” Raguel’s voice grew urgent. “Run faster. Please!”

She did her best to do as he said, although she struggled to keep up with his longer strides. It didn’t help that her shoes were not the best for this terrain.

“How can they even see us from there?” she panted. “How can they know I have this key?”

“The humans do not. Although they might try to take it from you anyway, if they can... and if the demons push them to do so.”

“Push them?” She stared at his back as he ran ahead of her, and he seemed even larger to her now, more formidable. Protectiveness practically emanated off him. And yet, for the first time, he genuinely frightened her. “Are you saying they can manipulate their minds, Raguel?”

“The Fallen can do many things,” he said only.

Still fighting to make sense of his words, she let out a gasp when he yanked on her hand again, harder that time, to avoid another cluster of people approaching them from the other side. A few of them were half-running now too.

Luckily, none of them ran very fast or very well.

Even so, the sheer fact that they were truly being chased by unrelated strangers made Ilana’s heart thud crazily her chest all over again.

“We are getting closer to the gates,” he said, his voice low. “But be ready. There is some chance they will be waiting for us there, too.

She felt her panic start to recede, replaced by her military training. Reflexively, she touched the gun hidden inside her coat, still running just behind Raguel as he wove them through the thick-branched trees.

“It will be all right, Ilana,” he said, glancing back at her. “As I said, it is unlikely they will attack us here. But we must be careful... they could do other things.”

“Like what?” she panted back, wary.

He didn’t answer, but tugged her harder again when they ran into another cluster of people sitting around a campfire in a small clearing. Watching those dead-eyed stares turn to focus on them––the cluster of bearded, unwashed faces reflected in firelight––Ilana didn’t argue, but only sped up her pace. She felt that panic closing in on her once more as the trees thickened, when suddenly...

They emerged from the trees totally.

Ilana found herself looking up at the columned gate of the Stalinist entrance portal.

No one waited for them there, as Raguel feared.

No one stood there at all.

Exhaling in relief, she didn’t slow her run, but rather sped up, now that she was on asphalt and concrete rather than uneven ground. Within seconds she was nearly pacing Raguel as they both sprinted out of the park the way they’d come.

ANOTHER VANISHING

GIVEN THE INVISIBLE key that passed through solid flesh and then being watched and followed by dead-eyes strangers––to the extent that she and Raguel fled Gorky Park––Ilana found herself agreeing with Raguel.

They needed to go see Golunsky.

They needed to go see him now.

If this was something that could affect so many people, they couldn’t wait.

Mere minutes after they emerged from those trees, they were inside Ilana’s car, with the doors slammed and locked. When she looked through her dingy windshield though, no one appeared to have followed them out of the park itself.

The parking lot, if anything, was even more empty than it had been when they arrived.

Taking a breath now that she didn’t feel in immediate danger, she found herself thinking about Golunsky, about what they would do next.

She wasn’t sure how she would get Raguel in there, but unlike before, when she scoffed at the very suggestion, she was now firmly convinced that she must. Her mind was already turning over the problem, finding ways she might frame the request without putting Raguel on the radar of the authorities.

At this point, she didn’t want him known by KGB at all.

She intended go back later to make sure the militsiya officer had done what he said he would do, and purged Raguel’s arrest file. If she had to, she would share some information about Raguel with Karkoff, but she was leaning towards not doing that, either.

She also needed to get him papers, and soon.

She knew someone who could handle the papers angle for her on short notice. He did jobs for the KGB on occasion, and in return they let him ply his trade––within certain strict limits, of course––for those with the money to afford him.

That would need to be her first priority, even before they went to visit Golunsky. She could not again bring Raguel into a police station without some record of who he was.

As she thought through the logistics of these things, it hit her suddenly that she believed him––she believed Raguel. Perhaps she had believed him before they went to Gorky Park, even as her mind told her she was reserving judgment. Watching that key pass through his bare skin and flesh, not once but twice, was enough to shake her out of that denial.

If Raguel was telling the truth about himself, then he was telling the truth about Golunsky.

The need to hurry felt like a physical force now, like something let loose in her body once her mind admitted this was really happening. Urgency shook her hands as she started up the Zhiguli, revving the engine to warm it.

Even so, he found herself just sitting there a few moments while she caught her breath.

She fought to level her mind, but kept going back to the key, to what she still clutched in one hand inside her jacket pocket, even as she gripped the steering wheel with the other. She leaned over to crank up the heater, then pulled her hand off the key to rub her hands together, blowing on them for warmth. She told herself she was waiting for the engine to finish heating, for the windows to lose their thin layer of ice while the car’s motor settled into its normal, slightly-wheezing gait.

“What do we do?” she said.

She didn’t look at him as she asked it. She wasn’t even positive she was speaking to him.

Even so, he answered her.

“We must find out where Golunsky has been for the past few weeks,” Raguel said.

She glanced at him. Raguel was watching her, his eyes faintly concerned.

His voice remained calm as he spoke, however.

“...I suspect most of what he’s done, he did not do in this body. To jump bodies, his previous body and the new body must be in the same room. We need to determine if anyone died recently around Golunsky, and who they were. We must also know who he spent time with in the period prior to his escape from the mental institution. It is very possible he was groomed in some way for this role by a third party...”

She nodded, forcing her mind to turn around this problem. “Yes,” she said, clearing her throat. “Yes. This makes sense.”

“Are you all right?”

She looked up, surprised. Then she let out a humorless chuckle. “No, comrade angel. I am not ‘all right.’” Wiping her face with a gloved hand, she fought to relax. “I feel like I’m going to throw up.”

“They are still watching us,” Raguel said. “We should go, Ilana.”

She looked up in alarm––first at him, then out the dirty windshield of her car. He was right. They had followed them out of the park by then. Just past the Stalinist arches of the park’s entrance, Ilana saw a crowd emerging from the park. It was a larger crowd than what they’d encountered by the pond. Some she recognized from there. Some she had never seen before.

Like before, some looked like vagrants, drunks. Others wore an expensive-looking coats. One of the nearer ones had a small dog at the end of a leather leash he gripped in one gloved hand. The dog strained at its leash, yapping, but the man didn’t glance at it.

He never took his eyes off the windshield of her little gold Zhiguli.

The crowd continued to move towards them as she watched.

“Ilana,” Raguel said, his voice warning. “They are real. They can hurt us.”

Something about his words snapped her out of her daze.

Fumbling frantically for the key, she turned it, making the starter screech. Realizing the car was already running, she jammed the gear-shift into reverse. Disengaging the hand break when the wheels spun, she peeled out, skidding and fishtailing in the snow and ice.

Cranking the wheel around, she jammed her foot back on the gas and aimed them back towards the main road, fishtailing again when she hit the gas too hard.

She was panting again. She found herself looking compulsively in the rear-view mirror once they had the park behind them.

The line of men in black coats and hats just stood there, watching them go.

The little dog at the end of the expensive leather leash yapped at her car’s tail lights as she and Raguel left them behind.

Ilana didn’t start to breathe normally again until they’d entered the post-lunch traffic of Krimsky Val. Only then did she look over at Raguel. He was watching her, that concern etched even more prominently into his smokey crystal eyes.

Avoiding it, she looked back at the road. “I must get you papers.”

Her voice shook slightly as she wiped her face with a gloved hand.

“...We will go now.” She made up her mind even as she said it. “We will go to see Golunsky as soon as that is done. We will talk to him, you and I.” Her jaw firmed, and that time, she glanced at Raguel, who still watched her cautiously.

“...After that,” she continued. “We will go speak to those at the mental institution. They will know if anyone died around him recently... and if he had any visitors. Perhaps this change happened in him right before he escaped.”

She glanced up at Raguel, looking for his approval.

The angel only nodded.

Then he reached over, placing his hand cautiously on her leg.

Exhaling, Ilana looked back at the road. When he didn’t remove his hand, she felt herself slowly start to relax. After a few seconds more, she placed her own hand on top of his, clutching his fingers as she drove.

Neither of them spoke.

THEY PULLED UP to the front of the militsiya station after passing through the main gate.

They had already visited the forger.

Ilana kept that stop as brief as possible, and told the man nothing about Raguel. The forger was used to that, of course, and did not ask. He gave Raguel a choice from several names, took photos for the current picture and sorted with them through younger photos to use for the obligatory photo for age sixteen, which most Russians had, since sixteen was the age they first got their required propisky documentation and internal passport.

He did everything right there, right in front of them.

Once Raguel had his new papers, Ilana felt herself breathe a little easier.

He was now Pavel Gershovich, aged thirty-two, born in Moscow.

They would say Raguel was a nickname, if asked. Many Russians had nicknames.

Once they had the paperwork, she brought him here, to Petrovsky 38. Previously, she’d hoped papers would not matter if he was with her––especially if they kept their visit short––but with everything that had happened, she couldn’t risk it.

More importantly, he had an identity now, even if it still contained gaps. She had his papers reflect that he lived in the same apartment building as her, in a flat she knew to be vacant currently. It was an imperfect cover, but again, it was better than nothing, and would explain why he could be seen in her building if anyone asked.

As for Raguel himself, he seemed relatively indifferent to the details of his new persona.

He climbed out of the car once she’d parked it, slamming his door shut when Ilana did the same. He followed her silently as they walked towards the entrance to the station. She slipped a little on the icy walkway as they made their way towards the stairs leading up to the front door, and realized the temperature had dropped again.

She didn’t bother with more than a nod at the officer manning the front desk. She’d already decided the fewer people they interacted with the better, so she more or less walked right by him. She brought Raguel through a maze of corridors between smaller offices and file cabinets and desks, straight into the slightly larger office where she’d been earlier that day, watching the lead detective attempt to interrogate Golunsky.

She lucked out.

The operativnik, a man named Obnizov, was still inside.

Walking in, she had rehearsed nothing, but found herself taking the direct approach.

“I have a possible witness,” she said, speaking before the detective had even looked up. When Obnizov did glance up, startled, she continued speaking. “Yegor, we need to see him. Golunsky. Can you take us?”

The detective frowned, glancing at Raguel. He sized him up briefly in Uri’s clothes, which were well-made, if casual. Ilana’s father’s coat was even more expensive-looking, and fit Raguel surprisingly well. Appraisal over, Obnizov relaxed. He nodded, rising to his feet as he pulled a heavy, loaded keychain off his desk.

“I will sit in,” he said.

He didn’t phrase it as a question. Ilana only nodded, glancing at Raguel.

The detective walked towards and then past them, giving Raguel another once-over before looking at Ilana. He still spoke only to her.

“Where did you find him? The Square?”

Ilana nodded, not bothering to elaborate.

The detective grunted, still sorting through keys as he walked them down the lefthand corridor, heading in the opposite direction of the holding cells where Ilana first found Raguel. She knew Obnizov was bringing them to the smaller cluster of private holding cells housed in this part of the building. These particular cells were reserved for offenders in more serious crimes––or for crimes that were political or sensitive in some way.

Usually those residing in them only stayed there long enough for someone from the KGB or the military to arrive and collect them.

“Why did you not call me?” the detective said, giving her a slightly harder look. “Or am I no longer the deciding voice on this case?”

Reading the expression on his face, she sighed, letting her shoulders relax.

“I apologize, comrade,” she said. “It was an unexpected development. I got the call, since he is a Party-affiliate.” She motioned vaguely towards Raguel, again not elaborating more than absolutely necessary. “I brought him here as soon as I could. This is off the books for now. Truthfully, it is a long shot, but I told them I would run it down.”

The detective nodded. That harder look in his eyes faded slightly.

Ilana could tell her answer more or less satisfied him. He knew how things worked.

He still seemed to be strangely suspicious of her, however. It was that same, nagging feeling she’d gotten from him that morning, like he didn’t trust her. He hadn’t been so cold or so distant to her prior to their interview with Golunsky.

Frowning slightly, she watched as Obnizov unlocked a heavy, iron-plated door that led to the small holding area. He walked inside and Ilana followed. She glimpsed only two cells this time, instead of the row that lived at the lower levels on the other side of the building.

“Where is he?” she said at once, looking at the empty cells.

Obnizov came to a dead stop.

He did it so quickly that Ilana ran into him from behind. She pulled herself back, only to run into Raguel, who had been following closely behind them both. She’d only looked past Obnizov long enough to briefly scan the length of both cells a second time, when the detective let out an explosive string of expletives in Russian.

A harder edge of the remnants of his Georgian accent came out when he did.

