Another challenger entered the ring—a woman swathed in layers of sky blue fabric, with golden bangles and henna tattoos decorating her arms.
“That’s Mahira, alpha of the Varkolaks. She’s vicious,” Lisa said. “She became alpha of her pack by ripping off the head of the beta at the last Challenging Ceremony I went to—he was her own brother.”
I shivered in the cold wind, but then to my surprise, Mahira pulled the blue fabric from her shoulders and let the layers fall to the ground. She stood there completely naked in front of us, unabashed.
Slade just about fell over.
“Okay,” I said. “Little Miss Naked is my responsibility. None of you boys will be able to focus while fighting her.”
One last man entered the ring. He had hair almost as white as snow, even though everything else about him looked as if he were a young man. Everything else but his narrowed eyes.
Lisa gasped. “That’s Christopher Varul. He’s a pure blood. Varuls don’t intermix with anyone who isn’t pure. They don’t allow Urbats like me—created by infection, not birth—into their pack. If he were to become alpha, he would no doubt get rid of everyone who isn’t purebred.”
“Now, we can’t have that,” Slade said, lifting his knife in the Varul’s direction.
Another minute passed as we waited for anyone else to step forward and make a challenge, but the crowd stayed quiet and still with anticipation. Where were the Shadow Kings? Where was Caleb? Where was my little brother?
“Why the hell hasn’t Caleb presented himself yet?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Daniel said. He drew his long steel sword from the sheath under his robe. “What is he waiting for?”
The guardians began to hammer their spears against the ground. My heart beat with the rhythm, anxiety curling in my muscles. It was only fifteen minutes until the eclipse. How were we supposed to stop Caleb before it if he didn’t show up?
And then I realized that maybe the eclipse was exactly what Caleb was waiting for.
The drumming of the spears reached an almost deafening thunder around us, then broke off into silence all at once. “Begin!” the guardians shouted.
We all looked at one another for half a second, and then with a great scream the lone wolf in the military pants went charging at Daniel. The other challengers followed only a second behind. Daniel would be the prime target of the challengers, and it was the task of the rest of us to pick them off.
The lone wolf broke away from the other challengers in a flat-out run. He let go of the bundles in his hands, revealing two long whips made out of chains. Silver ones, I was sure of it. He spun them in front of him like propellers.
“Damn, chain whips,” Talbot said. “I should have thought of that.”
The man with the whips lashed one out at Daniel, who twisted out of the way.
The rest of the challengers closed in on them. Our little pack of backup broke apart, and we each went after the targets we’d chosen.
I went running after Mahira, who loped toward the platform. She jumped with a great lunge and shifted into a large brown wolf in midair, only feet from where Mr. Chain Whips and Daniel fought.
“Hey,” I shouted at her. I scooped a baseball-sized rock up and flung it with all my might at the back of the brown wolf’s head.
She turned on me, growling.
“Come and get me!” I cried.
I waited half a second to make sure she’d taken the bait, and then I went running toward the barn, following the strategy we’d laid out beforehand—to draw the other challengers as far away from Daniel as possible.