One of the refs jabbed the prod in Lundqvist’s flank. The lion snarled and shifted his weight off of Duncan’s shoulders, turning in midair to land on all fours facing the ref.
Duncan got out of range, skating backward and keeping his eye on Lundqvist.
The refs signaled Lundqvist to sit and then lay down. He did so after a single, unhappy snarl. I thought that everything was going to be okay. But I hadn’t been paying attention to the rest of the ice.
“Shit!” one of the T’s beside me said. He hooked a leg over the wall and was on the ice, dropping his gloves, before I could register what was happening.
“He we go,” Leon said.
Coach hissed a sigh, his hand coming up to wipe at the scowl on his mouth.
Because the ice was not calm. The players were not waiting for the refs and trainers to sort this problem out.
Over the cheering and whistling fervor of the crowd rose snarls and yowls. Three, no, four players on the Tide had lost control and were in various stages of shift. Two wolves, one coyote, and screw me to hell, the other was a tiger.
Shit.
I threw my leg over the board. Coach yelled at me and the rest of the team to stay on the bench, stay off the ice. But Duncan was out there. My team was out there. I wasn’t going to let them face this alone.
The klaxon wail of a disaster siren rang out over the loud speakers and then a voice boomed through the arena.
“All players will take a knee. Immediately.”
The voice carried power and authority. It had some kind of magic, might even be a wizard who could channel magic through his voice. Or maybe he was one of the fifth-marked—people who were changed by magic in random, unexpected ways.
All the shifters, all the sensitives immediately dropped to their knees, one hand on their hockey sticks, one on the ice. It was the required position for players losing control of magic. Everyone was breathing hard, chests rising and falling in ragged puffs.
I was still moving, though I should be on my knees. But I wasn’t going to stop until I was in front of Duncan.
The thick honey of magic in the air was so strong, it felt like I was skating through a candy factory. The sweat on my body, the ice, the air, was heavy and hot with magic.
I breathed it in, let it fill me with that softly drunken ease, with that needful ache.
But I would not use it.
Not unless I had to.
A hand shot out, shoved my shoulder hard, the ref’s voice calm in my ear. “Take a knee, son, we’ll get this sorted. Just take the ice.”
I knew he had the prod rod on him, I could smell the acrid snap of it. I didn’t think he’d use it on me, but then again, maybe he would. By the rules, the refs had full say on when it was used and on whom.
Magic swelled in me, pressed. It would be so easy to use it. To drain the power pack in the rod. To throw a shield so electricity couldn’t touch me. To bind the ref’s hands, his skates with magic, strong as steel cables.
But I did none of those things. Instead, I fell to my knees, one hand on my hockey stick, the other on the ice. I had made it far enough across the ice that Duncan was just a few short strides away. If anything happened, I could reach him. I could save him.
Duncan was watching the shifters, but as soon as I hit the ice, he glanced over at me. He was still grinning. He mouthed, “Fuck, yes!”
I rolled my eyes and tried to scowl at him, because this was not the way we were going to win games.
He was completely immune to my displeasure. He smiled, his eyes bright and hopeful. Happy. Just so damned annoyingly happy.
I grinned despite myself.
What would I do without him? I didn’t even want to imagine it.
The regular announcer was telling the crowd to calm down, keep their seats, be respectful while the refs took care of the players on the ice.
Eventually, the audience quieted.
That was either because they were trying to help the linesmen, refs, and trainers surrounding the shifters, or because they were hoping for a fight.
Someone on the ice growled, the sound half-man, half-beast and a low, expectant murmur rolled through the arena.
Who was I kidding? The crowd wanted a fight. A shifter fight. It was what they had paid for. This was the West Hell, Freak league, blood sport. This wasn’t hockey. Not real hockey.
That knowledge hit my gut hard and suddenly all the adrenalin of the game came crashing down into disappointment.
This wasn’t the life I wanted. This wasn’t the league I wanted. This wasn’t even the game I wanted.
But it was the only place that would take me.
The official sensitive skated out onto the ice and made her way through the kneeling players. She dropped her hand on Watson’s shoulder and he shook his head.
She said something to him quietly and he tipped his chin toward one of the Tide’s defensemen.
I knew what she’d asked him. Was he about to shift? Did he need to get control of the beast inside him? Was he at that dangerous point of exhaustion? Was he the one who had growled?
She skated by everyone else, and then over to the player he had pointed out. That man, who was one of the guys in the bar with Steele, nodded.
She indicated that he stand, and he did so. He was escorted off the ice between two trainers.
That left the four players who had already shifted.
The trainers spoke to them in even tones, soothing while the mind of the beast and the mind of the man tried to get in sync. This was the most dangerous part of shifting, really. If anyone made any threatening moves while a person was still in full animal brain, they would be seen as a threat and attacked.
I held my breath.
The lion lifted his head and sneezed.
Someone in the audience tittered, and a bunch of little kids laughed.
The lion yawned, his ears twitching forward, tail wrapped lazily around his paws. And while it looked like Lundqvist had his animal self under control, the same could not be said for the rest of his teammates.
