Red Rider's Hood

by Neal Shusterman

  “I hear you,” A/C said, nodding. “Anyway, Cedric wants to see you. He thinks you’re avoiding him.”

  “Avoiding him? No way.”

  Warhead was to my right, directly in front of the bush Marissa was hiding under. He sniffed the air suspiciously, and I suddenly had an awful thought.

  “Uh…by the way, how’d you find me here?” I asked.

  A/C pointed at his nose. “A werewolf’s nose is his best friend—especially this close to the full moon.”

  Warhead was still sniffing. He knew someone else had been here. Marvin might not have been a werewolf yet, but if he got close enough, I’ll bet he’d recognize his sister’s perfume. If they found her with the crossbow and arrows, it would be all over for us. So thinking fast, I said, “Hey, Marvin—you just missed your sister.”

  Warhead stopped sniffing, and Marvin snapped his eyes to me, glaring. “What was she doing here?”

  I matched his glare. “Like I said, we were taking a walk.”

  Then a corner of his mouth turned up in a smirk. “Looks like she finally wised up and ditched you.”

  I wanted to match insult for insult, but I had to hold back that urge. Getting Marissa out of mind, if not out of scent, was more important. I looked down and shrugged, like maybe he was right. His smirk widened into a full-fledged gloat, so I burped in his face, figuring that would get his mind off it, and kill any other scent as well.

  “Yuck!” He pushed me away from him, hard.

  Warhead laughed, and A/C straightened up. Only Loogie didn’t seem to react. He was busy covering his eyes from the weak glare of the sun, which was just peeking over the tops of the nearby buildings.

  “Sun’s getting high,” Loogie said as he moved closer to a tree to get under the shadow. “It’s gonna be another scorcher. We should get back to the Hollow.”

  “What’s the matter?” I asked. “Can’t take the heat?”

  “No,” Loogie said, slipping on his sunglasses. “I just don’t got my sunscreen, that’s all.”

  I laughed. Loogie was about as white as a corpse in Clorox—and seemed even paler than he used to be, now that he was set against the rich greens and browns of the park. “Ain’t ever heard of a werewolf that needs sunscreen,” I said. His skin was practically translucent—like you could see right through it to his veins.

  “Now you have.”

  I wondered if that would affect his fur as a werewolf…then I realized that I would know the answer very soon.

  “Come on,” said A/C. “Cedric’s waiting.”

  “Okay. Let me get my jacket.”

  “Whaddaya need a jacket for in this heat?”

  “It was raining when I got here.” And then I silently cursed myself. It hadn’t been raining since dawn. That fact was lost on everyone except for Marvin. He glared at me.

  “How early were you out ‘walking’ with my sister?”

  “Early enough not to be bothered by you.”

  Marvin glared at me some more, but that was okay, because it kept his attention away from the target tree, riddled with arrow holes.

  As we walked away from the tree, I figured I’d make a narrow escape…until I reached the spot where I’d left my jacket on the ground.

  There was a bag of silver bullets sitting on top it, and it was wide open.

  How could I have been so stupid? One glance down from any of them and they would see what was inside.

  “Hang on,” I said, bending over it. I quickly rolled up the top of the bag and tossed it gently aside, trying to make it look like I was just adding a new piece of litter to the litter-ridden park. Then I picked up my jacket and turned to go.

  “What about the bag?” A/C asked.

  “Is there food inside?” Warhead asked. “If you don’t want it, I’ll eat it. I’m starved.” He tried to pick it up, but I got to it first.

  “Nothing you’d like,” I told him, holding it out of his reach.

  “Hey—you were throwing it away,” Warhead said. “Now you’re keeping it, just so I can’t have it?”

  “C’mon,” said A/C impatiently, “just take it and let’s go.”

  And so without any other choice, I took the bag of bullets meant for Marissa and left the park.

  We pushed our way through the hedge surrounding the park and headed in the direction of Troll Bridge Hollow. As we walked, I rolled the top of the paper bag down even tighter, to pack the bullets down so they wouldn’t rattle. Marvin must have seen the way I was clutching it, because he snatched it away.

