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THE DEVIL COMES TO ANGELOVSK
04: A Small Price to Pay
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"How is it, little sister?"

Rodion lifted his head to find Shutka slumped over in the Kynaz's lap, loose and liquid like a raindrop. Her cheek was resting on her outstretched arm, and her knees were pulled to her chest. The Kynaz stroked her arm from wrist to shoulder with a tattooed hand, causing her set of silver bangles to chime as they shifted over her bones. He stared daggers at Rodion and Sasha all the while, a smirk quirking his mouth.

"Vint hits like lighting. It's quick, and it's got you feeling better than you ever have before, doesn't it?"

"I know it does."

Rodion clenched his jaw. Shutka's words were mushy, her tongue heavy. He was worried she was going to choke on it or on the vomit that was almost guaranteed to come up after the rush wore off. Every time he'd slammed too much, the adjustment started with retching until his stomach was empty and his throat was scorched by bile. Then came the drowsiness, the heaviness that pulled him to the floor where he laid unable to move for anything or anyone until the cold gripped him and he had to hunt down more layers.

The Kynaz swept a section of black hair off the nape of Shutka's neck. He ran his thumb down to her collarbones, tracing the route of her jugular vein. "Can you even feel that, little sister?"

"Don't touch her," Rodion said. "Come on, pakhan. Enough."

Koshchey intercepted him before he could get to the other side of the coffee table. He held Rodion in place with tree trunk arms, stopping him from advancing any further. Yielding to his disadvantage in size and strength, Rodion backed off and stayed seething . He was so close to pulling Shutka up and getting her away from the Kynaz– close but stuck on the other side of a widening chasm.

"Are you going to let him talk for you again?" The Kynaz asked, taking Shutka by the chin and tilting her head back to make her look at him. "Look at those eyes. Men used to rape for eyes like that."

Sasha grabbed Rodion's shirt collar from behind. He slapped his hand up against the center of Rodion's chest, keeping him barely restrained. Rodion breathed steadily despite the tightness of his chest and the adrenaline in his blood swirling from temple to toe. The Makarov on his hip never felt so useless.

"He's trying to squeeze us," Sasha whispered, his voice a fleeting hiss. "Relax."

"How much do you think someone would pay for those eyes now, little sister?"

Shutka mumbled a string of incoherent syllables and rolled back into the Kynaz's sable coat, into oblivion.

The Kynaz looked to Rodion. "You want to answer for her now? How much?"

"Two, three-hundred?"

"Try four. They're like fucking emeralds, those eyes."

Rodion pulled out one of the Devil's stacks, tearing away the ribbon. Koshchey let him pass. He stopped before the sofa and broke the rubles into groups of one hundred, setting them in the Kynaz's open palm.

"Four hundred each."

Rodion sighed and begrudgingly counted out four hundred more. If that was the price to pay, so be it. He needed and wanted Shutka to be alright.

The Kynaz knew that and stuffed the cash into his coat pockets with the slimiest look. Once he had all eight hundred, he shoved Shutka off his lap like she was a rag doll and rose to a towering height, sticking out his hand.

"It's been a pleasure doing business with you."

☨ ☨ ☨

The Kynaz and his lieutenants left as soon as he and Rodion shook. In their absence, Sasha spun around, hands stacked on his head again, jaw agape like a dead trout's.

"I'm never selling you another fucking gram." He jabbed a frustrated finger at Rodion. "You hear me? I don't need you or vory coming around again, lying and threatening to rape some strung out girl in my apartment. Absolutely not."

Rodion nodded, though he wasn't really listening. He lingered at the sofa side, pulling strands of black hair from Shutka's clammy cheeks. The second the Kynaz stepped away, he'd arranged her into the recovery position, fearing her suffocating more than the Devil's punishment. He'd shelled out eight hundred rubles to get her back, eight hundred rubles he didn't own or have a way to recover. But it didn't matter. Shutka was safe. She was still functioning below the blanket of numbing euphoria–for the moment, anyway.

