Fallen Angels in the Dark

DANIEL IN L.A.





When the sun went down on skid row in L.A., a city of tents rose. One by one, until the throng of them got so thick you could barely drive a car down the street. Just a bunch of tattered nylon tents ripped off the back of a Walmart truck. And the other tents made out of nothing but a bedsheet thrown over a plank wedged into a milk crate. Whole families tucked inside.

The lost ended up there because they could sleep without freezing to death. And because, after dark, the cops left the place alone. Daniel ended up there because the seven thousand other transients made it easy to blend in.

And because skid row was the last place on earth he expected to find Luce.

He’d made a vow after the last life. Losing her like that: a brilliant blaze in the middle of a frozen lake. He couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t let her fall for him again. She deserved to love someone without paying for it with her life. And maybe she could. If only Daniel stayed away.

So there, downtown, along the grittiest street in the City of Angels, Daniel pitched his tent. He’d done it every night for the past three months, ever since Luce would have turned thirteen. Four whole years before he usually encountered her. That was how determined he was to break them out of their cycle.

There was nothing any lonelier or more depressing about skid row than any other home Daniel had made for himself over the years. But there was nothing worth romanticizing, either. He had his days free to wander the city, and at night he had a tent to zip up, shutting out the rest of the world. He had neighbors who kept to themselves. He had a system he could manage.

He’d long ago given up on the pursuit of happiness. Mischief had never held any real appeal, not like it did for so many of his fellow fallen angels. No; prevention—preventing Luce from loving him, from even knowing him in this life—that was his last and only goal.

He rarely flew anymore, and he did miss that. His wings wanted out. His shoulders itched almost all the time, and the skin of his back felt perpetually about to explode from the pressure. But it seemed too conspicuous to let them free—even at night, in the dark, and alone. Someone was always watching him, and he didn’t want Arriane or Roland or even Gabbe to know where he was hiding out. He didn’t want company at all.


But every once in a while he was supposed to check in with a member of the Scale. They were sort of like parole officers for the fallen. In the beginning, the Scale had mattered more. More angels out there to measure, more to nudge back toward their truest nature. Now that so few of them remained “up for grabs,” the Scale liked to keep a special eye on Daniel. All the meetings he’d had with them over the years added up to nothing but an enormous waste of time. Until the curse was broken, things were bound to remain this way: in limbo. But he’d been around long enough to know that if he didn’t seek them out, they would come to him.

At first he’d thought the new girl was one of them. Turned out she was something else entirely.

“Hey.”

A voice outside his tent. Daniel unzipped the front panel and stuck his head outside. The sky at dusk was pink and smoggy. Another hot night on the row.

The girl was standing before him. She had on cutoffs and a worn white T-shirt. Her blond hair was stuffed into a thick bun on top of her head.

“I’m Shelby,” she said.

Daniel stared at her. “And?”

“And you’re the only other kid my age in this place. Or at least, the only kid my age who’s not in the corner over there cooking crack.” She pointed to a part of the street that flowed into a dark alley Daniel had never ventured down. “Just thought I’d introduce myself.”

Daniel narrowed his eyes. If she were Scale, she would have had to make herself known. They appeared on earth in plain clothes, but they always announced themselves to the fallen. It was just one of the rules.

“Daniel,” he finally said. He didn’t come out of his tent.

“Aren’t you friendly,” she muttered under her breath. She looked annoyed, but she didn’t walk away. She just stood there staring down at him, shifting her weight and tugging at the frayed hems of her shorts. “Look, uh, Daniel, maybe this is going to sound weird, but I got a ride to this party tonight in the Valley. Was going to see if you wanted, uh—” She shrugged. “It might be fun.”

Everything about this girl seemed just slightly larger than life. The square face, the high forehead, the green-flecked hazel eyes. Her voice rose above all the racket on the row. She looked tough enough to make it on the street, but then again, she also stuck out. Almost as much as Daniel did.

He was surprised to find that the more he stared at her, the more cause he had to stare. She looked so incredibly familiar. He must have noticed it the few times he’d seen her walking around before. But it wasn’t until that moment that he figured out who Shelby reminded him of. Who she was the spitting image of.

Sem.

