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

Chapter Sixty-One: Show Time

Heaven.

Heat blasts my lungs. I have no weapon, nothing but my own body to fight with. The others are too weak to give chase, and yet I fly on my feet, so fast gravel dislodges from the empty, open road and whips up against my limbs. My skin smolders, the air shimmery in the heat of the early spring and of the aura draped like a thick, staticky sheet over the city. It has to be Angel's doing. And though I suspect I should be mad at him, I'm more relieved he's well enough to create something like this. At least Owl didn't try to kill him like I thought she would.

Now onto killing her.

I know my way around this city better than anyone. I've flown over it countless times, combed every inch in search of criminals and evidence. The emptiness is so out of place, so wrong, with my everu move I can't help glancing over my shoulder. Waiting. Waiting for someone to jump out and snatch me up, kick down the false backdrop. Everything is too glowy, too glisteny for the violence Owl threatens. And the feeling that my city, my home, is a ghost town makes my heart hurt so much.

I'm starving, and the speed of my sprint sucks u most of my energy. When I arrive at the Capitol building, my legs are like rubber, my chest muscles drawn up so tight I wonder if they'll explode. My guts had to be rearranged in my stern anyway, they must be awful weak. Maybe I should've stayed back. Waited. But this is what I have to do, this is my fight. That Demeter guy was right. I'm terrible at this heroing thing, and I couldn't save him. Couldn't save all the people I'm supposed to. So today, I'm going to do it or die trying, even if my hero's sacrifice is in vain, at least I'll be with my mother and father again. At least I can make them proud.

The capitol building is white and clean in the distance, icy. The porch spreads across the edge of my vision, gleaming like a sheet of frost. Rails shoot up in neat parallel lines and on the steps squat figures in black.

My stomach rumbles, my pulse roaring in my ears. Weaponless, defenseless, I stand alone in the middle of the highway. The air burns my neck and scalp, up and down my arms where the world feels as hot and empty as if it were itself a star.

Nebula's statue is broken, her limbs tossed into the shrubs. Her helmeted head lies at her marble base, staring out at me. I stare back, squarely into those lifeless eyes. Dead. She's dead. Her legacy, too.

And I have to pick up the slack.

I leap up off my feet, stabbing pain tearing through the back of my neck and calves. The heat is now unbearable, like the sun is shining through me rather than upon me. I'm so hungry even the blood that shines on the Capitol steps doesn't curb my appetite. My mouth is so dry, I can feel the wetness shrivel up on my tongue in dry patches.

The henchmen don't stand a chance against me.

Crazed with hunger, with hatred, with the thought of failure, of losing everything that I care about, of failing my poor, dead parents, I land hard on the slippery steps. Cloaks fly up like black angel wings and Angel's wings, the six or so hooded figures grabbing for me all at once. As I dive under them, they form a canopy that blocks out the sun. My leg snaps out and my shin bone connects with the back of someone's knee, knocking them up and over me with a pop. A scream. And yet it all feels like a heat mirage, a dream.

Steel-gripped fingers punch through the skin of my forearm, and I run.

A door is broken, jarred off its hinges. It's beautiful, ornamentally carved with curls that match the columns holding up the roof. I sigh to myself, soft and breezy. A hand yanks a lock of hair out of my scalp, and though I feel the heat of blood on my skin, I don't feel the pain.

Today, I'm a machine.

I race inside, the floor coated thickly with layers of dried blood, brown and crackly underfoot. Air conditioner keeps the room cool, the walls as clean and white here as they were outside. Hostages in matching black uniform take up the crook under the spiral staircase, their forms like lumpy dark shadows in the crisp light.