“Where is he?” Obnizov turned, glaring at Ilana as if she had done this. “I don’t know. Where the chyort voz’mi is he, Party Comrade Kopovich? You ask me this? How would I know? I am only lowly militsiya, am I not?” When she blinked at him, startled, he scowled openly. “Did you know of this? Is this more Party bullshit, that they do not even tell me when a multiple homicide suspect is taken from my custody? Or are you behind this?”

Ilana stared at him, then back at the empty cell. “Me? Why would I be behind this?”

“You tell me, ‘Ilana,’” he said, his voice openly sarcastic. “Why would you be?”

The import of his words hit then, even as her stomach sank.

“He could not have been taken for processing of some kind here?” she said. “More interrogation?”

“No!” Obnizov snapped. “He could not! Not without my knowing! Are you serious right now?”

She shut her mouth with a snap, shaking her head before looking up at him.

“I do not think this is Party, comrade... nor KGB, not in the usual way. It is certainly not my doing. Whatever this is, it is not official, or they simply would have had me bring Golunsky to them this morning...” She glanced back at the empty cell. “This makes no sense.”

“You are telling the truth? You knew nothing of this?”

She stared at him, incredulous. “Why would I be here if I did?” Frowning up at the angry Obnizov’s face, she caught hold of his arm, trying to get him to focus. “Yeger... you know this is not me! Why would I ask to question him, if it was?” At the other’s harder scowl, she sighed. “We will talk to the release guards, you and I. Find out who has him.”

“No one should have him!” Obnizov exploded, jerking his arm out from her hands. “This is bullshit, Ilana! It is total bullshit, to do it like this!”

“I agree.” She went back to staring at the empty cell. “We will clear this up, you and I...”

Obnizov only scowled though, looking at her with even more suspicion.

She was about to try and speak to him again when she glanced at Raguel and trailed, forgetting her words when she saw his expression. He frowned intently at the wall of one of the the empty cells, anger etched in his handsome features.

She followed his stare. When she bent down and stared at the same section of wall, she saw words written there in dark, red-tinted script.

“What is that?” the detective snapped, apparently following their stares too. “What is that written there? What does it say?”

Walking closer, Ilana bent her knees to lower her body to a crouch so she could peer through the iron bars. Staring at the words dripping there on the gray wall, she realized they had been written in drying blood.

Too late, Raguel, the words said in Russian. You and your little KGB cunt are too late.

“KGB?” Obnizov spoke loudly, reading the words from behind her. “What is that? Who is he talking about? And who is ‘Raguel’?”

Swallowing, she only looked up at Raguel.

But the angel didn’t speak.

YOU KNOW HOW IT WORKS

ILANA LEFT THE area of the cells fully intending to call Karkoff and find out if he knew who was behind moving Golunsky.

As it turned out, she did not have to call Karkoff, however.

Karkoff called her.

As soon as they reentered Obnizov’s office, a junior detective popped his head in the door and summoned Ilana to a private room.

She motioned for Raguel to follow her.

She did not really want him questioned alone by Obnizov, not until she’d prepped him, so he followed her into a private office and stood just beside her after the junior detective left them alone and shut the door. She didn’t bother to turn on the lights, so the room remained dim apart from an orange desk lamp that was already lit.

When she picked up the phone, she found Karkoff waiting for her on the other end.

“Ilana?” he said at once. “You have heard? You know about the new body, da?”

Ilana felt her skin grow cold. She glanced at Raguel, who watched her silently with his crystal gray eyes. “No.”

“This line is clear, Ilana. We can talk freely.”

She nodded, staring at the closed door. “What body, Karkoff?”

“It is him. Golunsky.”

Ilana felt her stomach give another lurch. “Another child?”

“No. I mean it is him. The body is Golunsky. He is dead.”

Again, Ilana glanced at Raguel, remembering what he’d told her.

The writing on the prison wall was right. They were too late.

She didn’t say much as Karkoff sketched out the basic details. Golunsky had been found, it turned out, with his throat cut, nearly on the steps of St. Basil’s Cathedral, “close enough to piss on Minin and Pozharsky,” as Karkoff put it, his voice holding the barest touch of grim humor.

She knew it was not a joking thing, though.

Ilana could hear the tension in Karkoff’s voice even below that humor.

“How?” she said, her voice numb. “How did this happen? Who saw it?”

“It is like before. No one will admit to seeing it, Ilana.”

“But how is that possible?” she said. “This is not the middle of the night––this is broad daylight! There are so many people there... soldiers.” She shook her head. “It is not possible, Karkoff.”

“Someone cleared that part of the Square, Ilana. Someone official.”

“Who?”

She heard him smile on the other end of the line, yet heard no humor in his voice.

“We do not know.”

“That is not possible, either,” she said, frustrated.

“Yet, it seems that is what happened. For now, at least.” He paused. “You’ll need to come down here, Ilana. But later, okay? Let official KGB do their thing first. I do not want you to break cover until it is absolutely necessary. I want you to stay with the militsiya for now. Find out who took him out of there. I am looking here, too.”

“When did they find the body?”

“One hour ago.” She heard him moving and realized he was checking to confirm his answer. “...Now, it is perhaps closer to two hours. I will get the exact time for you. There is a big stink here right now because it was a Party member’s son who found the body. I cannot get away for long.”

Ilana felt her sense of unreality worsen. “Two hours? Obnizov only now finds out he is gone, and Golunsky is already dead maybe two hours... again outside the Kremlin?”

Karkoff exhaled, sounding frustrated. “Someone is playing games with us, Ilana. You think?”

She slowly shook her head, but not in a no.

“Games are your specialty, Karkoff,” she said finally.

He grunted, then his voice grew more official-sounding. He asked her opinions of the murders themselves, from what the militsiya had uncovered so far. He also asked her whether she had seen or heard anything more that might give them some clue as to the exact political motive, and which foreign powers were likely to be involved. After a long pause where she only thought, she exhaled another sigh.

“I do not think there are any foreign powers involved,” she said truthfully. “I did not think it political at all, not at first. Now, with him gone, it seems likely.”

“You did not think it was political before?” Karkoff sounded surprised. “You were there for the interview, da? Yet you do not think there are foreign powers involved?”

Puzzled, she shook her head, although he wouldn’t see it of course. “Of course there is a chance.” Ilana grunted. “There is always a chance of such things.”

There was another silence, then Karkoff’s voice grew guarded.

“How did he sound to you? This Golunsky?”

“Truthfully? He sounded like a lunatic.” She glanced at Raguel. “He babbled about angels and demons. Nothing political that I heard... more like religious nonsense, mixed with a lot of aggression. He spoke to me about sex, trying to unsettle me. He said more nonsense about Obnizov, as well, trying to unsettle him. He spoke to people who were not in the room. Most of it was meaningless, Karkoff... just gibberish.”

The silence on the line deepened.

Unnerved by that silence for some reason, Ilana frowned, then shrugged.

“...He confessed to killing the children. He also confessed to abusing them sexually right in front of both of us. Obnizov has it all recorded. I will bring you that recording of course, but if there is a political motive there, I did not––”

“I have heard the recordings, Ilana.”

His voice sounded cold.

“Oh?” she said. “How is that?”

“We had them sent here as soon as the interview was completed.”

Ilana heard the coldness in his voice even more clearly that time. She was still trying to decide what to say, when he let out an angry-sounding exhale.

“I am confused, Ilana.” Karkoff’s voice grew harder still. “In the recordings I heard, Golunsky is talking mostly about America. How America will destroy the Motherland. How America is the future and we are the past. How the plans are already in the works... how their followers are everywhere, how the end of the Soviet Empire is near. You are right, he sounds crazy. But it is all political, Ilana. And it is all about foreigners. I heard the talk about angels and demons too. But that was only in the very beginning of the tapes. Before you and Obnizov got him to talk.” Pausing, he added, “Did you intend to cut that part of the interview out, Ilana? Do you think me such a fool, that I wouldn’t discover the truth?”

She felt her skin grow colder and colder as he spoke.

“Could there have been a second interview?” she said.

She heard Karkoff let out an incredulous sound. “I heard your voice on the tape, Ilana. You asked him questions. You spoke to him... about where. About when.” His voice turned to a growl. “I had to send the recordings up the ladder. I had to. But this line is clear. Why don’t you tell me what really happened?”

Ilana fought to think, to wrap her mind around this. She needed to get ahold of the tapes. She needed to know what the hell Karkoff heard, or it would be very dangerous to answer.

“Golunsky’s death,” she said instead. “...was it suicide?”

“No.” Karkoff let out an annoyed sigh. “His body was chopped up, Ilana. Hands. Feet...” His voice held disgust. “...Genitals.”

Ilana hesitated, glancing at Raguel.

“I do not know what to think, comrade,” she said finally, sighing as she turned back to the phone. Again, she found herself speaking more or less truthfully. “I feel like this thing is bigger in some way, but I am not convinced it is political in the usual sense... or perhaps is more political internally than it is pretending to be.”

Still thinking, she again glanced at Raguel.

“...If you want my real opinion, I would look inside the Kremlin, Karkoff. Or perhaps in Lubyanka,” she added more carefully, referring to KGB headquarters. Frowning harder, knowing she might be digging the hole deeper for herself with every word, she added, “I would very much like to know how he came out of a police station in midday without anyone admitting to having seen him... and how he was chopped up and left in the middle of Red Square... also without anyone seeing this occur. To me this is highly problematic. That there could be another murder there, with no witnesses... it is beyond unlikely. I would have said it was totally impossible before today, no matter who did it.”

For a moment, Karkoff remained silent.

She could almost feel him thinking through the line.

“Where have you been, Ilana?” Karkoff said. “This morning. I tried to call before, when I first heard the recordings. They said you left.”

She felt her fear worsen.

Forcing a sigh, she combed a hand through her long hair.

“Yes. Following the interview, I wished to look over the evidence in more detail before I made my report. I opted not to do that here. I just now came back to follow up with Golunsky with more questions. That is how we found him missing.”

She hesitated, once more glancing at Raguel, whose face she could still not read at all.

She knew Karkoff trusted her. He used to, at least.

She also knew how bad this looked, and would continue to look, if she did not find some way to hear whatever it was Karkoff had heard.

Karkoff would hear about Raguel now too, if he didn’t know about him already. Now that Golunsky was dead in such a way, Karkoff would be looking at everyone who went in and came out of Petrovka 38 that day. He would be looking at every single person Ilana had contact with, as well, and how she knew them.

He would hear how Ilana had brought Raguel back here.

He would hear how she took Raguel from the prison cell that morning, too.

“...I also followed up on a possible witness,” Ilana added after that pause, making a snap decision. “But I am thinking that is a dead-end now.”

“Why?” Karkoff said, sharper.

“He heard the guards talking about Golunsky and said his name to me,” she explained, again thinking fast. “He was picked up for drunkenness and one of the officers brought me to speak to him after he asked for me. He is a neighbor of mine, which is how he recognized me. I thought perhaps he might still be of use, but the man is sobering up now, and he admits to me he knows nothing. He was simply afraid his wife would find him in here. He wished to speak to me. And he wanted me to bring him home...”

“You know him?” A faint edge touched Karkoff’s voice.

“I had the misfortune of meeting him a few weeks ago, yes,” she said, wincing a little at the lie, but knowing it would be the only thing that fit all the information Karkoff would hear. “I did not know he was married back then. He is a womanizer, apparently. I broke it off. He has been somewhat... persistent since then.”

Karkoff again fell silent.

“Do you want me to detain him?” she said.

The silence stretched. Then, after another, longer pause, he exhaled.

“No. It does not sound like a good use of your time right now. If you think he might be helpful, put someone on him. Otherwise, cut him loose.”

“Yes.” She nodded. “I agree.”

She was almost afraid to ask the next question, but kept her voice blunt.

“Do you want me to come in, Karkoff?”

He grunted, but she heard the faintest tinge of that bleak humor of his again.

“No,” he said, his voice gruff. “No, I already told you. It is not a good time right now, Ilana. Let me do some checking of my own, first.”

She fought not to exhale in relief, nodding instead. “Da, okay.”

She could tell Karkoff wanted to believe her. She could also tell he definitely knew she wasn’t telling him something. He would likely assume it had to do with her comment about this being an internal job. That was something Karkoff could understand.

It might buy her and Raguel some time.

What apparently stumped him was whatever he’d heard on those interview tapes.

She remembered taking Raguel to buy shoes that day as well, wearing her ex-husband’s clothes, and felt that panic in her mind worsen.

