by Devon Monk
Holy shit. That was some hard-core hate.
Duncan groaned loudly. “Traffic sucks.”
He sat across the aisle from me. Like he needed distance. Like he was too restless to sit next to me. I thumbed out of the message and took a deep breath. The last thing I needed to do was panic. Duncan would sense that, and then it would ripple through the entire bus.
But Duncan was glaring out the window, his spine stiff. If he were a dog—not that he was, but still—he’d be barking his head off at whatever he was staring at out there.
“You’re a wizard.” He turned and pinned me with a look.
“So?”
“So do something about the traffic.”
“Like what? Roll down the window and yell at people?”
A flash of humor lit his eyes, then faded beneath his scowl. “Just. Magic it somehow.”
Other players had noticed our conversation. Not because we were talking all that loudly, but because the bus wasn’t moving.
“Duncan, it doesn’t work that way.”
“You can make magic do anything you want. Make those cars hurry up.”
“I can’t control people. I can’t…” I didn’t even know what he thought I could do. “…push a car around or make the bus fly.”
“Have you ever tried?”
I just blinked at him. His shoulders were inching up toward his ears and his head lowered. I’d known him long enough to know his body language. He was uncomfortable, tense, fighting a shift, begging for a brawl.
“No. I’ve never tried to levitate a bus. Are you sure you want to be on it when I give it my first shot?”
Someone behind us snickered. I kept a very straight face.
Duncan scowled at me.
“All right, Dunc,” I sighed. “But you’re the one who has to tell Coach why we flipped over on a tanker truck and exploded.” I pushed my sleeves back and cracked my knuckles. I felt the weight of all the gazes shooting my way.
“One…” I chanted, “two…three!” I snapped my fingers.
Nothing happened.
Absolutely nothing.
Well, except Duncan jerked.
I grinned at him.
“Boo…boo!” That, from someone at the front of the bus.
“You suck!” That, from the back.
And then wads of paper and hoodies and candy wrappers flew my way.
I laughed, batting away everything that came at me.
And Duncan finally, finally smiled.
He also threw his shoe at me, but hey, at least he kept his dirty socks to himself.
Twenty-Five
“Welcome to hell, boys.” Watts strode into the Tide’s visiting team changing room and dropped his gear on the floor by the bench. He wiped an arm across his forehead. “All the heat, none of the fun.”
He was sweating. We were all sweating. It was so hot in the room, every time I breathed in my lungs burned and itched.
Our equipment manager, Roxanne, walked in and stopped dead. “What in the—” She glanced at the wall on either side of the door, maybe looking for some kind of thermostat control.
She stepped out of the room, muttering to herself, then came back and dropped a bag in front of the door to keep it propped open. “I’ll be back. Keep the door open.” She stormed away.
“Think this is something the Tide do to every visiting team?” Duncan shed his hoodie and T-shirt in one go. “Or do you think they saved it for us special?” He slogged over to the benches and dropped down to untie his shoes.
“It’s West Hell.” I shrugged.
Maybe the steam room stunt was the Tide pregaming themselves a little upper hand. Boil us in our own juices before we even hit the ice. Try to shake us up.
It wasn’t legal, but hey, this was not the NHL. Lots of stuff like this happened in the WHHL.
“Assholes,” Troiter grumbled.
“Suck it up, boys.” Lock laughed. “A little heat won’t kill us. Let’s get it done and show them out there on the ice how much we appreciate their hospitality.”
There were a couple wet high-fives and we all got to it, doggedly sweating through our pregame rituals and fighting our way into our gear.
When Assistant Coach Beauchamp and Coach Clay walked into the room, I leaned toward the whiff of non-sweltering air they’d brought in with them.
Coach Clay stood there a moment, his cool blue gaze taking in everything. His hair instantly went damp at his forehead and collar. “I see.”
That was fury. Just those two words. I couldn’t look away from him. I had never seen Coach look that angry.
His face flushed red, his eyes narrowed to dark slits.
“Has anyone from the Tide or arena staff come by?”
And oh, his voice was so, so mellow. So, so calm. So, so not hiding the rage that crackled just beneath the surface, the anger that tightened all his muscles.
I got a good look at what a force he must have been on the ice when he played. Every cell of him loaded for attack and hanging on a hairpin trigger. Violence under velvet calm.
“No one’s come by,” Lock said. “We can deal, Coach.”
“No.” Clay’s pale, pale eyes flashed gold. “We do not deal. Not with this.”
That last bit came out with a growl that was not human.
I held very still, not even breathing. He was as close to shifting as I’d ever seen him.
Graves was the only guy in the room who moved, standing up from where he had been sitting on the bench. Squaring off toward Clay.
Coach tracked Graves, who was geared up and seemed completely unaffected by the heat, the grim mood, and Coach’s anger.
“Don’t suppose this is gonna kill us, exactly, Clay,” Graves noted.
Something about his voice. Something that buzzed in my ear and dug deep.
“We aren’t animals.” Coach’s voice was still steady, but thicker than normal, graveled. “We won’t be treated like animals.”
