“Down the Woodstock Road towards them an elderly, abnormally thin man was pedalling, his thin white hair streaming in the wind and sheer desperation in his eyes. Immediately behind him, running for their lives, came Scylla and Charybdis; behind them, a milling, shouting rout of undergraduates, with Mr Adrian Barnaby (on a bicycle) well in the van; behind them, the junior proctor, the University Marshal, and two bullers, packed into a small Austin car and looking very elect, severe and ineffectual; and last of all, faint but pursuing, lumbered the ungainly form of Mr Hoskins.”

“The two of them walked toward the road and the stone marker. Behind them, other cars were pulling out. A woman began screaming abruptly. Unconsciously, Garraty and McVries drew closer together. Neither of them looked back. Ahead of them was the road, wide and black.”

“He's going to try to take Megan!" I shouted, fury filling me and spilling out in the form of the manifestation. I raced down the hill toward the crossroad, the pack of snarling, jingling, horned hell poodles streaming behind me.Dane and his hell-poodles”

“All the Spirits of the Winter Realm, that just a moment earlier hustled around the Shifters as small balls of fire, were now in their ghostly forms, gray and transparent. Their ethereal bodies stretched parallel to the ground, huge eyes wide open, their wispy, long hair streaming in the air behind them”

“A sentence starts out like a lone traveler heading into a blizzard at midnight, tilting into the wind, one arm shielding his face, the tails of his thin coat flapping behind him.”

“Then starting home, he walked toward the trees, and under them, leaving behind him the big sky, the whisper of wind voices in the wind-bent wheat.”