"I mean it, Rodya. Get her out of here."

"I will when I can," Rodion replied, pulling down the blanket draped over the sofa back. He covered Shutka with it and sat on the floor in front of her, her slow breath washing over the back of his neck. If she stopped breathing, he'd feel it and already be right there.

"Who the hell is she, anyway?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"Try me."

Rodion reached between the bricks of anasha Sasha had yet to clear from the table for a second cigarette. "When you were a kid, did your grandparents ever tell you stories about chyerti?"

"What, like folktales? What does that have to do with anything?"

"She's a chyort."

"Is that what we're calling broads now?"

"I'm serious."

It was then that Rodion spoke of the black cat that had followed him a couple weeks ago, about women who snapped in and out of rooms, and the absurd, hopeless bet he'd made with the Devil. He wasn't sure if Sasha assumed he was high, insane, or hallucinating–or maybe all three–but it didn't matter. His descriptions were the closest thing he had to the truth, and narrating was the best way to make sense of all that had already happened. When he concluded, Sasha simply said "Alright."

"You don't believe me?"

"I believe you have lucid dreams. I believe reality isn't what it seems, especially after you've scrambled it with drugs and combat."

Rodion couldn't argue with that. He elected to stay in their mutually agreed upon reality, watching Sasha break the bricks into sellable doses. He offered to help, but Sasha quickly shut him down, giving some flimsy excuse to cover up the fact he feared Rodion contaminating or stealing the product. And so Rodion stayed on the floor, back to Shutka's lips, listening to the Kino tapes he put on spool through their track lists.

The ticking cropped up in the middle of the third tape. It was distant and slow at first, a murmur hiding behind the rock rhythms and Sasha's whispered counts. Rodion thought it was his watch before he checked his wrist and confirmed he'd again forgotten it in his apartment. More peculiar was the fact there were no analog clocks in the apartment, nor a watch on Sasha's wrist.

"Where is that coming from?"

"Where is what coming from?" Sasha asked, not bothering to look up from the bundles of vint he was tying shut.

"The ticking."

"What ticking? There's no ticking."

The ticks crescendoed. They seemed to slither in through the door, speeding to a sprint as they came in. Rodion's heart matched them. He was gripped by an artificial panic that became very real when the shadows behind Sasha ebbed and a foreign face stepped out of them.

The man looked related to the rest of the Devil retinue and possessed all the common traits; dark hair, black suit, rubies glimmering blood red somewhere on his hand or neck. Except this man was massive in stature. His build was like that of a serpent: long and lean and almost all muscle. Patches of silvery scales dappled his skin, and when he parted his pursed lips to speak, Rodion glimpsed his forked tongue.

"I've come to–"

"You can't be here," Rodion said, rising. "He doesn't know."

"Who? Him?"

Rodion followed the visitor's pointed finger to Sasha, who'd collapsed on the floor behind the coffee table and was slumbering as if he'd been for hours. He turned and found Shutka in the same catatonic state. Fearful, he laid two fingers on her wrist, searching for her pulse and breathing a sigh of release when he found it.

"He won't wake for some time now. Neither will she."

Rodion turned over his shoulder and stayed at Shutka's side, shielding her. "Because of a curse of sorts? What, you practice black magic like the rest of your demon friends?"

"No," he said. "I deal in good timing and bad luck, poor timing and good luck."

"Mortals can't claim the same. Tell me what you've done to them."

"Nothing besides counting seconds," the visitor said, tapping Sasha's upturned palm with the toe of his heeled boot. "Your friend's sleepless nights have merely caught up with him. And you can agree, Shutka Luciferovna is lucky to be asleep and breathing as opposed to dead and asphyxiating."

Rodion cocked his head. Only the Devil had referred to Shutka like that, forcing her to be connected to him by means of a patronizing patronymic. Was the man before him the Devil in one of his many forms? Or was he a simple agent?

"Shutka is lucky to have a friend," Rodion replied. "If not in me, then in you and your luck dealings. How do you know her?"

