Shadow WIngs (Skeleton Key) (26 page)

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.