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 11: Saint Svetlana of Samaria ——————————————————
Rodion had reached the top of the staircase and managed to escape through the trapdoor carved into its ceiling. The door had opened to more darkness and, despite his reservations, he dragged himself out and crouched in muted shock, watching it shrink until it vanished in the black, snow dusted earth.
Now he stood in a twilight wood so eerie he figured he'd arrived at the crossroads again. Wind gusts whipped his face. The moonlight snaked through the breaks in the trees and then he saw the River Rusalka stretched out behind them, its black surface glimmering like a hunk of polished obsidian. Angelovsk's grayish light blanketed one side of the shoreline, church domes and concrete towers piercing the murky indigo sky.
Rodion spun around to get a better sense of his surroundings. There was a dusting of snow on everything, which puzzled him because there hadn't been snow when he left for Shakhty. Brushing it off, he turned to and quickly assessed himself. He was wounded, but alive. The cuffs of the shackles he'd broken had come with him, though they'd somehow split into a set of steel bangles, three on each wrist. Other than that, all he had left as proof of his plight was the snake bite above his eyebrow that Lev had used to knock him out and the memory of the wraiths on the stairs.
He didn't know how he was supposed to convey what he'd seen. The entire experience felt like a nightmare just out of reach beyond the boundary of memory. Trying to think through the logistics of how he'd started the night in Shakhty and had traveled through Hell to the River Rusalka's northern bank hurt his head. He set off towards the city instead of trying to wrestle with it, hoping the ache beneath his shoulder blades would subside soon.
☨ ☨ ☨
He walked for the longer half of the hour. The pain spread to his ribcage; the Rusalka never left his side. Rodion was desperate for sleep or the company to keep him conscious.
"Keep alive, keep awake," he said, reciting his company's mantra through chattering teeth. "Alive. Awake. Alive. Awake."
Repeating the mantra sustained him as he pressed on. Sirens cried on the fringe of the city, and he traced two globes of spinning blue light as they raced across the nearing southern shore. He finally reached the road that winded out of the city and hurried toward the sign declaring two kilometers to Angelovsk. Then he was on the Andriyivskiy Bridge, passing through its tunnel of trusses, the shadows of the steel beams washing over his face and being chased away by the headlights of oncoming cars.
There were a hundred or so meters of bridge left to cross when a looming figure veered out of the ditch up ahead and started towards him. Rodion stalled, waiting on the narrow shoulder for the figure to come to him and wanting to hop the bridge barrier and dive into the black water once he saw slitted eyes and a ruby encrusted suit.
