The Fallen

by Anne Schlea

  “Several hundred people are a lot of people to hide in the mountains.” Marissa doesn’t sound convinced.

  “Not in a city.” Mia points out. “That’s a problem for different men anyway. We only need to make sure you can pass tomorrow’s test.”

  Mia’s words run through Anna’s head as she works on the wooden grain of her bow. The girl’s voices become background noise as she thinks through what Mia said. It is something of a mystery for several hundred people to simply disappear into the night. She didn’t put much thought into it before now but there’s something eating at the back of her mind she can’t quite put her finger on.

  The front door opens to let Riley in. He looks like he’d been down in the training facilities. He’s wearing cotton training pants and a tank top and there are bruises coming up on his arms. When his gaze lands on Anna, he smiles. “I thought I might find all of you here.”

  Anna barely hears him. As he turns to shut the door behind him, the light from the lamp falls across Riley’s neck. The scar he’d gotten when he was nearly beheaded stands out in stark detail to the smoothness of his skin like a beacon calling out to Anna. Her stomach falls out from her body and she takes in a sharp breath of air.

  “What’s wrong?” Riley’s smile turns into a look of concern as his eyes focus on her. He crosses the room to kneel in front of her. One hand goes to her cheek so that he can tilt her face toward his.

  “Maybe nothing.” Anna jumps up from the floor and hands him her bow before she turns for Marissa’s room. “Marissa, where’s your backpack?”

  “My backpack?” She looks at Mia in confusion.

  “Your backpack from the apartment. I know you brought it with you when we came here, I remember you had it on your back.” Anna pushes the curtain aside that hides Marissa’s clothes in her closet. “Where is it?”

  “It’s in my closet, I think.” Marissa wanders into her bedroom. “Probably in the back. I didn’t need it after I got here.”

  Stashed in the back of Marissa’s closet, behind a stack of clothes that needs cleaning, a few books from school, and an officer’s dirk Anna didn’t know she had, is her daughter’s old high school backpack. Anna grabs the bag and the dirk, and returns to the living room.

  She hands the sword to Marissa as she walks by.

  “We’ll talk about that dirk later.” She barely glances at Marissa as she brushes past her in the hallway. There are more important things to worry about right now.

  “Would you believe me if I told you it was for school?” Marissa follows her back into the living room. Her voice sounds hopeful.

  “Not a chance. The one you checked out for school is still on my wall.” Anna dumps the remaining contents of the bag onto the floor where she’d been sitting a few minutes before. There isn’t much left in the bag, only forgotten pieces of paper, a few photographs from Marissa’s life in the outside world, and a couple of pens. Her hand feels along the bottom of the bag until she finds the heavy flap along the bottom. Anna pulls it open and finds what she’s looking for.

  A map of the city Anna had put there in case Marissa ever got lost without her comes out of the bag. Anna feverishly unfolds it and clears off the kitchen table, sending books and homework crashing to the floor.

  “Hey!” Marissa jumps to grab her books as they scatter around the table. “I have a test tomorrow.”

  “Sorry.” The map is turned and rearranged until Anna’s happy with its position. She grabs one Marissa’s pens and makes a mark where her apartment used to be. “Mia, how long does the average Fallen survive outside the cities?”

  “Seven, maybe eight years if you’re really strong when you leave.” Mia looks at the map with a frown. Her eyes move over the paper while Anna makes two more marks with the pen. She’s trying to see the pattern to Anna’s puzzle.

  “Where were you when the Fallen attacked you at the club?” Anna turns her attention to Riley who had hung back near the sofa. His face is awash with concern.

  His hand reaches up to the scar on his neck and light filled his eyes. “You were out there ten years.”

  “Exactly.” She nods back to the map. “Where were you?”

  Riley approaches the table and looks down to study the lines of crossing streets, parks, and intersections. After several minutes his finger comes down to point at a building in the Warehouse district. It’s about five blocks from Anna’s old apartment. “Here.”

