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Date Posted: 14:24:34 11/30/03 Sun
Author: silver
Author Host/IP: cvg-65-27-246-32.cinci.rr.com / 65.27.246.32
Subject: Speaking of things to read...inside this post anyone interested can find the prologue to my new Angel fic, "The Fallen". Anyone wanna beta?

Nothing else is written yet, just the prologue. But I'm starting on Chapter 1 today.


Anyone, for anyone who's bored and would like to read, here's the prologue. It takes place, by the way, right after s2 of ATS.



Summary: A cluster of strange, brutal murders leads the Angel Investigations Team & Lorne to suspect a young woman with no memory, who may actually be the unwitting key figure in the ultimate battle between good and evil.

Rating: R for language, strong violence and adult themes.





The Fallen



by: silver







~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~






Los Angeles. Four years ago…





The heavens exploded directly above them and Office Makale Grant jumped, fumbling his thermos. Luckily, the lid was firmly screwed on, and the still piping-hot coffee within didn’t spill out onto his lap. He replaced it in the cup-holder on the console as the crack of thunder deepened into a rumble that completely drowned out the police radio and set his heart racing. He could feel it there, pounding furiously in his chest. Over in the driver’s seat, Grant’s partner winced a little, but didn’t let the thunder distract him. It was obviously taking all of his concentration just to stay on the road, cursing the night and the monsoon outside the squad car. Though the sky had looked ominous all day, this downpour had started when the thunder did, suddenly and with no warning. Now the sheets of driving rain obscured their view, splattering heavily upon the windshield and blurring the double yellow lines before them.


Ordinarily, Carlson would have ribbed his rookie for jumping at loud noises, but something about this storm put him on edge. It was more than the intense concentration of keeping them on course through the onslaught. It was something about that thunder. It was sky shattering, and it was so close it was like it was right there in the car with them. The rain came in torrents; in between them he caught glimpses of swollen clouds hanging heavy over the city, bruised and angry. There was something unnatural about them, something much more sinister than the usual smog-laden overcast above L.A. It had been a long time since thunder storms had frightened him. Now, he felt again the instinctive fear of a child for nature out of control.


Another ear-splitting crack startled them both, then rolled into a menacing growl that reverberated in their chests. “Jesus,” Grant exclaimed, “I’ve never seen anything like this.”


Privately, Carlson thought he never had either, but he kept it to himself and continued to squint through the pounding rain.


Unhindered by his partner’s lack of comment, Grant went on. “I mean, can you believe this? Every light for the past six blocks has been out. Do you think it could be the whole grid?”


“We’ll find out when we get to the station,” Carlson replied. His eyes followed the quick, steady staccato of the wiper blades, hoping to get a clearer view in their wake. Added to the high intensity pattering of the rain on the wind shield and the cracking of one thunderclap on top of another was the steady “shhhh, shhhh” sound of the squad car’s tires sluicing through the cascading sheets of rain already fallen.


“I bet it is,” Grant continued. “I don’t think there’s been a storm like this in the history of L.A. There’s something...cataclysmic about it.”


Carlson’s eyes darted to the younger man for a moment, then back to the road. He wanted to ride his new partner for exaggeration, too, but something about the word seemed to fit. It was as if all of nature was rebelling against something. The sky boiled black above them, and back when they’d been able to hear the radio there’d been reports of two minor quakes in the early evening.


Apocalypse weather. The thought sprang into his mind, and he frowned to himself as he thrust the idea away. To take his mind off of it, he spoke. “You know, my dad always used to say thunder was the sound of God and all the angels bowling up in heaven.”


Grant waited a beat after the next boom of thunder had faded away. “Yeah? I guess God’s pissed today.”


Carlson snorted. A moment later, though, Grant’s answering chuckle turned into a choke. “Jesus, did you see that?!”