Graves didn’t reply, he just held Coach’s gaze. If I hadn’t been staring so hard at Coach I would have missed it, but his breathing changed. Calmed. And when I slid a look at Graves, I realized he was matching his inhale, exhale.
Weird. Was that weird? I checked how Duncan was reacting to this. Even though he wasn’t a cat shifter, I could usually get a pretty good read on what was going on with shifters if I paid attention to him.
Duncan’s head was tilted, as if he were listening to a faint sound. He was frowning at Coach and ignoring Graves.
No help there.
“No, Coach,” Graves said. “We are not animals, are we?”
Coach lifted his chin a fraction and blinked. His eyebrow rose and…was that a smile almost tipping the edge of his mouth?
“I’ll go have a word with the arena.” Coach was all calm again. All man again and no cat.
How had Graves gotten him to snap out of his mood so quickly?
No one else in the room seemed to be taking any notice of their dynamic.
“Beauchamp, get them out of here and get them some water.” Coach strode out of the changing room.
“All right boys and girls, get your gear and follow me.” Beauchamp was a bear shifter, built like a concrete truck, all shoulders and chest, gray hair and beard.
He held open the door while we did what he said. Then he plowed down the corridor as if he alone could flatten any obstacle in our path. He might be in his late fifties, but he moved like a man at least a decade younger.
The cold air in the hall was like diving into snow melt. It took several breaths before my lungs could deal with the sudden change. I wasn’t the only one wheezing, coughing, sneezing.
How hot had it been in there?
Assistant Coach opened random doors and stuck his head into rooms until he found an open room to his liking and waved us in.
Looked like an unused conference room, no chairs, but the tables were pushed against the walls. Assistant Coach Beauchamp shut the door behind Roxanne who had her arms full of gear.
; “Finish getting ready,” he said. “We’ll go out early to warm up.”
We were a little sluggish and fumble-handed, but we got it done. He gave us a pregame talk, listing off the first line on the ice, and reminded us of how he wanted us to play: smart, and what he wanted us to do: stay on the puck and shoot the hell out of top side right because their goalie, a big Iowan named Johnson, was weak on that side.
Then he left to find where Leon had gone with our water.
My cell phone pinged and I swiped the screen.
Same unknown number.
This time there was no letter. There was just a picture of a stuffed toy. A little wolf. With its head torn off.
I stopped breathing.
My heart slapped thick, heavy thuds against my chest. Fight or flight.
I should leave. Leave here now. That photo was a threat.
Not against me.
Against Duncan.
Fury and terror rushed through me, catching the dry kindling in my chest on fire. I swiped my thumb over the image, erasing it, erasing the message, erasing it like doing just that would make it never come true.
Magic boiled through the air, sweet, sweet, sweet. Pushed hard to slip my control.
I was wizard enough to know that casting magic on the heels of a nightmare, under the stress of this upcoming game, after receiving a threat on my brother’s life, in this too-small room with twenty restless and twitchy teammates would be a massive disaster.
A disaster that would be my fault.
I had used magic to hurt Duncan. What was stopping me from losing control and doing it again?
“Easy.” Josky’s voice filtered through the fog in my brain. She lumbered toward me, a bulky and commanding presence in her goalie gear. “Hazard. You need to step out? Get your head together?”
She could feel it. Magic. She was a sensitive. Knew I was losing it.
Just like in the nightmare.
Just like when I’d hurt Duncan.
Someone growled. Another person snarled. Reacting to my panic? Reacting to the magic.
Could I force them into a shift on accident?
That was one thing I did not want to test.
Josky shoved all up into my space. “You still with me, Hazard?” She crowded in front of me, her height and width blocking my view of half the people in the room.
I opened my mouth to say something but smoke came out instead of words.
It was…horrifying. No words, no air escaping me. That smoke was the magic. Magic burning me up from the inside out.
“Well, shit.” Josky slapped her hand hard against my chest and then pressed so that I could feel the weight.
And the pain.
A blast of candy-sharp lightning rammed down my spine. The top of my head burned hot, too hot. The bottom of my feet went numb, tingling, cold, cold, cold.
My skin hummed, my vision suddenly so crisp that light hurt.
Magic that had filled me was flung to such far parts of my brain, of my body, that I felt tied together, pulled apart, by a million thin lines of magic. Those thin lines were not connected.
It was as if Josky had just cut a million wires on a million bombs inside me. Disabling magic.
It was…shocking. Sobering.
Terrifying.
“What?” I asked. “How?”
Josky’s eyes were too wide and her lips pale. “Are you clear?” she asked, her voice papery. Her gaze was not quite tracking, not quite focused. “Are you better? Now?”
“Holy shit, Josky. What did you do?” I mean, I knew she was a sensitive, but I had never, and I mean never heard of a third-marked who could do…whatever the hell she’d just done.
Influenced magic. Changed it, channeled it, grounded it, disarmed it.
Sensitives were the eyes and ears that could sense magic. They weren’t doers. They weren’t changers.
They were observers. Witnesses.
They didn’t get their hands dirty with magic because they couldn’t do that. Right?
No. Because Josky had just rewired the magic in me. That was true. That was real. That was now. But how?
I came up so blank, my brain echoed.