  “Did Grandma pack her Little Red lunch?”

  I grabbed it back from him before he could look inside. “No, your sister did, and sealed it with a kiss.”

  Marvin tried to slug me, but A/C held him back. “Touch him and you answer to Cedric,” A/C said.

  Marvin snorted at that. “This little snot’s got you all wrapped around his finger, and you just let him do it.”

  At the next corner, I wanted to drop the bag casually into a trash can, figuring I could come back and get it later, but Warhead still had his eyes on it and wanted a bite of whatever it was he thought I had. I knew I’d have to keep the bullets with me.

  A/C and Warhead turned a corner up ahead, and Loogie was somewhere far behind. Suddenly I felt a hand digging into my shoulder. It was Marvin. He stopped me before I turned the corner.

  “You know Cedric doesn’t control me like he controls the others.” He spoke quietly, so only I would be able to hear him. “I don’t play by his rules. Any agreements between you and him don’t mean anything to me. You got that?”

  I started to answer him, but he cut me off. “No, don’t say anything. Just keep looking straight ahead.” He prodded me forward, and I kept walking. When we turned the corner, A/C and Warhead were twenty feet ahead of us.

  “So,” Marvin continued, “Cedric promised you he’d leave your grandmother alone? Well, that’s Cedric’s business. But I make no such promises. I politely asked you to keep your paws away from my sister, but you didn’t. So now your dear sweet grandma and the rest of your family move to the top of my dinner menu.”

  Then he chuckled. It was a low, unpleasant sound. And when he was through chuckling, he said, “That is, they would be on the menu…if I were a werewolf.”

  We arrived at the Hollow. Cedric was waiting, and I could tell that he was already feeling the effects of the growing moon. His jaw was set like stone, a vein pulsed on his neck, and he was pacing like a caged animal in the dreary depths of that dim chamber. The entire place was already starting to smell like animal musk and dog breath. Each night, as it got closer to the full moon, they were all changing just a little bit inside—and although I knew it was just my imagination, I felt like I was changing, too. Without even realizing it, I reached to my chest and felt the Saint Gabriel’s coin that was still hanging from my neck, hiding beneath my shirt. Protection, I thought. I wondered if it could protect me from myself.

  “I want to know where you’ve been!” Cedric demanded when he saw me. “And why you haven’t been reporting to me all you know about the hunters.”

  I forced myself to be calm, answering in an easy tone of voice. “I’ve been gathering information,” I told him. “No sense reporting back until I had something worth telling.”

  Cedric relaxed the tiniest bit. “You got something?”

  “Oh, yeah!” I smiled, and didn’t say anything more for a few long seconds, keeping him in suspense. I noticed Cedric glancing down at the bag in my hand, so I spoke up, pulling his attention away from the bag and back to me.

  “The hunters know about Troll Bridge Hollow,” I said.

  “Because you told them!” shouted Marvin.

  “Shut your face!” Cedric said, then turned back to me. “So how do they know?”

  “It’s not too hard a thing to find out. I’ll bet they’ve known for a long time.” I told him, “This isn’t a good place to get caught—only one entrance with no back door. They’re gonna have sharpshooters posted in a nea
rby building. They’re gonna pick us off one by one as we come out the door tomorrow night.”

  The others looked worried, but Cedric just smiled. “And how do they know we’re gonna be here?”

  I smiled right back. “I told them I’d make sure of it.”

  Cedric nodded. “So they think we’re gonna be like ducks in a shooting gallery. Are all the hunters gonna be here?”

  “Every last one of them.”

  “Let’s go take care of them now,” said Warhead, pounding his fist into his palm.

  “We’ll wait till we go wolfing.” Cedric crossed his arms. “What kind of weapons they got?”

  “State-of-the-art,” I told him. “Automatic rifles with laser sights. You see a little pinprick of red, and the next moment you’re history.”

  “Silver bullets?”

  And then I had a brainstorm. There was already too much interest in the bag I was holding. I knew I wouldn’t get out of there without someone seeing inside…but maybe the truth could set me free.

