Rebellious Hood

by Kendrai Meeks

  “I’m not sure what kind of state Tobias is in.” I fished out one of the silver bricks, a chunk of metal the size of a chalkboard eraser, and pooled it over my skin. “He might not be able to keep his huey form if he’s too weak.”

  “We could always call off the mission, try again tomorrow night.”

  I shook my head. “You know Mom won’t back down now that she’s in the field. Besides, tonight is the second full moon since we’ve been separated. He’s got to be starting to lose his grip on reality. I hate to say it, but I want his animal brain to be the one in charge of his body tonight. Instinct should get him to run when the chance comes.”

  Even if that means leaving me behind. It was something I was prepared for. Vlad wanted my blood too much. If he captured me, he might torture me, even take advantage of me as he did with Alex, but he wasn’t going to kill me. To free Tobias, I’d endure that.

  “Just let me get the silver and weapons I brought out of the trunk. As soon as it’s dark, we can—”

  The opening car door drew our attention. Dad and I turned to see Yan, his hands shoved in his coat pockets like the cold actually did anything to him, strolling across the way.

  “I thought you were going to stay in the car until the sun was completely down, to keep yourself from losing even the smallest bit of strength?”

  He nodded. “There are but a few minutes until then, and your father needs assistance.”

  Suddenly panicked, I turned to my dad still standing by the car. “Assistance with what? You look fine.”

  I felt the air shift around me, felt the change of direction in my soul, even before my father’s head finished its fall.

  With a blink, my world flipped. Yan’s arms caged me. Silver threads raced through the air, a network of spider webs that laced over my arms and legs, drawing me into a hold. My mind raced even as my limbs flailed and my mind tried to comprehend the impossible. It was silver, just silver, but why wasn’t it obeying me? Why did it refuse to yield to my command?

  My father couldn’t bring himself to look at me. “The silver is blood-claimed. It obeys only me.”

  I’d been named after the Betrayer, but I was the one being betrayed. Blood-claimed silver? But didn’t he say the act was banned, that it caused horrific pain for the one who claimed it? Why would my biggest champion my whole life put himself through that, just to trap me? “Papa?”

  The intensity of his gaze knocked the breath from my lungs. “When you were born, your mother and I vowed to do whatever it took to protect you from harm. That holds even if it means protecting you from yourself.”

  Every movement drew the taut threads tighter across my skin, even as my sadness turned to fire. “You have no right! He’s my mate. He’s my responsibility.”

  “And you are mine.” Crossing to me, the metal about me moving at his command and allowing my legs freedom just long enough to collapse beneath me, leaving me in a sitting pose, my father’s hand cupped my cheek. “I promise, mi corazon, I will save him. Now, no more discussion. We’re losing precious time.”

  I closed my eyes, resigned to the fact that to struggle would only hurt more. “You’re losing something far more precious than that.”

  My father paused, looking back over his shoulder. “Time can heal an injury, but it cannot restore the dead.”

  I shook my head. “Tell yourself that if you want, but the full moon is still rising.”

  A threat full of hope and lacking all capital. My father said no more as he and Yan made for the nearby trees. I flexed every muscle, trying to break the hold of the cords around me, but to no avail. No magic could force it either. At this point, I only had one choice.

  If the silver would not yield, it would have to burn.

  And I along with it.

  TWENTY-SIX

  AMY

  “So this is the archive, huh?”

  I examined the rows and rows of leather-bound books and piles of scrolls with all the interest of a fruit fly to Styrofoam, i.e., zero. But for some reason, the last place on Becky Schantz’s itinerary for my personal tour of Schloss Wolfsretter was the one she seemed proudest of. She looked on it now like her own grown child striding across the stage at graduation to make his valedictorian speech.

  “It’s, um... very nice?”

  It wasn’t. True, it was nicely organized. And I’d add that it was surprising to find in the subterranean floors of a medieval castle. What was a climate-controlled high security library room straight out of a Nicolas Cage film doing in the dull patina of Schloss Wolfsretter? And what did the hoods have that was so coveted it demanded this level of Mall Cop Mecca-hood anyway?

