Plus, I figured with two of them jumping for the ball at tip-off, I wouldn’t have a chance. So I’d been hoping to let them do some of the initial work as I got to see what a few of the portals might do this time.
Now, though…now I have about fifteen seconds before that ball is in my hands and thirty seconds after that to get rid of it before I start losing pieces of my stone to its out-of-control vibration. Which, now that I think about it, might be exactly what Cyrus had planned—no advantage here after all.
As the fifteen seconds tick by between one long breath and the next, a dozen strategies enter my mind, and I discard them all. I briefly consider using Hudson’s gift of persuasion right away—just end this Trial early and walk the ball in. But sadly, the other team is too spread out. I’m not sure how much time I’ll have once I tap into his power, but surely not long enough to chase them all down and persuade each to take a nap instead of trying to kill me. I can’t even bring myself to consider turning everyone to dust—even if I know the magic of mortal injury will save them. Plus, Hudson’s worked so hard to keep that particular gift a secret, convince Cyrus it’s dormant, and it’s not my right to expose it now.
Other strategies come and go as well. All equally bad. And then it’s too late, because the whistle is blowing, and Nuri is throwing the comet straight at me.
I catch it and start to run—there’s not much else for me to do at the moment—then realize, not for the first time, that while my gargoyle form does a whole lot for me, one thing it doesn’t do is give me speed and maneuverability. So I switch to human on the fly, and just as Cole and Marc close in on me, teeth bared in their werewolf forms, I dive into a portal.
I’m prepared for the stretching feeling, tell myself to just breathe through it. But this portal doesn’t feel like that at all. Instead of stretching me out, it feels like I’m being poked with hundreds of thousands of pins all over my body at the same time. Each individual pin doesn’t hurt much, but when put altogether, it’s excruciating.
Even worse, the ball is getting warmer and warmer in my hands and this portal seems to be taking forever.
I tell myself it’s not any longer than the other ones, that I won’t go over the thirty seconds, which is the longest I’ve ever been able to hold the comet, but it’s hard to think through the pain of being jabbed a million different times.
Then again, the pain is nothing compared to losing Jaxon and losing my parents, nothing compared to the guilt I feel over Xavier’s death or not believing Hudson sooner about his father.
It’s nothing, I remind myself, even as every inch of my skin stings. Nothing that matters and nothing that I can’t handle. I just need to hold on and breathe.
Finally—finally—I start to experience the weird surfacing-through-water feeling that comes with the beginning and end of a portal, and I brace myself to be emptied onto the field.
I manage to land on my feet this time, but I’m still disoriented, because in the small amount of time I was in the portal, the arena has gone dark. Like really, really dark.
The stands are so dark, I can barely see the audience, which makes their shouts and cheers and gasps feel completely disembodied. Even the lights on either end of the field seem to be darker than they were just a few minutes ago.
I tell myself I’m imagining things, but when I look around, I can no longer see all of the field. I can only see the portion around me—at least in my human form—which can only mean Cyrus did this on purpose.
Of course he did.
It’s a huge advantage for my opponents, because the wolves, dragons, and vampires can see perfectly in the dark, while I’m stuck squinting and trying to figure out which way I’m supposed to go.
The portal let me out about twenty yards from my goal line, so now I’ve got one hundred thirty left to go to get across theirs. The stone is burning red-hot in my hands, though, so I do the only thing I can do—I throw the ball as high into the air as I can, then shift on the run and launch myself into the air after it.
The wolves and witches can’t get me up here, and the dragons are all the way down the field, blocking their goal line, so it works. I snatch the ball out of the air and start to fly as fast as I can toward the goal, thankful that my gargoyle eyes work slightly better than my human ones do.
I know I’ll have to go low eventually—the dragons are racing straight at me as fast as they can, and while their magic doesn’t work on me, they can still knock me right out of the sky. They’re massive, and the fall is a lot from up here—I’ll end up shattered, in human or gargoyle form, for sure.