Page 21 of Fallen: Darkness Ascending, Vol.1

I fall back on the scorched grass, blinking through the smoke at the mansion, wild and overgrown with passionflower vines.

That can’t be right. I’m hallucinating. There’s something in this smoke that’s making me see things.

Still, I crawl forward, slow and cautious, and peer over the edge of the pit again. This time, I don’t let myself jerk away, even though what I’m looking at makes me feel dizzy and vaguely nauseated.

The man lies on his side in the center of the pit, tiny rivers of yellow-white fire flickering out around him.

He’s very pale, and the fire casts strange shadows over his body, especially his face, although most of that is hidden beneath his inky-black hair.

He’s not naked but wrapped in a thin, diaphanous fabric that reflects the shine of the firelight.

“Hello?” I call out nervously. Stupidly. This is a hallucination. It has to be.

But then he moves, kicking out one long, graceful leg. I scream and jump back, not taking my eyes off him as he rolls onto his stomach, the fabric draping strangely around his body as if it can move on its own.

I should leave. I know I should leave, that I should run as far from here as I can, back to the park ranger station in Flamingo. I think of the pythons and giant snails that have invaded the Everglades. Surely this, whatever it is, is worse.

But something roots me in place. I stand on the edge of the impact pit, breathing in the sweet smoke, my legs trembling violently.

The man stirs beneath me, pushing up to his hands and knees, his hair hanging over his face.

The fabric shimmers and then bolts upright, and I realize it’s not fabric at all.

Wings. He has wings.

They are the same kind of transparent, membranous wings of dragonflies, etched with intricate lines the same deep black as his hair.

Something about the designs reminds me of the stained glass windows in the church Mom took me to sometimes, before she died.

I think I can see faces in them, or figures, and the way the wings catch the firelight makes those figures look as if they are writhing in agony.

He crawls forward, slow and torturous, his pale, thin hands sinking into the wet sandy dirt.

He looks hurt—and why shouldn’t he? He fell out of the fucking sky—but he also moves with an elegant grace that makes my breath catch in my throat.

I’m terrified of him and drawn to him at the same time, and I think that’s why I can’t move, why I’m paralyzed like a deer on the highway.

He heaves himself up over the side of the impact pit, dirt cascading down the slope and sizzling as it crosses the veins of pale fire. The heat doesn’t seem to bother him.

I take deep, shuddery breaths, my thoughts quick and frantic. I will myself to run. He still hasn’t turned around. Still hasn’t seen me.

But I don’t, and he takes a halting step forward, like he isn’t quite sure how to use his legs.

Aside from the wings, he looks human—albeit a very tall, very thin human, with a long, lean back tapering into a firm, sculpted ass, a detail I really shouldn’t be noticing.

He sweeps his hands back through his hair and looks up at the dark sky, as if tracing the path that brought him here.

Somehow, my terror wins out. I scramble backward, although I only manage two thunderously loud steps before he whirls around, and I see him face-on.

He is not human.

The first thing I think, staring at him, is eyes. He has three rows of eyes running down his face, stopping just above a soft, delicate mouth, and six more eyes across his slim, pale chest. They blink at intervals, all of them fixed right on me.

Terror slams through my body, and I take off, running blindly into the swamp.

But I don’t get far. There’s a kind of whooshing sound and a sudden updraft of hot wind and then he’s standing in front of me, only a few feet away, his massive wings spread out behind him.

I shriek and try to whip myself around him, but my foot catches on a loose root, and I sprawl into a spray of damp ferns.

He says something that I feel more than I hear—something that feels like razor blades slicing into my eyes.

“Stop!” I scream, trying to scramble away from him. I flip over to find him rising imperiously over me. He’s as naked from the front as he is the back, and my eyes drop over his flat, smooth belly to the enormous cock dangling between his legs.

I jerk my gaze back up to his monstrous face, to his dozen eyes.

He says something again. Pain tears through my head, and I clutch at my pounding temples and squeeze myself up into a ball, trying to block him out. Every time he speaks, my bones jostle in my body, like I’m coming apart at the seams.

“Please stop!” I sob, pushing through the pain to try and crawl away from him. Something warm and wet drips out of my eyes. Tears, I think, until I wipe them away and see the dark smear of blood on my knuckles.

I scream in terror, and it sounds foggy and cobwebbed, like something’s broken inside my ears. I drag myself over the ground, trying to get to the swamp. To the darkness. Trying to get away.

But that thunderous, vibratory voice rings out again, jarring straight into my chest. I scream in agony and collapse onto my side, the pain too intense to move. And through that pain, I can feel my body slipping away from me. I can feel the darkness crawling in.

And then I feel nothing at all.

When I open my eyes again, the sun is up. At first, that’s all I know because all I can see is the dim, greenish light of the swamp.

I blink, trying to bring my vision into focus.

Tree branches cross overhead—no, not tree branches.

Those are passionflower vines crawling over a cracked, peeling painting of some heavenly sky.

Fluffy pale clouds, rosy-cheeked cherubs with feathery wings.

The purple, alien tendrils of the passionflowers smother the angels in place.

I groan and roll over, my muscles aching. I’m on a bed, the sheets earthy with mildew, and my clothes feel strange. Too restrictive, like they shrank overnight.

Except when I sit up, I see I’m not wearing my Pearl’s uniform. I’m in a sleeveless grey dress with a full skirt. The satiny fabric tangles up around my legs as I shove myself off the bed, my steps shaky and uncertain. When my soles touch the cool, sandy tile, I realize my shoes are gone, too .

My bag , I think wildly, and I spin around, blinking at my surroundings.

The bed might be rotting now, but it was expensive once, with its tattered satin sheets and big pale headboard shaped like a seashell.

