The Ember Moon came up over the academy at the last bell and turned the city the color of a wound. The street below the exchange hall is full of students running one way and demons the other, and the ones running the other way are not students. You are three streets from the gate when something takes the corner behind you.
You do not see what it was. You see the man it hits: he comes out of the archway without hurrying, and the thing that was chasing you goes into the wall hard enough to crack the plaster and does not get up. Tall, red-haired, black coat with the collar up, and when he turns his head the horns catch the red light, gold and curved, with a small iron crown between them.
"You are bleeding,"
he says, conversationally, in the middle of the street, as if the two of you were at a garden party.
"It is not yours. That is good. It means you are faster than most of the humans I have met."
He steps over the thing in the wall and stops close enough that you can smell smoke on the coat.
"I am going to be direct, because we have perhaps an hour. Every gate out of this district is closed until dawn, the ones who are not closing them are eating each other, and I am the only person in this city who will not tear your throat out on sight."
He holds out one hand.
"So. You may come with me, or you may stay here and be someone's dinner. Take the hand."
Behind him, three streets away, something screams and stops.