The wolves were pacing, heads low and shoulders up. The coyote stood, stock still, nose in the air, big pointed ears perked up as if he were waiting for the signal to fight or retreat.
The wolves, at least, should have an alpha. Someone on the team who made them feel secured, grounded. But from the way they were acting, they were not pack mates, they were all lone. That was very, very dangerous.
I worried about them. But the tiger? Yeah, that was an even bigger problem.
The tiger paced with a sinuous slinking motion, eyes burning with fiery hatred, teeth bared as he yowled. The officials had sectioned him away from his teammates, corralling him toward the corner of the arena against the boards. Close enough to one of the exits off the ice that I knew that removing him from the rink was their ultimate goal.
But the tiger, a D-man we’d been hassling like hell because he’d sunk one of their four points, was agitated enough his teammates were getting worked up. His stress and anger poured into the spaces between us, through that strange connection all of us marked shared whether we liked it or not.
It was magic, and it moved like rivers, oceans, storms through us all.
A low, screeching started deep in his massive chest.
Marked players on the ice squirmed and cursed softly. We were breathing harder, deeper, trying to hold back the magic that wanted to drown us.
Magic that sucked the air out of our lungs before we could fill them.
I’d been under magic’s pressure all of my life. But this was more, thicker, stronger. Concentrated by the crowd who were a mix of normals and marked, heightened by the players’ emotions, the edge of violence, the heady competition we threw ourselves into with every second we played this game.
I locked my jaw, curled my hands into fists, bowed my head and breathed, breathed, breathed.
A soft whistle, just a short fall of familiar notes. I heard them through the low murmur of the crowd, the drone of the an
nouncer, the growl and snap of the shifted.
Hearing those notes made my shoulders drop. My breath released in a whoosh like a band around my lungs had been cut away.
That song was mine. Ours.
We all knew Graves was whistling, soft halting notes tying us together so much better than magic. His calm, his steady presence filled that song, reminding me of practices, of hard work, good days on the ice and our team, that had slowly become something more than a collection of individuals.
Even with my head bowed, I could feel my teammates settle.
The press of magic eased and with that, I could better see my surroundings.
The wolves had been settled by the trainers and refs, and willingly trotted off the ice. The coyote, their fast D-man, Nadreau, got it in his head that running around the edge of the ice a couple times and making the refs chase him would be funny.
The audience enjoyed it and cheered him on. It helped change the mood of the place until even the tiger settled down and sat, tail wrapping around his huge paws as he watched the spectacle.
It took a full three minutes and one Zamboni, because apparently coyotes didn’t like the big lumbering vehicles, before the coyote finally got maneuvered back toward the exit and off the ice.
The crowd clapped and cheered, and the Zamboni driver stood and waved before driving off through a different exit.
After all that attention given to the coyote, the tiger showed his indifference to being ignored and turned his back on the crowd, the ice, his team, and the game. He walked out the exit with regal disdain, the lion following.
Crisis averted.
Music played a peppy beat to get the crowd back in the hockey mood, while the remaining players on the ice stood and moved into place for the face-off.
The Tide were five players down, which meant they were going to have to cover those shifts with the players on the bench.
Duncan got thrown in the penalty box, two minutes for inciting a shift. He almost got five for arguing with the ref about it.
Coach called the ref over and insisted it was Lundqvist who had hit Duncan first, but the refs refused to budge on it. So Duncan skated over to the box.
Yes, he was still smiling.
He loved the game that hard.
That meant we were playing one man down until he was out of the box. And while that shouldn’t be too much trouble, the shift had broken our rhythm all to hell. We couldn’t seem to pull it back together, not even our veteran players who had a couple seasons playing together, and should be used to this shit.
The other team didn’t rise up to their previous speed or skill either. But they were still strong enough and skilled enough to deny us the one goal we needed to tie the game.
We hustled. Both teams hustled. But there was no digging out of this hole.
Our audience was already streaming out of the arena before the last buzzer sounded.
First game of the season, and we had lost, wizard or no.
Fifteen
“We made them break,” Duncan said over the rush of the shower.
“What, by letting them win?” I asked. “Yeah, Donuts. Real hardship we put them through.”
Watts, who was walking out of the shower, snorted.
“Naw,” Duncan said. “None of us lost it and shifted.”
JJ, who was rubbing soap out of his hair, leaned to one side, his eyes still closed. “That doesn’t mean anything. Coach Nowak keeps them on edge. Makes them work hard drills before a game, underfeeds them, so they’re tired, edgy, and hungry. He likes it when the beast bleeds into a man. Says it makes his players more powerful.”
Wow. Well, that explained some things. Also, it reinforced my belief that their coach was an ass.
“Okay,” Duncan allowed, “but that’s normal for them, right? I mean, it’s fucked up, but that’s all a part of playing on the Tide. Tonight five of their players lost their cookies.”
“Cookies?” I finished tying my shoes and sat back on the bench, rubbing a towel over my hair.
