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stopped by a jock wall.
    I smelled the blood even before I saw it. By using Ulric’s shoulder to support myself and standing on my tiptoes, I could see a battered Bella just beyond the jocks. Her eyes were no longer fey, but wild and furious. The blood came from a cut on her swelling cheek.
    “What’s going on?” I asked a kid nearby who was just watching, his cell phone held at the ready as if to get a picture rather than dial 911.
    He didn’t look away to answer. “I guess Nat gave the emo girl a ride up here and didn’t find her properly appreciative.”
    “So he hit her?” I asked, outraged.
    He shrugged. “She spilled beer on his kicks when she pushed him away.”
    I couldn’t decide who to take down first—the jocks or this jerk, who seemed to find spilled beer a good reason for bloodshed—but I was going to have to figure it out fast. My eyeteeth were growing at the blood-scent and the ugly energy that filled the air. Jerky boy wasn’t the only one watching expectantly.
    “You bastard!” Bram cried, barreling out of nowhere on the far side of the crowd to grab Bella and put her behind him. Byron was right beside him. “You only beat girls, or you want to try me on for size?”
    “With all those earrings, who can tell the difference?” Jock-itch answered.
    Bram launched himself at the bully boy, who side-stepped and grabbed Bram’s arm as he flew past. I heard a pop like his shoulder coming out of the socket, and then Bram was being whirled like a wrecking ball straight at Byron. Jock-itch released him at just the right moment and Bram struck Byron with a terrible thud, both collapsing to the ground. That was it . I pushed through the jock wall using all my super strength and leapt into the action. I jump-kicked Jock-itch’s arm at the elbow, cringing at the snap as something gave way. He never even saw me coming.
    One of his partners in crime grabbed a pigtail and nearly yanked it out of my head before I hit him with a sharp elbow to the groin. He cried out and buckled, but caught my bare foot as he hit the ground and twisted my leg out from under me. I went crashing down to my knees. As soon as my flesh hit the ground, lightning seemed to arc through me, as though I’d landed on an exposed power line grounding itself through my body. Pure, crackling energy sizzled through me and every synapse, every muscle, hell, even my bones seemed to be electrocuted and as tense and taut as a tripwire.
    Ulric tried to put himself between me and the jocks, to protect me while I was down, but they saw their chance at me. Bram and Byron hadn’t reentered the fight; I had only a second to worry about why not before a jock was pole-vaulting Ulric to get at me and his friend was lunging from the other direction.
    I roared upward, catching one of the guys with an uppercut to the jaw and another with my shoulder to his stomach. He buckled over me and I used his momentum, thrusting him toward his still-reeling friend. They landed hard and went rolling, one over the other … right toward the sudden drop-off of Red Rock. Rather than stop them, everyone pulled back, afraid to be caught up and carried over the cliff themselves. Panic gripped me, and between the adrenaline and the weird electricity flooding my system, I flew into overdrive. I dove for them, tackling their legs and shredding my shirt before I was able to halt their slide and stop them cold. All the fight had gone out of them.
    For a second, the whole world froze. Then I heard a “Whoa!” from the crowd, and the sound of sobbing and Bram’s name being called more and more frantically.
    Shaky from adrenaline overload, I got to my feet and made myself limp over to my gang, even though my scuffed-up knees were already healing beneath my trashed stockings. My legs nearly went out from under me as I took in the devastation. Byron, scraped but whole, held a trembling, sobbing Bella to his chest. Ulric, on the ground and fighting to stop his bleeding nose,