Sure enough, Violet makes the handoff to Quinn, and I dive straight toward him. I’m going to get that ball back, and I’m going to shove this tornado down one of their throats while I’m at it.
Quinn is totally unprepared for the ambush—for me or for the tornado—and he bobbles the ball at the first gust of wind. And that’s when I snatch it away from him and fly right out of the wind and into the nearest portal—leaving the rest of them behind to deal with the tornado.
I take my first deep breath in what feels like hours but is probably only about fifteen seconds. And then swear under my breath when I realize I’ve wandered into the stretchy portal—the one from the very first game.
It’s a million times better than being stuck with pins over and over again, but holding on to the ball is a big challenge. So is landing on my feet when I finally get dumped back on the field.
Still, I don’t have time to waste—Cole will be out for blood now. So with him and Delphina on my ass, I’m really going to have to be on my game.
Unless I’m lucky, of course, and I finally picked a portal that empties me out near my own goal line. Then again, nothing about today has felt particularly lucky to me, so I’m not counting on it.
Besides, I totally wouldn’t put it past Cyrus to make sure that all the portals emptied as far from my goal line as they could get—for no other reason than to make this as difficult for me as possible.
The weird vacuum feeling finally hits me, and I brace myself for hitting the field. Which I do, shoulder-first.
It jolts me but doesn’t hurt—stone for the win—and I jump up as fast as I can.
But it’s still not fast enough, because Marc is only a couple of steps away in his werewolf form, and one look at his eyes tells me he’s here to avenge his alpha.
Maybe that’s why I get so angry when he compounds that first assault by chomping down on my ball-carrying arm as hard as he can. It doesn’t hurt—again, stone—but hearing his teeth scrape against me riles me an irrational amount.
So when he starts trying to drag me down the field again, I decide I’ve had enough of this shit. And I whirl around, punching him in his ugly wolf snout with my other fist. He whimpers but doesn’t let go, his jaws turning into a vise on my arm.
Which only pisses me off more, so this time when I hit him I don’t pull my punches. I use every ounce of strength I can muster as I lash out with my stone fist and hit him on the side of his head as hard as I can. And then I hit him again.
Third time’s the charm as he finally, finally lets go, and I roll away from him. But a quick look back shows me that while he’s shaking his head, he’s planning on coming after me again. And I just can’t have that.
I’m beyond exhausted, and there’s no way I’m going to be able to keep going like this—having one after another after another steal back any progress that I’ve gained. This game is rough when you’re playing eight on eight. When you’re playing one on eight—or even one on seven—it’s absolutely brutal.
Plus, each shift I make—gargoyle to human and back again—takes a little more out of me. As does being strangled by a superstrong were-jackass for nearly a minute…
All of which means I’m going to have to start taking out more of the competition if I have any hope at all of getting across that goal line. And I have more than hope. I have resolve. I’ve decided there is no way I am losing to that asshole Cole. No fucking way.
So the second that Marc lunges a little drunkenly my way, I decide it’s time to even the odds. I protect the ball with one side of my body and then use the other to slam into him with a full-on roundhouse kick to the side of the face—thank you very much, miserable kickboxing class that Heather made me take with her sophomore year.
He yelps but still keeps coming—turns out wolves have very hard heads—so I hit him with another, even harder one, and then swing around to deliver another kick…but this time he doesn’t just go down, he magically disappears. I swallow back the nausea as I realize if my next kick had connected, it could have been a mortal blow.
But now I’ve got even bigger problems. The ten seconds I spent taking Marc out of the game caused two new issues.
One, the ball is vibrating so much that it’s about to take me apart.
And two, Cole is headed straight for me, and I gave him the time to catch up.
117
Raining Cats
and Dragons
Part of me is tempted to stay right here and let him take his best shot at me, but I’ve got more urgent things to do right now—namely, reset the ball.
So that’s what I do, tossing it as high into the air as I can manage and then shooting up after it, about two seconds before Cole gets to where I’m standing. He makes a huge leap for me and his fingers brush against the bottom of my feet, but I’m already flying higher and he can’t grab on.
Too bad the same thing can’t be said for Delphina, who looks about as done playing as I am.
I’m almost to the ball, but she gets there a second before I do and uses her powerful tail to knock it all the way down the field—back toward the goal line I need to protect. Of course.
I zip off after it, already knowing I’m going to be too late and I’ll have to wrestle it away from someone else. But I’m back to dodging giant blocks of ice, so for the moment, I’ve got other things on my mind—mainly how not to be the prize in my very own midair shooting gallery.
I do a pretty good job of it, mostly by doing more of the death-defying flips and turns I didn’t even know I had in me before half an hour ago. But Delphina’s getting better at shooting on the fly, and she catches me with a huge block of ice to the hip, which sends me spinning out of control as pain explodes along that side of my body.
I plummet downward in a flat-out spin. My brain is screaming at me to pull up, to get moving, to go, go, go, but gravity, aerodynamics, and exhaustion make a deadly combination. So in the end, I do what my driving instructor taught me to do when skidding out in a car. Instead of fighting to pull out of the spin, I turn into it.
Apparently, it’s the right move, because it changes everything. I get control in a couple of seconds, and then I’m flying down the field, straight at Cam, who has cotton in his nose, blood on his shirt, and the ball clutched in his ham-fisted hands.
My hip is killing me, but that doesn’t matter at this point. Nothing does but stopping Cam before he hands the ball off to Cole—because I know Cole is going to want to be the one to bring it across the goal line—and end the game.
Except either Cam is getting smarter or one of the witches is, because as I barrel down the field toward him, none of them tries to use a spell on me. Instead, they use a spell on him…and he effing disappears halfway down the field.