"She hasn't told you about me? Hasn't mentioned me?"

"Should she have?"

"I would hope so. I spared her soul instead of devouring it after she lost her deal."

The arrogance Shutka's so-called friend possessed made him insufferable. Lost deal or not, what did she owe him? He had just admitted that he decided to spare Shutka on his own accord and she had not paid for the favor–but perhaps she'd begged? Rodion shook his head. The reason didn't matter, and he didn't need to fixate on the details of their exchange. More important were  those surrounding Shutka's deal with Lucifer. He pondered why she hadn't told him about it herself and instead kept her lips pressed and her eyes down, allowing an alleged friend, a mistress, and the Devil himself to stop by and drop off more snippets of the mystery. Was she protecting him? Deceiving him?

"How does one get into the business of devouring souls?"

The stranger shrugged. "Hell gets crowded. I grow hungry. Ravenous, really."

"What do they call you, in Hell?"

"The Leviathan. But my friends, Shutka Luciferovna included, prefer to call me Lev," he said, offering a flittering hiss of his forked tongue to prove his serpentine status.

The gesture riled Rodion. He'd despised snakes ever since a hoard of vipers and cobras infested one of the army compounds in the Panjshir. The week-long snake cleanse, won by burning and hacking the slithering bastards to pieces, had been one of the few successful operations in the valley. The compound commander declared the snake population wiped out, but never said the same for the village insurgencies. Still, Rodion would rather go on an offensive against people instead of snakes, because at least people stopped squirming when they were dead.

Yet the Leviathan was neither fully serpent nor man. Along with his scaly skin and split tongue, his slitted, reptilian eyes were the only clues proving he could shapeshift into the sea serpent who consumed the damned and embodied chaos. He was as much of a man as he was a mystery, and that meant he was dangerously unpredictable. All the Devil's retinue were wild cards, jokers stacked against the house, and Rodion was unsure of how to play his newest hand.

"That explains the scales, but not your purpose. Why are you here?"

"To warn you," said Lev. "The second you broke out those banknotes to pay for Shutka, you plunged yourself into debt with Lucifer Chernov. Thirteen hundred thirty rubles worth, to be exact."

"Thirteen hundred? I only spent eight."

"Yes, but didn't Shutka Luciferovna warn you? At six hundred sixty-six percent, Lucifer Chernov's interest is hardly sane."

"No kidding. I can't get that kind of money. Nobody in this country can. Unless, well, unless they're a party boss taking bribes. But do I look like a fucking party boss to you?" Rodion asked, holding out his arms as if to give the Levithan a better look.

"Not quite. You're not rotund enough, for one."

"Exactly. So what the hell am I supposed to do? Beg the Devil for mercy? Tell him I spent his money to counter Shutka's indiscretion?"

"Let's see what luck I can deal you first." 

"Wait," Rodion said, raising a stonewalling hand. "Name your price."

"I don't have one."

"Do you think I'm stupid?"

"You did make a deal with the Devil."

"And now I know none of you demon types do anything for free. So tell me, what's your price?"

"I'm not the Devil. I don't have a price."

"You're a terrible liar."

"Simply because I am not lying." Lev lifted his chin to Shutka, still heavy and weak on the sofa. "Consider this friends helping friends. No debts required."

"Can I get that in writing? In a contract clause, perhaps."

"We don't have time for this."

Lev peeled away from the shadows along the wall, slinking over to the bedroom door. He hovered his hand over the handle and the rust-coated hardware crumbled to the floor, lock and latch included.

"Unfortunate that fell apart today," Lev said, looking up from the busted door handle with a cheeky grin. The door creaked open. "Your friend should have replaced it earlier."

Rodion followed him over the threshold, resentfully so. It was bizarre being in the bedroom, prowling among Sasha's things without him there to chaperone. As Lev rummaged through the closest in search of ways to cash in his luck, Rodion found himself drawn to the bedside. Everything important to Sasha was in some way crowded on the night table. There was a small painted box packed with hashish, a pile of guitar picks for the acoustic he'd taught his company to play, and a grainy photograph of him and his sister taped to the stem of the gooseneck lamp.