Before the Fall, he’d been one of Daniel’s closest confidants. One of his very few true friends. Precocious and full of opinions, Semihazah was also honest and fiercely loyal. When the war began and so many of them left Heaven, Daniel had his hands full with Luce. Out of all the angels, Sem came closer than anyone to understanding Daniel’s situation.

He had a similar weakness for love.

Gorgeous, hedonistic Sem could cast a spell over anyone he met. Especially the fairer sex. For a while, it seemed like every time Daniel saw Sem after the Fall, he had a different mortal girl on his wing.

Except the last time they’d seen each other. It was a few years ago. Daniel marked time by where Luce was in life, so he remembered Sem’s visit as the summer before she entered middle school. Daniel was spending his days in Quintana Roo when Semihazah showed up at his door alone.

A business call. Sem had the badge to prove it. A Scale scar. The gold insignia of the seven-pointed scar. They had gotten to him. They’d been after him for a while, and he said eventually he just got tired. Didn’t Daniel ever get tired? he wanted to know.

It pained Daniel to see his friend so … reformed. Everything about him seemed smaller. Regulation-size. The fire inside him gone out.

Their meeting was graceless and tense. They spoke to each other like strangers. Daniel remembered feeling most angry that Sem hadn’t even asked about Luce. When he took his leave, Sem was cursing, and Daniel knew he wouldn’t be back. He would ask to be taken off the case. He would ask for someone easier.

Daniel had accepted that he might never see his friend again. Which was why he was so floored to realize who the girl was.

Standing before him on skid row was one of Semihazah’s offspring. A daughter.

She must have had a mortal mother. Shelby was a Nephilim.

He stood to get a better look at her. She stiffened but didn’t back away when he got up in her face. About fourteen. Pretty, but a handful. Like her father. Did she even know who—or what—she was? Her cheeks flushed as Daniel studied her.

“Um. Are you okay?” she asked.

“Where’s this party?”


They spent an hour stuck in traffic in a van crammed with strangers. Daniel couldn’t have talked to Shelby even if he’d known what to say. Tell me about the father who abandoned you seemed like the wrong way to get started. When they finally made it over the hills into the vast, flat valley, the house they stopped in front of was dark. It didn’t look like a party at all.

Daniel was wary. He’d been on the lookout for signs that this gathering was something more than mortal. A setup. A sign that Shelby was in one of the Nephilim circles he’d heard Roland talk about. Daniel had never paid much attention before.

The front door was unlocked, so Daniel followed Shelby, who followed the rest of the carload, inside. This was no celestial gathering. No, the people at this party looked lifeless.

They were passed out, making out, checking out, strewn across the couch and in heaps on the floor. The only light in the room came from a refrigerator being opened when somebody pulled out a beer. It was stuffy and hot, and something in the corner smelled rotten.

Daniel didn’t know why he’d come, what he was doing there, and it made him ache for Luce. He could fly away from here and go to her right now! The time they spent together was the only time in Daniel’s whole existence when anything made sense.

Until Luce went out in a flash and everything went dark.


He kept forgetting his promise. To stay away this time. To let her live.

In the dark, disgusting living room, Daniel took a hard look at life without her, and he shuddered. If he’d had a way out, he would have taken it. But he didn’t.

“This sucks.” Shelby was standing at his side. She was shouting over the harsh, discordant music, and still Daniel could only read her lips. She jerked her head toward the back door. Daniel nodded, following her.

The backyard was small and fenced in, with scorched grass and patches of sandy dirt. They took a seat on the small cement ledge and Shelby cracked open a beer.

“Sorry I dragged you all the way out here for this shit show,” she said, taking a swig, then passing the warm can to Daniel.

“You hang out with this crowd often?”

“First and last time,” she said. “My mom and I, we move around a lot, so I don’t really get to hang out with any crowd for too long.”

“Good,” Daniel said. “I mean, I don’t think this is the kind of crowd you should be spending your time with. What are you, fourteen?”

Shelby snorted. “Um, thanks for the unsolicited advice, Dad, but I can look out for myself. Years of practice.”

Daniel put down the beer can and looked up at the sky. One reason he liked L.A. was that you could never really see the stars. Tonight, though, he missed them.


“What about your parents?” he finally asked.

“Mom means well, she just works all the time. Or, all the time she’s not in between jobs. She has a special talent for getting herself fired. So we keep moving and she keeps promising that one day things are going to get ‘stable’ for us. I’ve had some problems, you know, adjusting. It’s kind of a long story.…”

Shelby trailed off, like she thought she’d already said too much. The way she was avoiding his gaze made Daniel realize that she did know at least a little bit about her lineage.

