When cynical addict Rodion Popov makes a deal with the Devil and wagers his soul, his life takes a turn for the demonically surreal. Thrust into a city of shapeshifting sinners and chaos spirits, he must complete five tasks at the Devil's behest in...
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☨ THE DEVIL COMES TO ANGELOVSK 07: Crossroads ——————————————————
Rodion returned to the cupboard and found Shutka as he had many times before: stretched out on the windowsill, dozing, until she startled awake and started meowing.
He wove through the sagging lines of forgotten bone-dry laundry to the bed, pushing her off his lap when she nudged at his arms. His body was heavy despite the evening's events having hollowed him out. The last thing he needed was her nagging him, kneading him. She did anyway. Her claws flexed into his skin. They pricked him. Irked him.
"What do you want from me? Go!"
He lashed out at her, elbowing her in the ribs and casting her off the mattress. Shutka landed on all four paws with a defeated thud. She hastily sought refuge from his hair-trigger temper under the bed, her tail down and dragging on the floor before it disappeared beneath the draped quilt.
"No, Shutka, I didn't mean it like that."
When she made no reply, not even a hiss, Rodion laid belly-down on the floorboards. He pulled up the quilt and found himself peering into the feline eyes of one very hurt young woman.
"She's yours to curse or unhex as you chose. She hasn't left me alone since you and I cut our deal," Shutka said, spitting his own words back at him. "I bet you didn't mean any of that, either."
Rodion flinched. He sensed his face quirked in revolt or denial, because hers sharpened into a prickly scowl. They kept still, trying to make sense of the other, to compare and contrast which feelings they shared and which they held individually until Shutka scrambled forward. She emerged from the bed with a layer of lint and dust clinging to her dress's black bodice and began picking it off, ignoring him as if he was as irrelevant as a damp cigarette butt in the street gutter.
"Aren't you going to defend yourself? Aren't you going to say you were still a little high? Or that you had to please Lucifer Chernov?"
Rodion scoffed. "You're not looking for excuses; you're looking for an apology."
"That I am," she said, turning to him and looking him up and down as if questioning his right to state the truth. "Are you going to give me one?"
"No." He looked away sheepishly. "Now that you've asked, it wouldn't mean anything."
"It never would have meant anything because you meant those words, Rodya."
"Stop calling me that."
"Why? Don't you want to be humanized instead of patronized?"
"Can a devil really humanize a man?"
"Demon," Shutka muttered. "And I think the question you should really be askin yourself is how a man can become his own demon."
