Lock scowled then stiffed his fingers through his hair, pushing it off his forehead.
“All right. All right, Hazard. We had a hard ride. That steam room shit was bull. So let’s just put this behind and look ahead. Keep it tight out there, right? Score some goals. Leave the magic behind.”
It was more encouragement than I’d expected out of him. There was a reason he wore the C on his jersey.
“Right,” I agreed.
He nodded and before walking away, smacked me on the shoulder. Like a teammate. Like a friend.
“All right, Boomers, let’s get out there and show the Tide just how much we can turn up the heat.”
Twenty-Six
Duncan slid around in front of me blocking my view of the game. It was three minutes into the second period. We were down by two and waiting for a replay on a goalie interference call. “What is wrong with you?”
“Nothing. Move.”
He bent to see my eyes, like he was looking for signs of concussion. “Talk. Now.”
My head was hot, my breath short. I wasn’t sick. Not physically sick. I was just…messed up inside. The magic in me snarled up. And my brain…I wasn’t tracking like I should. Wasn’t focused.
I’d forgotten something. Something important.
But I could play hockey. Had played plenty of times before when I’d been sick. This was no different. This wouldn’t be the reason Coach Clay would finally figure out he’d made a mistake to put me on the team.
Then hockey would be over. I would be over.
“Whoa,” Duncan said. “I don’t know where your head just went right then, but you are throwing off shit vibes. Take a break.”
“I got it.”
He dipped his head again and caught my gaze. Hard green, that gaze. “Get off the ice, Hazard. Really.”
The ref announced that there was no goalie interference, and just like that, the game was back on.
“Crap.” Duncan let go of me and took off across the ice. He’d probably expected me to skate to the boards, get off the ice.
Instead I sucked down a breath, and threw myself into the play.
We lost the faceoff and chased the puck to the corner. Graves slammed a Tide player into the boards and dug for the puck. Watts powered into the pile, followed by another Tide. The puck shot clear and Duncan was there to take it.
He was a few strides behind me, and I hustled toward the net, Steele on my heels.
I put on a burst of speed and scooped up Duncan’s pass, juked, and popped the puck high left.
The ping of the puck hitting the crossbar, had me cursing.
I pushed after the puck, turned.
And watched Duncan get slammed into the glass from behind. Hard hit. Illegal as hell.
Steele looked up from Duncan’s crumpled form and made kissing motions at me.
Duncan did not come up swinging. He pushed onto his knees and stayed there, hands and knees braced, head hanging.
There was blood pouring from his face.
Duncan was bleeding. Hurt.
Blood wasn’t enough to call a foul in this league. If anything the sight of it, the sight of a player too hurt to get up to his skates right away sent the crowd into a frenzied roar.
But I remembered. Remembered the thing I’d forgotten. The thing that had triggered magic’s burn in me.
The text. The beheaded wolf toy.
Son of a bitch.
Someone had threatened to hurt Duncan.
And now this. Now Steele had made him bleed.
Magic in me stuttered, unwieldy, messy. Lashing. A furious storm.
No.
Steele was barreling toward me. So were three other Tides. The hit hadn’t been called. The puck was still in play. The game was still on.
I busted after the puck, twisted, got slammed into the boards at the hip.
Jerked back as a stick swung up and cracked into the side of my face.
Stars rattled across my vision. The puck was at my feet, my stick protecting it, trying to push it free to someone on my team.
“Stay the fuck down,” a voice grunted as another stick jammed my ribs, hard enough to bust bone.
The two players crowding me were the same ones who had been in Downpour with Steele. The same two who had been in the parking garage.
I pushed back, grunting with pain and blinking away sweat. “Fuck yourself.”
“What are you going to do, little wizard boy?” the Tide player, Zima, asked. “You gonna do magic little boy? Go ahead. Cast a spell.”
“Take a fuckin’ knee.” That, from Catcher. He punched my kidneys hard enough, my lungs stopped working.
Please, like that was the first time I’d ever been hit.
“Go polish your skates, asshole.” I twisted, shoved, and the puck popped free.
JJ was there to settle it and haul down the ice toward their net.
I looked for Duncan. He was slowly skating toward the bench, one hand against his nose, trying to keep the blood from getting everywhere.
He climbed over the boards, and said something to the Tide bench. One of players, the big tiger shifter, shouted something back at him.
I don’t know what Duncan replied. But whatever it was, the other guy jumped over the boards and came at Duncan, swinging his stick at Duncan’s head.
Duncan blocked with his arm and threw a fist at the guy’s face.
The benches emptied as players from both teams jumped into the fight.
Duncan is hurt. Bleeding.
Magic thrummed through the air, thick and harsh.
Steele, just a few feet away from me on the ice, tore at his uniform as he skated toward the melee. He twisted his head to make eye contact with me, eyes wide, teeth bared.
For a moment, a breath, there was desperation there. Pleading. As if he were drowning, trying to yell out with no air in his lungs. And then that was gone.
No sanity. No man behind the beast. He was wild blood hunger. He was rage.
Finally free of his clothes, he fell on all fours and between one breath and the next, shifted into a snarling black panther, roaring for death.