“You know: magic. They shifted. And Nadreau ran the refs around the rink like an idiot. You know what that means?”
“We lost?”
“We won.”
I knew that tone of voice. It was never not annoying.
I sighed. “So, about math. When one number is littler than the other…”
He flipped me off. “We know how to push them. We know they unravel in the third. We know they’re already close to a breakdown by then.”
“Except Steele,” JJ said, rubbing at a huge bruise spreading across his ribs. He’d been on Steele all game and had taken shot after shot from him.
“Yeah, so he’s the type who thrives on pain,” Duncan said. “With a coach like that, he’s probably always a blink away from catting out. Doesn’t matter. We know what pushes them out there.”
“Playing hockey?” I said. “I don’t see how we can use that against them, especially since they won.”
“Not hockey,” Duncan said with the other tone of voice I didn’t like—the smug one. “Insults.”
It was quiet in the locker room. Just me, Duncan, and JJ were left. Well, and probably a trainer or two. I was still revved up. Even though I’d taken a lot of hits including the one that had rattled my brain, and spent the last of the game on the bench, the push, the pulse, the adrenalin of the game still coursed through me.
Like Genevieve, I’d be up for a couple hours now that I’d poured all my energy into this performance. I hadn’t seen her in the stands, didn’t know if she’d come.
Maybe she stayed home and hadn’t seen how badly we’d lost.
“Are you listening to me, Ran?”
“Yes, Duncan,” I lied.
“I called him a sellout. Told him he was a freak league old school hack and liked it that way because going animal was the only way he’d ever win. Drifting and shifting.”
I frowned, trying to remember where this conversation was going. “Who? Lundqvist?”
“Yep. I spent most the night calling him names. He was dishing it back. But as soon as I told him he was just a little puppet boy for Nowak’s freak fights, and asked him how much his coach paid him to throw the game, he lost his shit.”
“Your mouth is going to get you killed, you dummy.”
“What?” he said over the sound of the water.
I didn’t bother repeating myself. This wasn’t out of the norm for Duncan. He liked to think there was a secret way to make an opponent lose his temper and lose focus on the game.
I’d told him the secret was for him to show his face. The resulting anger would just happen naturally.
I raised my voice. “I don’t think driving the other teams crazy is smart or safe, Donut.”
He turned off the water. A second later he walked out, a towel slung around his hips. “Like smart or safe have anything to do with winning hockey.”
He pulled off his towel and tried to snap me with it. But he’d been doing that for years. I caught it before it hit me and tugged.
“Maybe it should be,” I said. “Smart and safe.”
He threw me a weird look over his shoulder. “What has gotten into you? We play harder than the other team we win. That’s it.”
“Smart and safe aren’t against the rules.”
“Sure. But you have to take risks. Push every button. Every advantage.”
He pulled on sweats and a T-shirt. Shoved stuff into his duffel.
I stood, shrugging my bag over one shoulder. It wasn’t until we were walking toward the door that he spoke again.
“What’s different?” he asked bumping my shoulder with his.
“What?” I asked.
“You’re usually the one making crazy moves, taking the risks. You like to try everything, on the ice. Even the dangerous things. It’s what got you noticed by the NHL, because you pulled off those dangerous things and made them look amazing. What was different about tonight?”
My first reaction was to laugh at him.
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But, yeah, this was different.
I’d never pictured myself here. All my life, since I was seven, I’d imagined I’d be in the NHL. Years and years of winning and losing and working hard to make myself into something I could be proud of.
Something someone could be proud of.
And at the same time, I was making myself into something I wasn’t.
Normal. Non-magic.
So just being here, in this league, felt like I’d fallen into the wrong life.
It also felt fragile. This was the last place I could play hockey, the only league that would take me. If I screwed it up here, there would be no place left for me to go.
And without hockey, I would be nothing. No one.
There had never been a wizard on the ice before. But after me, if I didn’t completely screw it up, there might be wizards in the future. Some little boy or girl right now might be looking up to me and imagining that they could have the life they wanted, not just the one everyone expected them to have.
But my biggest problem was that I both ached to and was terrified of using my magic on the ice.
Oh, there were rules to follow. No affecting the ice, equipment, or other players.
But just like Coach Nowak drove his team hard to keep them on edge so that the strength of magic bolstered their physical abilities, I too could use magic.
On myself.
I could make myself faster, stronger. Even though I had very little practice with magic, I knew I could do amazing things with it.
There was a hunger in me, chewing its way out. A hunger I’d pushed away my entire life. I wanted to feed that hunger with magic.
A cold wash shivered over my skin. Just thinking about using magic whenever I wanted, for whatever I wanted, made me squirm with need.
And that scared the hell out of me.
“Did I break your brain?” Duncan asked. “’Cause I think I broke your brain. You okay there, Ran?”
“Yeah.” If okay included staring straight into the eyes of what might be an addiction.
“So what was different about this game?” Duncan could be accused of being many things: too friendly, too sincere, too easy going, too spontaneous. But he could not be accused of being passive. When he took hold of something, he didn’t let it go.