Rodion plucked the photograph off the red metal. Sasha was just a kid in it, his teenage sister only a couple of years older. They were standing side-by-side in front of a slat fence overgrown with vines, squinting in defiance of the summer sun lighting their freckled faces. On the backside there was a description written in Sasha's hand: Sonya's last smile. July 1969.

"Ah, here we are!"

Rodion reattached the photograph and turned. Lev was holding up the remainder of the ruble wad Sasha had used to pay the Kynaz for his new stock. He examined the banknotes in the light, inspecting them for signs of forgery. Once he deemed them authentic, he turned back to the gaping chest of drawers and shucked off the rubber bands.

"That's all you've got for luck?" Rodion asked, coming over and pushing the rubles out of Lev's reach. "An opportunity to steal?"

"Your other option is...? Oh, that's right," Lev said. He slapped the sizable chunk of cash he'd already counted into Rodion's hands. "You don't have one. You fucked up."

"Shutka was the one who–"

"Do you honestly believe Lucifer Chernov will buy that drivel? He'd rather broker your soul, trust me."

"I'm not robbing Sasha."

"But you'll rob the Devil?"

"That's not what I said."

"It's what you implied. You've also just committed yourself to forfeiting your soul. Because you will forfeit it if you don't recoup Lucifer Chernov's money."

Rodion threw the wad down onto the cabinet top. He didn't want it staining his hands and guilt staining his mind. He was already in debt to a demon; he didn't need to be in debt to his only ally. Sasha had already put up with him and helped solve a handful of crises: an imminent court-martial in Tashkent, his family excommunicating him, an overdose. Robbery would finally sever their ties. It'd annihilate Sasha's trust, and with that, their friendship. Rodion knew he couldn't do that. He knew how desperately he needed Sasha's comradery. He couldn't kill it by robbing Sasha, by robbing himself of the only reliable relationship left in his life. And yet... what would become of his soul if he didn't?

"Let me rephrase this for you, since you seem to be doing a great deal of bargaining about it," Lev said, leaning on the cabinet top and looking Rodion dead in the face. "Do you believe your soul is worth more than thirteen hundred rubles?"

Thirteen hundred. Rodion had asked himself the same question several times, but he'd never had to answer it so explicitly for someone else, nor had the value ever been reduced to a single sum. He'd always gleaned determinations of his value from others, from what they thought of his skills or lack thereof. Captain Belikov, his company commander in the Panjshir, had claimed he was only worth something if he shot straight and sprinted fast–which he did. His other evaluation came from his youngest brother, Gleb, who had shouted in their last argument that he was worth nothing more than flea market znachki because the vint had whittled away his remaining worth.

Now he had the Kynaz's assessment of Shutka to weigh. Her eyes were eight hundred rubles alone, and he couldn't possibly be worth more than any part of her. Besides, the very act of admitting his soul was worth thirteen-hundred rubles was tied to an act of robbery that in turn proved just how worthless he really was. After all, what friend would dare rob another? And for what? Self-preservation and the morphine he couldn't tear himself away from?

"The promise of paradise certainly is," Rodion muttered, defaulting to the safest of answers.

"Then take the damn money."

when choosing this chapter title, i originally intended it to refer to rodion's exchange with the kynaz. now i realize it's something of a double entendre and also references the price rodion has now paid to continue on with his deal and succeed.

rodion's sacrifices are where i see my secondary prompt–no. 95: i will become as monstrous as i must–coming into play. he has already wagered his soul; endangered himself and shuka; and now jeopardized his only functioning friendship. how much more monstrous will he get? i guess i'll have to keep writing and you'll have to keep reading to find that out...

as always, thank you for supporting my work. your votes, comments, and reading list adds are great motivators.

happy reading and writing, everyone! and congratulations to all of us who qualified for round two! ♡♡

12.341/20.000
milestone no. 3 ✕