The room came alive with motion and groans and growls and curses.
Half the team spun to face the walls, heads hanging as they fought the need to shift. A few of them took a knee, the hockey technique and position required to stay in control of the beasts inside them.
Whatever Josky had done, or maybe it was what I’d done, with magic had triggered the marked. The other unmarked in the room knew the drill and held very still.
Josky trembled hard. I closed my hands under her elbows and helped her to a chair. She moved blindly, her vision still not tracking.
“I’m,” she whispered. “It’s…I’m fine. Hazard. Don’t move.”
I’d already frozen in place.
Because when a room full of apex hunters were trying to outmuscle their human hosts the smart thing was to be quiet and invisible.
I stood with my back to Josky, between her and the team, just as she had stood between me and the team.
Got myself a front row seat at the we’re-screwed-atorium.
Lock at my left had his back flat against the wall, his head tipped back, eyes closed. He was breathing steadily, but every exhale was peppered with the faintest of growls.
“Dammit, Ran,” Duncan said at my right. “Just…don’t…you…shit.” I could literally feel how hard he was pushing his wolf back. He counted down from one hundred quietly, a trick he used to use as a kid when he needed to keep the beast at bay.
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t Josky. Maybe they were reacting to magic. To me.
I could work with that. I cleared my throat.
Every head snapped my way, eyes glowing, flickering, features shift-edged and blurry.
I inhaled, lifted my hands slowly.
They watched me like I was stretched across bones they wanted to chew.
The magic in me was disconnected, but it was still there, scrambled up and distant, but mending, rushing back to connection points. Because I was a wizard. And that meant magic was always there inside me.
Like blood. Like oxygen.
Just like it was always inside the other marked. Shifters and sensitives.
Josky had done some sort of amazing thing when she cut all of magic’s wires. I could do amazing things too.
And right now, I needed to be amazing.
“Breathe.” It was barely loud enough for me to hear from across the room. Graves stood in the far corner, stance wide as if he were holding up the entire building.
“Breathe,” he said again.
He inhaled, exhaled, loud enough, we could all hear it. Did it again. This time I saw a few of the guys breathe with him. Just like Coach had followed his cue.
What was he, the shifter whisperer?
Graves hummed, that slow, soft tune that he’d been whistling during our practices, during our games for months, the song as worn and familiar as a heartbeat.
The song about butchers strolling through town to kill people.
It settled the tension in the room, softened the sharp press of magic. Replaced it with a sense of belonging.
It told us we moved as one, breathed as one, fought as one.
It told us we fought together, and in that fight, were more than just human.
Even against magic.
The tension torqued down by degrees and the shifters settled, muscles unlocking, bodies relaxing.
I don’t know when Graves stopped humming, but even Josky’s shakes had eased off by the time I noticed it was silent in the room. The hard press of magic in my head and chest was gone. I felt like me. But I was raw inside. Unsettled.
Graves sniffed, then cleared his throat.
“All right. I’ll see about the water. You all just take a minute.” That was enough to snap everyone back to the here and now, enough to rouse us out of the strange thrall we’d all fallen under.
It had t
o be magic, right? I watched Graves move through the room. If I saw him on the street, I’d say he was a second-marked: wolf. But that wasn’t a wolf thing he’d done.
Still, every gaze in the room followed him. Just like they would have followed an alpha. But he paused and stared at Duncan. Waiting for Duncan to acknowledge something.
Duncan frowned, tipped his head as if he could almost hear something, could almost understand whatever point Graves was trying to make.
Then Graves moved past him and out the door.
Just like that, everyone was moving again, everyone was breathing again, everyone was normal again.
“Jesus,” Duncan exhaled. “That sucked.”
“Marked have it locked down?” our captain asked. “Because if you’re struggling with the shift right now, you need to say something. The last thing we need is for one of us to shift on the ice against the Tide.”
Feet shuffled. Everyone met his searching gaze and nodded.
Even me.
But instead of looking away, Lock zeroed in and walked over to me.
“Don’t blame him.” Josky stood and shoved me to one side so she could get in the captain’s face. And when a goalie decides to block something, she blocks something.
“He was doing something,” Lock said. “I’ve been feeling it since the bus ride. You must have felt it too, Josky. And you know this never used to happen before he joined the team.”
“What I felt was the whole team about to fall apart. Not just because Wiz is here. This was a long trip and that hot house reception was shit. So, with respect, Captain? Don’t lay the blame on Hazard just because you got a problem with him.”
I pushed at Josky, but she didn’t budge. Seriously, why did people always think they had to stand up for me?
“It was me,” I said.
Josky sighed, and moved to one side. She shook her head and then waved her hand between us as if telling us to work it out ourselves.
I saw Tomas Endler set his shoulders, then walk over to talk to Josky. I didn’t think Josky had any idea how much Endler looked at her. Nor how he had to psych himself up every time he talked to her in his halting Spanish-laced English.
“Magic,” I said. “That was my fault. But it won’t happen again, Captain.”
I was still scrambled inside. Magic was cut and weeping in me. A heaping wet mess I didn’t want to touch and I didn’t think I could pull on it if I tried.
