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

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.