Startled, thinking of drive-by shootings and muggings on street corners, Carlson hit the brakes. The squad car skidded in the flood that used to be Santa Monica Boulevard, hydroplaning sideways before he got traction again and regained control. “What,” he demanded, trying to find the threat through the rain. “Did I see what?”


“Slow down, stop. Stop the car,” Grant answered. The rookie’s mouth was agape. His eyes were wide and riveted on the entrance to an alley across the street. It fell behind them as Carlson pulled over to the curb and parked, hitting the flashers but forgoing the sirens, for now. Red and blue light began to spin silently from the roof of the squad car.


Grant was already yanking at his seat belt; his fingers scrabbling for the door handle. “Wait a minute, where the hell do you think you’re going?” Carlson asked. “What did you see?”


Grant paused, looking back at the alley. “Didn’t you see it? There was this huge, bright flash. It was like this white light, beaming right out of the alley. I can’t believe you didn’t see it.”


“I was watching the road,” Carlson replied. He watched the entrance of the alley; it seemed dark enough, now. Abruptly, he realized the rain was letting up. A moment later, he realized something else…the thunder had stopped. Grant figured it out in the same moment, and they stared at each other for a minute in the sudden silence. Instead of being a relief, the cessation of the thunder suddenly seemed ominous to both men.


Grant shook it off, concerned for the moment only about the flash of light he’d seen. He got out of the car. He was followed a moment later by Carlson, who stepped out and placed one hand on the wet roof of the squad car to steady himself and looked up. The rain had stopped. It had stopped completely in the space of ten seconds. Carlson was uneasy with the abruptness of it, especially in conjunction with the odd silence after the thunder. It was too quick. It was like something big had just happened, and now he felt the familiar tension in his belly that warned him trouble was coming. Unaware, Grant mused “What do you think it could have been?”


Carlson took one look at his partner’s face - which was alternately being painted red, then blue - and knew what he thought it had been. The younger man was an avid Fox Mulder wannabe. He had all sorts of theories about crop circles, he frequently postulated about government conspiracies, and when he came back from his lunch breaks he always had a new tabloid with headlines screaming about the bat boy found living in a cave in Indiana, or the latest sighting of old Nessie. Grant’s fascination with the supernatural earned him infinite amounts of jokes and teasing back at the station. Carlson sighed, oddly comforted by the familiarity of Grant’s overblown imagination. “You probably think it was a U.F.O., don’tcha?” he cracked.


“Laugh all you like,” Grant replied, joining his partner on the driver’s side of the squad car. “But I know I saw something. Something unusual.”


Grant started across the deserted street at a brisk pace, kicking splashes of water up with every step. Carlson followed with less haste, looking for the shallower puddles. “Dunno why you’re a cop,” the older man said, “you oughtta be in the F.B.I. if you want to work the X-Files.” He said it sarcastically, pronouncing it “Effa - bee - eye”.


Used to the ribbing, Grant only grinned. “Well, maybe when I’m old and about to retire, like you are, I won’t be able to get it up long enough to investigate anything unusual.” With a smirk, he looked over his shoulder at Carlson. “My interest, that is.”


Carlson harumphed and watched as his partner’s attention was once more drawn to the mouth of the alley, and suddenly a wary feeling overcame him. He didn’t know what it was, or where it had come from, but he abruptly felt that going into that alley - hell, that crawlspace between the two buildings - was a bad idea. It wasn’t until Grant turned around again and said “What?” that he realized he’d spoken the thought aloud.


“Something tells me we shouldn’t go in there,” he said again. His forward momentum ceased entirely, and he stood still on the sidewalk ten yards from the entrance to the alley.


Grant was closer; another three or four steps would take him into the alley. He frowned at his partner, then peered into the shadows between Chen’s Noodle Bar and The Little Professor book store. “It’s dark enough now,” he muttered, unknowingly echoing Carlson’s earlier thought. He took a step closer.


