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THE DEVIL COMES TO ANGELOVSK
05: No Rest for the Wrathful
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All it took was Shutka's left arm coiled around Rodion's waist and the snap of her right hand and they were tumbling out of Sasha's apartment, into a black blur, and rolling out of a crash landing onto his apartment's dirty floors.

As soon as Shutka retracted her arm, Rodion staggered to his feet and steadied himself on the chair the Devil had sat in that morning. His stomach roiled with nausea wrought by their transportation method, and he heaved once, then twice. A trickle of bile bubbled and burned up his throat on the way out. It plopped onto the floor with a sticky slap beside Shutka, who was clutching the part of her ribs she'd landed on and writhing back and forth like a beetle trapped on its backside.

"You absolute fucking kozyol," she said. Her soft words veered into incoherence with the help of maniacal laughter. "I've never botched an entry that bad–even with a passenger!"

Ignoring her insult, Rodion wiped his mouth and emptied his pockets. He threw Sasha's looted bills onto the table, coughed up the rest of the Devil's untouched stacks and piled them backside up. After the events at Sasha's, that money was as good as blood money. It was stained with droplets of lost trust and gnawing guilt. Rodion didn't want to answer for it anymore. Merely touching it made him want to throw up again.

He turned to Shutka. "Get up."

When she didn't, his patience wore thin. He came over and heaved her up by the back of her upper arm. She looked into his eyes and smirked before she relaxed her muscles and went slack as a rope. Rodion strained to keep her from striking the floor and cracking a bone. He cursed twice for every step it took to get her over to his bed and to lug her on it. The vint's heaviness had indeed set in. Shutka was no more agreeable, or more enjoyable, than a wet cat half-drowned in a sack.

"You think this is funny?" Rodion asked as she continued to fill the cupboard with her wild, piercing laughter. "You think this is all just a joke like your name?"

"Rodya–"

"Don't call me that. Only Sasha gets to call me that."

"Someone's touchy."

"I'm done putting up with your recklessness, that's why."

Shutka sat up and leaned back on her hands. She tilted her chin down and looked through her long lashes, pouting and attempting to guilt him at the same time. Rodion scoffed and turned away to rob her of the satisfaction of seeing his bowed head and averted eyes. Vint turned everyone into the worst, most desperate version of themself. Shutka was too faded to comprehend what it'd done to her or how far it'd lowered her inhibitions.

Realizing that, Rodion dragged a chair over to the bedside. He shed his afghanka and draped it over the chair back before he sat down and countered her manipulation with an equally scheming grin. "Not to mention your secrecy. When were you going to tell me about the deal you lost?"

"Whenever you asked."

"Alright. I'm asking now. What happened? Why did you make a deal? More importantly, how'd you lose?"

Shutka flopped back onto the mattress, her arms stretched above her head. She played with the thinnest of her silver bangles, spinning it over the bones in her wrist. "I was still at the conservatory in Pieter when Lucifer Chernov came to me with a proposition."

"Which instrument were you studying?"

She turned her head and unleashed her most saccharine smile on him. "Harp."

"Like an angel in heaven."

"Yes. Very fitting, isn't it?" She rolled back over. "In my first year, I was the best one there. I was wonderful. I mean, people cried when I practiced my arpeggios. My mother, rest her soul, would have spent the entire afternoon outside my practice room door if I let her. But I didn't practice, or, rather, I stopped during my second year. I wanted to be the best, to be like Alymova or Korchinska, without the work.

"When Lucifer came to me, he told me my particular concoction sloth, greed, and envy made my soul enticing. He said if I completed a couple of tasks at his behest, he would bestow me with all the musical skill I'd ever need to succeed, but if I didn't, I'd forfeit my soul. Clearly I failed, but not before I drove one of my professors mad to the point he killed himself, and burned most of my family's icons."

"Icons? You're Orthodox?"

"I was. Now I worship Lucifer and serve him alone."

"A most excellent conversion, I might add."

Rodion turned over his shoulder at the sound of Devil's familiar sardonic tone and the strangling scent of his crisp, dark cologne. The shadows around the Devil and Lyubasha whirled like yanked open stage curtains, turning their arrival into a delightfully demonic spectacle.

"Your tale is as touching as ever, Svetlana Abdullayeva," the Devil said. His cane struck the floor with a menacing rhythm as he came over to the bedside. "Or should I say moya kisa?"

In the fraction of a second it took Rodion to blink, the form of Shutka he vastly preferred was gone and the cat form he despised had returned.

His shoulders slumped. "You can change her," he said dejectedly.

"Such is the nature of my curses."

