Midnight looked a little awed herself. “It’s because they don’t want any doors on the wall to open right onto the city.”
The streets below seemed mostly abandoned, although a few stragglers had stopped to watch their descent from a distance. Tana looked out at the city. She felt as though she had stumbled into a world alien and yet familiar. She’d seen it on the news, seen it in the background of the vids of runaways and in the photographs of daring journalists. She had seen the blackened, burnt remains of old buildings captured in pictures—seen what had once been a row of storefronts, now with spiderweb shatters in the glass, with blankets and plastic bags covering the empty frames of windows, and the jagged outlines of edifices stretching out toward the far walls. Spires whose panes flickered with light. Great domed buildings pulsing with distant music. A landscape gone feral.
“Hey,” Midnight said, pointing down the side of the wall. “Look—the boys.”
Tana turned slowly, trying not to make the thing sway more than it was. Aidan, Winter, and Gavriel were in another cage suspended beneath theirs—one that swung in a pendulum-like motion, but went no lower. Gavriel stood with his fingers through the bars, looking out at the orange haze in the east with a smile lifting one corner of his mouth. Winter stood next to him, with Aidan on the floor, his feet dangling through the bars.
“I think ours is broken,” Aidan called up to them.
“They mess with vampires like that, I heard,” said Midnight, softly, nodding to the wall. “They’ll wait as long as they can.”
In the dim light, Tana saw scorch marks along the cinder block exterior, ones that seemed to have flared up as if something had been very close to it while burning.
“You’ve got to get out of there,” Tana called. “I really think—”
Gavriel tore the gate off the hinges.
Midnight screamed at the suddenness of it. One moment, the vampire had been looking out at the sky and the next he had peeled back the metal with his hands. Now Tana looked at the warped remains of the hinges, pulled like taffy, and then at Gavriel’s face, transformed by whatever power let him do that. His mouth gaped open, fangs evident. When he looked up at her, hunger twisted his features, and she was suddenly glad to be far from him.
He jumped down to the dirt below, landing as easily as a cat.
A few moments later, the cage that held Tana and Midnight hit the ground, too, knocking Tana to her knees. There was a loud buzzing and their door opened. Midnight staggered out, pulling her garbage bag behind her as her brother lowered himself on a loose piece of chain.
They stumbled through a section of road that was probably once a roundabout but was now an asphalt courtyard, an island of overgrown shrubs and weeds at its center.
Aidan followed them, falling clumsily. He got up and brushed himself off, looking back at the wall with horror, as though the reality of their situation had just settled over him.
“Quick,” Midnight said, pulling her brother to his feet. “Come on. We’ve got to get out of here.”
“Where are we going?” Aidan called as he ran. He reached for Tana’s hand. She took it and they raced after Midnight and Winter.
The streets had been paved a long time ago, but they were cracked now, with deep pits. Tana had to watch each step as she moved, fast as she dared, skipping after Aidan. She looked back once to see that Gavriel was still with them, his face blank.
He must be very, very hungry, she thought. Very, very, very hungry.
From the windows of houses, from behind drapes and blinds and shutters, they were being watched. Watched as they stumbled past mounds of refuse, past rats that scattered at their approach and gleaming blackflies that rose like an oily mist off rotting food and the long-dead body of a dog.
They turned onto a narrow street, Winter and Midnight dragging their garbage bags and suitcase, looking shaken.
Halfway down the block, Midnight leaned over and braced her hands on her thighs, breathing hard. Her hair hung down, the shadows turning it dark. “We have to figure out where we are,” she said.
“Dawn’s coming,” said Tana, letting go of Aidan. She was winded, too, and leaned against the brick wall. The building opposite it was covered in graffiti, elaborate paintings of dragons of which she could make out only a few details in the gloom.
Midnight knelt down and unzipped her case. “Just give me a minute. I downloaded a bunch of different sketches kids uploaded of the streets. They are the only maps we’ve got.”