Fallen: Angels in the Dark Read Online Free

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. Theywere 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