Red Rider's Hood

6 Wicked as a wolf

"It's all for the best, I suppose." Grandma had me sitting up on the dining-room table as she tended to my palms and knees. The stinging antiseptic solutions smelled worse than wolfsbane. It made me wonder what evil doctor decided that if it hurts it must be cleaning the wound. "At least we know the hunters are back, and on top of things."

"I only saw one of them," I told her.

"Well, one's better than none."

"Ow!"

"Now don't be a baby. It's not that bad."

Marissa, sitting across the room, snickered, so I bit my lip to keep myself from whining. I was never a very good patient.

"Does it hurt worse than when I clobbered you over the head?" Marissa asked.

"I don't know," I told her. "You knocked me half-unconscious, so I didn't feel much of anything at the time."

She snickered again. Fine, I thought. Let her. She was just jeal­ous because she hadn't been the one to find the hunter.

"If he thinks I'm just gonna back off and let Cedric Soames get away with stealing my wheels, he's wrong."

Grandma slapped a Band-Aid over one knee and moved to the other one. "You got a foolish streak in you, Red."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means that you should back off and leave wolf hunting to those who know how. I'm sure you'll get your car back in time. Now hold still."

"Marissa and I can help the hunters."

"Yeah," Marissa said. "We can be kind of like . . . apprentices."

Grandma looked at my hands, which weren't scratched enough for Band-Aids, and shook her head. "They gave you a warning today. You keep sticking your nose in this, you're gonna wind up part of the problem."

"Cedric took your money, and my car. I can't just sit around and wait for someone else to take care of it. That's just not the way I'm built."

"You keep it up, and you won't be 'built' at all. You'll be in pieces. The Wolves will see to that."

I squirmed a bit at the thought and hopped off the table.

"There," Grandma said. "Good as new. Now you both get on home―and Red, don't you dare tell your parents what you've been up to."

We left without another word about my run-in with the hunter―but even before we reached the bottom of Grandma's long stone stoop, Marissa and I were already making plans.

"You still remember it?" Marissa asked.

I nodded. "Four-L-Y-C-Nine," I told her. I had burned that license plate number into my memory as the black Harley had sped off. It wasn't something I was going to forget anytime soon―but it was also something I wasn't gonna tell Grandma. Some things she just didn't need to know.

"I've got an aunt who works at the Thirty-fifth Precinct," Marissa said. "She could run the license plate and tell us who owns that motorcycle. We'll have their name, address, every­thing we'd ever want to know about them."

"What do you think the hunters'll do when we show up at their door?"

Marissa grinned. She was up for this just as much as I was. "Maybe they'll be impressed that we actually managed to track them down. But then again, maybe they'll leave motorcycle tread marks on our faces."

"One thing's for sure," I told her. "If they don't want us to be part of the problem, then they'd better find a way to make us part of the solution."

After all that riding around town looking for my Mustang, it finally turned up just a block from my front door.

It was the very next day. Marissa was off trying to get her aunt to trace that license plate, and I was walking back from the supermarket with a bag of groceries for my mom, trying to pre­tend, if only for a few minutes, that this was an ordinary summer.

Then a glint of red caught my eye, and I saw it, right there at the intersection. My Mustang, with Cedric Soames behind the wheel. Even though I knew he had taken it, and knew he must have been driving it, seeing it with my own eyes made me crazy. It made my blood boil so hot, my brain stopped working right. The light changed, and he floored it, like he was drag-racing everyone in the city. It wasn't just him in the car. There were at least five or six other guys with him, squeezed in.

I dropped the groceries and took after them on foot. I didn't have a chance of keeping up with them, but the traffic and lights slowed them down just enough for me to keep the car in my sights. I was in pretty good shape, but not for this kind of sprinting. I must have rammed into half a dozen people on the sidewalk. What would I do if I caught up with him? I didn't know. He had almost killed me before. Closed off my windpipe until I had almost blacked out. All I knew was that I couldn't stop chasing him as long as I had that car in my sights.

He made a left turn far up ahead, and when I got to the cor­ner, I thought for sure he'd be long gone. But I was wrong. My red Mustang was parked on the street, just a block ahead. Cedric and the others weren't in it, but it was no mystery where they had gone. The car was parked in front of the Cave―a sleazy pool hall where my mama told me never to go. Well, she wasn't here now.

My heart pounding and my head light from all that running, I stormed toward the car. I'd never hot-wired a car before, but I knew how it was done. Usually people do it when they're stealing the car. I'd be doing it to get my car back.

I got close enough to see my reflection in the sideview mir­ror, when out of nowhere something dark and sleek pulled in front of me. A jet-black Harley. How did the hunter know I was here? Had he been following me? I tried to get around him, but he rolled his bike forward to block me.

"All I want is my car," I told him. "Why can't you just leave me alone?"

Then came that same hoarse whisper I had heard the day before. Only this time it said, "Get on."

I shook my head so hard I felt my brain rattle. "After what you did to me yesterday, there ain't nothing you can say that'll get me on that motorcycle."

And then the hunter flipped up the visor that hid his face. "Red, you are one stubborn little cuss."

