Burning Dawn (Angels of the Dark #3)(62)
Author: Gena Showalter

As Elin closed in at Bellorie’s left, Chanel tossed a boulder at one of the vamps, knocking the girl in the jaw. Impact threw her down, and she was unable to catch the stone before it hit the ground. Blood poured from her now-misshapen mouth.

Sickness churned in Elin’s stomach, but she somehow managed to breathe past it. She hadn’t lied to Thane. The girls had been working with her to help her overcome her fear. But by “working with her” she meant they’d talked about it nonstop, all while taking turns cutting their hands, and shoving the pooling crimson in her face. Immersion therapy, they’d called it.

As she’d watched their wounds weave back together, she’d realized blood wasn’t always accompanied by pain and death. Blood could be…life.

I can do this. Elin spread her arms to make herself seem like a wider target and called, “Hey, vampyra. You’re so ugly, the doctor slapped your mom the day you were born.” Okay, so that wasn’t the best trash talk, but it did the trick.

“My mom is gorgeous!” The vampire flashed very long, very sharp fangs before hurtling a rock at her. As Elin ducked, Bellorie tossed her own rock, nailing the girl in the shoulder. Out!

Grinning, Bellorie gave Elin a high five.

Okay, this was getting fun.

After they took out another player in the same manner—only four to go!—the Fang Bangers caught on and decided to take Elin out for good. One boulder after another launched her way. Blimey! There was no way to dodge them all. Then Octavia was there, catching one. Chanel was there, catching another. Bellorie and Savy were too far away. The last stone was closing in quick…

She had a choice. Dodge, and keep the game going. Or catch, and end it, ensuring victory.

She opened her arms, and—

Crack. Elin’s body skidding backward as her sternum and ribs howled. She lost her breath. Oh, the pain! Catching had been a mistake. A huge mistake.

When she stilled, she tried to focus. Stars swam through her vision.

The crowd was eerily quiet.

Then a celebration bomb detonated, and cheers erupted.

“You did it!” Bellorie screamed.

Meaning…they’d won, she realized. They’d really won! Adrenaline kicked in, dulling the pain.

The girls pulled the boulder from her kung-fu grip and jerked her to her feet. She winced as they hugged and kissed her and lifted her above their heads.

A sense of triumph flooded her. Triumph and relief. She’d helped her friends. And they really were. They were her friends. She wasn’t an outcast. Wasn’t considered a lowly slave. She was an equal, and she was liked.

Laughing, uncaring about the sting in her chest, she pumped her arms in the air. Then she found herself peering into the familiar crystalline gaze of a spectator and lost her breath all over again. Thane had come to her game. And he was grinning, those scrumptious dimples on full display.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

ELIN DOWNED ANOTHER shot of “Legspreader.” That was what Bellorie had called the drink, anyway. It was sweet at first, but had a bitter aftershock, and oh, wow, it packed a powerful punch. Like a boulder, she thought with a grin.

After checking her out and declaring her sternum and ribs hadn’t shattered into a million little pieces, the girls had taken her to Inferno, a nightclub—Thane’s biggest competition—to celebrate their massive victory.

“Because of me,” she shouted with a laugh.

Beside her, Bellorie rolled her eyes.

Music thumped through the air. Lights were dimmed, creating a shadowy atmosphere. Smoke wafted, and bodies crowded…danced. Elin would have joined them, but she was currently too chummy with dizziness, and the black-and-white tiled floor wasn’t helping.

Bellorie patted her on the shoulder, and despite feeling numbed out, Elin grimaced. Her sternum and ribs weren’t broken, but there was a size-jumbotron bruise on her chest.

Jumbotron. Like Thane’s penis.

She snickered.

Maybe she needed to admit to him that she’d seen Thane Jr. at the Phoenix camp, and that, like a few of the romance-novel heroines she loved to read about, she didn’t think it would fit inside her. Then he would be determined to prove that it would, and she could at last have her wicked way with him.

Brilliant!

Because, here it was, flat out. They had chemistry. The kind that caused explosions. She had no idea why one element reacted to another, and she didn’t care. They just did. She was done fighting a losing battle. She wanted him. He wanted her. Why not try out a resextionship?

As he’d said, Bay would tell her to move on and be happy.

Somehow, Thane’s touch made her happy.

“So proud of you, Bonka Donk,” Bellorie said.

“Me, too,” she replied with a nod. “It’s got to be the best plan ever to be planned.”

“Plan?”

“Yep. Maybe even as soon as tonight I’ll be riding the jumbotron.”

“You are so weird.”

“Thank you.”

“Welcome,” Bellorie said with a nod that made her dizzier.

Thane would be supereasy to seduce. He wasn’t even mad at her! He must have understood what she’d hoped to accomplish by leaving him turned on—meeting every single one of his needs, even the darker ones, without actually harming him, or herself. Whether he denied having those needs or not.

“Last season, we lost to the Deep Fryers, a group of Phoenix,” Savy said. The girls stood around a small, circular table. “The ladies have since dropped out of the league due to fear of staking, and that really sucks, because a rematch would have been so cool. With Elin as bait, we could have stolen victory—and their boyfriends.”

“Woo-hoo!”

“Well, next up we play four Sent Ones,” Chanel said, flipping her hair over one shoulder. “The Knock Knocks. They’re part of Thane’s army. And don’t ever strike up a conversation with them. They’ll say, we’re the Knock Knocks, and you’ll think you’re being hilarious by saying, who’s there, and they’ll say, the girls that are gonna eff you up. Well, we are gonna eff them up.”

“I’m gonna be playing with jailhouse rules, ya’ll,” Octavia said, raising her glass.

Uh-oh. “Won’t Thane have a problem with us beating the faces off his fellow soldiers?”

The girls whooped with glee, and she frowned. She’d asked a serious question. Hadn’t she?

“Hells yeah, we’re gonna beat their faces off,” Savy shouted, and downed another shot. “They are gonna hurt so bad!”