Shutka hopped down from the bed and ran to the point of the Devil's hoof-like boots. Unable to resist her pathetically tender meows, he scooped her up and set her on his right shoulder. There, she perched like a hawk and stared down at Rodion with her eyes no longer dilated and dusky from the vint.

"You are getting rather close with her, Rodion Maksimovich," said the Devil, cocking his head. "Is that why you sound so perturbed? You wish to break her curse?"

"No. She's your servant, yours to curse or unhex as you chose," Rodion replied. "Not to mention the only reason I'm close to her is because she's always at my side. Seriously, she hasn't left me alone since you and I cut our deal."

"Just as I predicted," said Lyubasha.

The Devil's mistress stepped up and scratched under Shutka's chin in a way that was more patronizing than it was cordial. Shutka hissed and batted away Lyubasha's touch with a bullet-fast paw and flexed claws. Three fine scratches opened up on the back of her deathly pale hand and an indigo liquid darker than blood seeped out, coagulating into shiny globs.

"Now Shutka, you must not punish Lyubasha for prophesying the future correctly," the Devil said as if he'd scolded her for that very action many times before.

She tried to escape him, but he reached around and grabbed her soft underbelly, effectively evicting her from his shoulders. Instead of putting her down, he kept her aloft in front of his chest, unable to escape without the possibility of twisting away and hurting herself. It was a crude form of punishment and a wickedly effective way of humiliating her.

"We should call her shlyukha not Shutka," Lyubasha hissed, clutching her attacked hand. "Yes, Rodka, I know it's petty to insult her when she cannot reply."

Rodion eyed Lyubasha with utter concern and mounting disdain. Either his disapproval was etched right onto his face, or she could read thoughts in addition to predicting the future. The implications of both scenarios made him uncomfortable. To cover his unease, he pivoted to the stacks of cash on the table behind them and gestured to it with the hand he wasn't scratching the back of his head with.

"Is this what you've come for?"

"It is indeed, my pet."

The Devil released Shutka and came over to thumb through the stacks with as much speed and accuracy as Kalk had.

"I had to spend some," Rodion admitted, swallowing hard when the Devil slowed the count and looked up disapprovingly with his mismatched eyes. "But as you can see, I paid you back with proper interest," he added, pointing to the extra stack of five hundred rubles.

The Devil held his piercing glare for a moment longer before he grinned. His sharp teeth flashed in something of a mockery of masculine endearment. He seized and shook Rodion's shoulder like wolves shook their most recent kill to rip meat from bones.

"An honest sinner," he said, amused. "At least indulge me by disclosing what your greed lured you into spending it on. Drugs? Guns? Girls?"

Rodion eyed Shutka loafing on the windowsill and said nothing. He dropped his head, backed away from the stacks.

"Never mind it," the Devil said, dismissing his question with a flick of his gloved hand. "Lyubasha will tell me later. Right now, I need you to tell me if you are prepared to undertake the second task."

"I am."

"Even without your little assistant?"

Rodion pivoted to Lyubasha. "Yes," he said firmly, challenging her with his tone. "I'm not completely helpless."

"Oh, no, I didn't think you were, darling, it's just, well..." She slinked up behind him and her hot breath fell on the helix of his ear. "Cheating won't ever make up for a lack of skill. Just ask Shutka."

A self-satisfying smile crossed onto Lyubasha's painted, pursed lips as she pulled away and perched herself on the table behind Devil. Her move was a safe choice in a room full of men and monsters at odds. Her needling and attempts at seduction had reached a point where Rodion was fed up with her and on the verge of wanting to strangle her. Why did she need to be there, taunting him? Was the Devil really so desperate that he needed a succubus to help seal his end of the deal?

"Lyubasha makes a valid point about you receiving Shutka's counsel," said the Devil. "That is why I have designed your next task to be intensely personal. Nobody but you can complete it."

"What's the vice associated with this one?"

"My second favorite," he said, and the lighter of his mismatched eyes seemed to darken. "Wrath. You seek vengeance, yes?"

"On several people."

"Excellent. Out of those on your list–I presume you keep a list?–who would you say you want to destroy the most?"

"You can't possibly expect me to answer that."

"Sure I can. All it takes is one simple question; which of them has hurt you the most?"

Who hadn't hurt him? Everyone he knew, everyone he harbored neutral if not agreeable feelings toward, had wronged him. Gleb and Kostya were his brother first, yes, but his tormentors second. They'd cast him out of the family and their mother had endorsed their decision. She refused to speak to him, her middle son, even when he so desperately needed a parent's support.

