Page 20 of Fallen: Darkness Ascending, Vol.1

I pedal through the warm night, the damp Gulf wind blowing my hair back from my shoulders.

It’s nearly one in the morning, and the weak little light I have roped around my bike’s handlebars is barely enough to illuminate the sand-dusted road in front of me.

But I know my way. I ride on this road twice a day except Sunday, traveling between my childhood home on the edge of the swamp to the Pearl Diner near Flamingo, where I work as a waitress.

It’s Saturday—well, Sunday now, I suppose—and today was exhausting.

We were short-staffed, and the diner was crammed with tourists from some event at the nature center, and I spent all evening flitting between tables like a butterfly.

The longer the night went on, the drunker the tourists became, and the more I had to swat their hands away and tell Eddie, the bartender, to water down their drinks.

My legs ache. My throat’s dry. But I just want to be home.

I just want to crawl into my bed and sleep until noon and then wake up tomorrow and count out my tips.

I can feel them as a satisfying weight in my bag, and I know that’s one benefit of drunk tourists.

More damp, crumpled bills to shove into the jar that holds my escape fund.

I’ve got nearly a thousand dollars right now, the most it’s been in months.

If I can just hold out—not get sick, not get hurt, not have my bike fall apart—maybe I’ll finally have enough to leave this place.

I push forward, eyes on the patch of illuminated road in front of me. Another ten minutes. Then I can rinse off in my shower and crawl into my bed and?—

Static electricity sparks against my skin. I jolt, the bike’s front wheel skittering sideways, and nearly topple over. I catch myself with my foot and suck down a deep breath of air.

My skin’s still sparking. Or rather, the air itself is sparking, an odd crackling sensation that doesn’t hurt exactly but definitely isn’t normal. It’s making the soft downy hair on my arms rise up, and I feel an odd sensation on my head, too, as if…

Not as if. It’s actually happening. The loose strands of hair that worked out of my braid are rising too, like someone rubbed a balloon on my head. I try to smooth them down, but as soon as my palms make contact, there’s another sharp, static spark.

Around me, the insects get louder. So do the night birds, their soft, mournful hoots filling up the darkness.

The trees rustle along the road, and there’s a flood of screeches and rattling and, most distressingly, the low, engine-y vibration of an alligator’s bellow.

Not just one but dozens of them, layered on top of each other.

“What the fuck?” I scramble back onto my bike. My heart thuds up in my chest as I pedal forward, trying to ignore the uncomfortable, staticky sparks as I push through the wind. I keep glancing sideways, but it’s too dark to see what’s happening in the thick, swampy tangle.

And then something vibrates up from the ground, a low, steady shaking that makes my bike tremble beneath me. I skid to a stop, but I still feel it, strong enough that my teeth rattle around in my skull.

The sky looks weird, grey and pinkish, almost like the sun’s coming up.

I’ve lived in South Florida my entire life. I’ve ridden out half a dozen hurricanes and tropical storms in the stilted house my great-grandparents built. I’ve never seen anything like this.

The sky brightens a bit more, and my braid lifts from where it was resting along my spine like the tail of a frightened cat. The animal racket gets even louder. Deafening. Like the entire swamp is screaming in terror.

I balance on my bike again and push forward, pedaling furiously as the darkness seeps out, replaced by a thin, eerie light that makes the road and the swamp look like an old, faded photograph. The air feels hot, hotter than normal.

And then I see it. Orange light smearing across the sky.

I squeeze hard on my bike’s brakes, jolting myself to a stop. A meteor, I think distantly, burning up as it enters Earth’s atmosphere.

Although it doesn’t exactly look like it’s burning up. It’s not a falling star, streaking suddenly against the dark as I make my wish. It’s a fireball, a miniature sun leaving a long, pale tail in its wake. And it’s getting bigger.

Getting closer .

My heart clenches up, and all I can do is stare. It’s finally going to happen. Except an asteroid, not a hurricane and not global warming, is what’s going to wipe Florida off the map.

Hot, damp wind courses across the road, making the trees and underbrush bend over backward.

The animals shriek louder, and a black cloud of birds erupts out of the trees, fleeing for safer ground.