She considering mentioning her intention to visit Kashchenko, meaning the mental institution where Golunsky had been kept prior to his arrest... but decided against it. She could not have said why precisely. Either way, she decided she would wait on sharing more with Karkoff until after she’d heard those tapes.

“...I’d planned to talk to Golunsky’s mother next,” she said, clearing her throat. “Find out more about his associations, if I can. They are... well, they were estranged... but I thought it best to try.” She paused. “Do you still wish me to do this?”

“Da. What about his mental diagnosis?” he said. “Did you talk to his doctor? Is there any chance he was in Kashchenko for vyalotekushchaya shizofreniya?”

Ilana shook her head.

She knew what Karkoff meant. The diagnostic category “sluggish schizophrenia” was one that Soviet doctors invented on the orders of the KGB. Political dissidents were held under such a diagnoses regularly.

“He was not there for that,” she said, shaking her head again. “He was there for paranoid delusions mixed with deviant sexual compulsion and violent tendencies. He got committed after he went after a neighborhood boy with a knife. Later they found he had been abusing that boy sexually, along with several other boys in the building. I checked this already, when we first got his name... but I will speak to his mother about these things again, of course. Golunsky lived with her when all of this happened.” She paused. “Do you want me to go back to Kashchenko, too? The militsiya have already been there, so––”

“No, no. Will Obnizov go with you? To the mother’s?”

Ilana hesitated, glancing at Raguel. “Should I bring him?”

“No,” Karkoff said at once. “I would strongly advise not. They will come to talk to him soon. It is better if you are not there.”

“KGB is coming for Obnizov?” She frowned, biting her lip. “Why?”

“No one has record of Golunsky leaving the police station, Ilana.”

Ilana shook her head. “It is not Obnizov, Karkoff. He was as surprised as us... and angry. He thought the Party had moved Golunsky without telling him. I don’t think he could have faked a reaction so well. He was angry with me, thinking I knew of this.”

“Did you?” Karkoff said.

The silence between them deepened.

Karkoff exhaled again.

“I am sorry, Ilana,” he said. “But maybe you should not share your feelings about Obnizov right now, my friend.”

“You think I would let an innocent detective take the blame, simply to protect myself?” Her voice was openly angry that time.

“Ilana... relax. I am saying maybe you do not have all the information. You were gone, da? So you do not really know what Obnizov was doing, do you? Golunsky was already gone when you got there. And Obnizov could have been acting, could he not? Going through the motions of acting surprised... of accusing you? Perhaps he saw an opportunity, given Golunsky’s earlier confessions. Perhaps he is a better actor than you think.” At her silence, Karkoff sighed. “I trust your instincts, Ilana. But you know how this works. It is out of my hands now. There are those here who are... nervous. I cannot tell them not to look at Obnizov.”

She heard the unspoken part of that, as well.

Karkoff could not tell them not to look at her, Ilana, either.

He would have people on her shortly... if he didn’t already.

“You know how this works, Ilana,” Karkoff repeated.

Pressing her lips together, she nodded, giving Raguel another look.

“I do. I do know how it works, Karkoff.”

“I know you do.” Karkoff’s voice grew slightly less hard. “Report back after you interview the mother. I should be able to tell you more then. Hopefully it will be good news, and you and I can speak of these things in person. But do not take any more prisoners out of jail, comrade Kopovich. Whether they are drunks with crushes on you or not...”

She did not answer, but only hung up the black handle of the rotary phone.

Looking up at Raguel, she met his gaze with a grim look of her own.

“Come,” she said. “We must get out of here. At once.”

KASHCHENKO

THEY DROVE SILENTLY, making their way through downtown traffic before crossing the river and entering the old Zamoskvorechiye District of Moscow. Driving through and past that neighborhood as well, she found the Zagorodnoe highway from memory.

This was not her first visit to this hospital.

As soon as they were alone in the car, Ilana began to question Raguel.

“Could a demon change a taped recording?” she said.

“A physical recording?” The angel frowned. “No.”

“Then how could the interview Karkoff heard be different from the one I heard? How is that possible? Karkoff tells me he heard my voice on the tape.”

“Perhaps he did.”

Frustrated, she gave him a harder stare. “What does that mean?”

“It means perhaps you were there for the entire interview and simply do not remember. Perhaps what the tape recorder heard is different from what you think happened in your mind.”

She gave him an incredulous look. “What the hell does that mean?”

Raguel shrugged, his gray eyes still. “He is a demon, Ilana. He cannot change the physical world apart from how a human would do it... but he has a lot of control over human minds. Particularly that demon. Lahash is a master of distortions of reality. And I wasn’t there to protect you from that after I touched the key.”

Frustrated, Ilana watched the traffic pass in front of them as they stopped at a red light. She glanced at Raguel’s profile, biting her lip.

“Could it be a physical thing?” Raguel said, his voice polite. “Could the tape have been tampered with perhaps, by someone else?”

She stared at him, thrown at first by his sudden reversal. Then it hit her what he was doing. He was forcing her to think this through logically, to assess what was possible.

Approaching his words from that angle, she exhaled in frustration.

“No,” she admitted. “There is not enough time for this.” She gave him a hard look. “To splice tape and create a new version... it would take time. To include me in this tape means they would have recordings of me already. It can be done, of course, but that is very detailed work. For Karkoff to have heard that recording already, they must have sent it to him right after the interview finished... that, or there was an extra listening device in Obnizov’s office.”

“Unless they had a fake recording ready,” Raguel pointed out.

Ilana started to answer that, then stopped.

He was right, that would explain it. But where had they gotten all of the voices?

Eventually, she shook her head again.

“It is possible, of course. But what you are suggesting... it is an elaborate thing, comrade,” she admitted. “Your initial explanation is sounding much more likely.”

It hit her that Raguel’s strategy had worked.

That explanation had lost most of its charge in their discussion.

Glancing at him thoughtfully, she shook her head. “You can be a crafty person at times, comrade Archangel.”

“Or a practical one,” he said. Cautiously, he rested his muscular hand back on her leg, softening his voice. “I need you, Ilana. The more I can help you to understand and accept these relevant aspects of my world, the better we can help one another.”

She nodded. “I understand.”

Rubbing her leg slowly, Raguel gentled his voice.

“To me, it is likely that once the key removed me from that room, the tenor of the interview radically changed. The part Karkoff is referencing likely occurred after I was gone... which is why my memory of the interview and your memories coincide.” Raguel’s voice grew more angry. “Lahash could not toy with your mind like that, not while I was there... but he could do whatever he wanted once I was gone. The vast majority of his mind does not live inside the human bodies he possesses, and demon minds are significantly more powerful and complex than that of a human being.”

“So you really think I was there for this interview Karkoff spoke of?” Ilana stared at him. “That it actually happened? I simply do not remember it?”

“It is likely, yes.”

She watched the angel study her face with those gray, crystalline eyes, and bit her lip, rubbing her face with a hand.

“Okay,” she said. “We will listen to the recordings when we return to my apartment.” She gave him a level look. “Given what I told Karkoff about who you are, I need to bring us both back there soon anyway. But I think we should still go to Kashchenko. If Karkoff asks, I will tell him that I brought you with me on my way to bringing you home.”

Raguel frowned. “That is risky, is it not?”

“All of this is risky now, comrade. I think this is a detail.”

Hesitating a bare beat, Raguel only nodded.

Minutes later, they had reached the mental institution.

Taking them to the guard house, Ilana showed them her badge and Raguel’s new papers. The security guard barely glanced at the latter once he saw Ilana’s ID. After getting instructions where to park, they drove past the booth and made their way slowly up the drive towards a low complex of red brick buildings.

Trying to shove her worry down about both Raguel’s fate and her own, as well as what might be about to hit them next with this whole Golunsky affair, she gave Raguel a warning look as they drove past the guard house, wondering suddenly why she had risked bringing him here after all, given who and what he was.

But there were many things she did not understand about her own behavior on this day.

“You will let me talk, yes, comrade?” she said to him warningly.

“I will, Ilana.”

Again, the pure seriousness of his answer brought an involuntary smile. She pulled into an empty parking space on the lot where the guard had indicated, and killed the engine. They got out at once and Ilana led Raguel towards the main administrative building, their shoes crunching rhythmically on the dirt and gravel in the road.

Once inside, she approached the caged reception booth, again with her Party ID badge up for inspection.

“Who can we ask about Golunsky?” she said, her voice blunt.

The woman’s eyes widened. Clearly, she recognized the name.

“One minute,” she said, holding up a finger. “I will be right back, Party comrade Kopovich.”

Her voice was polite, bordering on afraid.

Puzzled, Ilana glanced at Raguel.

A faint frown touched his lips as well.

Seconds later, a man appeared at the door of the booth, looking flustered. Probably in his mid-fifties, he was overweight with dark-rimmed glasses and a clean-shaven face. He wore a stained lab coat over a rumpled shirt he might have slept in.

“You work for Karkoff?” he said, his face flushed.

Ilana fought to hide her bewilderment, feeling her heart beat louder in her chest.

“Yes,” she said.

The doctor in the stained lab coat didn’t seem to notice her confusion.

“I will buzz you in,” he said, reaching for the switch to unlock the side door even as he spoke. “Meet me by the door... to your right.”

The door buzzer made a grating, broken sound as he hit the switch.

By the time Ilana and Raguel had walked over to unlocked door, the doctor had left the glass booth and waited for them on the other side.

“Come with me, please,” he said, his voice still openly nervous.

Glancing again at Raguel, Ilana shrugged, following the man down an unmarked hallway. They passed primarily plain but clean administrative rooms and what looked like shared offices. Ilana knew the wards themselves were housed on the other side of more locked doors.

They had a research lab here as well, housed in a separate building.

The doctor took them to a small conference room that had bars on the windows along with chickenwire mesh on the outside of the glass. Indicating for them to sit in two of the vinyl-padded chairs, he sat directly across from them, looking even more flustered than he had before.

It struck Ilana a second time that he looked afraid.

Terrified, even.

“Doctor, I––”

Before she could finish, he burst out with a rush of words.

“––I have done as your superiors asked, comrade,” he said, pushing his dark-rimmed glasses up his nose. He was sweating, she noticed, despite the coldness of the room. “There is no need to worry. It is already done, for all intents and purposes. All of the visitor files have been removed for patient #4920110. All of them. They are being burned in the basement furnace as we speak...”

Ilana felt her breath stop in her chest.

Next to her, Raguel stiffened.

Recovering as fast as she could, Ilana pressed her lips together nodding.

“I had actually hoped to take a look at those before they were destroyed,” she said, her voice polite, calm. “Did Karkoff not mention that?”

The man blanched, turning the color of chalk. “He did not.”

Afraid the doctor might have a brain embolism right in front of her, she held up a calming hand. “It is quite all right doctor, I am sure that is my fault. A communication problem on our end.”

The doctor blinked at them, then swallowed visibly, some of that fear lessening in his eyes. “We might be able to catch my nurse before she finishes,” he offered.

Ilana glanced at Raguel as the man got up, walking over to a phone on a small desk on the other side of the room. Raguel’s expression looked tense, borderline angry. Both of them turned back to the doctor when his voice rose.

“Anna? Did you finish with those files I spoke to you about? The ones that required disposal?” There was a pause while he listened to whoever spoke on the other side. Glancing at Ilana, he gave her a grim look then, shaking his head perceptibly. “Okay. Yes. Thank you, Anna. I appreciate your quick work in this matter.”

Setting down the phone, he walked over to them.

Ilana could not help but noticed he looked marginally more calm. Sighing as he sank his weight back into the larger chair, he wiped his forehead with a folded handkerchief before meeting Ilana’s gaze.

“I am sorry,” he said, still sounding relieved. “But it is done.”

Ilana nodded, keeping her face calm, borderline disinterested. “Well, thank you, Doctor. We were just here to ensure that the task had been completed. I hope you understand.”

“Of course... of course,” he said hastily. “We will be much more careful about how such things are recorded in the future, just as I told Karkoff. I just thought... with him here to see his dying father, that there was little political motive there.”

Ilana again glanced at Raguel, before looking back at the doctor. “Comrade Karkoff’s father, you mean?”

The doctor looked distressed again. “Was I not supposed to tell you that?”

Ilana held up a hand. “No, no... it is fine. We were told only about Golunsky. I am sorry to hear about his father dying, but it has no relevance to our task here.”

“Of course.” The doctor rose to his feet, relief expanding off him as he smiled. “Is there anything else that Commander Karkoff would like me to see to in this matter?”

“Just one thing,” Ilana said casually. “He asked me to double-check with you. Prior to his escape, did anyone else come to visit Golunsky... apart from Commander Karkoff himself?”