Outside of blood, his comrades from the Panjshir had also done him wrong. It was their fault he'd almost suffered court martial in Tashkent; they'd stranded him at the hot springs, all but guaranteed to be declared AWOL in the time it took him to walk instead of ride back to the base. And Sasha, while a true comrade, had gotten him hooked on the drug that was destroying his life. Yet, as Rodion realized, it wasn't all Sasha's fault. There was a man behind Sasha's corruption. A man who had made both his and Sasha's lives living hell by pushing product and jeopardizing his one shot at paradise, profiting from the corruption of civilians all the while.

Rodion clenched his jaw. "To date? Andrey fucking Angelov."

"The criminal lord?"

"You know of him?"

The Devil rapped his leather-clad fingers on his cane's serpent head. "He is quite the notable sinner. But alas, if you eliminate him before age does, I shall collect his soul while it is still ripe."

"Eliminate him? What, you mean kill him?"

"What better way is there to get revenge on a man than to remove him and the problem he poses to you entirely?"

"I can't kill him."

"Cannot or will not?"

"Can't. Do you have any idea of what kind of chaos I'd bring down upon myself if I killed the Kynaz?"

"I have an idea of what happens if you cannot complete your tasks."

"Fuck," Rodion muttered, clenching his fists.

It was then, while contemplating how screwed he really was, that Shutka's warnings about the tasks rang like an alarm bell in his head: there's always a catch. By answering a simple question, he'd run right into the Devil's catch and locked himself into an impossibility he couldn't get out of. Killing the Kynaz was like trying to win a war; it couldn't be done.

Yet he'd proclaimed robbing Sasha was implausible, and ended up stealing the money with a little convincing and minimal moral corruption on Lev's end. Paradise and his soul were on the line then, and they were still. The task of wrath had to be completed, or at least attempted. Surrendering without trying was a coward's fate, and while Rodion may have been a little bit of a fool and very much a cynic, he was no coward.

"Alright then," Rodion said, clasping his hands, the adrenaline and cortisol spiking his blood at the same time. "Time to be a dead man walking."

Under Lyubasha and the Devil's bemused eyes, he found and cooked up the last of Sasha's packets to placate his anxieties and fill him up with intoxicating courage. It was habit more than anything else to turn to vint at a time of desperation in search of a more favorable frame of mind. Such was the case in Afghanistan, particularly during the weeks where their missions were more like meat grinding than security operations. In those times, rates of hashish and tobacco smoking among his comrades skyrocketed. His company commanders gave up on trying to curb usage, knowing it was futile to waste time and resources on such an entrenched problem.

Rodion felt a pang of defeatism similar to what he imagined his commanders had experienced as he rummaged through his shelf looking for a spare Makarov magazine. He was about to charge head first into a suicide attack against the Kynaz and or the Devil and was acutely aware the odds were not in his favor. Having eight extra bullets on hand was one way to raise his chance of success. Having backup was another, but he could only manage the former.

"Don't worry, alright?" he whispered to Shutka as he stroked the tuft of soft fur between her ears. "I'll come back."

She bolted off the sill and hopped onto the seat of the chair he'd draped his afghanka over, her paws planted firmly on the coat's quilted shoulders. He snaked it out from under her, punched his arms through the sleeves with conviction and resolve. Despite her protest, despite the warning lights flashing in his head, Rodion had made up his mind: he had to take out the Kynaz or die trying.

"There is one more thing I should note, Rodion Maksimovich," said the Devil, spinning around on his planted cane in his usual spry manner when Rodion moved for the door.

Rodion popped the afghanka's collar. "What's that?"

"If you find yourself unable to complete a task while in the midst of it, there is a way to forfeit. All you have to do is bow your head and say 'Devil take me' and I will grant your request immediately."

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Rodion deduced on his walk over to the Bloki that the best way to find out where the Kynaz was holed up was by enlisting the help of one of the roaming youth gangs he typically tried to avoid. After all, if anyone knew what was going on out on the streets, it was the boys who skipped school to throw dice and drill boxing moves for upcoming fights.

Just after dusk, he stumbled upon a group of them in an alley a couple streets up from the river embankment. There were about twenty boys loitering in a cloud of cheap cigarette smoke and four or five more squatting on a litter-lined staircase. Rock music pumped out of bomb-shelter-turned-basement at the bottom of the stairs, the driving pulse sporadically interrupted by the clangs of bouncing barbells. Above the door there was a teapot with a rat crawling out of it sprayed in piss-yellow paint. Such a marking claimed the basement and alley as territory of the Kettles, the Chainiki, gang.

"Hey, patsany. You got a minute?"