“But Mom thinks she’s got the solution,” she went on, shaking her head. “She’s got this fancy school all picked out and everything. Talk about a pipe dream.”

“And your dad?”

“Skipped town before I was born. Real classy guy, huh?”

“He used to be,” Daniel said softly.

“What?”

Then—Daniel didn’t know why—he reached out and took Shelby’s hand. He didn’t even know her, but he felt an urge to protect her. She was Sem’s daughter, which made her strangely almost like Daniel’s niece. She looked surprised when his fingers clasped hers, but she didn’t pull away.

Daniel wanted to take her away from here. This was no place for a girl like Shelby. But at the same time, he knew it wasn’t just this party or this town that was the problem. It was Shelby’s whole life. She was totally screwed up. Because of Sem.

Just as Luce’s lives had been screwed up because of Daniel.

He swallowed hard and suppressed a fierce new urge to go to Luce. He didn’t belong here in this fenced-in yard. On this hot night, at this stupid party, with nothing to look forward to for the rest of eternity.

Now Shelby squeezed his hand. When he met her eyes, they looked different. Bigger. Softer. They looked like—

Uh-oh.

He pulled away and stood up quickly. Shelby thought he’d been making a move.

“Where are you going?” she said. “Did—did I do something wrong?”

“No.” He sighed. “I did.”

He wanted to clear things up, but he didn’t know how. His eyes fixed on the busted screen door, where a dark shadow wobbled slightly in the stiff, hot wind.

An Announcer.

Usually, Daniel ignored them. The past few years they’d started coming to him less and less. Maybe this one—maybe it had something to do with Shelby. Maybe he could show her instead of flailing for the words. He nodded at the Announcer and let it glide into his palm. A moment later he’d worked it into a flat black plane.

He could just begin to see the image coming clear: Luce. And he knew instantly that he’d made a big mistake. His wings burned and his heart ached as if it were breaking into pieces inside him. He didn’t know where or when in time he was viewing her, but it didn’t matter. It was all he could do not to dive inside and go after her. A single tear rolled down his cheek.

“What the—” Shelby’s shocked tone broke Daniel’s concentration.

But before Daniel could respond, a siren sounded on the street. Flashing lights illuminated the side of the house, then the blades of grass in the backyard. The Announcer splintered in Daniel’s hands. Shelby scrambled to her feet. She was looking at Daniel like something had just clicked but she didn’t have the words to express what it was.

Then the screen door whipped open behind them and a handful of kids from the party raced out.

“Cops,” one of them hissed at Shelby before they all dashed across the lawn toward the fence. They helped each other scramble over it and were gone.

A moment later, two cops jogged around the side of the house and stopped in front of Daniel and Shelby.

“Okay, kids, you’re coming with us.”

Daniel rolled his eyes. It wasn’t the first time he’d been booked. Dealing with the police always veered between a minor annoyance and a big joke. But Shelby wasn’t going in so easy.

“Oh yeah?” she cried. “On what grounds?”

“Breaking and entering a condemned residence. Illegal substance use. Underage drinking. Disturbing the peace. And somebody stole that shopping cart from Ralphs. Take your pick, sweetheart.”

At the station, Daniel waved to the two cops he knew and poured two cups of hot brown water from the coffeemaker, one for Shelby, one for himself. The girl looked nervous, but Daniel knew they didn’t have much to worry about. He was just about to plop down in the seat where the booking officer took your information, your personal items, and your mug shot when he noticed someone standing in the doorway of the station.

Sophia Bliss.

She was dressed in a smart black suit, with her silver hair spun into a tight twist. Her black heels clicked across the wood floor as she approached him. She ran her eyes over Shelby briefly, then turned to Daniel and smiled.

“Hello, dear,” she said. She turned to face the cops. “I’m the parole officer for this young man. What’s he in for?”

The cop handed over his report. Miss Sophia skimmed it quickly, clucking her tongue.

“Really, Daniel, theft of a shopping cart? And you knew this was your last violation before the court-mandated reform school. Oh, don’t give me that face,” she said, a weird smile pulling up the corners of her mouth. “You’ll like Sword and Cross. I promise.”