The man turned, giving her a faintly surprised look. “No. No, of course not, comrade. We had him completely isolated. Karkoff’s orders.”

“Remind me... were those orders given after his father’s death?”

The doctor looked faintly confused as he thought. Then his brow cleared. “Yes. The same day in fact. I remember now, because the topic came up when we were discussing internment options for his father. I had forgotten until now.”

“And you are sure those orders were never violated?” Ilana bit her lip, keeping her voice stern, as if those other imaginary people were her concern. “No one else got in his room? Only those handful of visits by Commander Karkoff?”

“Never! Never did this happen... he is the only one, I told him that! And it is only the two visits that I am aware of...” A worried tremor touched his voice. “Did he tell you there were more visits than this? Because as far as I know, Golunsky has never been seen by anyone apart from him. His own mother refused to have any contact with him––”

“No, no... it is fine. Calm yourself, doctor.” Ilana raised a hand, smiling at him. “It is my mistake. I apologize. And you are correct... it is only the two visits that I meant. Truthfully, I was more concerned with insuring that no one else had come to see him prior to his escape.”

“No,” the doctor said, looking both relieved and determined. “Absolutely not! I told Karkoff this. There was no one! No one besides him ever came here!”

“Ah. Well, that is certainly a relief.” Ilana glanced at Raguel, giving him a flat-eyed stare without lessening the smile that curved her lips. She upped the wattage of that smile even more before she swung it back in the doctor’s direction. “Thank you so much, doctor. If that is so, then I believe our work is finished here.”

The doctor smiled nervously back, once more shoving the glasses up his nose.

“God bless the Motherland!” he said, smiling wider, more nervously.

She bowed her head, smiling again.

“Indeed,” she said. “...God bless us all.”

HUMANS SOMETIMES LIE

“KARKOFF DID THIS?” Raguel said, his voice taut. “Did you suspect him, Ilana? Did you know his father was institutionalized in the same place as Golunsky?”

“No,” she said only.

Rubbing her face with a gloved hand, she fought the sick feeling that rose in her gut as she tried to think through what they’d just learned.

Raguel didn’t speak either, not at first. He only frowned, staring at the flashing headlights of cars as they passed on the other side of the street. The weather had turned foul again, bringing a spring thunderstorm and rain. Her windshield wipers squeaked across the front of her windshield, clearing a space for her to see.

“It is likely your boss Karkoff was recruited by Lahash while Lahash inhabited his father’s body,” he said finally. “Lahash probably had Karkoff arrange to put his father’s body next to Golunsky’s when he died.”

“Are you saying Karkoff is possessed too?” she said, frowning.

He shook his head, his eyes still on the road. “No,” he said. “But he is likely under the demon’s influence regardless. They recruit willing helpers too, Ilana.”

Ilana knew there was probably more to his thoughts just then, but decided she would wait to ask until she got them back to her apartment. Grimly, she found herself thinking it might be her last night as a free woman. Worse, she would spend most of that night trying to solve a murder case that would never be officially solved.

They had gone to see Golunsky’s mother, too, in part to buy Ilana time in case Karkoff checked out where she had been. The mother had not been particularly helpful. Ilana definitely got the impression she carried a great deal of guilt for how her son turned out. Perhaps she had even suspected what he was and what he’d been doing––or what he was capable of doing, at least. She had twisted those emotions into blame and anger, talking about her son as if he were an animal, something entirely foreign to her that needed to be put down.

Sometimes people did this out of fear of the government, Ilana knew.

In this case, however, Ilana saw only grief and rage.

She left the woman’s drab apartment complex feeling even more depressed than she had when they’d left the mental hospital.

Now, she found herself thinking about her own predicament again.

Really, only two options remained for her.

She could stick around and do her job until Karkoff had her arrested and framed her for his involvement in whatever Golunsky had been part of.

Or she could make a run for it.

That meant letting the demon finish his plans without her.

If she decided to run, she wondered if Raguel would come with her. She strongly suspected he would not. He wouldn’t flee for his own safety before. Why would he flee for hers? No, if she ran, he would stay and try to figure out his demon problem on his own.

She wasn’t sure if she could let him do that.

“You know,” she said, her voice casual. “It is really not safe to stay with me now, comrade Archangel. To be known as an associate of mine.” She gave him a bare glance and a smile, not pausing long enough to assess his expression. She returned her eyes back to the road. “You are perhaps smarter if you stay with someone else tonight... or in a hotel, perhaps. I think anyone staying with me is putting themselves in view of a firing squad...”

Raguel didn’t speak.

Even so, his silence was loud.

Eventually, Ilana exhaled again.

“I can give you money for such a thing,” she offered. “...For a hotel. Food. Enough money to tide you over here until you find a job. As much as you need.” Letting out a grunt, she added in a lower mutter, “Somehow I have my doubts I will need money where I am going. So you might as well take it. Put it to good use.”

“Ilana.” His voice bordered on cold.

Her jaw firmed. She did not turn.

“Ilana!”

Exhaling louder, letting him hear her exasperation, she did not take her eyes off the road. “What, comrade?”

“I am not going to leave you.” For the first time, he sounded genuinely angry. “I will not leave you in this alone. Understand? Not now. Not ever. So do not talk to me of hotels and giving me your money again, Ilana Kopovich. Yes?”

Shaking her head, she gave him an exasperated look. “Don’t be a fool. I told you what Karkoff said on the phone. You also heard that doctor. Karkoff is in this... he is in this up to his eyeballs. He likely has someone waiting for me outside my apartment right now. And clearly he intends to pin his involvement on me. You would be foolish not to distance yourself from that, and from me––”

“Ilana,” Raguel growled. “You are not hearing me.”

“My hearing is perfectly fine!” she snapped, turning. “If you do not care about yourself, then think about your case... about stopping your demon! I cannot help you from prison. Nor from a work camp... nor from your heaven!”

His expression grew hard as stone.

“Ilana,” he said. “I am the reason you are in this mess. I am not going anywhere... not willingly. So if you want to be rid of me, you’re going to have to arrest me.”

She let out a laugh. “Arrest you?”

“Arrest me, yes. Or stop talking about it.”

She fell silent, staring at the road. Then she shook her head, slowly.

“No,” she said. “No. You are not the reason for this. This has been going on with Karkoff for weeks, at the very least. The doctor said––”

“I will not discuss this any further,” Raguel growled. “Drop it, Ilana. I mean it.”

Scowling, she gripped the steering wheel tighter.

She glared at him, but those crystal gray eyes only glared right back. As she continued to look at him, he folded his arms, his long jaw clenched.

In the end, she looked back at the road.

“Fine,” she said, unable to keep the anger from her voice. “Then I suppose we must stay in a hotel together. We will have to take a lot of precautions to avoid being followed... but at least it will be easier to debug the room.” Turning, she glared at him. “It is your funeral, Raguel! Or I guess Russia’s, or perhaps humanity’s... since I guess it does not matter to you anymore, if you stop your demon or not. As long as you can play stupid with me, da?”

“Don’t guilt me, Ilana,” he warned. “It won’t work. And I don’t just want your help, I need your help, as you amply proved today. You know as well as I do that I have no way to figure this out on my own. Not as a human. Not even as an angel... I’ve learned more with you today than I had on my own in weeks. I will only end up in a jail cell of my own without you.”

“With me, you will only end up dead.”

He didn’t blink.

“Then we will end up dead together,” he said.

She shook her head, about to argue more. When she glanced at him however, he scowled at her in warning, as if daring her to speak. When she saw the sheer stubbornness there, she shook her head again, more angrily that time, but only looked away.

“Fine,” she muttered.

“Fine,” he growled in return. “It is settled.”

Neither of them spoke again for the remainder of the drive.

WHEN THEY REACHED the tenth floor of the Hotel Ukraina, where she and Raguel had procured a room for the night, all Ilana could think about was a shower.

That, and food... although the second thing only occurred to her after her stomach growled loudly enough for Raguel to look over, startled.

She had chosen the luxury hotel in part because she knew exactly where the listening devices would be located, including the one on the phone.

She had no doubt her apartment was bugged by now as well, but she would be less likely to find all of those. Showing up at a hotel and paying cash with one of her emergency aliases in her pocket felt much safer. She and Raguel left her car in the parking lot of another enormous apartment complex, this one in walking distance to a train station on a different line as the hotel. They’d changed trains twice, then walked to the hotel itself, carrying two bags of clothes and the files and tapes from the Golunsky case between them.

All in all, the operation took more than two hours.

Now, she just wanted to shower.

And apparently, from the noises her stomach was making––eat.

She flushed at the puzzled look Raguel aimed at her mid-section when her stomach growled loudly again, even as it struck her that neither she nor the angel had eaten that day, and the sky had been dark for over an hour now. That also explained how she felt light-headed, and probably at least part of why she was so exhausted and short-tempered.

Of course, her emotions right then weren’t only from a lack of food.

She checked her watch at the thought, exhaling.

Nearly seven o’clock.

Being in such a nice hotel, they could order room service at least. They’d used Raguel’s new alias to book the room itself, since Ilana knew Karkoff might look for female names. She wanted to save her own emergency alias in case they had to run for real.

Unlocking the door to their room, she gave Raguel a tired smile.

“I call the shower first this time,” she said. “I will order us food before I go in. It should arrive by the time you finish taking your turn.”

She saw something in his eyes soften before he nodded.

“Of course, Ilana.”

Hanging her coat in the closet by the door and pulling off her boots one by one before throwing them in that same closet, she watched Raguel as he dropped their bags of clothes on the floor not far from the television set and bureau. Seeing the unsure expression on his face, she motioned towards the couch and the bed.

“Make yourself at home, comrade angel,” she grunted. “We might as well enjoy our night of luxury, da?”

She saw him staring at the king-sized bed for a few seconds too long, but pretended not to notice.

It was of course less conspicuous to check in as a couple. She’d had Raguel hide in the back of her car when she went back to her apartment building, so they wouldn’t be looking for her with someone else, or vice versa. She’d brought the clothes and files down herself, not letting him show himself until they left the car for the train station.

Plunking down on the bed with a sigh, she picked up the phone and ordered them food, along with wine for herself. She only noticed the mini-fridge nestled under the bureau after she hung up. Grunting when she saw that it contained water, juice and vodka, along with some chocolate, she contemplated the chocolate briefly then shut the door and headed for the bathroom instead.

Raguel was still standing in the middle of the room. He still wore his winter coat even, but she didn’t offer to help him put it away.

He would have to find his own way to feel comfortable here.

Inside the luxurious bathroom, she cranked up the hot water, marveling at the water pressure. When steam began to fill the small room, she exhaled in relief and began peeling off her clothes. Stepping into the stream of hot water felt so good, she could only sigh again, dunking her head under the shower head––and thinking maybe she did not indulge herself in luxury like this often enough.

She almost felt human again when she finally turned the water off.

Opening the door to the glass shower cubicle, she squeezed out her hair, then leaned out of the stall, grabbing a fluffy white towel off the rack.

When she did, she found Raguel standing in the doorway, watching her.

“Sooka sin!” she swore, snatching the towel and pulling it to her chest. She stared up at his face and saw him avert his eyes, right before he folded his arms. “You scared the hell out of me, Raguel! Why did not you say something?”

He looked over, discomfort etched in his white marble features.

“I am sorry,” he said. “I was considering joining you in there, but I could not decide. You seemed so peaceful, like the water relaxed you... but you also seem upset. You have seemed upset since we left the mental hospital.” He met her gaze when she finished wrapping the towel around her body. “...I could not decide if you truly wanted to be left alone, or if you would have preferred some kind of comfort. I know you must be upset about Karkoff. I know he is a friend to you... almost like a father, since your own father died.”

She stared at him, unable to come up with words to respond.

“...As an angel, I would have known which it was.” He sounded almost apologetic. “I would have known whether you truly wanted to be alone or if you desired another’s presence. But I know humans often do not express things they are feeling. Humans sometimes lie... for reasons I don’t always understand. So...”

He trailed once more, waving a hand, as if at a loss.

“...I could not decide,” he finished lamely.

For some reason, Ilana found herself fighting a smile.

Then, as she thought about his words, her smile faded. She made up her mind before she’d fully let herself think about what it meant. Walking up to him, she wrapped her arms around his waist as soon as she was close enough.

Raguel didn’t flinch back, or even seem startled.

If anything, he seemed relieved.

