Damsel[ed]: Some Rescue Required (#2 of the Damsel[ed] series)

Chapter Twenty: On the Move

Angelos.

I fight back a smile. There's a factor Poison and his friend didn't bank on, and that is that I've been dealt a lot more pain than they can keep up giving.

And now I'm flying. Figuratively, that is. I wriggled out of the ropes around my feet, but my wings are still all tied up like they've been gift wrapped. The ropes dig into all the tender nerves and muscles and make struggling pretty painful, but a guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do.

"Hey!" Poison calls. Black splotches well up in my eye as I run, blinding me, and my head pounds like the inside is padded with cotton balls. The ground rushes up to meet my feet, the smells of sweat and decay drawing my head to a spin. Someone make it stop.

I tell myself to keep moving, even though each breath makes my lungs swell up and my chest throb like it will explode. I can hardly keep from toppling over. Behind my shut eyelids, All I see are stars.

Though I don't know where I'm going, I manage to stay footed, moving forward. I can feel the asphalt digging into my socks and the coolness of the shady sky. If I keep moving, then surely I can get away. I can find a way into a, I don't know, forest, a shallow cospe of trees. I can lose Poison and crew, rest up, and find somewhere to phone home. Then I can continue searching for Gats and right now, that's all that matters.

I wriggle my fingers to make sure they don't go numb. Poison may suck at rope tying, but the handcuffs hold up, no matter how hard I flex and struggle. My wrists ache, but that can only be summed up as a dumb concern as I flee vicious, soulless captors who like seeing me writhe on the ground in agony.

Scary, much?

Twilight is dark now, a few early stars showing in the sky. It was noon when Poison and Company captured me. Time sure flies when you're trying to escape rope ties on the floor of your evil brother's beige Impala.

"You." Poison speaks low and measured on my blind side. I nearly jump. This can't be happening. It can't be. I never heard his footsteps. He snatches my elbow and I stumble, and f he tugged me any harder, my arm would pop out of my socket. I cry out. Just when I had a chance. Just when I almost made it. "What am I going to have to do to you to make you play along?"

Pretty much nothing. Bile rises in my throat and I twist and struggle to escape his grasp. I hate him. I mean, no kidding. Hate that he's supposed to be my brother, that he wants Heaven so badly and thinks of her as a thing. I tremble. The black spots move like inkblots in a Rorschach test. Out of the corner of my eye, I see bashed-in windows of a peeling mini mall's front, the brick parts crusted with mold and the vinyl parts cracked, yellow, stringy, and dry. My heart beats so quickly I can feel it in my fingertips. How can he be my brother? I take deep breaths and try not to explode. "I can't help you," I say simply, but it comes out something like, "Ay ant elp oo" from behind the folds of the handkerchief.

Poison bristles beside me, quivering. I can tell he wants to hurt me, but even he knows it won't help much. His friend, the big man with the bright green eyes and probable degree in theatre, appears at his side like a loyal puppy. I have to twist my head to see him and his pale, sweaty face. I blink. He looks the way I feel.

I heard him existential crisising all over the front seat, panickedly mumbling string after string of ethical questions about the nature of superheroes and supervillains. I start to feel bad for him, but then I remember him flinging me twenty feet while I lay helpless and I don't anymore. I know he was once a superhero, but that's pretty low for a hero, beating someone up for trying to find a missing friend.

"Buddy," Poison says, and his tone is tender, nothing like it is when he talks to me, "are you feeling okay? Do you need to rest or something?"

My teeth grind down so feircly if my dentist saw she'd slap me. Look at that, my "brother," acting so kindly to that guy and beating me, his supposed flesh and bone, to a bruised bag of flesh. That's what I get for family.