  “Yeah, they’ve got silver bullets,” I said. “But a lot fewer than they think they have.” Then I emptied the bag on the table right in front of Cedric. A few bullets rolled onto the floor, and the Wolves jumped back like they were acid.

  “You stole these from your own grandmother?” Cedric laughed and laughed. “You are one bad little wolverine!”

  “You got that right!”

  He looked at the bullets—I could see a little bit of fear in his face, and Cedric never showed fear. “Okay—get rid of them.”

  So I did. I picked up all the silver bullets and put them back in the bag. “I’ll go up on the bridge and throw them into the river,” I said.

  “We have to leave Troll Bridge Hollow; we can’t stay here,” said A/C, looking to Cedric for approval. “We should pick up and move, right now.”

  “Don’t be dumb! That would be too suspicious,” I told him. “You gotta pretend like you don’t know anything. You can’t let them know that you’re onto them.”

  “Exactly,” said Cedric.

  I pointed to a grate on the ground toward the back of the huge room. “Anyone know what’s down there?”

  “Just a drainage tunnel,” said Klutz. “It empties out into the river.”

  “There’s our back door,” I said.

  “Good thinking,” said Cedric. “We’ll get everyone here before sundown—then, once we transform, we’ll get out through the tunnel, sneak up on the hunters from behind, and it’s supper time.” Then Cedric turned back to me. “You gave us all the information we needed,” he said. “Your job is done.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. “Cool,” I said, rolling up the lip on the bag of silver bullets. “I’ll go get rid of these.” I turned to go, and then Cedric did something that I wasn’t expecting.

  “I’ll go with you,” he said.

  The last thing that I wanted right then was to be alone with Cedric, but I wasn’t about to let him know that. Maybe he just wanted to walk me up, to make sure I got rid of those bullets—if I were him, that’s what I would do. But then he could have sent any one of the Wolves to do that, he didn’t have to come himself. I had given him all the information he needed. It meant I wasn’t needed anymore. I began to wonder if it was going to be me, instead of the bullets, that got thrown off the bridge.

  I swallowed hard and tried to pretend like I wasn’t scared.

  A set of rusty metal service stairs zigzagged up the side of the Troll Bridge Hollow to the bridge deck above. Halfway up, Cedric stopped me. We were in darkness, and in the shadow cast by the bridge, no one could see us. I could barely see him.

  “You talked like a real know-it-all in there,” he said. “You made everyone else look foolish.”

  “I…uh…I didn’t mean to,” I said. “I was just trying to be sensible.”

  “Sensible,” he echoed. I couldn’t figure out if his voice was mocking. “A/C’s my second in command, and I don’t think he liked that you talked back to him, calling him dumb.”

  “Like I said—”

  “Yeah, I know,” Cedric said. “You were being sensible.”

  Cedric was quiet for a moment, then he said, “Did you ever watch any of those Mafia movies?”

  I had to laugh—what did that have to do with anything? “Like, which ones?”

  “Any of them. All of them. There’s TV shows, too. See, it’s always the same—there’s the head guy. He’s the boss, or the Godfather, or whatever. He’s got lieutenants and captains and stuff. It’s like a friggin’ army.”

  “Yeah? So?” The bullets were feeling heavier and heavier in my hands.

  “There’s always this one guy, though. The consigliere. Ever hear of that?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You know what it is?”

  “No,” I said.

  Cedric rapped me on the shoulder. “See—so you’re not a complete know-it-all.” I let out a nervous little laugh. Cedric continued. “The consigliere is like the adviser to the Godfather. Kind of like his second in command, without really being his second in command.”

  I took a deep breath, suddenly realizing where this was going.

  “See,” said Cedric, “A/C is gonna be the first of us heading out. He’s going to Chicago, and I’m going to need to appoint someone else to be second in command. But it can’t be you, because that’s gonna tick off the other guys. ‘Why’s he making the Wolverine second in charge?’ they’re gonna say, and they ain’t gonna listen to you—heck, if I were them I wouldn’t listen to a snot-nosed brat like you, either. But, see, you got the brains that they don’t have, and they’re all too stupid to see it. So there’s no way you can be second in command,” he said again. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t be consigliere.”