Whatever he was feeling, he enveloped her, not moving from where he stood in the bathroom doorway by the marble-topped sink. When he curled his strong arms around her back and waist, she felt her body melt into his. He only gripped her tighter then, holding her with both hands as he pulled her tightly up against him.

Leaning her head against his chest, she closed her eyes.

She let herself just be there with him for those few seconds, her mind blank.

They stood there for a few minutes before she felt that tension start to drain out of her for real. As it did, reality took over once more.

“This will not end well for me, Raguel,” she said, looking up at him. “And it will not end well for you, if you stay here with me. You really should go.”

He shook his head, but didn’t scowl that time. “We will not talk about that now.”

Loosening his hold on her, he looked towards the shower stall.

“I am going to shower now.” He paused, meeting her gaze with those smoky crystal eyes. “You are welcome to come in with me, Ilana. I would like that very much.”

Blushing at the added meaning in his words, she thought about his offer.

Then, slowly, she shook her head.

“No.” She looked up, giving him a wry smile. “It is a tempting offer, comrade Archangel. But we have food coming... and whatever might happen if I joined you in that shower, I suspect it would take longer than the hotel kitchen...”

Raguel laughed.

The sound startled her but also made her smile.

Still smiling, she added somewhat more seriously, “And I still very much want to listen to that recording of the interview with Golunsky... possibly while I drink generous amounts of vodka and think about my own mortality.” She looked up, studying his storm-cloud gray eyes. “We can talk about anything else after we manage those two things, da? But you are human now, Raguel... as am I. Humans must eat.”

“And drink vodka?” he said, quirking an eyebrow.

She laughed herself that time, pulling the rest of the way out of his embrace. Rubbing him affectionately on the chest through the thermal shirt, she shook her head.

“I think we will wait a bit longer before introducing you to that particular Russian pastime, my angelic friend. I have enough to answer to with God already.”

Raguel laughed at that, too.

Something about that laugh, which sounded so genuine, so open, forced Ilana to smile again.

OUT OF THE WAY

ILANA DISMANTLED ALL of the listening devices in the room after she got dressed, then did a second sweep just to be sure. She heard the shower turn off in the other room right as she found her copy of the taped interview in her shoulder bag.

Room service knocked on their door then.

They wheeled in a cart loaded with covered plates, along with roses in a vase and two thin-stemmed wine glasses and a bottle of French red wine.

She instructed them to set everything up on the coffee table by the couch, then dug out her tape player after they left, thankful she’d remembered to grab that from her apartment prior to leaving. She’d just finished setting up the recorder on the carpet next to the coffee table, when Raguel emerged from the bathroom, trailed by a cloud of steam.

He wore a different set of clothes than the ones she’d given him that morning––a pair of black pants and a royal blue long-sleeved shirt. Since she’d packed more of Uri’s clothes from the box in her apartment and left them inside the bathroom door for Raguel to use, she wasn’t surprised to see him wearing them.

She couldn’t help staring, however, at how good he looked.

Looking away abruptly when he noticed her stare, she walked back to the couch and sat.

She’d done her best to make the hotel room comfortable, turning on the heater and switching on a few of the more inviting lamps before turning off the overhead. She found some extra blankets and a few pillows for the couch before setting out the covered plates of food.

Now she poured herself a half-glass of wine, relaxing into the couch with a sigh. She would leave the mini-fridge vodka and chocolate for later, perhaps.

For now, she preferred to leave her mind reasonably sharp.

She was taking the covers off their plates of beef goulash with gravy and potatoes and bread, when the sound of Obnizov’s voice rose from the other side of the couch, near where Raguel now sat beside her.

She turned to see Raguel bent over the tape recorder.

He’d turned it on.

Biting her lip, she considered telling him to wait until they had eaten first. Then, realizing he was probably right not to wait, she turned back to her food after placing the plate covers back on the rolling cart. She started to eat her goulash while the tape recorder continued to spin.

The first twenty or so minutes was mostly silence.

That silence was peppered with periodic questions from the homicide detective, Obnizov, but no one else on the tape made a sound. Golunsky himself gave no answer, despite the detective’s threats. Ilana didn’t speak during any of that initial questioning, either.

She remembered that part of the interview, however.

Then, out of nowhere, Golunsky began speaking to someone else.

“Worried about your pet, Raguel...?”

Golunsky’s words came out loud on the tape, louder than the detective’s had.

Just like she had in the room that morning, Ilana flinched, right as she was lifting another forkful of the beef goulash to her mouth. Finishing the motion and chewing the piece of meat, she swallowed it, taking another sip of the red wine as she listened to the demon speak.

It was different hearing it this time, knowing Raguel had heard it, too.

The two of them ate silently while they listened to the back and forth exchange, the too-long silences as the militia detective tried to get Golunsky to talk to him directly. Ilana found she blushed at some of those parts now as well, knowing the demon had been taunting this man about wanting her sexually.

If Raguel felt embarrassed by that, she saw no indication on his face.

Then, the conversation abruptly changed.

“I found it, my feathery friend,” the demon said, sounding delighted. “As you rightly surmise, I cannot pick it up in this form. Yet it follows me. It follows me, brother. Are you quite sure it is not yours? For I cannot help but wonder if this is so...”

When Ilana glanced at Raguel, he gave her a grim look.

“That is when I first saw the key,” he explained.

Her eyes widened. In everything that happened at the militsiya station and at Kashchenko, she’d completely forgotten about the key they’d found in Gorky Park. Wiping her mouth with a cloth napkin, she got up from the couch as the recorder continued to turn, her goulash still only half-finished. She walked to the closet and opened it, rifling through her coat pockets until she found it. She brought it back to the coffee table, showing it to Raguel.

“You still cannot see it?”

He shook his head, frowning. “No. Are you holding it?”

“Yes.”

“I see only the gaps between your fingers.”

Nodding, she tossed the key to the glass-topped coffee table, where it made a clinking sound when it landed.

“Did you hear that?” she said. “When it fell?”

“Yes.” His frown deepened as he slid his hand over the key where it had fallen. Again, his hand passed through the glass key as though it were not there.

“Is it there?” he said.

“Yes.” Incredulity touched her voice. “Your hand passes right through it. I would not have believed it if I did not just see it with my own eyes.”

“You saw it before,” he reminded her, glancing up.

“Da. I guess I hoped I imagined it.”

Both of them glanced at the tape recorder, which now exuded only silence.

“Do you remember anything of the interview beyond this point?” Raguel watched her spear a piece of beef in the goulash with her fork after she sat back down. “I don’t remember any more. I am thinking I have touched the key by this time, and disappeared out of the room.”

She shook her head, swallowing the mouthful of beef. “No. My memory tells me the interview ended... that Golunsky refused to speak.”

Even as she said it, the silence was broken, making both of them jump.

Golunsky’s voice rose on the tape, louder than before.

“You are too late,” The voice was cold, threatening, nearly unrecognizable. “It is too late to stop the future, podonok militsiya pig... it is too late...”

From the tone of voice, he might have been a different person. This new person was no less disturbing than the old Golunsky had been, but he was definitely more aggressive.

Then another voice rose.

Clinical. Military-sounding.

Definitely female.

“We are too late?” Ilana’s voice said. “Too late for what? What is coming, comrade?”

Ilana stared at the recorder, more shocked by hearing her own voice than she was hearing Golunsky speak words she didn’t remember him saying. She froze as she stared at the recorder, so stunned she almost didn’t hear his answer.

“Why are you asking me?” This new, harder-edged Golunsky laughed, a cold, cruel-sounding laugh. “You know more about this than I do... ‘comrade.’ ”

“What does that mean?” Ilana’s own voice again, jarring.

“You know exactly what I mean.”

“Let us pretend that I don’t,” Ilana’s voice said. “Are you saying more deaths are coming? That you are working with others?”

“Da, da... of course I am working with others! America is the future! You know this! Soviet Russia is going the way of the dinosaurs... as you told me yourself...”

Ilana felt her skin grow cold.

“Americans?” that other Ilana snapped, disgust audible in her voice. “What Americans? Who are you working with? Or is this just some attempt to pin the murder of innocent children on someone else? To make it part of some wider, delusional cause?”

The demon laughed, and there was a hard sound, a clink of metal. Ilana recognized it as the sound of Obnizov kicking the prisoner’s chair.

“Answer the question, you scum!” the detective growled. “Give us names. Or I will bring in those who would get the information out of you the hard way!”

The demon let out another derisive laugh. “Do your worst, comrade. Do you think I care? Do you think I do not know I am dead, either way? What do you think you can do to me now? If I am rescued from this, it will not be by Soviet scum. If I am rescued from this, it will be by those who lead the free world, not the world wrapped in communist chains...”

“So you are a capitalist now?” Obnizov mocked, his voice louder from being nearer to the microphone. “Is that it? You are hoping to go to America? Maybe piss on the Statue of Liberty? Is that it, Golunsky?”

The demon laughed again, its voice holding disbelief.

“You say that like I should be ashamed of such a thing...” The contempt in his voice grew more biting. “...like going to America would be some kind of curse. Are you really so stupid? Why do you think our best athletes and artists have to be guarded by KGB for every second they set foot in another country? Why do you think the military builds walls to keep its own people inside? Why do you think so many are shot on the wall, trying to escape? Is it because it is better here? Because the West is so terrible?”

The demon let out another derisive laugh.

“...You are a fool. No wonder she despises you,” it finished coldly.

The other Ilana spoke up, anger in her voice. “Are you saying you were asked to do this? By someone from America? Why? What is their goal?”

Golunsky only laughed.

“You would ally against your own people?” Obnizov growled. “And just how does that work exactly, ‘comrade’? Please enlighten us.”

“My people? What makes you think they are mine?”

“So you are American, is that it?” Obnizov sneered. “And this is the work of the great America? Raping and butchering children? This is the goodness the West brings us?”

Golunsky’s voice changed once again. It grew sharper than it had been, more intelligent-sounding. Less randomly crazy-sounding, despite his actual words.

“I guess we will see, won’t we?” he said. “Everything is set in motion now. It is time to make way for a new world. A world where we face the truth. That communism is a dangerous dream and a failure, and its time is over...”

Something in the words rang of truth.

Truth mixed with lies, perhaps, but truth nonetheless.

She glanced at Raguel, remembering what he’d said about the old gulags under Stalin, about how the demon likely wanted the exact opposite of what it was saying right now. Did he wish to make the USSR so hate the idea of change that they would return to those dark days?

The angel didn’t return her gaze, but continued to stare down at the tape recorder, a look of frustration on his handsome face. She saw him glance at where the key sat on the coffee table. She could tell by the way he squinted, looking at several different spots on the table, that he still could not see it. She could almost feel what he was thinking.

He wanted to be an angel again.

He thought he could do something about this, if only he were an angel again. In this form, he felt stripped of his power.

She only turned away from him when her own voice rose once more.

“We need names, Golunsky. Who are you working with? Who else is a part of this conspiracy? Are there Americans here now? In Moscow?”

The demon laughed louder.

“And again I say... why don’t you tell me, Party comrade Kopovich? My lovely, sexy Ilana... why don’t you tell both of us the answer to that question?”

Hearing the demon’s words, Ilana felt her skin grow cold.

The demon called her by name.

She’d never been introduced to Golunsky. Not by Obnizov. Not by anyone.

She’d certainly never told him her name herself.

Remembering what Karkoff said to her on the phone, how strange Obnizov had been to her ever since they left the interview, she felt that fear and dread in her chest worsen, even as she took another hard swig of the wine.

Karkoff had said they would pick up Obnizov. No doubt, the homicide detective had voiced his suspicions about Ilana to the KGB already. He would tell them about the writing in the cell, about Raguel being with her that day. They would assume the writing was about her, that Raguel was her accomplice, perhaps an American spy.

If they investigated Raguel’s identification papers, they would realize they were fake. They would discover he didn’t work where those papers said he worked. They would discover he didn’t live where those papers said he lived either... and eventually they would realize that Raguel wasn’t a Soviet citizen at all.

They likely wouldn’t believe he also wasn’t a citizen of Earth.

No, they would think he was a foreigner, here to bring down the Soviet Motherland.

Thinking all this, Ilana glanced at Raguel.

She took another swallow of wine, then set down the glass, pouring more of the bottle into it. Sipping the wine, she stared at the glass key and frowned, looking over at the angel.

“I guess he has both of us out of the way now, eh, comrade?” she said.

Raguel didn’t answer.

She saw him glance back in the direction of the key, however, that frustration once more tightening his features.