Something darts across the road, too fast for me to make it out.

The fireball falls and falls. It’s not going to hit me directly, I can see that, even though it’s close enough that the heat of it scorches my skin. It’s falling toward the swamp.

When it lands, it happens so fast that I barely know what happens. One second, there’s heat and fire and wind and dust. The next, there’s a flash of white, impossible light and an explosion that throws me and my bike sideways.

And then everything goes dark and silent, like when the electricity cuts off.

I groan, pushing myself up. Soft, feathery grass and sandy dirt push up between my fingers, and I heave myself around, blinking in a daze.

I landed on the side of the road, away from the asphalt.

My hip aches from where I landed on it, but when I pat around for my purse, it’s still there, still zipped up. My tips are safe.

My bike, though?—

The headlamp flickers a few feet away, and I stumble over to it. I can see just enough of my handlebars to pull the bike up.

It’s ruined, the metal on the front tire spoke bent from the collision. It won’t stand up straight.

“God damn it!” I shout, shoving the bike off into the darkness. I squeeze my eyes up, willing myself not to cry. I need a bike to get to work, which means I’m going to have to cut into my escape fund. Again.

The scent of smoke curls around me. Burning wood. I whirl around and find a pale, orange glow rising from the trees.

The meteor.

My brain clicks into gear. Most of the regulars at Pearl’s Diner are ecologists and conservationists who work for the national park.

They’ll be interested in a meteor like that, won’t they?

But they’ll need someone to show them where it is.

Flamingo is nearly five miles away, so they’ll have seen it in the sky, but not where it landed.

Not like I just did.

Adrenaline courses through me, and I look up at the tops of the trees again.

Even in the dark, I know this area well.

I grew up here. I know how to navigate the swamp.

And it looks like the firelight is coming from the direction of the old Montcroix mansion, which means I can get there on foot.

It won’t be far. Maybe a ten-minute walk.

I pry the headlamp off my bike to use as a makeshift lamp. I don’t have a cell phone anymore, not since I dropped mine a few months back and decided to see if I could go without to save some money. But this little sphere of light between my palms will do to get me through the swamp.

I set off, following the scent of burning. And it’s eerie, how silent the swamp suddenly is. The swamp is never silent. It might be quiet, right before a storm. But silent? Never.

It is now.

Well, except for me. I rustle the thick underbrush as I stomp a damp path toward the meteor, marked by an orange glow glimmering through the trees. But other than that, I can’t hear a single sound. And that creeps me out even more than the wild cacophony of earlier did.

I shake it off, though, moving as quickly as I can through the swamp’s sticky dark. The glow is just up ahead, and the scent of smoke is even thicker. There’s a kind of underlying sweetness to it, like burned caramel, and I wonder what’s on fire.

Soon, it’s bright enough that I don’t need my bike headlight anymore, and I weave easily through the palm trees and sawgrass until I step into a clearing.

The meteor. I’ve found it.

That’s the first thing I see: a pit in the lush, damp ground, glowing with golden light and releasing long twists of pale smoke. The second thing I see is the silhouette of a massive house rising up on stilts. The Montcroix mansion. The meteor didn’t just land near it. It landed in its front yard.

I edge closer, blinking against the meteor’s smoldering heat.

That oppressive silence feels even more pronounced here, and if it weren’t for my soft, thudding footsteps, I’d almost be afraid I’d lost my hearing.

Because the Montcroix mansion was built on a tiny strip of white beach, the only true beach for miles, and I ought to be able to hear the waves crashing against the shore.

I don’t hear anything but my steps and my breath and the crackle of the fire in the pit.

I know I ought to turn back. It’ll be easy to find the meteor again, it being right on the Montcroix property. But something pulls me forward until I’m standing on the edge of the pit, close enough that I can lean over and look down at the meteor.

The smoke burns my eyes, making my vision blur. For a moment, I’m not sure what I’m looking at. I expect the meteor to be round and bumpy, like the illustrations I’ve seen in books. But it’s oddly shaped, curled in on itself like?—

I gasp and stumble backward, my heart pounding furiously in my chest.

Because that meteor is not a rock at all.

It’s a man.