Red Rider's Hood

  I spent the day in a kind of fog. I couldn’t think straight, couldn’t make any decisions. I felt paralyzed as I waited for the sun to set.

  I went by the antique shop at five o’clock. A sign on the door said BACK IN FIFTEEN MINUTES, but the back door was unlocked, so I let myself in.

  “Marissa,” I called softly. “Are you here?”

  There was no answer, so I sat down behind the register to wait.

  And that’s when I noticed the box on the counter by the register. It was a small, thin box, the kind that usually holds a watch or a bracelet, the kind of gift girls go gaga over.

  Except this one didn’t have a girl’s name on it. It had mine.

  I picked up the box. It didn’t have any gift wrap or ribbon on it, just a piece of tape holding it closed, and another piece of tape holding the small envelope with my name on it.

  I tore open the envelope and found a note.

  YOU AIN’T TOO SHARP, RED.

  YOURS TRULY, MARVIN.

  I lifted the lid off the box. Inside was a tarnished silver butter knife.

  What was it supposed to mean? Was it a threat? Not a very scary one. You ain’t too sharp. Was the dull knife just a joke, or was there something I wasn’t getting here? Was there something about the knife itself?

  I held the tarnished knife up to the light and studied it. It was heavy, thick, with a finely detailed pattern of flowers on the handle. I turned the blade over and noticed some printing on the flat side of the blade, near the handle. The words stainless steel.

  It was just a cheap, steel butter knife, not an expensive silver one.

  But stainless steel doesn’t tarnish—that’s something that happens only to silver. I looked at the knife again, scratched it with my thumbnail, and the stains came off on my fingers. Silver tarnish won’t do that, you have to use special polish. So this knife wasn’t tarnished at all—but it had been “antiqued.” Someone had brushed it with steel wool and used special acids to make it appear like silver. People who didn’t know the difference would think they were getting something of value.

  A thought started to roll around in the back of my head. I put the knife down on the counter and stood up, feeling a little dizzy.

  I looked across the store at the crowded shelf of knickknacks and spotted the silver candelabra Marissa had used to find out whether or not Marvin was a werewolf.

  I walked over to the shelf and stood in front of the heavy object. Five curlicue branches arched out from the center. The tarnished silver gleamed dully under the display light of the cabinet.

  I didn’t want to, but I reached out and picked it up. Then I scratched the base with my thumbnail. The “tarnish” came right off.

  The candelabra wasn’t silver at all. It was steel, treated to look like silver.

  Which meant Marvin never touched silver…

  A sharp slam of pain knocked the thought out of my mind, and my head was once again filled with cartoon stars before everything went black.

  I woke up so sore I couldn’t move. Then I realized I couldn’t move because my arms were bound together behind my back. I tried to stand, but my ankles were tied to the chair, so I tried to cry out, but couldn’t do that, either. Something stuffed in my mouth kept me from making a sound.

  The Wolves must have been in the antique store, waiting for me! But why? I thought they trusted me.

  Marvin…there was something about Marvin I needed to remember. Something I had found out…

  I saw something moving out of the corner of my eye and turned my head to look. Big mistake. I felt a sharp pain radiating from where I had been hit on the head, and I groaned.

  “He’s awake,” a voice said. It was cold as ice, but it wasn’t a voice I expected. It was Marissa. She and Grandma came over to where I sat.

  “We had to do this for your own good,” Grandma said. “I’m sorry, Red.”

  I shook my head vigorously, in spite of the pain.

  Marvin…something important about Marvin. Why can’t I remember?

  “Really, Red,” Grandma went on, “I’m sorry. You’re not a Wolf yet, and I won’t let them make you one—even if it’s what you think you want. Once we get rid of all the Wolves, you’ll be out of danger and we’ll let you go.”

  Then I saw the stainless-steel butter knife sitting on the counter, and I remembered everything.

