Damsel[ed]: Rescue Required (#3 of the Damsel[ed] Series)

Chapter Twelve: History Lesson

Sixty-two years ago, Starlight City was a mess of squat clapboard houses atop rolling hills. Scored by tar and fresh asphalt streets, cursive coils of telephone wire, the click of cicadas, the buzz of crickets, and the occasional buff of dry, southern wind that left you hotter than the ninety-degree heat did. 

Sixty-two years ago, Juniper stood in the dirty gutters, blackwater sloshing in her buckskin boots. Neon signs flared above her head, a 'Motel 12,' a 'Cupid's Inn,' and the stench a diner that smelled of onions and feet. The alley was narrow. The darkness was crushing.

Shuddering, Juniper lifted her skirts to her knees, the bodice of her cotton dress bound tightly by a silk sash. Too stiff. Not enough room to run.

But there was a gun to the back of her neck, so she wasn't running anyway.

"This is ridiculous." Juniper held her chin high, her throat raised to the bite of the acrid city air. "Your insistence on a gun..."

The villain cocked the weapon. It clicked and Juniper flinched, staring up at the blackened sky in an attempt at calm she wasn't level-headed enough to make. After all, she wasn't immortal yet. The threads looped through her wrists— botched stitches of super skin samples grafted into her own—long pink scars down her forearms, chemical burns, they all proved it.

The voice was calm as the weapon butted the back of June's neck. A kiss of cold steel. "Either I hold a gun to you or I'll have your pet project follow us on our next excursion."

Juniper snorted and bunched up her skirts, her mincing steps quickening as she walked past garbage heaps and graffiti, splashing up puddle water as she teetered along in those brick-high heels. "You could tear me to pieces." June glared at the ground, breathing in quickdraws of sour air. "I can't possibly understand—"

"You think you're clever." The villain had a meandering voice, much like a philosopher's, low and rich. "But I thank you for your help finding... her."

Juniper nodded, another attempt at keeping a cool front when her head was swimming and her heart slammed so fiercely she thought her chest would burst. The gun, she could deal with, the villain for a chaperone, she could adjust to, a life of captivity, that was iffy, but June would survive cage bars if this lead turned good. June glanced aside, made out the faint glow of red peeking out from under a door. She slowed, smoothed the wrinkles from her dress, and the villain removed the weapon with a roll of her wrist and a dry rustle of her leather holster.

Sludge clung to her shoes, made walking heavy as she shuffled over potholes and crossed cracked cinder shards. With her breath caught in her throat, she stepped to the bare metal door with a rust stain for a doorknob. She rapped gently.

Silence answered.

Juniper ground her jaw down. Closed her eyes. "Hello?"

"Is this a joke?"  The muzzle of the gun prodded June's neck. It brought on a sharp ache that jolted June stiff.

Juniper knocked again, louder now, sweat snaking down the back of her neck. "It's Julia Redding," she said, swallowing hard. "Please don't turn me away. My husband is very sick." Juniper couldn't lie to save her life, so she tried to place her friend in that circumstance. His name was Alexander, a tall man with smoke-gray eyes full of light and honey-gold hair he kept long. Carried pistols on either hip and a bladed weapon over the shoulders of a leather jacket. He loved that jacket, all red leather with a dragon stitched in gold silk thread across the back. He went by many names, Axel, Grayson, Otis, but her favorite alias for him was Storm. That's what she thought of him, a force of nature with thunderheads for eyes. She tried to imagine the assassin, crumpled on a dingy little hospital bed, pale and weak. Tried to make her voice tremble. "Please, I need to see her. I'll pay anything."