Shadow WIngs (Skeleton Key) (4 page)

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.