  “It is my pride unt joy,” Becky said. “When everything arrived here in the 1940s from all over the world, it was a mess. Just boxes and boxes of records, every family using its own classification system. And preservation? The only things the hoods know how to preserve is a grudge. But now, you see. Years of labor, all for this, and it is marvelous.”

  What could I say? I didn’t want to be a dick and not appreciate something she obviously bled and sweated for. “So I guess you know a lot about wolves and hoods then.”

  “Of course. I am, perhaps, the world’s foremost expert in lupine and wolfsretter genealogy.”

  “Wolfsretter?”

  “Ja, wolfsretter.” She nodded. “It is German for ‘wolf-watcher.’ Until recently, this is what the hoods were called.”

  “Watchers, huh? Sounds voyeuristic.” Then, finding a place where maybe the old castellan and I could share some common ground, I adapted my conspiratorial tone. “Bet you came across some dirt in all these documents, huh?”

  Her face curdled. “Of course, but I managed to clean all the documents without damage. I am a phenomenal archivist.”

  “No, I don’t mean like dirt dirt. I mean like, dirt. Scandals. The dark underbelly of wolves and wolf-writers.”

  “Wolfsretter.”

  “That’s what I said.” I put an arm around her, pulling her close. “Tell me, Becky, what’s the juiciest thing you ever read in all these books?”

  “Juicy?” She shrugged. “The hoods are not juicy, as a rule.”

  I could have guessed that, having lived with Geri for two years.

  “Surely there’s something.” I gave her shoulders a little squeeze. “Come on, just between us castrati.”

  “Castellans.”

  “Right.”

  “Well... I suppose it would be the story of Hamunshet.”

  “Becky Shantz! You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

  Becky’s smile fell away. “My mother died in Auschwitz.”

  Awkwardness put on its gloves and punched me in the gut. Jesus, I couldn’t just not make a joke for once. “Oh! I’m sorry... I didn’t mean to...”

  Luckily, the airlock around the door decompressed, and in walked tall, dark, and stuck-up, presenting me with a merciful deflection.

  “Caleb!” I exclaimed like he’d just brought me to the edge of release. “Just in time. Becky was about to tell me about the story of He-Man Shits.”

  The castellan clicked her tongue. “There is something quite wrong with your ears, girl.”

  Caleb must have sensed my utter tumble into graduate-level social guffaws and allotted me a moment of mercy. “Go easy on her, Becky. You have to remember, Barbie here was raised in a place where the most exotic thing she encountered in everyday life was the halal food cart outside her hot yoga studio.”

  I balled my fists. “It was a kosher hot dog stand, moron.”

  He laughed away my retort. “Did she mean to say Hamunshet?”

  “Yes, you know the story of the first hood?” Becky grinned.

  Finally, someone who didn’t try her patience. Caleb just charmed everyone, didn’t he?

  Asshole.

  “If you mean the ancient Egyptian priestess who got knocked up by Aten the sun disk god and had twins? Yeah, I know that story,” Caleb said. “My mom used to tell me it at bedtime when I was little.�
�

  “Well, that explains something.” I cocked a hip. “No wonder you’re so sex-obsessed. You were programmed to fall asleep thinking about divine boot-knocking.”

  The slayer squinted at me. “She put it in kid-friendly terms, of course. Only, Becky, Hamunshet gave birth to the first slayer, not the first hood. It’s the reason we have the power of the sun, being that we’re descended from the sun disk god.”

  I looked to Caleb, who looked at me, and I looked at Becky, who looked at Caleb.

  “You don’t honestly think that’s true, do you?” I asked. “I mean, there’s no such thing as Egyptian gods. Mythology is the invention of man.”

  “So is money, but I’m a devout worshipper.”

  Becky shuffled to a shelf on the far end of the room and pulled out a box about the size of a loaf of bread. “Here, I will show you.”