Whatever I was feeling just a second before was blown so far away, I couldn't even remember it.

"Grandma?!"

"That's right. Now get your butt on my Harley, before any of those Wolves see us."

I was too stunned to do anything but obey. I hopped on behind Grandma, she popped a wheelie, and we burned rub­ber all the way to her house.

I suppose all the signs had been there: She knew all about wolfsbane, and more about Xavier Soames and what happened thirty years ago than anyone else. Still, the concept that my sweet old grandma was a werewolf hunter was just too much to wrap my mind around.

"Not just me," she said, once we got to her house. "Your grandpa was, too."

Grandpa had died long before I was born. Looking at all the photos of the two of them around the house, I couldn't imag­ine him hunting wolves any more than I could picture Grandma doing it.

Grandma went to the bathroom and picked out her helmet hair until it was a full gray Afro once again. She caught my dazed look in the mirror. "Surprised I have a secret side, Red?"

"I guess I always thought of you as the bingo type, not the wolf-hunter type."

She let out a deep, hearty laugh. Then she glanced at the Band-Aids that still covered my knees. "Sorry about yesterday," she said. "I only meant to scare you, not knock you off your bike. Guess my riding skills aren't what they used to be."

I thought of the way she wove in and out of traffic as we rode home today. "You're pretty good, if you ask me." And then I added, "Maybe you could let me take it out next time."

She didn't answer, but she didn't need to. The look on her face told all. I didn't ask again.

A heavy pounding on the front door nearly scared me out of my skin. For a split second I thought the Wolves had followed us here, but it was just Marissa. She had this paleness about her, and wide eyes, like she had been doing some mischief with bones herself.

"Red, I know who the hunter is. You're not gonna believe it."

But when she saw Grandma, still in her leather pants and jacket, Marissa realized I already knew.

"You're both too clever for your own good," Grandma said, shaking her head in both exasperation and admiration. "Run­ning a check on my license plate!"

"If we could do it, Grandma, don't you think the Wolves can, too?"

"It's no secret to them, Red," she told me. "They've always known."

Now that I thought about it, it made sense. Now I under­stood why Cedric was always so nasty to me―and why he seemed to have a grudge against her the day he stole her money. Then something came back to me. "Blood money. The Wolves called the money Cedric stole from you blood money. Why?"

"Because Cedric's a fool. He thinks we killed wolves for reward money. The truth is, people did give us money after we got rid of Xavier and his pack. We didn't ask for it, but they gave it to us anyway. Envelopes were slapped into our palms or slipped under our door. That was the bread I've been hiding all these years, the bread Cedric stole." And then she let loose a sneaky little laugh. "If he had any sense, he would have killed me right there in my basement, instead of letting the smell of wolfsbane keep him away. See, to Cedric I wasn't worth his trouble. He thinks I'm too old and feeble to be a threat to him―and that will be his downfall."

It was all coming together for me now. Marvin had been hanging out at that intersection, casing cars for things to steal―it was bad luck all around that I got caught at that par­ticular traffic light on that particular day. But then again, maybe it wasn't luck at all. Maybe it was fate. The second Marvin told Cedric it was me―the wolf hunter's grandson―taking a big bag of cash to my grandmother, Cedric wasted no time in get­ting to Grandma's house before I did.

Marissa pulled her chair closer to Grandma's. "Will you tell us everything you know?"

Grandma looked at us and sighed. "I suppose I have appren­tices now whether I want them or not." She went to a bureau that held dozens of photo albums. She was a photographer, after all, so photos filled every nook and cranny of her place. As a little kid, I had been through just about all of those albums. They were filled with pictures of her with Grandpa, and of their trips to strange and faraway places. But today, Grandma pulled out a photo album from the bottom of the lowest drawer. This one was full of werewolves, and of her and Grandpa's efforts as werewolf hunters. The pictures of the wolves were all taken with a telephoto lens from a safe distance, some with special film to catch them in the dark. The grainy images of snarling beasts were more disturbing than anything I had seen in my sixteen years. They didn't quite look like natural wolves, but like something almost prehistoric. Like a cross between bear and wolf, but with teeth sharp as a shark's. It was horrifying. It was fascinating. My eyes were drawn to each of those pictures, and I couldn't look away.

"We used these photos to identify them," Grandma said. "There's something about the eyes, the hair color, and the set of the jaw that doesn't change. Once we had a good picture of them in werewolf form, it was easier to figure out their human identities." She pointed to one particularly nasty-looking wolf. "That was Xavier."

I couldn't look at the picture for long. I couldn't get the feeling out of my mind that he was glaring back at me.

"Grandma, why don't you tell us how it happened the first time, and how you beat Xavier and his gang."

Grandma took a moment to look both of us in the eyes. "I thought it would be a story I would take with me to my grave. I wish I could have, but seeing how the evil's back just as strong as before, it's time the story was told."

