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.

And it's a dumb thought, and it quickly leaves. What a petty thing to dwell on. Gats is probably being tortured right now, and this is what I think about. My stomach churns. I'm letting him down.

I squirm and kick and yank and pull. Poison cuffs me hard on the ear and the blow snaps my head to the side. I resist another cry and let him pull me, ringing in one side of my head and the other already throbbing from blow after blow thrown earlier. More stars. I want to curl into a ball on the ground and wait for the world to stop spinning. Think, think, think.

"No," the superhero, Ceres, says, "not at all. Can we just get this over with?"

Poison shrugs and kicks my legs out from under me so I drag. My jittery wings twitch at the mention of 'get this over with.' That can never signal a good thing to come, especially if the person who says it bashed your face in multiple times. I shake my head and try to force out the gag. I need to speak to them, to explain as quickly as I can that:

1. Heaven isn't a toy; she's a dangerous, blood-thirsty sixteen-year-old who deserves to be treated like one. They may say lions are meant for cages, but Heavens are not, and neither are Gatsbies are Angels for that matter. They're meant to live boring lives relatively free of significant pain and imprisonment, unless, of course, they helped make midichlorians a thing, which we didn't and if Gats somehow managed that he deserves whatever he's getting.

2.I need to find Gats before he gets really hurt.

3.I don't want to be tortured. Please don't torture me.

Poison's cell phone rings. His ringtone is a chirpy pop song about the greatness of life and I would laugh if he hadn't dumped me into Ceres' waiting arms. A four-floor complex lurches into vision and I decide a right eye would really help right now. No matter what I thought before, right eyes are not overrated. They're great when you can get them, so this Black Friday swing yourself a set.

Ceres cups his arms around my rumbling stomach in something like a Heimlich maneuver, the way you squeeze the living crap out of someone to dispel something from their throat. Great for saving choking victims. Not great for hanging on to struggling hostages, and if he presses any harder I might cough up a hairball.

"Yeah, hello," Poison answers. The phone is on speaker, probably for my benefit, and by "benefit" I loosely mean "brought about terror and intimidation."

"Poison," says a low, sugary voice. A bead of sweat collects on my brow; it's Jaylin. Poison stomps ahead and his fluffed up wings poke from the slits of his leather jacket. I glare in weak envy at the coolest piece of clothing I've ever seen.

"What do you want, traitor? I can have you followed and gunned down if I trace this call."

"Traitor?" Jaylin snorts. I clench my jaw. Are you a good guy or a bad guy, Jay? Make up your freaking mind!  "What are you talking about?"

"What do you want?" he asks, his voice squeaky with suppressed rage. I squirm. Ceres leans up in my ear, speaking calmly while I thrash as best I can with my tied wings and cuffed wrists.

"Listen, kid, I'm really sorry about this, but when you have orders..."

Somewhere in him must be a softie, and I need to convince him not to carry this on. The gag slips a little, but not enough, and I rub my face against my shoulder to try tugging it down. "...it's for the best," he finishes, his voice a nervous whine. He even sounds like a puppy, too. "You'll get used to it. I did."

Whatever they plan for me, it won't be a gentle massage for the senses. I plant my feet into the ground, tearing holes into my socks when Ceres pushes me. I won't go down so easily. I didn't before and I won't now.

"I have a proposition for you, angel," Jaylin mocks from the speaker, "if you can alter plans."

"What do you want?" Poison snarls. Keeping track of both conversations makes my headache more than it already is.

"You deal with me instead of Galaxy. We're villains, honey, we can trust each other. You give me my Angelos, and I'll give you your hero."

I stiffen up. Am I supposed to be shocked? Because I'm not. Betrayals aren't unusual when you're in a complicated relationship with a supervillain. I blink a few times, a pang in my chest. I'm not shocked and I'm not "her" Angelos. Franky, I'm my own Angelos, even if I'm cuffed up and beaten. It's funny though, how less than a week ago, I would've given anything for Jaylin to call me hers. Now I think I'll hurl.

"So you're a traitor to even your friends," Poison says flatly.

Jay chuckles, as if his observation amuses her more than anything else. "If the ends justify the means, sweetheart."

***

Heaven.

This is probably the worst thing I've ever done, stealing a van, that is. I skim my fingers over the window's dusty edge. The vehicle is white and mostly unidentifiable other than the license plates, and Jay-Cat took care of that issue by scraping off the tags and switching them with two decorative ones she bought at Hobby Lobby with Juniper's credit card. Quick! Identify all the illegal things she did in the last sentence. I don't want to. I don't want to even think about it.

I cross my arms glumly in the passenger seat. We're at a gas station, and some time has passed since we left. Parked outside, Cat talks on a payphone. "Hey, Heaven!" she calls.

"Yeah?" I hop out of the door and teeter on my toes to keep from hitting  pavement. My voice is so shot when I speak pain passs from my throat to the inside of my head. I hobble over to her, glancing across my shoulder.

"Uh-huh, okay, yeah, Old Newport, the Craptorium, got it." She looks up, her hand over the receiver. Her smile is toothy and sweet. "Hey, hon, could you scream for me?"

Cold wind gives me goosebumps. I never changed my shirt after the Syndicate henchmen kidnapped Gats, so the black WWE tee is blood soaked and tattered at the back, allowing the wind to blow the strips this way and that. "No—Ow!"

Cat reaches up and yanks my hair so hard and so suddenly I can't help my cry. I drop as soon as she lets go. "Proof enough?" she asks. "Great, great old buddy. And yes, I have been reading Machiavelli again. Shut up, you do too. I mean, we have to follow some philosophy, and I guess it's good we don't follow that Kant gut. Oh, Lord! Ends-in-themselves. We'd be screwed."

Kant. The guy who devised Kantian ethics, basically saying we should always follow certain moral rules no matter what, like, you know, Batman and Spider-man and a bunch of other "mans" do with the no-killing thing.

"Yeah-huh. Might be five, six hours? Would you know about Xat-guy by any chance?" My chest tightens, but I don't interfere. "Yeah-huh, Syndy got its hands on him. What! Ah, darn. Well, make a call. Another call. If you do want this to work, then you'll do as I say. Capiche?"

I sigh and listen in, feeding Cat quarters whenever she asks. "Alright." She slams the phone back on the hook, nearly crushing it in her hands. I can't take my eyes off her. She's kind of entertaining when she isn't trying to kill me, hurt me, torture my friends. She whirls around and braces the back of her head in her hands, giving me a look that says 'See? I'm a genius.' "We have boys to save."

And we would get back to the car if we didn't hear screaming.

***
Happy belated Thanksgiving everyone!