The Gender War (The Gender Game #4)(100)

Even though I’d been deliberately trying to get her to mouth off, fury rose in me all the same. “Nobody should be treated like a tool,” I spat.

“Little girl,” she said, “you are so willfully na?ve.”

I ground my teeth but didn’t reply. I just took another step, not wanting to rise to my own bait again. Her eyes flicked behind me to the stairs leading to the next floor, and she grinned wolfishly, nodding her head at them. “You can run if you want,” she taunted.

My grip tightened on the egg, and I met her gaze. A heartbeat passed, then a second, and a third, the two of us eyeing each other. There was a stabbing pain in my side where my lungs were still catching up with all this running, and both my hands were now twinging intermittently.

I broke our tense stillness first, whirling without warning and breaking toward the steps. I heard Tabitha chuckle, and then her weight was slamming into my back, crushing me down atop the stairs. My chin connected hard with the corner of a step and my teeth felt like they were being wrenched from my skull. I grunted and flailed wildly, managing to plant an elbow into her face but losing my grip on the egg, which rolled a bit on the step.

She shifted her weight slightly, but it was enough for me to break free and push her away from me. I flipped over, clutching the egg and preparing to get to my feet, but she was on me again like lightning, this time bringing her foot down on my right wrist.

There was a horrible snap that I felt in every bone in my arm, up to my shoulder, followed by immeasurable pain. My spine arched upward, and I screamed—I couldn’t have stopped it if I’d wanted to.

Tabitha kept her boot on my wrist, pinning me down, her malicious grin flashing in the hallway lights. It was an agony so intense that my vision went gray, shadows flitting before my eyes. I clung to consciousness, refusing my mind’s desire to retreat into the oblivion of darkness, reaching for the cold, detached fury that ran through my veins like a lifeline.

I forced my eyes open just in time to see Tabitha’s descending fist. My head rang from the force of it, the back of my skull slamming into stairs. I blinked again, but nothing in the world came into focus. Still, I struggled.

Adrenaline fueled me, and as her fist came down again I wrenched my head to the side, a spear of pain shooting through my right hand as it strained against her grip. Tabitha’s fist smashed into the floor instead, cracking the tile on the stairs. I curled my left hand into a fist and aimed for her nose. She roared in pain, releasing me.

My left hand returned to the egg, and I rose to my feet, but immediately wobbled against the stairway railing. Tucking my broken wrist against my chest, I tried to finish climbing the steps. My stomach roiled with nausea as vertigo took me, and when I reached the top I bent over and vomited, dropping to one knee as I wretched all over the ground, my body trembling violently. I was wheezing when I finished expelling the contents of my stomach, and I looked around, dazed.

My eyes locked onto a pair of shoes standing just on the other side of the puddle of vomit. Somehow, slowly, I managed to straighten my back, flinching as the bright lights from overhead seared my eyeballs. The huge woman attached to the shoes gave me a measuring look and then squatted down in front of me.

“Impressive,” she said after a moment. “I can see why Desmond admires you and Elena fears you.”

I stared at her, trying to focus on her eyes. My hand tightened on the egg, and her dark eyes flicked to it and then back to me, a little smile tugging the corners of her mouth. “You still want to keep fighting?” she taunted.

My mind struggled to formulate a response, but the pain made it hard for me to focus on anything. I felt tired and sluggish, and a vast confusion filled me as I realized I couldn’t remember how I had gotten here. Or why.

I looked at this woman, and I had a hard time forming her name in my mind. I knew I hated her—knew I wanted to see her dead, that all my body was trembling in rage as well as pain—but for the life of me I couldn’t remember why. She tsked and straightened, waving a hand at something.

I squinted as several brown blurs started to move toward us, and I struggled to get my leg under me. Another wave of dizziness struck me, weighing me down and making my stomach twist violently. I groaned as the pain in my head intensified, as if someone were slowly inserting a long needle into it at the crown.

The large woman reached down almost gently and helped pull me up, dusting my shoulders free from debris as I swayed in her huge hand. “Personally, I always thought you were overrated,” she said conversationally. “That my sister and Desmond were being too alarmist over you.” She grabbed my chin, and my eyes fluttered open wider as she looked deep into them. “Well, I’m sorry for underestimating you,” she said, slowly and clearly, and my mind honed in on it. “I never get to have this much fun in a fight.”

Underestimating me. How could she have underestimated me? I shook my head, trying to sort through the cotton-like fog in my head, and stopped when the movement made the vertigo return tenfold. The woman—Tabitha—patted me on the shoulder and guided me to a wall. “Rest here,” she said kindly, and I couldn’t help but feel the wrongness that accompanied that statement.

She went down to the next landing, picking up an egg-shaped silver case that rested on the floor as if it had rolled there, then looked up to where I sagged against the wall. I focused on the egg, trying to remember something—something important about it. Tabitha cleared her throat, and I glanced up at her through half-lowered lids. I was so very tired.