He sprinted. Toward Duncan.
No!
Sirens blasted through the arena. The crowd screamed and cheered. An announcer ordered us all to take a knee.
Referees unholstered stun prods and beat hell toward the brawl.
More players were about to shift. Not just the Tide, but my team too. And when that happened…
…a wolf toy, head torn off…
No.
The world did that slow motion thing. Every detail went super-sharp: the arena, the ice, the lights streaming down hard and crisp.
I saw the breath of every player…
…magic like oxygen…
…exhaling gold and red, inhaling blue and purple. Could see magic moving through them, changing them, shaping them, like knuckles pressing wet clay.
The heartbeat of the crowd thumped. A susurration of a million wings fluttering, straining against the wind to rise.
Honey lacquered my tongue, spiced with mint, pepper, gasoline. Magic all around me. Magic inside me. Magic at my demand.
Waiting for me to tell it what to do.
I dragged my hands through the magic, already floating, drunk on it. Flying. Fingertips trailed smoking ribbons of white that sparked black and red at the edges, magic’s ashes burning against my skin.
My mouth watered and every inch of my body went tight with need. I groaned.
This was what I was made for. This moment.
I drew magic to me, pulling it out of the air, out of the ice, out of the chanting crowd. Pulling it out of my teammates, their lungs, their breath.
Magic spun in lazy circles of color, humming against the ice like fingers dragged across glass, an ethereal, haunting song.
With a thought, it became a stream: fast, roaring, water rushing away from the shores and banks of the shifters and instead hurtling toward me, feeding the tornado of color and sound a
nd taste and memories and power, endless power, that swirled and curled around me.
Up and up, magic following my hand that I lifted, trembling above me. The hand in which I clenched my hockey stick, like a sword, like the victor in a fight, raising a trophy.
Magic responded.
And it was brutal.
Magic poured around me, through me, over me, heavy, endless. Light and sound and color and pain shooting up, pulsing to the rafters, and out, out, out. Out of the enclosed stadium where it would disperse, but not before devouring me in the process.
It felt like it took forever.
One second. Two. Three.
And then…
…darkness.
And then…
…silence.
And then, because things never could go my way for once…
…agony.
I was blindsided by the tackle, fell all the way to the ice. Hit my head so hard, my helmet popped off.
“Stay down.” I couldn’t see. For the longest time, I couldn’t see. When I could, I found Graves standing over me. Graves had tackled me. And he looked pissed.
“W-what?” I tried to push up, but everything under my palms, under my body was slick and wet.
Water where ice should be. Water under my ass and legs.
The arena wobbled and I blinked hard until it stabilized. Concussion? How hard had I hit my head? How hard had he tackled me?
Time had seemed to slow down from the moment he’d body slammed me. Now it sped up. Too fast.
I pushed again, trying to gain my feet, only to have Graves slam a palm into the middle of my chest and shove me back on my ass, hissing as he did so. He crouched over me. When had he moved?
“I said stay down. You’re still burning.” His voice was low and filled with a power that stopped me cold.
Burning?
Before I could blink or ask him what the hell he was saying, he had already twisted, his huge fist pulled back. “Sorry about this, kid.”
I couldn’t have dodged the punch to the face if I’d tried.
Twenty-Seven
Graves’s hand was burned.
I kept coming back to that. Second degree burns. I couldn’t look away from the bandages, white and clean, that wrapped up his palm and fingers, like something a boxer wore before a fight.
“Listening to me, Hazard?”
I nodded, my gaze tracking in sticky little jumps up his T-shirt to his face.
Not a mark on him otherwise. I’d expected more damage when they’d told me he’d waded through a tornado of magic to find me in the center.
On fire.
Burning with magic.
Out of control.
“Duncan?” My voice was for crap, like I’d yelled it out. I swallowed against the hot scratchiness. I wanted water. But my arms felt like they were made of concrete. I didn’t have the energy to pick up the glass on the hospital tray next to me.
“Doctors are still checking him out. Checking everyone. Both teams. He’s with them. They’re making sure there weren’t any side effects or damage.”
Damage. The word just sat there in the front of my brain, big enough I couldn’t think around it. Damage because of me.
I had fucked up.
“You fucked up, kid.”
I huffed a laugh, because: weird. Then I lifted my concrete arm up to wipe at the hot tears slipping down my face.
I didn’t know why I was crying. I was numb. Couldn’t feel anything. Except. Except…
…damaged.
I’d fucked up.
“Hey. C’mon. Back with me.” Graves snapped his fingers and I stared at his bandaged hand again. Burned.
He pointed it at his face.
My gaze ticked up, following it.
“There has been no damage other than the fight. Bloody knuckles. Bruises. A couple broke noses. But what you did? That magic? They haven’t found any damage caused by that. Hazard?”
Graves leaned forward and dropped his good hand on my arm above the taped I.V. line. “Listen. Listen to me now.”
His voice did that thing, or maybe it was just his presence, the calmness of him, the steadiness of him. Whatever it was, my brain slipped out of the loop I hadn’t been able to break and I could focus on him. Could really see him.
