Shadow WIngs (Skeleton Key) (2 page)

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...?”