Red Rider's Hood

12 A Few million werewolves

Being a double agent takes a toll on you. You spend your days lying, pretending to accept friendship like you mean it, knowing you're going to betray those same people who trust you. Cedric had so much power in his gang, but in a way I had even more power than him. Their fate rested entirely on me. I could save them by telling the truth. I could destroy them by lying. No one should have that much power.

When a growing half-moon hung above the city, Cedric took us all back to the roof of his apartment building, to give me the big talk. It was a week until the night of first change.

"You want to know why there are werewolves?" Cedric asked as we sat in rusty chairs on the roof. It wasn't as dark as it had been that first time, and I found myself less terrified than I had been then. The memory of being held out over fifteen stories of thin air isn't something that fades too quickly. Some­how I couldn't help but think this was another test.

"There are werewolves because one of your ancestors got bit by one," I told him.

"That's not what I mean." He pushed himself closer, the legs of his chair scraping on the gritty tar paper of the roof. The rest of the Wolves sat in a circle around us, like this was another secret rite of the werewolf order.

"Everything on Earth is here for a reason," Cedric said. "Trees are here to make oxygen, worms are here to make dirt. There's no such thing as a freak of nature. If it's here, it's nat­urally meant to be here."

Unnaturally, in your case. I didn't dare say it out loud.

"Most other animals got predators to keep their population down―but see, us humans are too smart for predators. Even the stupid humans like Klutz."

The others razzed Klutz, and he threw a few well-placed punches to shut them up.

"We build walls and fences to keep the predators out," Cedric said. "We put 'em in zoos, and the ones that get loose, we can put 'em down with a single rifle shot. See, we got brains."

"So, what's your point?"

"I'm getting to that." Cedric leaned forward. "It used to be that diseases kept the human population in control. Before we knew how to fight them, things like the plague came and wiped out people like flies―but not anymore. We got vaccines, and antibiotics, and Pepto-Bismol and stuff, so suddenly the bugs ain't so bad anymore." He looked around to make sure he had everyone's attention, although I got the feeling they'd all heard this a dozen times before―every time a new Wolf was going to be "made."

Cedric spread out his arms. "So here I am, Mother Nature, trying to figure out how to keep humans down, on account of the population is reaching like a gazillion."

"Six billion," I told him.

"Whatever. Anyway, Mother Nature scratches her head, thinks for a while, and says, 'Hey, I know―I'll come up with a predator as smart as a human. One with a thirst for human blood.' She can't use evolution, though, because that takes too long, and she don't got that much patience. She needs to work herself up something real quick . . . so what do you think she does?"

I wanted to answer with something obnoxious, like "She goes on eBay," but the truth was, I couldn't answer him. All I could do was listen, my mouth dry, my throat closed up, and my eyes fixed on those yellow eyes in front of me.

"Mother Nature," Cedric proclaimed proudly, "creates werewolves to solve the problem. Oh, she'd been working on us for a thousand years or so, and with each generation we've gotten stronger. Hungrier."

Cedric's logic was as twisted as his supernatural DNA. I found myself amazed by how he stretched everything to fit the way he saw the world. A person could fall into that, believing the things he said.

"In ten years, how many more gazillions of people will be on this world if something's not done about it?" he said. "A few million werewolves could take care of the problem just like that," and he snapped his fingers, like he could magically create a few million werewolves. Then I realized that he could. Bite enough people, who then bite more people, and pretty soon, werewolf'll be the world's fastest-growing ethnic group.

"Of course it will take time," Cedric said. "But we're ready to start expanding outward. Next month A/C is heading out to Chicago to start his own pack there. Warhead will be going to Los Angeles. I figure in less than a year we'll have packs in twenty cities."

The air on the rooftop suddenly felt thin, like I was trying to breathe in space. I thought I might pass out, then I realized I'd been hyperventilating, breathing in and out so fast I was getting dizzy. I couldn't tell if it was excitement, or fear.

"And we won't be just your ordinary werewolves. No! See, I've got another trick up my sleeve. One that I don't even think Mother Nature was counting on."

"He still won't even tell us what it is," grumbled A/C.

"I know what it is," Loogie said, but Cedric threw him a silencing gaze.

"Why are you telling me all this?" I said, trying to slow my breathing.

"You're one of us now," said Klutz, looking to Cedric for approval.

"Right," Cedric said. "You deserve to know what's in your future."

I looked around and saw that one of the Wolves was hanging back. "How about you, Marvin?" I said. "What city are you going to?"

"None of your business," Marvin snapped.

"You gotta be with us for a year before you can start your own pack in a new city," Cedric told me. Then he smiled. "But that doesn't mean you can't make your reservation now." He snapped his fingers, and then Warhead stood up, taking a map out of his pocket, unfolding it on an air duct beside us. It was a map of the United States. More than twenty cities were marked off, claimed by each of the Wolves. I could sense a hint of the werewolf coming to the surface in Cedric. Whether it was a hunger for flesh, or a hunger for power, I didn't know.