  Marvin! He never touched silver! We have no proof that he’s not a werewolf—which means he probably is one!

  “Mrrrvmmm! Mrrvmmm uh wrrrwrrrff!” It was no use! I tried to spit out the gag so my words would make sense. I hadn’t even told them that I had done the job and had set the Wolves up for the trap we were going to spring. We. It wasn’t we anymore—I had just been cut out of the whole thing, which meant Marissa and Grandma were going alone. Our chances were bad enough with three—but two?

  Frustrated and furious, I shook the ropes that held my arms behind my back, trying to get loose.

  “Give it up,” said Marissa. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  She looked at me like she hated me. The way Marvin had always looked at me. I stopped struggling and stared at her, trying to send her a message with my eyes. Trying to let her know I had something important to tell her.

  The message didn’t go through. Marissa turned away.

  “Come on,” Grandma said to her. “We’ve still got a lot to do, and there’s not a whole lot of time left. The moon’s just short of rising.”

  They left me sitting there, trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey. I could hear them in another part of the shop getting their equipment together. I had to get through to Grandma somehow. I tried to calm down and think. My hands were tied behind me, my ankles were tied to the legs of the chair, but the chair itself wasn’t tied down.

  I inched forward in the chair, putting all my weight over one of the front legs as I scraped it against the floor. It left a faint, but visible line. I inched the chair back, then forward, then back again, and looked down. Clear as day, I had etched the letter M into the wood floor!

  While I worked, I could hear Grandma and Marissa talking.

  “You have the ammo?” I heard Marissa ask.

  “All that’s left of it. Fifteen bullets. I’ll have to make them count. Good thing you thought of the balloons. Do you have them?”

  “Right here,” Marissa answered.

  I paused for a second. Balloons? What was that about? I kept working on scraping out my message. M…A…R…V…

  I had gotten to the first R in werewolf when Grandma came back into the room. She had on a leather jacket, biker pants, and a helmet. Her face and hands were covered with mud, to hide her scent. She looked as far from being my crazy old grandmother as could be.

  “We’re going now, Red. You’ll be safe here.” Although wolfsbane would have been too suspicious a smell for them to have, Grandma did light some wolfsbane incense for me and left it on the counter. “Sit tight and we’ll let you go when it’s all over.” Then she sighed. “And…and if we don’t make it back…well…someone will be here in the morning.”

  I groaned and tilted my head, pointed my toes, and did everything I could to get her to look down at what I had scratched on the floor.

  If she saw it, I knew she’d take the gag out of my mouth to let me explain. I kept looking at her then staring down at the floor, her, then the floor over and over again. Finally I knew I had her attention! She came over to me, and I knew she was going to take the gag out of my mouth!

  But I was wrong. She just adjusted it.

  I looked at her, and to the floor again, and she misread that gesture of my eyes.

  “Feeling ashamed, Red?”

  I looked to the floor once more, but she just didn’t get it. “I was counting on your help tonight…but to go over to the other side?” She backed away. “Maybe you should feel ashamed.”

  She turned and left without once looking down at the floor. Marissa, also covered with protective leather, was right behind her. She glared at m
e on her way out.

  I could see a tiny bit of the front window from where I was sitting. I could see the sky had turned to night. And at the very edge of the visible piece of window, I could just make out the bright curvature of the full moon. While I was sitting there tied up, it had risen, and somewhere, far off in the distance, I heard the night’s first howl.

  I had to get out of there!

  As I shifted my position to try to get a better sense of how high the moon was in the sky, I saw the stainless-steel butter knife on the counter. Marvin’s terrible gift to me. I scraped my chair over to the counter, then used my chin to push the butter knife to the floor. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and tipped over sideways until the chair fell. I tried to take most of the impact with my shoulder, but I still felt a sharp stab of pain in my head, where Marissa had conked me. The world started to go dark, but I struggled to remain conscious.

  I scrambled around and felt blindly behind my back until I had the butter knife in my hands.

