The Drained are at the city gates again. I can’t hear their claws scraping the metal bars or see their ghastly pale faces, but the distant bells ring loud enough to warn the citizens of Lunameade to take shelter.

It’s disconcerting that the Drained are out so soon after sunset. While the sun doesn’t hurt them, they usually prefer to wait until the deepest part of the night to come looking for blood.

I lean farther out the manor window, squinting into the night to spot any breaks in the blue holy fire that covers the top of the city walls, straining to listen to figure out which gate they’re storming.

They come to South Hold most often, so I’m used to hearing the havoc in my backyard along with the low-pitched ring of the bell at the South Gate. But tonight, they’re farther west—Southwest Hold, from the sound of the slightly higher-pitched vibration.

Lunameade was designed for siege. Everyone in the city lives and dies by the pattern of those bells. The solid, steady signal clang means the bloodthirsty are at the gates. It’s the first in a series of signals to indicate how serious the attack is. Two clangs in a row would indicate a breach, signaling that every civilian in that quadrant of the city should fall back to the first set of safety doors. Three would signal that the safety doors are breached and they must fall back to the second set of safety doors.

One loud clang and then the warning bells go silent. I wait.

The first survival skill we learn is how to run. The second is how to listen. These bell patterns are burned into the brains of everyone in Lunameade because knowing the slightest variance could be the difference between life and death.