  She moved it to a table and opened it, pulling out a scroll. As she unrolled it, the fragments pasted over a clean linen cloth came into focus, looking like something out of an old monster movie. In the center, a woman wrapped in a beautiful white dress sat on a throne, the sun blazing over head and its rays shining down on her. On each knee, a baby, one who shone so brightly its features were difficult to distinguish, almost as if it were light. The other, robed in a blue cloak, but with silver eyes.

  “There’s the whole of it,” Becky said. “The oldest version of the story I’ve been able to find. Came here from the House of Black about fifty years ago, but I’ve found mention of this through much of the hood literature.”

  I traced my fingers over the edges of the papyrus scroll. “Caleb, I’m no expert in this. I mean, a priestess impregnated by a god? Way above my pay grade. I’d laugh it off, but a year ago, if you had tried to convince me vampires and werewolves were real, I’d have said you were even drunker than me. If there’s any truth to this, it means—”

  “It means that slayers and hoods come from the same origin. That we’re in some way... the same race.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  GERI

  A howl pierced the air, falling on us from the edge of the woods, just as the moon came up.

  Local wolves, of course. If there were hoods in this region, there would also have to be lupines. During full moons, packs roamed their lands, consumed by their animal natures, more beast than man. Obligated to walk on four legs, only alphas and the occasional beta could keep their huey form under its power. I used to fear meeting one on a feuernacht, suspecting such a meeting could turn into a kill-or-be-killed situation.

  My mother had always speculated that once I took my fire, the wolves would heed my summons. Under the light of the silver moon, I drove awareness into my soul, beckoning them, appealing to them.

  Help me. My mate is a prisoner, and I am trapped by those who’ve betrayed me.

  The words turned and twisted in my head, radiating out, a beacon for any help. After a few minutes, sweat beaded my forehead, even as the night descended and the temperature dipped.

  The howls faded.

  And then, padded paws crunched the snow.

  Golden fur rimmed a brown face. Smaller than the packlings I’d been raised with, the alpha still commanded grace, his tenuous steps as lithe as they were determined. He must not have been expecting to find what he did when he’d descended from the hills, for when he suddenly shifted into his huey form, he wore a screwed-up expression.

  “You’re a hood,” he said in a form of Spanish that sounded more lyrical than my father’s.

  I shook my head. “Soy una asenaic. Um... Soy una muceta pero soy también una loba.”

  “Both a hood and a wolf? Is that possible?” he continued, scratching his unkempt black hair. “What did you do to me? How did you make me feel like I had to listen to you?”

  “Please, I don’t have time to explain. My name is Gerwalta Kline, and I...”

  “Gerwalta?” he said, cutting me off. “The Betrayer?”

  I gulped down my anxiety. “Her descendant. Her... Her heir. Please, my mate is being held prisoner a few kilometers from here. I need to get out of these silver cords and save him. Can you help me?”

  His eyes swept over me, taking survey of my situation. “What is this, some trick to get me to touch the silver? Playing a joke on us, are you? There are other hoods near here tonight; we have sensed them. They must be near now, hiding. You have a bet or something, don’t you? See if you can trick a wolf into getting burned.”

  “No tricks. I swear, I’m not lying. Please, the cord is woven too tight for me to unravel. If you’d just loosen it a bit, I could do the rest. You’re an alpha at full moon, I’m sure you’re strong enough to bend it. You can rip off one of my sleeves or get something out of one of those cars so you don’t have to touch it.”

  “You are a hood, no? You should be able to will the cords away yourself.”

  “Normally, yeah. But these are...” I struggled for a word in Spanish I knew that would work. “Defective.”

  “Defective?” The alpha’s face curdled. “If you are a hood who cannot wield silver and a wolf is not burned by it, it is you who are defective. I don’t believe any of this.” He turned. “I’m not falling for your tricks, hood. A word of advice: next time you play this game with another wolf, do not claim your name is the one all hoods loathe.”

  He turned tail, reclaimed his fur, and ran.

  “No. No, please!”

