Shadow WIngs (Skeleton Key) Read online

  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 loo
ks 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 s
at, 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.