"Pick yourself a city," he said.

I looked at him, and at A/C and Klutz. I looked at Warhead and Marvin. I stood, and feeling lighter than air, I went over to the map. Klutz handed me a marker. The permanent kind.

"Go on," Cedric said. "Any city that's not already taken."

I looked at the map, holding the marker in my hand. Any city I want. Grandma was right. This was a dangerous game.

"Denver," I said. "I want Denver." And I marked the city with an X, claiming it in my name.

The next day I told Grandma that Cedric had big plans, but I didn't tell her what those plans were. I figured she didn't really need to know, since it really didn't change anything as far as she was concerned. Her goal. .. our goal... was to take out every single werewolf, and Cedric's plan didn't change that. "He's smart," I told Grandma. "A lot smarter than you give him credit for."

That was something Grandma did not want to hear. It upset her so bad, she burned the eggs she was cooking. That might not sound like much, but Grandma was the coolest customer I knew. Nothing ever seemed to rattle her. Even when the Wolves had locked us in her basement, she was calm.

"I was so sure he'd be like his grandfather," she said. "Xavier Soames was shortsighted and simpleminded. A werewolf with brains is a frightening foe."

"Grandma," I asked, "you never did tell me how you got Xavier."

Grandma cleaned out the burned pan.

"I didn't get him," she said. "Your grandfather did." At first I thought she wasn't going to tell me any more, but she put the pan down and turned off the faucet. Her glasses were steamed up from the hot water, and when she took them off, I could see her eyes were a little moist, too. She sat down at the kitchen table, and I sat with her. "We had gotten the rest of the gang, but we knew if we didn't get Xavier, he'd be able to gather a whole new pack, and so we couldn't wait. Your grandpa knew Xavier was going to be harder, more dangerous, than the rest. He was the strongest, the fastest, the most brutal of all of them. Your grandpa didn't want me to risk it, so on the next full moon, he snuck out alone, without telling me, to track Xavier down. Xavier had been hiding out for a month down by the docks. Your grandfather found him in an old, burned-out warehouse. He hoped to surprise him, catching him before the moon rose, but it didn't happen that way. By the time he found Xavier, he was already in wolf form, and hungry. Just before Xavier pounced, your grandfather raised his gun and pulled the trigger.

His aim was true, and the bullet sank deep in the werewolf's chest. It stunned him, but only for a moment―and even though your grandfather had filled up on wolfsbane tea, when a werewolf as powerful as Xavier is furious enough, it won't make a bit of difference."

I was at the edge of my seat now. Grandma took a moment to blow her nose and wipe her eyes. This was hard on her, and I thought I knew what was coming next. I had always heard that Grandpa had died of blood poisoning. But was I about to find out he was really killed by a werewolf? Suddenly I didn't want to hear any more, but I couldn't stop listening.

"Your grandfather ran, Red. He had a plan, you see. He raced to his Harley, then took off, with Xavier right on his tail. Xavier must have known he had less than a minute to live before the silver of the bullet took effect, and he was deter­mined to take your grandfather with him. They were just at the edge of the river, and your grandfather blasted full-throttle down Pier Twenty-four, and soared off the end right into the ice-cold winter water. When he surfaced and looked back, he could see Xavier still there on the edge of the pier writhing in pain, his cells exploding from the inside out. From that icy water your grandfather watched Xavier die. It wasn't until he got home and told me the whole story that he noticed a small cut on his heel. Xavier had nipped at his heel just before he rode into the water. It was barely a scratch, but sometimes all it takes is a little bite.

"All the next day we sat together, waiting. If that tiny bite from Xavier had passed on the curse, we would know when the moon rose that night. At about four that afternoon, he went into the darkroom. 'I just want to make a few quick prints,' he said. 'To pass the time.' He was in there for more than an hour, and I began to get worried." Grandma paused. I suppose she had never told this to anyone. "I found him on the floor of the darkroom, with a small piece of paper in his mouth."

Grandma didn't have to say another word. I knew exactly what had happened.

"Silver bromide!" I said. Grandma had taught me enough about photography over the years for me know about silver bromide―the stuff on photographic paper that makes it work. "It was a piece of photographic paper in his mouth, wasn't it, Grandma?"

Grandma nodded, scrunching her face up to try to hold back the tears. "To someone with the werewolf curse, the stuff's like cyanide. He left a note. He said this was a better test than waiting to see what happened when the moon rose. Because if he was a werewolf, he didn't want to live long enough to actually become one."

Grandma cried, and I reached out to hold her hand. So in a way, it had been blood poisoning after all.

"I'm sorry," I said.

Grandma quickly mopped up her tears. "It was a long time ago. But if his sacrifice is going to mean anything, we have to finish the job. We have to get rid of Cedric Soames and his new gang, and make sure not a single one of them survives this full moon." Then she took a good look at me. "Is there anything else you found out about them? Anything that can help us?"

"Nothing else."

"You sure?"