The boys turned like a tide, stuffing their hands into their pockets. They jogged up to the mouth of the alley in pairs, swarming Rodion and stopping him from stepping off the sidewalk and into their territory. The youngest among them were thirteen or fourteen and were swiftly jostled aside by four or five middle members, that is, boys anywhere from seventeen to nineteen, who'd peeled off the wall and came up to him wielding crudely cut metal pipes.

The tallest middle came face to face with Rodion. He had ash-brown hair buzzed down to his skull, and wore what looked to be a leather flight jacket, no doubt stolen, with a defaced Komsomol t-shirt underneath. He was a breath taller than Rodion and thus brimmed with smugness and toxic teenage superiority.

Yet as Rodion, and anyone with actual life experience, knew, the boy's persona–his puffed out chest and berry-colored face bruises worn like badges of honor–was a flimsy act. All youth street gang members in Angelovsk, save for the ones who counted protection racket earnings in basement weight rooms, were exactly that: youth. They were children beaten down by failed perestroika policies and rival gang members in neighborhood turf wars. While the gangs provided boys with brotherhood and loyalty, it was all conditional. The second a patsan disobeyed his elders or broke the gang's code, he could be kicked out and targeted for theft like those not involved in street life.

The middle crossed his arms and swished the toothpick he was chewing on to the other side of his mouth. "State your business, chushpan," he said, looking up the street as if Rodion was so far beneath him he wasn't worthy of a glance.

"Get a good look at a man's coat before calling him chushpan," Rodion countered, stepping back so the boys could see the tattered state of his afghanka. "You don't get tears like this from running around the Bloki. You have to go to the desert, to Kabul, for this kind of wear."

The middle pulled out and pitched his toothpick. He finally looked at Rodion with his brooding blue eyes. "So you're an army man? With who? Universam? The Jackals?"

"All you need to know is that you jump me and you're going to war," Rodion said, continuing with his bluff. "Now, my dedushka sent me here on a peacekeeping mission and to trade some intel. If your elders don't want me sharing said intel with you then–"

"What kind of intel?"

"Raid rumors, lists of patsany the militsiya have issued arrest warrants for."

"You a fucking informer?"

"Nope. Caught one who knew a thing or two about the cleansing operations going on in this part of the Bloki, though. Now I've heard a lot of things myself, but right now I can't seem to catch any word on the Kynaz."

At the mention of Angelov's moniker, a curious chatter broke out. The middle threw up an annoyed hand, and the boys snapped their jaws shut immediately. He whispered to the wiry boy on his right and nodded twice.

"Last we heard, he was doing deals on Oktyabrskaya, Zhe Block."

"When was this?"

"Uh-uh. You said this is a trade, not a favor."

Rodion raised an unimpressed brow. "You trying to turn this town into lawlessness like Kazan? The only reason you refuse an army man's request is if you're a chushpan. Are you a chushpan?"

"Course not. But you're no chainik."

"Doesn't matter. We're on the street and that means we play by the street's rules," Rodion replied.

If he didn't have to worry about being jumped by twenty teenage boys, he would have slapped some sense into the middle. Literally. Instead, he settled for a patronizing poke delivered to the center of the middle's chest, right on his sternum.

"Street rules say because you're not a chushpan, you have value. Right now, your value to me is based on your knowledge of where and when the Kynaz was last spotted. So start talking, patsan; when did you see him at Zhe Block?"

"Tonight. G-g-going in around eight," said the wiry boy who'd conferred with the middle. He lowered his gaze and thrust out his hand in a plea for Rodion to validate his defiance.

Rodion waited a moment. He wanted the middle to sit with the blow to his ego and the gang members with their uncertainty. When he figured enough seconds had passed, he shook the hand of the boy who'd spoken out of turn and tapped under his chin so he knew he could look up again.

"Much appreciated, patsan," he said before he turned to continue up the street and towards Oktyabrskaya.

"Oi! What about the intel?" the middle called.

Rodion spun around but kept walking. "Stay off Oktyabrskaya tonight. I hear there's going to be a gunfight."

the way rodion can go from being fed up with shutka to realizing he has to kill someone to duping some scummy teenagers all in one chapter is just so fun. man has range and guts!

rodion and other characters aside, i wanted to check in to see how you are feeling about other elements of "the devil comes to angelovsk." what do you think of angelovsk as a setting; is it fleshed out enough? how about the prose and word flow? is the glossary helpful and do you use it; why or why not? feel free to share your thoughts in a comment! i welcome any and all forms of constructive feedback. <3

as always, thank you for supporting my work! comments, reading list/library adds, and especially votes (which boost "tdcta" in tag rankings and help new readers discover it!) are much appreciated.

happy reading and writing, everyone! ♡♡

15.934/20.000
milestone no. 3 ✕