7. Magnolia #2
"I was on the junior varsity track team for two weeks in ninth grade."
"Why only two weeks?"
"I got shin splints and my mom said competitive running was unfeminine."
Dash pulls both sleeves above his elbows. The muscles in his forearms shift like tectonic plates.
"Stay behind me. Move when I move. Stop when I stop." His golden eyes sweep the field with the same focus he used to assess my mother. "If a boar charges you directly, drop flat. They can't adjust trajectory below knee height."
The pen gate splinters open.
Six glowing boars explode onto the field.
The field erupts.
Boars scatter like furry cannonballs, their amber tusks carving trenches through the soft earth.
Todd hurls his ceremonial spear with the confidence of a man who's never thrown anything heavier than a squash racket.
It sails six feet wide and embeds in a barricade.
Petunia screams, but the decorative kind, the kind that says I'm having an experience rather than I'm about to die.
Dash moves.
One second he's beside me. The next he's four strides ahead, barefoot in the mud because at some point he kicked off his dress shoes and I didn't even register it.
His feet sink three inches with each step.
Doesn't slow him. He angles toward the smallest boar, a creature the size of a commercial dishwasher with eyes like brake lights, and herds it sideways with his body mass alone.
I run behind him. The kitten heels last exactly three steps before the left one sinks into the mud and stays there. I kick the right one off and keep going, cold wet earth squishing between my toes, the lavender dress already streaked brown from the knee down.
"LEFT," Dash barks.
I go left. The boar jukes right. Dash cuts the angle and drops to one knee, arms wide, and the boar banks hard into a barricade.
The enchanted ivy lashes out and tangles around its front legs.
It squeals. Thrashes. The ivy holds for maybe two seconds before the boar rips through it like wet tissue paper and bolts back toward the field.
"BEHIND YOU, MAGGIE!"
That's not Dash. That's Mark. He's standing near the weapon rack with no boar, no partner, no mud on his pristine hunting gloves, and a grin that makes my stomach drop.
His right hand is tucked behind his thigh. His fingers are moving.
I know those fingers. I dated those fingers for two and a half years. Mark minored in Applied Enchantment at Whitmore. Party tricks, mostly. Lighting candles from across the room. Chilling drinks without ice. Making small objects move.
Making small objects move.
The ground under my right foot yanks sideways.
Not the mud shifting. Not my balance failing.
The actual earth lurches beneath my bare sole like someone's pulled a rug.
My ankle rolls. My knee buckles. The field tilts and the sky swaps places with the ground and I'm going down, arms flailing, and the massive boar that was circling back is now twenty feet away and closing fast, head lowered, tusks blazing amber, aimed directly at where I'm about to land.
Fifteen feet.
Ten.
The mud hits my back. Cold. Wet. Absolute. It swallows my shoulders and floods the back of my dress and squelches up around my ears. The boar's hooves pound the earth so hard the vibration travels through the ground and into my spine.
Five feet.
A shape blots out the torchlight.
Dash doesn't tackle the boar from the side.
He meets it head-on. Full stride. Both arms forward.
His hands grab both glowing tusks and his feet plant in the mud and the impact sound is something I'll hear in my dreams for the rest of my life.
A wet, heavy, bone-deep thud that sprays mud fifteen feet in every direction.
The boar's back legs leave the ground. All four hundred pounds of magically aggravated pork go vertical for a half second, tusks screaming amber light, and then Dash drives it down.
Into the earth. His arms flex and the armor-silk across his back splits along the seam line the tailor triple-stitched two hours ago.
The boar hits the mud with a sound like a car door slamming and Dash drops his full weight onto its flank, one knee on its ribcage, both hands still locked on the tusks.
The boar bucks.
Dash holds.
It bucks again. Squeals. Thrashes its hind legs. Carved twin trenches in the mud that fill with dark water.
Dash holds.
The amber glow in the tusks flickers. Dims. Goes out.
The boar wheezes. Grunts once. Goes still beneath him, sides heaving, red eyes fading to a defeated orange.
The field goes quiet. The other couples have stopped. Todd is standing on a barricade. Petunia's got her phone out. Mom's champagne glass is frozen halfway to her lips.
Dash lifts his head.
He's unrecognizable. Mud covers every inch of him. His hair, his face, the ruined suit, the scars. Only his eyes are clean, golden and bright and absolutely volcanic.
He looks at me. Scans my body. Checks my ankle, my arms, my face. Something shifts behind those eyes when he confirms I'm intact. Something that isn't in the contract.
Then his gaze tracks across the field.
To Mark.
Mark's hand is still behind his thigh. His fingers have stopped moving. The grin is gone. In its place, something pale and tight and very, very aware.
Dash rises off the boar. Slowly. Mud cascades off his shoulders in sheets. He straightens to his full six-foot-nine and lifts one massive hand.
One finger. Extended. Pointed across the churned lawn like a siege weapon finding its target.
"You."
Mark doesn't move.
"When this weekend is over. You and I are going to have a conversation about what you just did. And I will be doing most of the talking. With my hands."
The pinned boar whimpers.