  Anna points at the first mark she made and then moves on to the other ones. “This is where I lived with Marissa. The other marks are places I saw Fallen while I lived in the city. This is Marissa’s school. It’s a private Catholic school on hallowed ground. I never saw a demon anywhere near there in all the years she went to school in the city. That’s the reason I had her in that school – I thought it was safe.”

  “Of course you didn’t see any demons; you managed to rent an apartment right in the middle of a Fallen city.” Riley’s eyes meet hers and a cold chill passes through her. Was it possible they’d found the city of rebel Fallen? What would that mean for the people of Orasul?

  “Technically I left first,” she points out. She draws a circle connecting the points on the map with her home in the center. She would have had to live very close to their city to live off their energies. “They built their city around my home, not the other way around.”

  “We need to send out a team to scout the area.” Riley paces across the room. He looks lighter, more excited than she’s seen him in a long time. “There has to be an underground facility they train in. They’ll have women and families in there. Maybe we could negotiate…”

  “I wouldn’t count on it.” Mia pushes up from her table and looks at Marissa. “Sorry, I can’t help you study right now. I need to go down to library. Maybe one of the scholars will be there.”

  Anna watches her close the door behind her and she turns to Riley. “That girl needs to be free to be a scholar.”

  “I know.” He locks eyes with Anna across the room. “Can you be ready to go into the city tomorrow?”

  Anna looks over at Marissa who’s watching them with wide eyes. She’d been so careful not to let her job come home with her because she doesn’t want her daughter to think about the fact she can get killed. She wants her daughter to think as little about her position in their city as possible.

  “Go ahead, Mom.” Marissa looks from Anna to Riley and back again. “I know what you do; you don’t have to hide it from me.”

  “Mia will stay with you.” She glances over at Riley and sees he’s going to object. “I need to leave someone here I trust in case something goes wrong. Bring Kurt if we need someone else. You’ll need me to guide you once we get to the city and I’m not going to leave Marissa alone.”

  Riley nods. “That’s fine, but you get to tell my sister.”

  ∞∞∞

  It feels uncomfortable to be in her old neighborhood. Anna knows she’s changed in more ways than she can even begin to understand. The last time she stood on this street she’d been broken and dying. Today she’s strong and sure of herself. She’s ready to face an enemy city.

  There is no more fear.

  Riley parks their car across the street from Anna’s old apartment. Kurt heads one direction out of the parking deck and they go the other way to scope the area. Their first stop is a coffee shop Anna had seen Fallen in before. They buy coffee and then head back into the street to keep looking. The grocery store Anna shopped at, Marissa’s school, the playground she’d taken her to when she was little. Anna can’t believe she’d lived so close to a community of Fallen and never knew it.

  Riley’s cell phone buzzes and he looks down to see a message from Kurt. “I found it.” An address follows that makes Anna even more surprised. It’s an apartment complex only one block away from her own.

  There’s a small diner across the street from the apartment building. Anna and Riley take a seat in the diner against the front window and order drinks. They sit there for an hour and
watch one Fallen after another come and go from the building.

  “I can’t believe I didn’t find this place before.” Anna can’t shake the frustration with herself. She’s literally a block from home in a diner she’d eaten in countless times. Marissa loves their milkshakes.

  “We can’t see what we’re not looking for.” Riley’s eyes are trained on a Fallen woman that exits the building. She approaches the diner with a singleness of purpose.

  Once inside she finds their table and walks right up to them. Anna sees Riley tense and reach for a weapon hidden under his jacket but she stops him with a hand on his arm. They know this woman; she’d gone to school with them when they were children. Once she reaches their table she asks, “May I sit with you?”

  “Yes.” Anna indicates the seat next to her. “I know you, don’t I?”