  He waited for me to respond, but I didn’t, because I just didn’t know what to feel. I was relieved that he didn’t come up here to kill me, and stupefied that he was willing to put so much faith in me, when I was really the enemy.

  “So tomorrow we take care of the hunters, then the next night, you’ll get ‘made.’ After your first kill, we’ll talk about it.” He patted me on the shoulder. “So are we gonna toss these bullets?”

  “Sure,” I said, but my voice came out little more than a whisper. “I’ll take care of it.”

  “You’re doing good, Red,” he said. “You’re proving yourself every day.” Then he turned and clattered back down the stairs.

  The sound of his footsteps faded, and I continued up until I reached the deck of the bridge. Cars whizzed past, not knowing or caring that I was there, as I followed the bridge’s walkway, until I was halfway across the river. I looked over the edge, holding the bag of bullets. I knew I could take them to Marissa, and the Wolves would never know. Simple as that. Simple. But instead I found myself hurling the bag, bullets and all, over the edge of the bridge, and into the water.

  15

  Pregnant Moon

  You did WHAT with the bullets?” Grandma shouted. I had walked around for hours before I worked up enough nerve to go to Grandma’s house. It was evening by the time I got there.

  I didn’t mean to tell her how it happened. I started out just telling her the bullets were lost, but Grandma has a way of poking and prodding at the loose ends of a story until the whole thing just unravels.

  “The Wolves trust me. I had to prove myself worthy to them—they were all watching me!” It was a lie. No one had been watching. I told myself that I had a good reason for lying to Grandma, but that was just a lie, too.

  “Listen,” I told her. “I’ve got some information for you.” Then I told her how the Wolves planned to sneak out through the drainage tunnel beneath Troll Bridge Hollow. “Find where that tunnel lets out, and you’ll have them,” I said.

  Grandma sized me up for a moment, then said calmly, “That information can’t help us if we don’t have silver bullets,” she said. “But I suppose you already knew that.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I�
��m really, really sorry.”

  Grandma looked at me, stared into my eyes, and said nothing. Then, finally, she smiled. “Of course you’re sorry. I know you are.”

  Only there was no warmth in her smile, and her eyes were still hard.

  “What are you going to do now?” I asked her.

  “Oh, don’t you worry about that. I’ll cook up something.”

  “Hey—you had some other bullets, didn’t you?” I asked. “The ones that were still cooling? Where did you put them?”

  “Someplace safe,” she said quickly, almost sharply, and didn’t bother to tell me where.

  I reached to my chest, feeling the little silver coin that Mom had given me. It wasn’t much, but it could be melted down into a single bullet.

  “Maybe I could give you some silver, Grandma.”

  “Don’t worry, Red. I’ll manage. I always have.”

  It was as though a chill had descended on the room. Grandma moved around the house, locking cabinets and drawers, as if absentmindedly. But she didn’t miss a single one.

  “Are you worried about me, Grandma?” I asked.

  “Oh, not at all, not at all,” she said. “I’m sure you know exactly what you’re doing. Why don’t you run along home now, Red. I have a lot to do, a lot to prepare.”

  “Grandma, please, let me help you.”

  But I could see a guarded expression on her face now, a look of suspicion that I had never seen there before.

  “No, you’ve been enough help, I think.”

  I went home and tried to sleep, but couldn’t, so I stared up at the moon, watching how it’s trailing edge faded into darkness, so close to being full, but not quite there. A pregnant moon, Grandma called it. Full almost to bursting, and ready to give birth to something unthinkable. Tomorrow night, the Wolves would prowl the city streets, devouring anyone in their path. Tomorrow night would also change my life forever. Whatever happened tomorrow, whichever way it went down, I know nothing would ever be the same.

  When my alarm went off before dawn, I got out of bed and went down to the park, but Marissa never showed. A little later I tried calling Grandma, to offer my help again, but there was no answer.