Shadow WIngs (Skeleton Key) (12 page)

“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.