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.

What the hell am I supposed to do with that?

I’ve got no time—no time—but the only thing I’ve got going for me is he doesn’t have that much time, either. In fifteen seconds or so, he’s going to have to toss that ball to someone else—invisible or not.

But I don’t want to wait that long. Every second he runs is an extra several feet he gets toward the goal line. And that is not something I can let happen.

Glancing around, I’m desperate for an idea when one suddenly hits me. It’s nothing I’ve ever done before. But then again, I’ve never before done 95 percent of the things I’ve done in the last twenty-four hours.

Is it a long shot? Yeah. Does that matter? At this point, not even a little bit.

I want to land, but I know better than to put myself down where Cole might be able to get me. So I stay in the air and start looking for the ice Delphina’s been shooting since we got into this hell-arena. There are hundreds of chunks scattered around the field, and I’m going to use them all.

Or at least, that’s the plan.

Most of the books Amka laid out for me in the library really didn’t shed much light on what gargoyles can do, but there’s one thing they all mentioned… Gargoyles are naturally adept at channeling water—supposedly it’s why, for centuries, so many buildings used decorative sculptures of us as water spouts. I don’t know if any of that’s true or not—and neither did Jaxon or Hudson, since I’m the first gargoyle they’ve ever met—but I’m going to operate on the idea that it’s true.

And probably lose this game if it’s not.

But I’m not going to think about that right now. I’m not going to think about anything but getting that ice to work for me. And so I start to focus on pulling the water to me. Just like I channeled magic into Jaxon through the mating bond or Hudson’s magic to light candles, I let the energy build in me. Feel its purpose as it courses through my body, drawing it into my hand.

Once I can feel the ball of energy burning brightly in my palm, I clench my fist on it, draw it back in. And then I pull, pull, pull, pull the ice toward me, melting it into water even as it flies through the air. And it does fly. All of it. And no one is more amazed than I am.

It’s an amazing thing to see, these giant blocks of ice flying at me from all over the field and melting into funnels of water in midair. But the one thing I didn’t account for—the one thing that makes this even cooler and more terrifying—is the fact that there is a lot of water in the air.

And I am pulling it all toward me.

Suddenly my funnels become one giant wall of water moving down the field, and I’ve never seen anything like it. Judging from the way the audience is reacting—screaming and stomping their feet—neither have they.

I want to look for my people—for Hudson and Jaxon and Macy—and see what they think of what’s going on. But I’m terrified of breaking my concentration, of what will happen if I drop my focus for even half a second.

I also don’t have the time. I need to find Cam before it’s too late.

Not going to lie, I’m freaking out a little bit, but I figure it’s now or never. So I take a deep breath, gather all the water into my hold, and then throw it straight down the field at where I think Cam is.

Sure enough, as it falls, it falls around him, not through him, and that’s enough to show me where he is—only about forty yards from the goal line.

I take off after him, flying at absolutely top speed, and still I don’t know if I’ll get to him in time. So I pool the water back together and create a giant wave of water…and bring it crashing down on him, Violet, and Quinn—all of whom are on that part of the field. And as the wave starts to dissipate, I pull the water back and, with a spin of my wrist, turn it into a whirlpool to trap them all.

Cam turns visible again somewhere in the middle of my whole water attack, but he no longer has the ball. None of them does, and I strain my eyes, trying to find it before someone else can.

I finally spy it resting near the bottom of the whirlpool. I was planning on letting them go after a few seconds, but I can’t do that now. Not when they’re so close to the ball and the goal line.

A quick glance around shows me that Cole and Simone have spotted the ball and are racing for it—even as Delphina is diving to intercept me. Keeping the whirlpool going is taking a lot of my energy, and I’m running out of ideas.

I have no choice but to try to get to the ball first.