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

Chapter Twenty-Four: Museum

Gats.

Owl stalks down the hall until she fades into a red speck. The guard with my arm huffs and swipes her hood down. I squirm. She is tall, her wrinkled cloak rustling as it tumbles to her knees. Her blonde hair falls neatly to her shoulders and frames her eyes. I pull back. The other guard isn't particularly tall or particularly frightening, brown hair swept up into a loose ponytail and a sheepish little smile on her shaded face. Still, I find little comfort in either of them.

"Well," the blonde one says, "what do we do with him?" Her grip is tight, but there isn't any malice in the woman's relaxed tone. Granted, I'm not great at identifying that type stuff, but I'm not scared of her. She looks curious, her eyes bright and round, a quiet "hmm..." muttered under her breath.

The other guard holds up her hands. Signs. The gestures start fluid, but when she glances at me they become vigorous and jerky, like through the graceful movements, she's screaming. I try to move away, soft baby steps instead of the big, loping strides, but the guard never relaxes her grip. She hardly notices my struggling, it seems, just holds me like she's a mother in a grocery store engaging in serious conversation and I'm her derpy kid.

"Huh," the blonde woman says, "she is going pretty far, but... " A sharp pause. "Spleens."

The brunette gathers herself, her rounded cheeks flushed red, by drawing up one long breath. Her eyes practically glow, all angry flames and agitated blinks.

I cock my head. Watching and listening to the guards argue is like watching the Star Wars movies, trying to puzzle what the characters are saying with only the clipped words and pauses of one speaker.

"We can't... but there's some truth... we've talked about this before... well, yeah, I agree... no, I would never do that...even if she ordered..."

They're stiff as they glare at each other each other, their faces drawn tight with deep, sudden creases. As they're leaned toward each other, hands fisted, it's here I find enough strength to pull away, just out of the woman's grasp. I do it slowly, twisting my wrist like pulling I'm a key out of a lock. I can only hope they're too engrossed in their conversation to notice.

My knees are putty. My head feels like a bloated balloon ready to pop. As I flatten my back against a complex wall, ready to bolt, the blonde woman spies me out of the corner of her eye. I freeze. She snatches my arm and yanks me back into the hall.

Well, okay. "Snatch" and "yank" are strong words. More like taps me on the forearm and pulls me a twinge away from from the corner. But when you're trying to escape the clutches of a violent supervillain, everything feels like a "snatch" and a "yank."

"Hi." She smiles at me, leaning down with her free hand slid on her knees. I pull back, strands of white hair in my eyes and ruffled up in odd places. Out of nervous habit, I start to comb it down, my fingers caught in the tangles. I growl under my breath. Getting shot in the face is one thing, tangled hair is another, and there's blood on my fingers. That stuff's gonna get all in my hair, and oh, how yucky.

"I'm Sarah, and that's Ivy." The guard points over her shoulder and the brown-haired woman nods. I blink. Average, salt-of-the-earth names. I think they're the strangest things I've heard my entire stay here.

I glower. "What are you going to do?" My throat feels dry from my silence. The guard, Sarah, chuckles. Her friend does too.

"He speaks!" Sarah says, a big grin on her face. She throws Ivy a wink. "And he's British."

Ivy laughs silently and I wonder what's so funny about me being British. So I have an accent. I'm also a mutated cat-person-creature. I try to growl, but it comes out a purr, so now I'm trying not to blush. "Yeah, yeah, what do you want?"