“Twice.”

Riley winced, then looked at Garret. The other boy regarded him coolly, and Riley smirked. “See, St. George? We don’t need guns. You’re actually fairly competent at disabling people without them.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Garret said drily, “the next time we face a dozen soldiers with assault rifles.”

Riley shook his head. “Hopefully not tonight,” he muttered, and turned away, observing the room once more. “So now the question is, how do we find two scared runaways in this mess?”

Soft footsteps interrupted us. I glanced over to see a skinny, zombielike figure shambling toward us from the shadows.

Riley

The human edged into the light, shoulders hunched, watching us like a stray dog who wasn’t certain if you would toss it food or kick it. A woman, I saw as she got close. As humans went, she might have been pretty once, maybe even gorgeous. But her blond hair was lank and stringy now, her skin pale and wasted, glassy blue eyes sunk into her face. She looked like a bony marionette as she eased forward and stopped just out of reach, the hollow expression and thousand-yard stare making my dragon stir restlessly.

“Angels,” she whispered.

I frowned. My adrenaline was up; the fight had made me edgy and restless. I was not in the mood for this. “What?”

“The angels,” she murmured again, and I saw she had only a few teeth left in her head. “The ones you want. The one’s you’re looking for. The pretty ones.” One hand rose like a limp fish and pointed behind her. I squinted across the floor. A door sat against the far wall, barely visible in the shadows, looking like the entrance to a stairwell. “Near the sky,” she whispered, as if in a daze. “The angels. They have to be near the sky.”

“Upstairs?” Ember asked, but the human turned and shuffled back into the darkness, muttering to herself. I listened to her footsteps fade away, listened to her babble softly to herself, until the sounds were swallowed by the blackness, leaving us alone.

“Crazy humans,” I muttered, and resisted the urge to brush imaginary loony off my jacket. “Well, at least we know where we’re going.”

Sick-looking, emaciated people gave us blank stares as we crossed the open floor, giggling uncontrollably, or talking to themselves in hushed voices. No one tried to stop or harass us again, except for some crazy old guy who grinned and made a lewd comment to Ember. She whirled on him, bristling. The soldier quickly grabbed her, stopping her midlunge and halting whatever she was planning to do, which was probably kick the old codger in his withered jewels. I snickered, almost sorry he’d stopped her, but by that time, we had reached the other side of the room and I pushed open the door.

A wave of dry, stale heat billowed through the opening, and a rusted metal staircase ascended into utter darkness.

“How far do you think we should go?” Ember asked once we had all stepped through the door, crowding the bottom of the stairs. It was even hotter here than the casino. My hair stuck to my neck, and even though I didn’t mind the heat, I could feel sweat running down my back through my shirt.

“All the way,” I answered, shining the light up the tube. “As far as we can.”

So we climbed. Up several flights in blistering, oven-like temperatures, Ember and the soldier trailing behind me. We met no one else; it was just our footsteps echoing up the shaft. I assumed the heat and utter darkness kept most junkies out of the stairwell at night, though the tube still reeked of piss and garbage and other things.

And then, quite suddenly, we couldn’t go any farther. The stairwell ended at another simple metal door that creaked as I pushed it back, shining the light through the opening.

We’d reached the end of the hotel’s construction. Beyond the door, half walls and rotting wooden frames created a labyrinth of metal and iron. Carefully, we eased inside, brushing aside ragged plastic sheets that hung everywhere, fluttering in the hot wind. I glanced up, and saw that the roof was open to the sky, though it was impossible to see the stars through the haze of the city. I could breathe easier, though, just being this close without the stink of human filth and craziness clogging my nose. If I were two runaway hatchlings, this was where I would go.

“What are we looking for?” St. George asked as we maneuvered our way across the floor. The wood groaned under our feet, and I stepped lightly over beams and rusty metal screws. Hopefully nothing would give way beneath us; the floor looked pretty rotten.

“Two kids,” I told him. “Hatchlings. Probably no older than either of you.” I brushed aside a sheet and ducked under a low-hanging beam, poking the light into dark corners. “If you find either of them, let me handle it. They’re going to be terrified of strangers, of anyone who could be from Talon. I don’t want them running off before I—”

Something lunged from around the corner, swinging a metal pipe at my face.

I jerked back. The pipe missed crushing my skull by about an inch but hit my arm instead, knocking the flashlight from my grasp. It went spinning across the floor in dizzying circles, as the attacker raised the weapon and came at me again.

“Wait!” I dodged and backed swiftly away, ducking around a beam. The pipe smacked into the wood a microsecond later, raising a hollow thud and a billow of dust. “Wait just a second,” I said as my attacker followed me around the beam, holding the pipe like a baseball bat. It swung at me again, and I dodged out of the way. “Will you relax? I’m not here to hurt you. Just listen to me.”