"Of course I'm sure."

"All right, then."

I didn't tell her that Cedric had offered me a city―or that part of me had liked the idea.

None of the Wolves questioned my loyalty anymore. They didn't look at me funny, didn't doubt my motives. Except, of course, for Marvin, who just got more and more bitter with every ounce of acceptance I got. I had respect down there in the Troll Bridge Hollow now, and it made me feel powerful. It was the kind of sneaky, addictive power that kept making you want more. I wasn't exactly sure why I had so much respect now. Maybe it was because I knew so much about "the Con­federation of Werewolf Hunters," which didn't even exist. I even made up names for some of them. I got them off the spines of books on my grandma's shelf and mixed them up. "Herman King." "Stephen Melville." Or maybe they respected me because I had ventured into the Canyons and had actually set foot in the Crypts' lair. Of course, the Wolves wouldn't admit that they were afraid of the Crypts.

"They're just a bunch of girls," Klutz had said over a game of pool in the Cave one day. Some of the Wolves grunted in agreement.

"Just a bunch of girls, huh?" Cedric smacked him in the head. "You're even dumber than you look. Girls can be just as tough as guys when they wanna be. Sometimes even tougher." He took away Klutz's cue and made a shot for him, even though Cedric wasn't in the game. "All I know is I wouldn't want another war with the Crypts―and I ain't ashamed to admit that either." Then he gave Klutz a twisted grin. "Of course, if you want to take them on by yourself, be my guest― and see if you don't end up like Bobby Tanaka."

"Who's Bobby Tanaka?" I asked.

"You mean who . . . was Bobby Tanaka."

A/C chuckled nervously. "Yeah," he explained, "he was a Wolf, but the Crypts kinda put him in past tense."

"Got him with silver?" I asked.

Cedric shook his head. "No."

"But I thought 'silverizing' was the only way to kill a were­wolf."

"It is," Cedric said. "But some things are worse than death."

It seemed to me the temperature in the room dropped, and the Wolves let out a collective shiver.

Klutz began to look a little pale, like all his macho was leak­ing out through the holes in his Nikes.

"We don't talk much about Bobby anymore," Cedric said. "Or the Crypts. They stay on their side of town; we stay on ours. Everybody's happy."

"So why did I get sent over there?" I dared to ask. "And who did she want you to send for three midnights in a row?"

I thought Cedric might whack me in the head, too, but he didn't. He just gave Klutz his cue stick back and took Loogie's soda, like it was his own. It was an unspoken rule: Whatever was yours was also Cedric's. Which maybe explained why none of the Wolves ever showed up with their girlfriends.

"You're full of questions today, Little Red."

But Cedric offered me no answers. Instead, he demanded to know more about the so-called Confederacy of Werewolf Hunters, so I made up stories about John Steel and Danielle Grisham, and how they were, at this very minute, flying in from London.

As for Grandma, she thought the stories I was feeding the Wolves were a fine thing. "When you're at war, like we are, it's not called 'lies,' it's called disinformation," Grandma said. "Spreading disinformation is a powerful weapon. If they think they're outmatched and outnumbered, they'll be scared and start doing stupid things. That's when we'll have them!"

I couldn't tell her how spinning all those lies to Cedric was making me feel all twisted up inside.

I had once told Cedric that Grandma had a secret room where she kept all her werewolf stuff. Good thing he never came back to look for himself because there was no such place. There was a darkroom, but that hadn't been used for years. All that was in there were old photographic supplies. Grandma's werewolf work was done out in the open; the only thing shield­ing it from prying eyes were her Venetian blinds.

Four days before the first full moon, she was working a blowtorch, melting down silver jewelry into bullet slugs on the same table where she served Thanksgiving dinner.

"Silver bullets aren't exactly an item you get at Wal-Mart," she told me. "You gotta make them yourself, but you have to be careful."

I watched her pour the molten silver into little molds, like she was making a pie. She had bought a whole bunch of .22-caliber shells and had removed the bullets, replacing them with the silver ones once they had cooled in the mold. "Not exactly rocket science," she said, "but if you do a shoddy job, the bullet may just blow up in the barrel―or in your hand."

"I hate guns," I mumbled to myself, but Grandma heard.

"Don't you worry, Red―I got you covered," she said. She took off her protective glasses and went into the closet, coming out with something you don't usually find in your grandma's closet. It was a steel crossbow.

"Ever use one of these?"

"No," I said. I had spent a couple of weeks in summer camp once and did some archery there, but this wasn't summer-camp archery we were talking about.

"I'm making you some silver-tipped arrows. They'll do the job."

I took it from her and held it by its smooth ivory handle. It was heavy, but so well balanced, it felt half its weight. A cross­bow was different from a gun. Crossbows were always in the hands of good guys. At least in the movies. I found that I could stand to hold it, in a way I could never stand to hold a gun. This was a fine anti-werewolf weapon.

"A werewolf's a big target, but it'll also be moving," she said. "You're going to need practice."