  A butter knife has a dull blade, not the best edge for cutting a rope—but it is a knife. I rubbed the cords holding my wrists together over the butter knife again and again for at least fifteen minutes before I finally felt the bindings starting to give. After a few more minutes I managed to pull my wrists apart.

  I rubbed them a few times to get the circulation moving, then untied my feet from the chair legs. Staggering to the door of the shop, I stared out onto the moonlit pavement. I heard another howl, not so far away this time.

  Grandma and Marissa were out there somewhere. So were Cedric and the Wolves.

  A battle to the death.

  It was up to me to tip the scales one way or the other.

  Bring it on.

  16

  Silver City

  Hardly a cloud dared to touch the sky on this terrible night. The full moon shining over the city gave every surface an eerie silver sheen. There’s an old-fashioned kind of photograph Grandma had once told me about. It’s called a daguerreotype. She had a couple of them hanging on her walls. Instead of the photo being printed on paper, it was printed onto the surface of a mirror, so instead of black and white it was all black and silver. The whole city was a daguerreotype tonight.

  My bike was still propped up behind the antique shop, and I rode it at breakneck speed through the silver city, skidding around corners, crisscrossing through alleys that I knew would shave a few seconds off my ride. My hands and feet were numb from fear being pumped through my veins, as deadly as nitroglycerine. My whole body felt like a bomb ticking down to detonation.

  You can’t imagine what it’s like to be torn between darkness and light—to be a traitor no matter what move you make. If my grandmother and Marissa died tonight, it would be because I had stayed in the darkness too long, flirting with the idea of being Cedric’s consigliere. If that happened, I could never live with myself—but if Cedric gave me the bite as he planned, I would be forced to live with it forever. That was the worst hell I could imagine.

  I knew where the Wolves were and the not-so-secret drainage-tunnel exit they’d be trying to slip out of by the river, just above the waterline. They expected to double back to Troll Bridge Hollow and surprise the two dozen hunters they thought were waiting for them. Little did they know that it was just Grandma and Marissa, waiting in ambush as they came out of the drainage tunnel. I had no idea what I would do when I got there, only that I had to go.

  I was about two blocks from Troll Bridge Hollow when I heard gunshots and the Wolves going crazy. Howling, yipping, screaming in frenzy.

  I pedaled harder, pushing my bike to the max, and covered the last blocks in seconds. I turned the corner, misjudged, and took it too fast. The bike skidded out from under me, and I scraped across the pavement on my back and shoulders.

  I rolled over into a low crouch and paused there, catching my breath and taking a good look around at my surroundings.

  I was down by the edge of the river, just a dozen yards away from the drainage tunnel, but the Wolves were nowhere to be seen. No—that wasn’t entirely true. There were three furry masses lying motionless on the rocks near the tunnel. It looked like the ambush had worked, but not as well as Grandma and Marissa had intended. It made me feel both frightened and relieved, and the two feelings battled inside me. I hurried back up Troll Street, listening for the sound of howls, or shots.

  The buildings facing the bridge were dark. I trotted toward a doorway, planning to crouch there until I caught my breath, but I had only made it halfway when I heard a wolf howl somewhere unseen, a block or so away. The howl was followed by a gunshot, then a yip of pain, followed by more howling and growling from others.

  I took a deep breath and ran for the corner, staying low. One more wolf down. How many bullets had Grandma already used up? How many did she have left? And who’d been taken out already? I immediately hoped it wasn’t A/C, or Klutz…or Cedric.

  No! I told myself, pressing my knuckles to my forehead until it hurt. I can’t let myself think that way. They’re not people. Not now. They’re wolves. Yet every single death cry tore into me like a wolf claw. I reached the side street and turned the corner. There was the downed wolf, lying in the street. I could see it was writhing in pain, then it breathed its last.

  Pressing close to the buildings, I passed the dead wolf’s position. I looked a moment too long, because I recognized something in the set of its muzzle. It was Warhead.