I heard the sounds of the hospital around me too, smelled the heavy antiseptics, the cleaning products, felt the stiff blanket scratching my chest.
“There you are.” Did he look worried? Yes. Tired and pale too, the lines on his forehead deep, the lines at the corners of his eyes pinched.
He looked older. He looked…
…haunted, hollow…
...…exhausted.
“No one was hurt.” He nodded.
I nodded.
“Good,” he praised. “You didn’t hurt anyone. But pulling on that much magic…” He leaned back, drew his hand to rub at the back of his neck as he looked away from me.
“I don’t even know what to say, or how you did it, but Hazard. Listen. I was there.” He looked back at me, his dust-colored eyes bright, solemn.
“It didn’t hurt. At all. That magic you used, that spell?” He wiped his hand over his mouth now, as if tasting a memory he wanted to forget.
Or wanted too hard to remember.
“There was no pain in it. Every marked slid out of their shift smoother than I’ve ever seen. Came out of it feeling fine. Not hungry, not weak. There was no pain. Not even for the sensitives. You didn’t hurt anyone. Except yourself. And you did a job on that, son.”
“The damage…” My voice gave out entirely.
Graves stood and moved around the bed to the table with water. The room was small, the doorway covered by a curtain. I thought we might be in an emergency room, not a regular hospital room. He picked up my cup of water and held it for me, angling the straw to my mouth.
“You were the only one damaged, Random.”
Him using my first name made the comment softer, more personal, caring.
I swallowed water, and ignored the tears that started up again. The water was cool, clean, and did a lot to settle me.
“What happened? I don’t r-remember.”
His eyebrows shot up. He lifted the cup a little, offering me a second drink. I shook my head.
He eased back down into the chair again. “What do you last recall?”
“The game. The…Duncan hit by Steele. He was bleeding. Nose?”
“Not broken. Split lip. Few stitches. He’s fine. That all you remember before you…” he waggled his fingers at me.
“He was chirping at the Tide’s bench.”
Graves chuckled. “Yeah, he was stirring up trouble. Got it too. Paski couldn’t jump the boards fast enough to get to him.”
“They shifted.”
“They started to. Everyone started to.”
“What happened?”
“You happened.”
“Oh.”
He waited. But really, what could I say to that?
“Want to tell me how you did that? How you pulled thirty shifters down out of the shift?”
The curtain to the little room pulled to one side and Duncan came barging in, all shoulders and hard jaw, bloody stitched lip, and determination.
“What in the hell were you thinking?” he screeched. “Just because you can use magic—all the damn magic in a block radius—doesn’t mean that you should. Jesus Christ, Ran, you were on fire!”
He’d pushed past Graves like the defenseman wasn’t taller and wider than him and grabbed my face with both of his hands. “You will never do that again in your life, understand?”
He rocked my head in a nod. “Yes, Duncan,” he mimicked in a high tone, “I will never use magic and set myself on fire like a stupid ass again.”
“You…okay?”
At the sound of my voice, he softened his grip on my head. “How badly are you hurt?”
He didn’t wait for my answer. “Graves, how bad is he?”
“The nurses sai
d he’s stable. The doctor hasn’t seen him yet, but since I’m a teammate and not a member of staff, they’re not going to talk to me. Are you on his emergency contact list?”
“Yeah, I should be. So are my parents. I finally got reception out in the parking lot. They’re driving up here. I’ve never heard Mom so close to hyperventilating.”
“They saw the game?” Graves asked.
“Yeah. They always watch.”
I made a small protesting noise, and both men swiveled hard looks at me.
“I didn’t m-mean to…”
“It happened, Hazard,” Graves said, not unkindly. “There’s going to be fallout. Every second of that stunt was caught on national broadcast.”
The sound I made this time was a groan. I closed my eyes, suddenly just tired. I didn’t want to deal with it all. Mr. and Mrs. Spark. The team. The media. I just wanted to crawl under this scratchy blanket, hide, and never be heard from again.
Duncan gently patted the side of my face, and then the foot of the bed dipped as he made himself comfortable as close to me as possible.
He was quiet and so was I. Graves eventually left the room, the swish of the curtain pulling closed behind him.
I didn’t want to talk.
“Dad and Mom were so scared,” he said quietly. “The only info I could get on you was from Coach. He said you were stable and resting. I tried to talk Dad out of driving up here.” He exhaled a soft laugh.
“Like talking to a pile of bricks. Nothing was going to stop them from being here.”
I sighed, opened my eyes. “I’m sorry.”
He scowled at me. “You need to stop saying that. Every time you use magic, you apologize for it. You’re a wizard. You’re gonna use magic.”
He shifted around a bit—there really wasn’t a lot of room for two big guys on this small bed. But Duncan needed the contact, the wolf in him wanting to know I was okay.
I needed the contact too. I felt hollowed out and fragile. I hated it.
“How burned am I?”
Duncan’s eyebrows went up. “What I can see? None. Here.” He stood, pulled back the blanket to look at my bare feet and legs, replaced it, then lifted the top of the blanket off my torso. He hooked a finger in the loose hospital gown I was wearing, glanced at my collarbones.