SHADOW WINGS

“WHAT DOES IT mean?” She focused back on Raguel when the silence stretched. “What is the point of these murders? Are they really just to implicate you and me?”

They’d listened to the tape from beginning to end twice by then.

After the demon practically fingered Ilana herself as a part of his conspiracy, he refused to speak. The remainder of the tape was Ilana and Obnizov peppering him with questions, both of them sounding increasingly angry when the demon refused to answer.

Ilana knew her anger and fear would be heard differently however, depending on who was listening to the tape.

“...Is there anything to what he said?” she pressed, when Raguel didn’t speak. “About Americans being involved? Or is that all just bullshit, too?” Feeling increasingly angry and helpless, she said, “Karkoff said they would pick up Obnizov today. I do not know what he said to the KGB and others... and they likely have him in custody still, so I can’t even ask him. He’ll have told them about the writing in the cell... and about you.”

Raguel sighed, threading his fingers together where he leaned over his own thighs.

“Yes,” he said only.

“Yes, what? You think this is all just to implicate us?”

Again, his eyes shifted towards the surface of the coffee table.

The same part of the table where Ilana saw a glass key.

“I do not know,” he said only.

Ilana frowned, wanting to yell at him for some reason. “So what do we do?”

He met her gaze. “I don’t know, Ilana.”

Exhaling in frustration, she took another swallow of wine as she paced back and forth in front of the couch. She’d drank most of the whole bottle of wine by herself.

So much for keeping her mind sharp.

“Ilana.” When she didn’t look over, Raguel raised his voice, but kept it patient. “Ilana... there is nothing more we can do tonight. You must stop.”

She barely heard him.

After another minute of pacing and thinking, she shrugged.

“I do not even know his political beliefs,” she said, as much to herself as to him. “Karkoff and I did not talk politics. Not in relation to anything other than what I needed to know to complete my assignments. I always thought he was fairly moderate, for KGB.” She stopped pacing briefly, looking at Raguel. “Most in KGB who are his age and who have attained his rank are more bullish in their stances.”

Raguel nodded.

He patted the couch next to him then, his eyes more serious.

Exhaling in frustration, she realized he was right. She needed to calm down.

Sitting next to him heavily on the couch, she exhaled again.

He shifted closer to her, studying her face. Using one hand, he stroked the long, dirty-blond hair off her cheek. She didn’t move away or try to avoid his touch, but she flinched, more from the current of tension still vibrating her skin.

“I’m okay,” she said, looking at him. She stroked the hand he had on her face, trying to reassure him. “It’s okay, Raguel. I’m okay.”

“When did you last sleep, Ilana?”

She shook her head, averting her gaze from his. “I cannot sleep now.”

She started to take another drink of wine, but he plucked the glass from her hand, turning his body to set it on the glass coffee table behind him, and out of her reach. They had already wheeled the cart with their mostly-empty plates out into the hallway.

“You cannot continue to do this, either,” he said, softer.

Sighing, she looked up at him. “Please. I need to think about this.”

“You are not thinking, you are worrying.” He studied her gaze, his gray eyes as still as a windless sky. “We have no new information, Ilana,” he said gently.

He was right. Her mind stubbornly refused to let it go, however. “Are you thinking this has to do with the Americans? About them wanting to put more weapons in Germany? Do the children have anything to do with this at all?”

Stroking her hair, he her gaze. “I do not know. What do you think, Ilana?”

Sighing, she looked at the glass key on the table, then back up at him.

“I am thinking you are wishing you are an angel again,” she said. “I am thinking I can’t help you anymore, comrade... that my usefulness is at an end.”

Nodding, he laid a hand on her thigh, rubbing it slowly.

Swallowing, she turned once more, meeting his gaze. He continued to massage her leg while he studied her expression.

“Being an angel would make some things easier,” he conceded. His voice remained calm, gentle. “It may not seem obvious to you, but I could protect you from there, Ilana. I could influence those who would hunt you, at least, while I looked for whoever is behind this.” He glanced back at that spot on the coffee table that held the key. “I feel... helpless here. It is difficult, I admit. But I am very glad to be here with you.”

She nodded, exhaling again.

She thought about answering him in some way, then didn’t.

“I think this will happen soon, whatever it is,” Raguel added. “They got me out of the way. Now you are out of the way, as well. And Karkoff is clearly converted. Knowingly or not, he is working for whoever the demon is possessing now. Whether the children have anything to do with that directly, I don’t know. But I suspect not.”

Thinking about this, she found herself nodding, her jaw firm.

It felt true. All of what he said felt true. The children weren’t a part of this, not really. It was just horror. Misdirection. A way to set her up. A way to set both of them up.

And it worked.

She nodded, feeling defeated. “Yes.”

“We cannot do any more tonight, Ilana.”

She nodded to that, too, turning her head to look at him once more. She really was exhausted. She also knew she would not sleep. Not right away, anyway. Not now.

He returned her gaze, silent.

After a few more seconds passed, she nodded again. Then she rose from the couch, moving out from under his hand. She felt his eyes on her as she walked over to the bed. She stared at the phone, a part of her wanting to call Obnizov... Karkoff... even Uri. Some part of her wanted to yell at someone, to vent her anger and frustration at someone as she felt her life crumbling down around her. Less than twenty-four hours had passed.

It took less than twenty-four hours to destroy her life.

But she couldn’t think about this now.

She knew the wine was making all of it worse. And Raguel was right. They could do nothing more about this, not tonight. They had no new information.

Turning, she faced Raguel, who still watched her from the couch.

“Tomorrow, we could try one more time,” she said, folding her arms. “If they have not yet revoked my clearance, perhaps I can talk to people who trusted me at KGB, convince them to look into Karkoff.” Hesitating, she met his gaze. “What is more likely, of course, is that I will be taken into custody as soon as I am seen near the building. If Karkoff has already turned them against me... which he likely has... then I will simply disappear. They will hunt you next, thinking you are an American spy. All of this without us doing anything whatsoever to stop what is coming. Assuming it has not already happened.”

She paused, letting her words sink in.

“...Or, we can run,” she said. “We can try to leave Russia, using my contacts.”

Raguel watched her, silent.

When he didn’t say anything, she shrugged.

“But that is tomorrow,” she said. “We will decide which it is then. Tonight, you are right. There is nothing more that we can do.”

She met his gaze, feeling her face warm, and not only from the wine.

“You said before that you wanted sex with me. Is that still what you want, Raguel?”

He only sat there after she first asked the question, looking at her.

Then, in a single gliding movement, he stood.

He walked to her. Fear washed over her as he approached––time seemed somehow to slow in the seconds before he reached her. Some part of her was terrified. She couldn’t make sense of that fear at first, or the overwhelming sense of vulnerability that came along with it.

It wasn’t the thought of sex itself. It wasn’t even that things with Uri had ended so badly, or that it had been so long since she’d been with anyone but Uri... or even that it had been so long since she’d been with anyone at all. It wasn’t even because her life was over now, at least the life she’d known for as long as she could remember.

It was him. She was afraid of him.

Raguel stood in front of her now, and she found herself looking up at him, at the inhuman, stone-like planes of his face, and she knew it wasn’t his beauty she reacted to, either.

He kissed her before she could get much further in her thought process.

The kiss was warm at first, sensual but so much lay behind it, Ilana found herself lost there. That fear that nearly overcame her as she watched him approach melted the longer they kissed, until she could barely remember the feeling at all.

When he finally raised his head, he cupped her face in his hands. She felt enveloped by him, even before he stepped closer, wrapping an arm around her waist and kissing her again, deeper that time, with even more behind it. When he paused that time, he was breathing harder, and she found herself pulling him with her, tugging him backwards towards the bed.

He followed her easily, moving with her even as he kissed her again.

He didn’t raise his head until they’d reached the edge of the bed, and that time it was because she had broken off the kiss. Leaning down to turn off one set of lights with the switch by the headboard, she began unbuttoning the front of her long-sleeved blouse once she turned back in his direction. When she had it most of the way undone, he pulled his own shirt over his head.

She found herself staring at his form in the low light from the remaining lamp by the couch.

“You’ve never done this?” she asked.

Her voice came out unsteady, once more showing her nerves.

He smiled, shaking his head.

“Because you seem like you’ve done this...” she said, her voice lower still. “With the kissing, at least. You seem like you’ve done it before...”

“I’ve watched it done.”

“Is that the same?”

Still smiling, he shrugged one shoulder. “No.”

“How much have you watched?” Remembering what the demon accused him of that morning, she sharpened her voice. “...And who, exactly?”

He laughed, wrapping his arms her and pulling her tightly up against him.

He kissed her, his mouth warm, soft, wanting.

His arms tightened around her the longer he kissed her.

In her mind, Ilana briefly saw them as wings. Long, white, shadowy wings, wrapping around her in the dark, enveloping her... making her forget everything she’d been worried about, all the bad things that happened that day.

Before she could dispel the image from her mind, he kissed her again.

He finished taking off her clothes and then his... and then they were both lying on the bed. She lay on her back while he touched her all over, exploring her with his hands. He took his time, going slow, massaging and kneading her muscles and caressing her skin. When he turned her over and began doing the same to the other side of her, she let out an involuntary sound, gripping the embroidered bedspread on the top of the bed.

He finished undressing himself, then turned her over again, and Ilana found herself losing control, curling her fingers into his hair as his hands wrapped around her waist.

Both of them were sweating by then. His skin was hot, still pearly white but glossed by a faint sheen in the dim light of the room. She was looking at his face, marveling at the perfect angles and lines, tracing his mouth and lips and his long neck––when he slid up her body so he was more or less lying on her.

He looked down at her, not quite a question in his eyes, but an urgency she couldn’t help but see. She wrapped her legs around him and he let out a low sound.

He positioned himself over her, and she helped him, using her hand.

That urgency on him grew more pronounced, even as his weight got heavy.

...Then he glided inside her.

She was so ready for him it shocked him. It shocked both of them––her as much as him.

She let out a heavy sound, totally involuntary.

He cried out too, half-crushing her against his chest. He cried out again when she made that heavier sound again, unable to help herself when he arched into her harder.

She’d never made a sound like that before––not in sex, not for any reason.

It felt so good she almost couldn’t stand it. She cried out a third time when he reached the end of her again, and then she was gripping his arms, her legs wrapped tightly around his waist. He held her down as he let out another broken groan of his own.

He began moving for real––slowly, excruciatingly slow at first.

In minutes both of them were gasping. He let out a heavier sound then... right before he began arching into her harder, his hands holding her flush with his body at the deepest point, his chest tilted up so he could get further inside.

She cried out his name when she climaxed.

It caught her off-guard, startling her with its intensity.

The sound he made sounded surprised too.

Then he grew softer, heartbreakingly soft as he began caressing her all over again.

He still didn’t stop. Groaning the whole time when he slowed, he began moving faster again once she began moving harder with him. She came again within a few minutes as he slowly accelerated, bringing her with him as his weight grew heavier.

When he came, letting go as she did that time, his whole face changed.

Longing filled his voice. She found herself clutching at him, gasping as she wrapped more of herself around him. Something in the sheer vulnerability of that cry, in how he melted against her as it went on, brought tears to her eyes. His weight pressed down as he lost control but somehow the more he pressed into her the more she wanted of him.

In those minutes, it grew strangely silent.

She swore she saw the wings again, enveloping both of them.

When they lay there in the aftermath, he began caressing her again, using his strong hands to explore her all over, gentle but strangely insistent. When he didn’t stop, she felt that emotion try to overwhelm her again.

“You are so beautiful,” he said, kissing her. “You are so beautiful, Ilana...”

She could not remember ever being so touched with Uri––not even at the beginning, when they first fell in love. The conflicting emotions she felt now, subtle and sweet and almost overwhelming... they woke her up in some way. Maybe they only woke her up to the possibility that there could be more than what she’d had before now. Not just more than fighting and games and jealousy––not just more than how bitter things had gotten with her and Uri by the end.

Just... more.

More kindness. More connection perhaps.

More of each person, willing to show themselves.

He was kissing her neck, stroking her back and side as she thought it. He wrapped his arms more tightly around her when she smiled.

“What?” he murmured, kissing her face. “What is it, Ilana?”

She turned her head, looking at his pale gray eyes in the faint light from the gold-colored lamp.

“I am thinking maybe you ruined me for non-angel men,” she confessed, still smiling faintly.

He smiled back, and it altered the marble-like planes of his face.

“Once one has an angel, they never go back?”

She burst out in a laugh, unable to help it. His smile slid briefly into a happy grin. Then his expression grew more serious again, right before he kissed her mouth. The kiss was tender that time, holding enough to catch her breath.