  I could hear howls starting up again, halfway down the block. I stepped away from the building toward the center of the sidewalk so I could see farther down the street.

  Three wolves were chasing after someone. It was too small to be Grandma. It was Marissa—and she had my crossbow. She was running from the wolves, but they were gaining on her. She spun around and fired an arrow at them, but it went wide. Then I saw her reaching for something in her backpack.

  She flung a small round object at the wolves on her heels.

  A water balloon.

  The balloon exploded on the lead wolf’s nose. The animal screamed and flopped over, rubbing its face against the street, trying to wipe whatever it was off. The other two wolves stopped and looked fearfully at the dying wolf, then at each other, as Marissa kept running.

  A gunshot came from above, and another one of the wolves went down. That must have come from Grandma, I thought.

  The third wolf took off in my direction, barking like mad. I couldn’t tell if it was warning the others away or calling them to battle.

  As it ran toward me, I stepped back into a doorway. It ran past without seeing me, and I prayed it didn’t smell me.

  After the wolf passed, I ran after Marissa. I had to warn her about her brother.

  I passed by the dead wolves lying in the street. From the one that Marissa had hit with the balloon I recognized a familiar smell from Grandma’s darkroom. It was silver bromide—the kind they coat photographic paper with. The same chemical that killed Grandpa. Marissa had filled water balloons with a silver-bromide solution.

  I got to the intersection at the end of the block, but I didn’t see Marissa, and I had no idea in which direction she had run.

  Then I heard a scream.

  I ran toward the sound, legs pumping hard, breath coming out in spurts.

  As I turned the corner, I saw Marissa in the middle of the street, running back toward me. Two werewolves were coming up behind her. Then two more sprang from the alleyway, directly in her path, and she stopped short. Now she was surrounded by four wolves.

  She struggled with the crossbow, trying to load an arrow, but in her panic she dropped the whole bow. It was still clattering on the street as she reached into her pack and pulled out two water balloons, holding them, circling warily. I kept on running toward them, but I was still too far away to do anything.

  Now the Wolves were barking at her, snarling and snapping their jaws, but none of them were willing to be the first to attack—the first to get the lethal liquid thrown in their faces. It was a standoff,
and something had to give soon.

  Three more wolves joined the circle. It wouldn’t be long now before one of them made a move. They kept circling Marissa and barking at her, daring to take a step closer each time.

  Then I realized that there was something I could do. I had told Cedric and the others that the hunters had laser sights on their rifles. At the time it had just been a detail I made up to make the story about the hunters seem real. I had no idea how important that little detail would become. I reached down to my key chain and grabbed my laser pointer. Then I ducked into the shadows of a doorway, aimed the laser pointer at the wolf pack, and pushed the button.

  A tiny red circle suddenly appeared on the side of one of the wolves, and the wolf next to him barked out a warning and leaped out of the way. The wolf marked with the red spot of light froze, then crouched and rolled, yipping in fear.

  The others, sensing a problem in their ranks, looked away from Marissa for just a second—and that was all the time she needed. She threw the balloons at the two closest wolves and then leaped over them and out of the center of the circle.

  I aimed my laser pointer again and again. Each time the red spot landed on a wolf, the wolf would run in circles, scared to death.

  Then a gunshot rang out. It must have been Grandma, firing from her position. One of the wolves fell, and that was all it took to confirm to the rest that the red laser was attached to a rifle scope.

  The pack scattered, and I ran for the crossbow Marissa had dropped in the street. As I dove for it, a motorcycle roared to life and came screaming out of the alley on its rear tire. The biker leaned forward, dropping the front tire to the road, and spun around next to me. The headlight was blinding, and I had to put my hand over my eyes to shield them from the glare.

  It was Grandma! She looked bigger than life, like an action-movie hero, steering with one hand, holding her pistol in the other at arm’s length.