  “My name is Corrine.” The woman nods in greeting. Her dark hair has been cut into a short bob and her dark brown eyes are solemn. “We went to school together until you decided to train as an archer. I was a scholar until I left Orasul with my husband. I’m here to take you into our home.”

  “You knew we were coming?” Anna keeps her hand on Riley’s arm. She can feel no hostility from Corrine.

  “Yes.” Corrine holds out her arm and pulls up her sleeve. “You may remove your gloves and touch my arm if you wish. As an act of trust, we will not ask you to remove your weapons.”

  Anna looks over to Riley. He nods and then she takes off her gloves to touch Corrine’s arm. She closes her eyes to delve into Corrine’s emotions. It only takes a minute to sift through everything the woman leaves open.

  “She’s not hiding anything.” Anna puts her gloves back on and looks at Corrine. “Thank you.”

  “Follow me.” Corrine stands and walks to the door without a glance behind. Either they’re going to follow her, or they aren’t. It doesn’t seem to matter to her either way.

  Riley tosses some money on the table to pay for lunch and glances at Kurt who sips his coffee at the counter. Kurt gives him a discreet nod before he looks back at his newspaper.

  “Stay alert.” Riley whispers into Anna’s ear as they cross the street behind Corrine. The sunshine of the afternoon seems somehow colder now. “I still don’t trust her.”

  “Don’t do anything rash.” Anna doesn’t bother to lower her voice when she looks back at Riley.

  Riley narrows his eyes at her and then focuses on the doorway ahead of them. His hands twitch like he wants to have a weapon in them, but they’re left under his jacket.

  This situation is tricky no matter how Anna looks at it. On one hand, Corrine is about to take them into the rebel Fallen city. She seems to be open, if not inviting, like she’s truly there to build a bridge between their broken worlds. On the other hand, they’re about to enter a city with unknown numbers of Fallen rebels. It doesn’t matter how good of a soldier Riley is, they won’t come back out alive if that is the intention of the Fallen inside.

  Corrine uses her key to let them into the foyer of the building. It looks like the entrance to any other apartment building in the city. There’s a hallway with mailboxes to Anna’s right and a small lobby with an elevator. It’s clean and well taken care of.

  Once they cross the threshold of the building, a wall of energy almost pushes Anna over. She stumbles back a step before Riley’s arm comes up to steady her. He looks at her with shock in his eyes. He felt it, too. “What is this?”

  “There’s a ward around the building.” Corrine turns to wait in front of the elevator. “I’m sorry, I should have warned you. It prevents most humans from coming in and it keeps other Fallen from finding us. Your friend in the diner never would have found this building if didn’t allow him to do so.”

  “How did you do that? Create a ward?” Riley sounds genuinely curious. He steps back out the door and re-enters. The ability to ward a city would be strategically valuable.

  “Every Fallen city has the ability to cloak its existence. Orasul is so far in the wilderness it has never been necessary.” The doors to the elevator hiss open and she gestures for them to get on. “Here it is necessary.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Riley steps onto the elevator and places himself between Anna and Corrine. “After all this time, why now?”

  “I was told to bring you here so you could see our city.” Corrine looks at him with a calm, steady gaze. “I do as I am ordered. Don’t you?”

  “The people of your city have been trying to kill my soldiers since you left Orasul. Why invite us in now?” Riley’s eyes are hard; he expects trouble. “You can kill us, but it will cost you.”

  “We have no desire for your death or the death of any Fallen.” Her voice remains calm and even. If she’s offended by Riley’s accusation, she doesn’t show it. “We left because we had no choice. Now, please, we have very little time before I must return you to your soldier in the diner. Follow me.”

  The elevator opens up to a basement that must be bigger than the original building. Anna can’t begin to imagine how engineers had gotten into the city and built this. From their vantage point by the elevator they can see the center for life in a Fallen city. A market is set up around the perimeter of an open space. But where the market in Orasul sells all type of goods both human and Fallen, this one only carries the goods specific to the Fallen. They wouldn’t have need of human goods, these residents only need to walk out their front door and have their choice of human stores.