The room is airy and spacious, one wall lined with big, salt-encrusted windows draped in the shredded remains of thin white curtains.

One window is broken, and that’s how the passionflower vines came in, crawling like spiders across the wall.

Is it the Montcroix mansion? Am I inside? How did I get here?

The memories flood over me. The meteor that wasn’t a meteor. The winged man. His cruel, thunderous voice?—

I race toward the door and am both surprised and relieved to find that it’s unlocked.

There’s a hallway on the other side, littered with leaves and sand and dirt and insects, but otherwise untouched.

Framed black-and-white photographs on the wall.

A long, filigreed table with an empty vase and a black rotary telephone.

I whip around to look back at my room. No sign of my clothes or my shoes or my purse. No sign of my tip money.

It’s a loss I’m willing to take, if it means getting out of here alive.

I stumble out into the hall, my joints too sore for me to do anything but limp along. It doesn’t help that the dress is too small, the bodice squeezing tight around my torso and making it hard for me to breathe. I don’t understand why I’m wearing it. Unless?—

Unless the winged man dressed me in it.

The thought leaves me queasy and unsettled. The idea of him leaves me queasy and unsettled, and my temple throbs at the memory of him. Of his horrible, murderous voice.

I follow the hallway, passing rooms like the one I was just in, rooms that must have been exquisite seventy years ago and have now been given over to the rot and humidity and filth of the swamp.

Everyone around here knows the story of Fredrick Montcroix.

He was some rich eccentric who built his fortune during World War II and then, sometime in the 1950s, decided he wanted to conquer the Everglades.

He started with a mansion that looked out over the ocean.

This mansion, which my parents told me to stay away from.

It’s dangerous , they always said. Rotting from the inside out .

Montcroix had abandoned it when Hurricane Donna hit, that’s what my mom said.

My dad told me he and his pretty heiress wife stayed and drowned when the house flooded.

It doesn’t look like it flooded, though, not even when I finally find a flight of stairs and go down to the first floor. I think my mom’s story was the true one. Abandonment, not death.

Well, in my life, those two have always been the same.

The stairs deposit me into a living room with rotting white furniture and a grand piano in the corner, covered in grime.

The windows here look out at the water, too.

It’s pretty, dark blue and glittering in the sunlight.

But something about it feels ominous. This whole place, all this rotting grandeur, leaves me cold and uneasy.

And that’s not even considering the man I found yesterday. The monster .

There’s been no sign of him since I got up, and it occurs to me, as I check the windows to see if any of them are broken so I can make my escape, that maybe I hallucinated the whole thing.

Maybe there were space fumes, or something, in all that weird smoke.

Maybe once I’ve gotten out of here, I’ll find an ordinary meteor sinking into the front yard, cool enough to touch.

I don’t find any shattered windows, though.

I duck out of the living room and into a big, dim hallway, the floral wallpaper dark with mold.

But there is a door up ahead. I bolt towards it, my bare feet skittering over the dirty floor.

It drags open with a screech, and warm, damp sea wind gusts in. I step out onto the porch.

Or try to. As soon as my foot passes the threshold, a white, searing pain jolts through my body and throws me backward with enough force that I wind up on my back, halfway down the hall.

And just like that, the terror of last night returns.

I push myself up to sitting and immediately look down at my foot, expecting it to be red and mangled. It’s not. It looks fine, even if the pain is boiling away at my skin. I flip myself onto my hands and knees and drag myself back up to the doorway, although I stop before I pass through.

The swamp waits for me on the other side, the vegetation all rustling in the wind.

I lift one hand cautiously, holding it up to the door. I can’t feel anything there—no heat, no buzzing barrier. But when I press my hand forward, pain erupts through my fingers. I shriek and fall backward, clutching my hand to my chest.

“ Stop .”

The word fills the air like thunder, and something seems to burst behind my eye.

“No,” I whimper, staring hopelessly out at the swamp. I can hear the ocean waves, rising and falling like breaths. I can hear the wind and insects.

And I can hear wings.

Slowly, I roll around, gritting my teeth at the pain in my foot. And when I see the monster landing softly on his feet, wings folding up around him, I wish I can’t see anything at all.

He looks even more luminous in the daylight, and even less human.

He’s taller than I realized. Thinner. He put on some black trousers, but they hang off his sharp, angled hip bones, too big for his frame.

His hair doesn’t look like hair or fur or feathers but like liquid, a glossy oil spill cascading around his shoulders.

And his dozen eyes all watch me.

“ Stay .”

I shriek, burying my face in my hands as my bones rattle around in my body.

“Stop talking!” I scream. “It fucking hurts!”

I expect him to say something again, to speak in that terrible language that he used last night, but he doesn’t. When the pain in my skull fades, I look up at him cautiously.

He stands still, watching me. His eyes blink and flutter.

“It hurts,” I repeat, dropping my hands down to my side.

He just blinks at me.

“Let me go,” I say, pushing backward on the ground.

He opens his mouth, then closes it, although not before I see a row of sharp, glittering teeth.

“Please,” I whisper.

He makes a movement with his head, a kind of jerking twitch. I wonder if it’s his way of shaking his head no.

Despair shudders through me.

“Please,” I whimper, dampness forming in my eyelashes. “Please, you can’t keep me here. You can’t?—”

He steps toward me, and I scramble backward. It’s no good, though. The only thing behind me is the open door and the pain that will slice through my body if I try to escape.

He mouths something, his teeth flashing. I don’t know what it is.

Then he lifts one hand, and the door shuts with a loud, thunderous slam and a click as the lock falls into place.

The winged monster looks at me again. A dozen eyes, and I can’t read the expression in a single one of them. It’s like looking at a night sky full of stars.

Then his wings unfurl and flap once, and I can see the figures on them, writhing around in agony.

And then he leaves me there, sobbing on the ground.