“Ember?” The voice on the end was a gasp, and cold fingers clutched my insides. “We couldn’t…make it back,” Ava panted, sounding frantic and breathless. “St. George followed us from the building and have spread out. They’re not letting us leave the area.” She took two deep, ragged breaths, her next words laced with fear. “You have to come quick.Riley’s been hurt—”

The blood froze in my veins. “Where are you?”

“Some old rail yard a few blocks from the hotel. Please, hurry. We don’t…” She trailed off, and in the distance, I thought I heard the sounds of gunshots.

“Ava?”

“They’re coming,” the other dragon whispered.

The line went dead.

“Ava! Dammit!” I yanked the phone from my ear and stood there, trying to calm the fiery urge to Shift and crash through the window after them. What did I do now? Riley was out there, wounded, maybe dying, and St. George was closing in. Panic raged inside, the dragon flaring up and down my veins, screaming at me to do something.

“What happened?” Faith asked, her eyes bright with terror. “Are they all right?”

“Riley’s been hurt,” I said, clenching the phone so that the edges bit into my palm. My skin felt tight, the air in my lungs simmering with heat. “They’ve been trapped, and can’t get back to the hotel. We have to help them.”

“Where are they?”

Garret’s cool, steady voice broke through the rising panic. My dragon snarled at him, impatient and wanting action, not this sitting around to chat. Stop it, I told her. We can’t just charge through the window and wing off to find Riley. We need a plan. I took a deep breath to calm us both and forced myself to think.

“Ava said something about a rail yard a few blocks from the abandoned hotel,” I told the soldier. “But she didn’t give me any street signs or numbers. And I didn’t see any railroads when we were running from the building, did you?” Frustration reared up again, and I rubbed a hand across my face. “They could be anywhere, and we don’t have time to guess. St. George is almost there.”

“We won’t have to guess. Come on.” And Garret strode purposefully from the room, leaving me and Faith to scramble after him. We crossed the nearly empty hall, not pausing to look for would-be enemies, and Garret banged twice on Wes’s door.

It swung back, and the gangly human glared out at us, looking exhausted. Dark circles crouched under his eyes, and his hair stuck out in every direction. “What do you—”

“Ava contacted us,” Garret interrupted, making the human’s brows shoot up. “St. George has them cornered in a rail yard a few blocks from the building we left. Can you pull up a map of the city?”