Grandma pulled a loose brick from her fireplace, and from behind it took out a music box. "I've always kept this at hand," she said. "Just in case." She opened the lid of the music box, and it played "Amazing Grace." There wasn't any jewelry in its red velvet lining. Instead there were bullets. Silver ones. They were tarnished to the point of being almost black, but you could still tell they were silver. I found myself backing away at the sight of them, and I almost tripped over the little table behind me.

"It's true, then," I said. "Silver bullets kill werewolves!"

"It's simple science," Grandma said. "Werewolves are aller­gic to certain metals. They have a violent reaction to silver. Get some silver wedged in their body, and the allergic reaction kills them in less than a minute. The problem for their prey is surviving during that last minute. That's why bullets work best. You can get them from a distance, and run away safely." And then she got sad. Thoughtful. "Your grandfather and I― we knew what was going on in town. No one else wanted to admit it. No one else dared to believe it. So we did research. We traveled the world, digging through crumbling books in old libraries to learn all we could. All the details. How fast does a werewolf run? How deep does a bite have to be before they pass the curse on to you?"

"How deep?" I asked.

"Not deep at all," said Marissa, giving me a smug smile. "I've been doing research on lycanthropism, too."

"Huh?"

"Lycanthropism," said Grandma. "That's just a fancy word for the werewolf curse. But really, it's nothing more than a supernatural virus. It gets passed on in the saliva, like rabies. If a bite breaks the skin, there's a pretty good chance you've got it."

I shivered.

"After your grandpa and I learned all there was to learn, we came back. We brewed ourselves a wolfsbane cologne and wore it everywhere we went, keeping track of the people who avoided us because of the smell. To be double sure, we went to their homes every full moon, to see if they were there or not. The ones who were never home we knew were werewolves.

"Then one full moon, we went out on our motorcycles, and went after them one by one. Xavier was the hardest. He always kept himself shielded by the pack. He'd let all the others take the silver bullets meant for him. Selfish to the last."

"But in the end, you got him," I said.

"Yes, we did, Red." But she didn't say any more about it.

It was all too hard to take. Being deaf, dumb, and blind would be better than knowing the truth. These were dark days, getting darker by the minute, and I didn't even want to think about the nights. I looked to Marissa, who seemed almost hypnotized by the sight of that little musical jewelry box. On the cover was a mountain lit by a full moon. I opened it to the sound of the innocent music, and the sight of the not-so-innocent silver bullets.

"I've never used a gun, Grandma," I said. "I don't ever want to." Once, when I was little, I saw a man get shot. It happened right in front of me, on the street. Ever since then, you could say guns and me didn't get along. My dad calls it "ballistiphobia," but I call it just plain hatred. Either way, I didn't know if I'd ever be able to touch a gun, much less fire one. I guess Grandma understood, because she took the music box from me and gently closed it.

"I don't blame you, Red. I don't blame you at all. You've got a decent heart," she said, although I wasn't sure whether or not I really did. She put the box away, and hid it behind the loose bricks again. "Different times call for different weapons."

Marissa rolled her eyes. "C'mon," she said. "You gotta kill werewolves with silver bullets. Everyone knows that."

But Grandma shook her head. "If there's one thing I learned in all of this, it's that instinct counts for a lot. If Red's instinct is to stay away from bullets, then maybe he should stay away from them."

I turned to Marissa. "What does your instinct tell you?"

Marissa looked at me, then at Grandma, and closed her eyes, going deep into herself, I guess, to tug at some of those instincts. She took a deep breath, and another, then she opened her eyes.

"It seems to me my instincts are telling me only one thing... that Cedric Soames is going to be harder to defeat than his grandfather."

There are werewolf legends, and there are werewolf facts. Grandma knew the difference, and that night, until the sun made a lonely appearance on the horizon, she gave us a crash course in the Lycanthropic sciences, as she called it.

On the power of the moon, she told us this: "The full moon ain't an exact sort of thing. The phase of the moon is always changing slightly. For three days, the moon is full enough to boil the blood and make a man turn wolf. The second day the curse is at its strongest, and the higher the moon is in the sky, the more deadly the wolf."

On werewolf appetites, she told us this: "In human form, they can eat anything humans eat, although they're partial to meat. In wolf form, they're driven to eat their weight in meat each night, and it must be the meat of a fresh kill."

On the mind of the werewolf, she told us this: "The mind of a human infected with the werewolf curse doesn't always start off being evil, but the way I see it, a person turns evil real quick."

On werewolf redemption, she told us this: "Ain't no such thing. No antidote, no remedy, and no turning back. Only way to save a werewolf's soul is to end its misery, and hope the good Lord truly does have infinite mercy."

And of our chances, she told us this: "We all have to die someday. Let's hope we die as humans."

By dawn, my eyelids felt as heavy as the boughs on her tree-lined street, but a plan had already started forming in my mind. Marissa went home, and I closed my eyes to take a quick nap― but when I woke up, it was already late afternoon. Grandma was still sleeping. I didn't wake her. Instead I slipped out and set a scheme in motion. It would take everything I had inside me to pull it off, and now I was restless as a caged animal, eager to get started. My plan was twisted and nasty and clever and cruel. I left that morning with a grin on my face, feeling as wicked as a wolf.