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.