“I mean it, Grant!” Carlson said sharply, stepping after him. Inside, he wondered what the hell he was doing. He was a cop, for chrissakes. Cops didn’t run from confrontations. They sure as hell didn’t fail to investigate situations because they had the freaking heebie jeebies. Still, he called out to his partner again, trying to catch up with him. Just as Grant stepped into the alley, they both heard a cry from deeper within that darkness.


Carlson skidded to a stop at the mouth of the alley, his eyes wide. His voice was hoarse, and it rang with the tone of premonition. “There’s something in there we shouldn’t be interfering with!”


Then there was something coming at them, coming out of the darkness at the back of the alley. It screamed like the devil, a piercing shriek of inhuman horror. Carlson thought quickly, “banshee”, and then it was upon them.


It dove right toward Grant, who dodged out of the way at the last moment. Unfortunately, that left Carlson wide open. The thing lunged at him and the hit nearly took him down. He backpedaled, trying to get away from the snarling, slobbering thing that raked at him with clawed hands and screamed incoherently in his face. His back slammed up against the wall, and then suddenly he could retreat no further as the thing clutched and gibbered at him.


When the thing hit Carlson, Grant had drawn his gun. Now, with no clear shot, he lowered it uncertainly. And there was something about their attacker...


Temporarily stunned into non-action by the thing’s rush, Grant’s instincts kicked back in and he went physically to Carlson’s aid. He grabbed two fists full of the thing’s (jacket?) clothing and yanked it away from his partner. He slammed it against the opposite wall of the alley and drew his gun again. It wasn’t until after he had the thing in his sights that he realized it wasn’t a thing after all...it was a boy.


Grant’s impression of a jacket had been correct; it was a simple denim jacket, a little worse for the wear but still perfectly serviceable. The boy looked to be in his late teens, physically, but the expression on his face made him look younger. His eyes were wide in child-like fear and his dishwater blond hair was plastered damply to his forehead and neck. He panted and clutched at his heart as if he were suffering from a cardiac embolism. “Jesus,” Grant said, half over his shoulder to Carlson, and half to himself. “It’s just a kid. The way he came at us, screaming like that, I thought he was something...”


Belatedly, he asked “You okay?”


Carlson straightened, panting a little himself. He was getting too old for this kind of thing. He was more glad than ever that he only had two months left until his retirement. “I’m okay,” he answered. Since Grant appeared to have the kid under control, he turned and stepped deeper into the alley. While he was still pretty sure he didn’t want to know what was back here, he had no choice now. There was blood dripping from the kid’s hands; it had gotten all over the front of his uniform. His gold badge was smeared with it.


Needing to know where that blood had come from, he delved deeper into the shadows, fumbling for his flashlight. He pulled it out of his belt and flicked it on. A high-intensity ray of light cut through the darkness, creating a steady beam of illumination. He played the bright circle at the beam’s end along the grungy walls of the alley before slowly working his way to the back.


Nearer to the street, the boy had ceased all efforts to escape and now lay limply at the base of the wall, his eyes lolling in the direction Carlson had gone. Suddenly Grant realized the boy wasn’t the threat, here. At least not the primary one. There was something back there that had terrorized the boy, and Carlson’s warning echoed quietly in his head.


There’s something in there we shouldn’t be interfering with!


Still, Grant’s eyes never left the boy as he turned slightly toward his partner. “What is it?” he asked, “what’s back there?”


There was no answer. No more than two minutes had gone by since they’d gotten out of their car across the street, and Grant’s ears still rang with the sudden, unnatural silence after the storm. Rain that had fallen from the sky two minutes ago was still being pulled by gravity down the slopes of the building roofs, and through gutters. That quiet trickling was the only sound he heard in the space where his partner was supposed to be answering him.


Grant finally took his attention from the boy. “Carlson?” he asked, pulling out his own flashlight. He flicked it on as he moved further back. “Carlson?” he called again, and then he saw him.


Then it saw it all.

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