“I felt my wings again,” he murmured against her face.

She froze, staring at the same stretch of empty ceiling as before, only now she didn’t see it.

“...They were back, Ilana, because of you.” He kissed her again, caressing her cheek with his. “They weren’t the same as before. They were not my archangel’s wings. I am human now and these were my human wings... the wings humans will some day have, but are not yet developed. They were shadow wings...”

Caressing his face, she inexplicably felt tears rise to her eyes. She didn’t understand him, not really, but his words touched her down to her bones.

Nodding, she slid her fingers into his hair.

“I felt them,” she said.

“I needed them,” he said. “I needed them, just so I could wrap them around you...” Stroking her cheeks with the backs of his fingers, he smiled again, but she saw a faint glow of wonder in his crystal-like eyes. “...I had never seen them before, not the human ones. Your wings will be so beautiful, Ilana.” He kissed her again, still stroking her skin. “They will be so very very beautiful, my love... I felt yours too.”

She could only nod, looking up at him.

She had no words, no way to tell him how his words made her feel. She couldn’t even really understand those feelings herself. She only knew one thing, with utter certainty.

What he said felt beautiful to her.

It felt so beautiful and true.

She wanted so desperately to believe him.

WE HAVE TO TRY

ILANA WOKE THE next morning to sunlight streaming through the open drapes in their hotel room. Squinting at the view out the long bay window, she held up a hand, then smiled when she saw Raguel standing there, gazing out over the Moscow River.

He smiled back, then walked over to her, sitting beside her on the bed. Leaning down, he kissed her, stroking her hair out of her face. Kissing her on the cheek before he raised his head, he murmured against her face.

“You should get up. We might need to go soon.”

She nodded, stretching her whole body and smiling at him.

They kissed again, and briefly, she forgot what he’d just said. When he ended the kiss a few minutes later, she remembered and let out a regretful sigh.

“Maybe after breakfast?” she said hopefully.

Even as she said it, his stomach growled, and they both laughed.

He ordered them room service while she was in the shower.

She was dressed and drying her hair with a thick towel when the knock came to their door. She let in the waitstaff and watched as they set the table, this time instructing them to use the higher table by the window. From there, she and Raguel would be able to eat and overlook the Moscow River and the view of the city. She’d decided she would enjoy her morning, and not think about where they would likely be by the end of the day.

She could already see clouds moving closer in the sky.

As for her, now, in the light of the morning sun, she knew she could not run. She knew Raguel would not run anyway, and she could not.

She would not leave him here––but she also knew it was not Raguel who made up her mind. She couldn’t run away when she knew something bad was coming. She’d devoted her life to protecting her people, the best way she knew how, like her father had before her. He’d done it under much worse conditions than she had, and he never abandoned his post.

Sighing at the thought, Ilana munched on a piece of buttered toast, pouring herself a cup of coffee and looking out over the view. She was watching the sun rise higher in the sky when the bathroom door opened and Raguel emerged with wet hair and only a towel around his waist.

Glancing away from the spectacular view out of their window, she smiled wider at the spectacular view of him. There was a silence where they just looked at one another.

Then Raguel broke it.

“We must go,” he said. “Right now, Ilana. Today. We will eat, then we will go.”

She nodded thoughtfully. Leaning back in the upholstered, crescent-shaped chair where she sat at the nook table, she folded her arms.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” she said, glancing ruefully out the window at the view of the river. The sky was growing overcast now, which felt prophetic almost. “We should probably try KGB Headquarters at Lubyanka first. If we are lucky, we can get in and out without seeing Karkoff. Usually there is little cross-talk between groups. Even if he has orders out on me already, he will not publicize this... so there is a good chance no one will know except Karkoff himself and a few others.”

Meeting Raguel’s gaze, she shrugged, trying to dispel his worried expression.

“Either way, no one would expect me to go back there. None of those looking for me are likely to be there, either. We can find out what is going on, perhaps... warn some to look out for Karkoff and what he is up to. Maybe we can get some clue as to what your demon will do next... or who he might be possessing now, if you do not think it is Karkoff.”

But Raguel was shaking his head.

“What?” she said, bewildered. “Do you have a different plan?”

“Yes. I meant we should leave, Ilana. Leave Moscow... leave Russia, like you said last night. It is not safe for you here.”

“You want to run?” She was surprised. Before he’d seemed so determined to stop the demon, regardless of the risk to himself. “Why? Or I should say, why now?”

“You are not safe,” he repeated. “I think Lahash probably is in Karkoff now... or someone else in a leadership position. They will try to say you did this... that all of whatever happens next is you. We have no choice now, Ilana. We must leave.”

Blinking at him, she thought about his words. Then she shook her head.

“No, Raguel.”

“Ilana––”

“No,” she said, more firmly. “You could never live with yourself.” Picking up her cup of coffee, she took a sip, shaking her head. “Neither could I, frankly. Joking aside... I believe you now. And I am not about to let an angel abandon his charge, simply because I am so charming to spend a night with...”

She gave him a small smile as she said the last part, but he didn’t smile back.

“I love you, Ilana,” he said. “I cannot let you risk yourself like this. I cannot.”

She stared at him, feeling her chest clench.

The pain there wasn’t fear that time. Rather, she found herself fighting a heat from a different kind of feeling altogether. She couldn’t answer him at first.

Even so, when those seconds passed, she shook her head.

“No. If you love me, you will not give yourself cause to resent me later. You will not give me cause to think less of you. Because it is not only you... I cannot abandon my post now, when I could finally do some real good. Not just the usual thing of protecting the Party and the bureaucrats but protecting the real Russia... my people.” Looking up, she felt her face warm. “I love you, too. I would never ask this of you. It is not right, Raguel... you know it isn’t.”

There was a silence where they only looked at one another.

Then he nodded, exhaling a sigh.

“Yes.” His voice grew harder. “Yes, but if we stop this or not, at the end of this day, if you are still in danger, you will leave here with me, Ilana. Promise me.”

Ilana frowned slightly. “And what if this thing happens tomorrow?”

Raguel shook his head. “Whatever will happen, it is today. Demons do not leave long windows open for such things.” His frown deepened. “Lahash will not wait. It is part of what they do... they speed things up. And Mik’hil and the others will be looking for him by now. And for me. He is running out of time.”

She nodded, thinking.

Glancing out the window a second time, she sighed. Then she turned, smiling at him, and raised her coffee in a kind of salute.

“Breakfast first. Then we go.” She drained the last of her cup, then set it on the saucer. “That means you too, comrade Archangel. You must eat.”

For a long moment, he only looked at her, as if frustrated.

Then, as if unable to help himself, he exhaled a smile.

“You are a stubborn woman, Ilana.”

“Yes,” she said, nodding as she poured herself more coffee. Pouring him a cup as well, she smiled at him again. “Yes, I am.”

DESPITE WHAT SHE’D said to Raguel, when they reached the KGB headquarters at Lubyanka, Ilana’s heart was thudding behind her ribs. She braced herself to be stopped as they approached the security gatehouse.

Everything she’d told him had been true, but it hadn’t exactly been the whole story. Karkoff could have put out a general notice to bring her in, along with her photo.

Even so, at base, she knew she was right––anyone who knew of Karkoff’s accusations would not be looking for her here. They would expect her to run.

They got past the gate without incident.

Ilana let out the breath she hadn’t known she’d held, as soon as they entered the main building. Once inside, the heightened level of activity immediately got her radar up, however.

“I think we might find out fairly easily what the demon is up to,” she muttered to Raguel, who followed close behind her.

Truthfully, it was more activity than she had seen at Lubyanka in months, perhaps longer. Stranger still, everyone ignored her and Raguel as they rushed by, holding reams of papers as they talked quietly in small groups.

Seeing a fellow agent, a man named Yakov she considered a friend, she stopped him with a raised hand, forcing him to look at her. He did a double-take when he saw her, his eyes widening in obvious shock. Glancing around the busy corridor, he walked over to her and Raguel, motioning for them to follow him. He gave Raguel barely a glance before he brought both of them with him into an unused office off the main corridor.

“Ilana!” He spoke in a loud whisper, his voice urgent. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I came to see Karkoff,” she lied, deciding to play dumb. “What is going on?”

He frowned, glancing at the busy corridor, where people still walked by rapidly in hushed groups on the other side of that smoky glass. Still frowning, he seemed about to say one thing to her, then changed his mind. His voice grew gruff, more business-like.

It was enough that Ilana knew he’d spoken to Karkoff already.

“Karkoff is not here,” Yakov said. “He will be at Staraya Square by now, Ilana.”

“Staraya? The Politiburo is meeting? Why?” Ilana stared at him, confused, then glanced in the direction of the busy corridor. “What happened? What is going on here today?”

“Chernenko is dead,” he said, his voice still low. “They are there to pick the new General Secretary for the Soviet Union.”

Ilana stared. She looked at Raguel, who frowned.

This had to be it. It had to be what the demon was up to.

“How?”

“How?” Yakov let out a snort. “He has been on his death bed for months, Ilana. There is no foul play... not with Chernenko. His doctors are surprised he lasted as long as he did. He went into a coma yesterday afternoon, around 15:00. He died several hours later.”

“They are picking the successor,” she muttered, again glancing at Raguel.

“It is rumored they already have chosen,” Yakov said.

“Who?” Ilana demanded, looking at him.

“Gorbachev.” Yakov shrugged, his voice growing more calm. “Most are happy with the decision. There are some hardliners who do not trust him... who think he might be too reformist, too young... a little too enamored of the West. Some are saying the Politiburo was in too big of a hurry to decide, that they are too worried about leaving a leadership gap because of public relations.” He grunted, glancing at her. “Karkoff felt there might even be an attempt on him today. He doubled security.”

“An attempt on Gorbachev?”

“Yes.”

She again glanced at Raguel.

She still couldn’t fully make sense of this. Gorbachev was the leader the moderate camps would have most wanted. He was younger than their last two General Secretaries had been. He was considered a good Marxist, but not a war-monger. A born diplomat, it was thought he would be better at negotiating with the West, and yes, that he might introduce much-needed economic reforms. More and more unrest had been building around what was perceived as a gap between the standards of living in the West as compared to that of Russia.

If pressed prior to now, Ilana would have thought the demon would be trying to prevent the rise of Gorbachev... not orchestrate it.

“And Karkoff is there to protect Gorbachev?” she said, puzzled. “Has there been a credible threat against him?”

Yakov shrugged, but she felt his scrutiny on her intensify.

“Some think so, yes.”

“Who?”

Yakov stared at her, then let out a humorless snort. “You, Ilana. Karkoff has people looking for you all over Moscow! It is said that you had something to do with the murders in Red Square, that it was some kind of message or threat...” Staring at her, his hands on his hips, he shook his head. “I should take you into custody right now. But the fact that you are here, looking for Karkoff...” He hesitated, as if at a loss.

Then, motioning with his head for her to follow him, he sighed, giving her a serious look.

“I will put you in custody, da? It will look good for you that you came here. I will vouch for you, Ilana. So will many others. This must be a misunderstanding of some kind––”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “There is no misunderstanding. Karkoff is behind this.”

Yakov let out a disbelieving noise. Then he did a double-take, his smile fading.

“You are serious, Ilana?”

Ilana looked at Raguel, who nodded perceptibly, his eyes glowing a sharper gray.

“I am,” she said. “You need someone to keep an eye on him in there. Based on what you are saying, there is a good chance he will try to take Gorbachev out himself...”

Yakov frowned, glancing at Raguel. “Who is this?”

“He is a friend...” Trailing off as she tried to think how to frame Raguel’s involvement in this, she started to go on, when Raguel cut her off.

“We have to go, Ilana.”

Yakov looked at him, then at Ilana. “No. Were you not listening to me? You cannot go. You need to be here, at least until they have announced Gorbachev as the new General Secretary...”

But Raguel acted as though he hadn’t heard him at all.

“We have to go, Ilana... we are out of time!”

He caught hold of her arm and began pulling her towards the corridor. Yakov grabbed her, but Raguel shoved him off, standing between them.

“I don’t wish to hurt you,” he said, his voice cold.

Yakov reached for his sidearm, but Ilana already had hers out and pointed at him.

“I’m sorry, Yakov,” she told him. “But my friend is right. We must go.”

“Ilana... if you go now, you are finished here. Do you understand this? And if you are anywhere near the Staraya––”

“Ilana!” Raguel said, sharper, opening the office door behind her. “Hurry!”

