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

Chapter Forty: Trapped

Angelos.

I can't fly.

That's a terrible realization to make when you're running for your life and your best bet is hanging in the air so the super-fast little villain can't catch you. The ropes on my wings slid down to the tips' curves, twisted up in the feathers and pulling the limbs down like weights. I surge up for a lift off, all the muscles in my wings tensed for flight, and only succeed in giving myself a starting stumble.

The girl chases me down with such speed that in her orange sweater, she looks like a flash of fire. New brands of pain ratchet through my bruised muscles with every step. I grit my teeth to hold back screams. "Spit, spit, spit!" 

And thanks to my lousy father, the only metaphor I can come up with for the whole experience is wolf hunting. The room is hot and cooks my skin, splotching my face with sweat. Sawdust burns my eyes and cakes my eyelashes. Every breath leaves me gasping, my lungs heaving and streaking pain through my throat when I open my mouth to breathe. Every muscle in my body pounds as I pass the cages. 

I'm dizzy. My knees feel like boiled spaghetti. I didn't expect to my father again so soon. I didn't expect him to crack metaphors at me or have one of his supers run me down and try to chain me up. The frustration is almost tangible, a sort of heat that fries me behind my eyes. I want to whip around and shout, "What did I ever do to deserve this?"

But I don't. Cages blur as they pass by. Animals, fluffy ones that resemble raccoons for the most part, chitter and screech, scratching at the cage with their tiny paws. My eyes are bleary, heavy with tears I'm too tired to shed. 

I feel so detached, so little of me invested at all in the fight. It isn't my fight. And it isn't my fault, either. It's like I'm seeing the world through the lens of a movie camera. At least, I've tried my hardest to minimize my fault for this mess. She pounces. The chain tangles around my ankles.  "Freaking—spit!" And I, being such a downer today, think: This is it. This is where it all leads to. All the fighting, all the kicking and screaming and suffering, it all ends here,  in a dark cage-room for experiments.

I decide it's awfully fitting, somehow. And then I decide to quit being melodramatic.

The chains twist and pull my legs together. I hit the ground in a tumble, collapsing flat on my back, arms splayed out. I look up, dizzy. The wall at my side drips with splattered ooze. A light hums above my head, and in my spinning frame of mind I just make out the very edges of a few tacked up photographs, black and white from a time before me and this fight. A  pretty pony-tailed woman who looks eerily similar to Jaylin smirks from the top of the board, her eyes glowing. I feel like she's laughing at me. My arms wobble when I lift my chest and I groan, my body as flimsy as if it were carved out of butter. The girl chuckles over me, an elbow on my hip to pin me down. I hardly even noticed her, to be honest. 

"Hey, hey!" I cry. Squirming, I lift my hands in front of my face to protect it. A reflexive move. "Be careful! Poison kicked me there, like, twenty-seven times. It hurts!"

The girl looks up. Her amber eyes glow a near gold in the low light, and when she smiles she looks like a villain. A kind of cute one, actually. Taller than Jaylin and Heaven, a little rounder in the face. I almost chide myself for noticing her cuteness, but it's not like Jaylin and I are a thing. The girl picks up her elbow and I let out a shaky sigh.

"Sorry, Katris—"

"Angelos." I fix her with a wink. "Angelos M Fibbs." She snaps open one of the cuffs, the two halves glinting like a 'W' under the low light. I recoil, my shoulders pulsing with fresh pain as I roll back on the blood-stained floor. "Please don't."