Chapter 22: Toivo's Wrench

We ran out onto the bluff with eight hundred wolves behind us.

The stone circle stood grey in the morning light, and its altar was empty except for the thin silver collar.

In the middle of the ring stood a wolf I had never seen.

He was silver-haired and huge, as tall at the shoulder as my father's chest.

Edmund Corbin had shifted.

He lowered his head and showed his teeth at me, and a low sound came out of him that rattled the stones.

"He's going to kill her," somebody whispered in the crowd.

"No, he isn't," Hattie said, very loudly. "He's going to try."

Corbin sprang.

I put my palm to my ribs and pitched the Voice, hard and low.

"Down!"

It hit him in the middle of his leap.

He stumbled, and his front paws buckled, but he didn't go down.

The Voice had cost me too much already, and my knees went out from under me in the grass.

Then Ansel went by me.

I saw him shift, which I had never seen before.

It took half a second, and what hit Corbin from the side was black and rangy and scarred, with grey eyes.

They went down together in a tangle of fur and teeth.

Corbin was bigger, and he was older, and he fought like a wolf who had never lost.

He pinned Ansel to the grass and tore at his shoulder, and I heard Ansel's snarl turn to a yelp.

"Ansel!"

I scrambled up, and I had nothing, no Voice and no weapon but the cuff.

Corbin heaved Ansel away across the stones and wheeled on me.

I saw his eyes.

There wasn't an ounce of kindness in them, and there never had been, not at any Christmas.