  But it was no use. I was alone, I was bound, and I was trapped. Or was I? Part of my training had been learning to get out of tight situations. Surely I could do that now? First step: to stand. Leaning forward, I folded my legs underneath me, getting ready to jump. The moment I did, however, I discovered that my father wasn’t an idiot. The cords were looser at my ankles, but still restrictive, and threw off my balance. I called out as my body paralleled to the ground, the earth rising to meet me.

  The moon laughed above as I rolled on to my back like an overturned armadillo. “Give it up, Geri Kline,” it seemed to say. “I’ve seen this story before. Now just sit there like a good little red riding hood and wait for mommy and daddy to return. You’re not going anywhere.”

  Which I might have done, if not for the fact that I knew, if the decision came down to freeing Tobias or killing Vlad, there was no way my werewolf was getting away. Through the forest and over the river in the valley, my mother and father, my cousin and his boyfriend, and even a few hoods took on the Ravens. I had to get out of here. I had to be the one there to make the right choice.

  And I was going to do that... how?

  I was a hood and wolf, why couldn’t my strength be enough? I pulled and pushed, trying to stretch the metal. Nothing. It was too strong. I was not strong enough.

  Frustration caught spark, sending anger raging through my limbs. Twisting, turning, crying out to the night until my throat was raw, I screamed. No, I refused to be sidelined. I refused to be relinquished. I would find a way out of this.

  The cry started in my heart, clawed its way up my throat, and ripped from my body with the power of my ancestors. Soon, the fire was not only emotional, it was physical. I opened my eyes and looked down at my body, watching silver flames dance over my fingers. The melting started slow, the bands on my wrists and arms dropping to the ground. Too amazed to be curious, I pushed my palms in turn to each of the cord’s stress points. My ankles, my shoulders, my arms. In a moment, I was free. The second none of the cords remained, the fire snuffed itself out.

  And I ran. Across the field, through the forest, through the splashing ice cold water of the barely-a-river, until it came into view.

  Moonlight clung to ancient alabaster walls of a structure more tall than wide, its sharp dimensions punctuated with arched windows and doors alluding to a Moorish past. Perhaps not authentic to the period, but the influence was there. Five or six stories high and with only one apparent way in or out, the path was clear as my feet ate up ground between the forest and the house.

  When the lurch in my stomach grabbed me, s
topping me dead in my tracks, my control almost abandoned me.

  He was near. He was near.

  But he wasn’t moving. Not away, not toward me, not at all. The sensation remained constant, growing in strength only as I forced my feet to work. Part of my instincts told me to call out, to tell him I was coming. The wiser portion of my brain remembered that wounded animals fell first to predators stalking the night. Igor’s old home lay no more than four hundred meters ahead, but the same distance to the east, my heart stood still.

  I saw it then, the low rise of a masonry wall more ruin than foundation. Light footsteps carried me across the open earth. A well. Or what remained of one. Even as I leaned in to peer down, I knew what I would find, but that did not stop the pulse of anticipation and woe as I did so.

  “Tobias!”

  Either he hadn’t heard me, or he couldn’t. Even from thirty feet overhead and with the moon above at such an angle that he was left in shadow, there wasn’t much of him I could see. His lupine form lay motionless, drawing my worry.

  He’s not dead, I lectured myself. You’d know it if he were dead.

  “Tobias, answer me or I’m coming down there.”

  Nothing, not even a flinch of an ear or a cycle of breath. I looked around, hoping to find a rope or some kind of ladder even. Nothing but empty, cold ground. Then I remembered the silver I’d grafted under my clothes before we’d arrived. If my father could make a cord to bind me, surely I could make a rope to climb down into a hole. I reached for it with my mind, demanded it do as I willed.

  Only, nothing happened. No rope, not even a tiny little string.

  I pulled off my coat and looked for the metal, my eyes demanding to confirm what my senses already felt was true. It was gone. All of it. Whatever magic it was that had let me melt my father’s bindings must have also claimed the silver plated against my skin.

  There was nothing to do then but jump. I threw my legs over the walls of the well, took a deep breath, and let gravity pull me down. My feet planted on either side of his head.