  “This is the center of our city’s culture.” Corrine leads them to the railing of the walkway. Below the city bustles. It looks like any weekend back in Orasul. There have to be hundreds of Fallen living in this building. “The upper floors are where families live and where our more corporate and Committee offices are. Below us our soldiers train. As you see, we have not changed much from when we left.”

  Anna watches Fallen families walking past. Some notice them and smile in greeting. No one is in a hurry to kill her or Riley and she feels no animosity from anyone. The hate filled Fallen rebels she’d heard about don’t seem to exist her. If she didn’t know better she would have thought she was visiting one of their cities in another part of the world.

  Beside her she feels Riley’s body tense. His eyes are on a woman who is walking through the market below. She wears an expensive suit and seems to be greeting almost every Fallen who crosses her path. He looks at Corrine. “You have a Committee here?”

  “Of course.” Corrine looks at him with those same impassive eyes. “How else are we to govern? We hold the same laws as you.”

  “How can you when one of your blades nearly took my head eight years ago?” Riley pulls his jacket back to show the scar across his neck. “One of your men did this. That would break our laws.”

  “I cannot speak of others, but here such an act is forbidden as it is in your city.” Corrine looks at her watch. “I’m sorry, but I must take you back now. A few minutes are all I can afford you today.”

  “Today?” Anna pulls her eyes away from the market below. “Is that to mean we are welcome to come back?”

  “As long as you return meaning only good will.” She ushers them both into the elevator and hits a button. “We only wish to live our lives here, Anna. We do not wish conflict with the rest of the Fallen.”

  Riley looks like he has a retort but he keeps it to himself.

  They ride up the elevator in silence and when they reached the lobby, Corrine leads them to the door. “If you wish to return, please come as you did today and wait in the diner. Someone will come to meet you.”

  “Is that an open invitation?” Anna looks at the other woman and does her best to read her. There’s still no sign of deception or hostility.

  “For you, yes. Not for all.” Corrine smiles for the first time and then moves her attention to Riley. “This is one step, General. In time we can take more. You must understand, our men and women worked hard to create this city for us. We must do all in our power to protect it. Good day.”


  Corrine steps back and allows the door to shut between them. The energy of the Fallen fades immediately and leaves Anna with a shiver. She looks over at Riley. The visit inside the city has taken less than thirty minutes but she had a feeling those thirty minutes are going to change everything.

  He turns on his heel and starts back across the street. “We need to get Kurt and head home.”

  Anna looks at her cell phone. It’s late afternoon and there’s a four-hour drive ahead of them back to Orasul. “We need to eat before we leave the city.”

  “Are you serious?” Riley looks over at her, an edge of irritation in his voice.

  “Yes.” Her voice is firm. He opens the door to the diner and walks in. “Not here. I want to get away from that building where we can talk. We’re away from Orasul, you may be strong enough to head home, but I have to eat before too much longer. Besides, I drank a whole lot of tea between this diner and the coffee shop down the street. I’m going to have to go sooner or later.”

  He looks back at her and his eyes soften. She knows he forgets that she still isn’t at full strength and needs to eat and sleep and heal more frequently than he does. “Sorry. I forgot.”

  “I know.” They watch Kurt pay his tab and then all three head out the door. “But there is a great Chinese place a few blocks from here.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  It’s late when they reached Orasul. Night has already started to settle in and most Fallen will be at dinner or home with their families. The Floor of Judgment would normally be closed by now, the Committee members also at home. Riley had called ahead and insisted Putere wait for them. He isn’t going to let this wait overnight.

  Mia meets them at the entrance in the Hall of Tapestries. “Marissa’s at dinner with Nick and Amy. What’s going on?”

  “There’s another Fallen city a block away from where Anna lived.” He looks up for the elevator and can’t see the car. Unwilling to wait, Riley starts up the stairs.