Swallowing, she nodded, even as Raguel began to pull her through the open door.

“I understand, Yakov,” she said, still holding the gun on him. “And I know you will have to call your people when I leave, and tell them to look for me.” She inclined her head sideways. “Just tell them to keep an eye on Karkoff too, okay?”

“Ilana, don’t do this!” Yakov snarled.

But the door was already closing between them.

“NO!” ILANA SHOUTED, waving Raguel away from the parking lot where she’d left her car. “They will lock the gate! There is no time!”

They walk-jogged to the gate, flashing their ID’s briefly and then exited out on the street. They’d barely gotten past the gatehouse walls when Ilana heard the alarm go off in the KGB building behind them. She looked back right as someone let out a shout.

Now she and Raguel sprinted down the sidewalk towards Staraya.

They made it a few blocks and now Ilana looked for a taxi, worried about time and about being picked up on the street. Before she could get close enough to wave a cab down, a bus pulled to a stop not far from where they ran. Remembering that particular bus’s route would bring them close to the square, she waved to Raguel and pointed, running faster.

“There!” she said.

They caught it just in time, Ilana swinging up on the steps and fumbling for money to pay for her and Raguel while both of them panted, fighting to catch their breaths. They only rode it for a few blocks, then got off on the edge of the Square. They were still a long block from the Politiburo building itself, but at least this side wasn’t cordoned off by security.

“It will be sheer damned luck if we get past this,” she muttered. Glancing down at her holstered weapon, she wondered if she should get rid of it, hide it somewhere.

“No,” Raguel said, meeting her gaze when she looked up. “He will want you here. Lahash. He is likely hoping we will be there, so he can pin it on us. They will let us in.”

Ilana nodded grimly, realizing he was probably right.

Her mind churned over options, her hand sliding into her pocket as she thought about what they could do. When it did, her fingers closed over the glass key. She’d brought it with her at the last minute, snatching it off the coffee table without thinking about why.

“We have to try,” she said finally, meeting Raguel’s gaze.

He nodded. “Yes. We do.”

They began to walk fast, heading for the Politiburo building as they made their way along the square. Ilana kept expecting to hit the perimeter. She expected to see where the security began, to see evidence they had scoped rifles in the nearby buildings, some kind of barrier to keep out pedestrians. She figured she and Raguel would turn once they hit the edges of that perimeter, walk around the building itself until they found an opening or a way in––but if there was extra security there, she could not see it.

She and Raguel walked all the way up to the double doors of the Staraya building itself, with no one stopping them at all. Ilana saw windows open above, but no guns. She didn’t hear the squawk of radios, either. Despite what Yakov said about added security––she saw no evidence of a KGB presence at all, even the ordinary amount for a meeting among government leaders.

No one stopped them as they walked inside, either.

Inside the doors, two guards saw them, but only stepped out of the way to let them pass. When they reached the blocked off hallway that led to the part of the building where the Politiburo would be meeting, another guard held open the door.

“Do we just go inside?” she whispered to Raguel.

He frowned, glancing at her. “What choice do we have?”

She was utterly unnerved at how quiet it was. Still, she knew he was right.

They walked through the small gateway and entered a dimly-lit hallway. Walking together in silence, she didn’t speak until they were approaching the closed doors of the meeting room itself.

No guards stood outside those doors at all.

“This isn’t right,” she whispered to Raguel, shaking her head. “This is all wrong.”

“What do we do?” Raguel said. “Do we go inside?”

But someone else answered his question before she could.

“No,” that other voice said. “No, I think this is quite far enough, comrades.”

Ilana turned, feeling her heart leap into her throat.

But she’d already recognized the voice.

Karkoff stood there, his gun aimed at the middle of her chest.

HUMANS WERE MADE TO DIE

“IT WAS KIND of you to come,” Karkoff said, smiling faintly. “I admit, it makes things so very much easier. I thought I might have to fabricate an evidence trail, all on my own.”

Ilana didn’t see the Karkoff she knew in that smile.

She didn’t see him in the faint silver glow of his normally dark blue irises, either. Like Golunsky’s had the previous morning, his eyes looked overly pale now, with a watery sheen that reflected in the dim light of the corridor.

She wondered what Golunsky’s eyes had looked like before the demon possessed him.

Without thinking about it really, Ilana gripped the glass key in her pocket, glancing at Raguel.

“Uh-uh...” The demon shook its head, then motioned at her with the pistol. “Give me the gun, my beautiful Ilana. I can’t have you disposing of this body before I’ve finished with it.”

She bit her lip, glancing again at Raguel.

“Give it to me, Ilana.” Karkoff swiveled the aim of his gun, pointing it at Raguel’s head. “I will kill him first, if you don’t.”

She handed over the gun, grip-first, and the demon took it from her with his free hand.

“Now, move,” Karkoff said, motioning with the pistol down the dimly-lit corridor. “I have just the right place picked out for all of us.”

He walked them past the double doors leading into the meeting hall, and through a smaller access corridor on the other side. When they reached an even smaller hallway, Karkoff again motioned with the gun, this time towards a metal-plated maintenance door.

“Open it, Ilana,” he said.

She glanced at Raguel.

The angel frowned, but she saw him nod perceptibly.

Biting her lip, this time hard enough to taste blood, she did as the demon said, shoving the heavy maintenance door inward.

They walked up two flights of cement stairs, their footsteps echoing in an empty, green-painted stairwell. When they reached the top, Ilana opened a second door when the demon instructed her to, and found herself in another maintenance corridor.

That one popped out in a glassed-in projection booth. Ilana couldn’t help noticing that the windows all slid open. It would make an excellent sniper’s position. Even as she thought it, she saw the assembled rifle and scope leaning against the wall by an open case.

Looking down, she saw the Politiburo meeting going on below them.

Standing at the head of the table now was Gorbachev himself.

He was speaking, but she couldn’t hear his words through the soundproof glass.

She was still staring down, fighting to think, to determine what their options were now, if there was any way to make a loud enough noise from where they were, when Karkoff chuckled and she turned.

“I can almost see you trying to puzzle your way out of this, my darling Ilana,” he said, still smiling. “But you are too late, I’m afraid...” Grinning wider, he added, “I really must thank you. You bringing your pet angel here is just icing on the cake.” His voice remained low, despite the glass window that stood closed between them and the lower part of the room. “...When I tell them I caught you in the act of this terrible crime, it will be difficult for anyone to argue with me. Particularly when they find you dead, the smoking rifle still in your hands...” Karkoff smiled, motioning with the gun. “...Sadly, dear Ilana, my attempts to stop you from committing this terrible crime against Mother Russia will be too late, I’m afraid.”

He pulled handcuffs from out of his jacket then, holding them out to her.

“Cuff your pet. We can’t have him getting ambitious, can we, Ilana? After all, I suspect he’d be willing to do a great deal to protect his favorite human... whatever his indifference for the rest of  the pathetic humans in his charge.”

Ilana frowned, glancing at Raguel.

“Do not look at him... look at me, Ilana.” The demon held out the cuffs more insistently. “Trust me when I tell you... I will shoot him right now. Unlike with yourself, you have the ability to save his life. He does not need to die in this scenario.”

“I cannot die,” Raguel said. “I would only become an angel again.”

“Are you so sure of that, Raguel?” the demon smirked.

Ilana glanced at the windows and the demon rattled the cuffs again.

“Don’t get ambitious yourself, Ilana. You were right the first time... The booth is soundproof. With the silencer, they will not hear it.”

When Karkoff aimed the gun at Raguel’s head and cocked it, she took the handcuffs from his hands and stepped closer to Raguel. Snapping the cuffs on his wrists one by one, she stepped back when the demon motioned her to move away. Karkoff tested the cuffs himself, then motioned with the gun for Raguel to get on the floor.

“Sit, brother archangel,” he said.

Raguel did as the demon told him, sliding down gracefully to a seated position. He did not take his eyes off the gun, which was again aimed at Ilana’s chest.

Ilana could almost see him thinking too.

She knew he still might lunge at the demon, given the opportunity.

It would probably only get both of them killed, but she held out hope that someone down below might hear something.

She knew it was likely a slim hope.

The demon was still talking as her mind churned over all of this.

“...Yes, sadly, I will be too late,” the demon said, motioning for Ilana to come closer. “...But I will catch the culprit at least. I suppose that is something. And if you behave, sweet Ilana, you will save your pet from dying with you. I might even give him a good citizenship medal or something, for helping us with the case...”

The demon aimed that flat-eyed stare at Raguel, a smile touching his lips.

“I hope the sex was worth it, Raguel. If Ilana is a good girl and I decide to spare you... which I really really hope she will do, simply because the thought amuses me... you will spend the rest of your human life wondering how you could have failed her so horribly. You can chalk it up to research, eh? And you can meet your woman in the human afterlife, perhaps? Unfortunately, she cannot be permitted to survive now, not when she could potentially provide an alternate story to the one the authorities might believe...”

Grinning wider, the demon shrugged with the hand holding the gun.

“Not that I care what happens to this human. But I suspect I will need this body for a bit longer. It won’t be enough to simply kill the symbol of moderate progress... I need to be here to tell the story about why it happened. How one of our own allied with an American spy to destroy the Motherland for good...”

Ilana felt her heart beating louder in her chest, but she didn’t speak.

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 brought 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 looked 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.”

Mik’hil laughed, even as Raguel smiled, taking her hand in his.

“Yes,” Raguel said, still looking at her face. “I will stay. For one lifetime, at least.”

Thank you so much for taking the time to read my Skeleton Key novella!

All reviews are appreciated.

If you would like to read more from the Skeleton Key series, please click on the link below:

Skeleton Key Website

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

I’m a USA TODAY bestselling author who writes paranormal mystery, romance and science fiction, often with a sexy, metaphysical and apocalyptic bent. My work has been featured in anthologies, online literary, art and fiction magazines as well as print venues such as NY Press. I travel extensively and have lived abroad in Europe, Australia and Asia and from coast to coast in the continental United States, but currently I live and work full time in Bangkok, Thailand.

To learn more about me and my writing, please visit jcandrijeski.com.

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MORE BY JC ANDRIJESKI

QUENTIN BLACK MYSTERY is a dark, gritty paranormal romance and mystery series starring brilliant and mysterious antihero Quentin R. Black, along with his partner, psychic forensic psychologist Miram Fox. For fans of Sherlock Holmes and paranormal romance, the series spans continents and dimensions as Black tries to redeem himself by making the world safe for his kind.

THE ALLIE’S WAR SERIES is a dark, unique and gritty psychic romance involving a young woman grappling with her role in bringing about the end of one world and the start of a new one. Follow Allie Taylor and her antihero partner in crime, Dehgoies Revik, as they fight terrifying enemies and one another in a passionate story spanning centuries, and filled unpredictable twists.

THE ALIEN APOCALYPSE SERIES is a dystopian new adult romance about a tough girl named Jet Tetsuo who grew up on Earth following an alien invasion. Forced into living among her conquerors, she has to navigate a treacherous world full of enemies who pose as friends, even as she becomes their most famous fighter in the Rings, a modern day version of the coliseum.

THE GATE SHIFTER SERIES is an unusual shifter romance centering on shifters from another world altogether, called morph. Earth humans remained blissfully ignorant of the existence of alternate dimensions until Nihkil Jamri tries to save private detective, Dakota Reyes, while he is surveying Earth. Part urban fantasy, part detective series, part paranormal romance, part science fiction adventure, the Gate Shifter series explores crime solving, interstellar warfare and alien romance with the least likely candidates imaginable.

SHADOW WINGS

A Skeleton Key Novella

Copyright © 2016 by JC Andrijeski

Cover Art & Design by Jennifer Munswami at

J.M. Rising Horse Creations
www.facebook.com/RisingHorseCreations

2015

http://skeletonkeybookseries.com
http://jcandrijeski.com

Published by White Sun Press

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

Table of Contents

SYNOPSIS: Shadow Wings

ONE: The Key

TWO: Never Cold Before

THREE: Ilana

FOUR: Raguel

FIVE: The Importance of Names

SIX: Angels and Demons

SEVEN: There Is No Religion in the Motherland

EIGHT: Gorky Park

NINE: Another Vanishing

TEN: You Know How It Works

ELEVEN: Kashchenko

TWELVE: Humans Sometimes Lie

THIRTEEN: Out of the Way

FOURTEEN: Shadow Wings

FIFTEEN: We Have to Try

SIXTEEN: Humans Were Made To Die

SEVENTEEN: A Choice

CREDITS