Red Rider's Hood

by Neal Shusterman

  “Until now,” said Loogie, and pulled down the collar of his shirt to show two little puncture marks on his neck. Everyone gasped.

  “So how come you’re not screaming, Loogie?” asked one of the others. “If the Crypts got you, how come you didn’t end up like Bobby?”

  “Vampires got a choice,” Loogie said. “Just like we do. We can eat our prey, or we can just bite ’em, and turn them into a werewolf.” Then Loogie pulled down the collar of his shirt a little farther to show two more bites, just beneath the first. “Three bites over three nights and poof! You’re a vampire, too.”

  The room was silent, until I spoke. “So…it was you I saw last night. That flying fox!”

  “No way.”

  “That’s crazy!”

  “You’re joking, Loogie, right?”

  Loogie shook his head. “Want me to ‘wing’ right here in front of you? That’s what they call turning into a bat—‘winging.’”

  But no one wanted to see it. We believed.

  “So, Loogie,” asked A/C, “are you a werewolf now, or a vampire?”

  “He’s both,” said Cedric. We turned to see him standing behind us. “He’s what the Mexicans call a chupacabra. The strength of a werewolf, the power of a vampire, able to change at will and fly all night long.”

  The Wolves looked at Cedric in amazement.

  “How come Loogie gets to fly?” asked A/C. “Why not me?”

  “Yeah, why not us?” complained the others.

  “Don’t worry,” said Cedric. “I’ve been working things out with the Crypts. Thanks to a new pact between them and us, in a few days we’re all going to be just like Loogie.”

  18

  “Which Side Are You On?”

  What do you do if you’re a kid living in Pearl Harbor, and you just happen to pick up a message on your walkie-talkie that the Japanese are going to be attacking tomorrow? What if those same Japanese pilots had taken you in and made you their friend?

  I had this massive bit of knowledge that no one else knew. Cedric was building himself an army—not just werewolves, but vampire werewolves! I mean, how do you kill a vampire werewolf? A silver stake through the heart? What would happen if Cedric got his way, and he started sending the surviving pack members to distant cities, with the power of flight, and a hunger not only for flesh, but for blood? The whole pack was excited about the thought, thrilled by it…and the thing is, so was I. As much as I wanted to stop it before it started, I wanted to fly like Loogie did. I wanted to know the hunger, and the feeling of satisfying it.

  Back in my car, I drove aimlessly, breaking all the rules I had learned in Driver’s Ed. Finally, exhausted beyond belief, I pulled over in a parking lot, leaned my head against the wheel, and closed my eyes, trying to sort out my thoughts. Good and evil, right and wrong, had all blended into a murky gray haze.

  The next thing I remember, I was turning down Forest Boulevard and parking out in front of Grandma’s. I didn’t know what I would tell her, but I felt sure I would have the words once I found her.

  Her door was unlocked. That wasn’t a good sign. Carefully I went in. “Grandma?”

  I felt that strange surge of déjà vu—this was exactly as it had been on the day Cedric lay hidden in her bed and stole that bag of blood money.

  “Grandma?”

  I pushed open the door to her room. This time no one was in the bed—not Grandma, not Cedric, nobody.

  “Grandma, are you here? We have to talk. It’s important!”

  It was getting dark very quickly. Night was falling like a curtain over the day, or maybe it was just the dense trees outside. On Grandma’s nightstand sat a glass, and in that glass sat her gross old dentures, all magnified by the water inside. Then a shaft of light pierced a slit in the curtains. It was the moon. It was already night, and the full moon was rising! The moonlight hit the glass, and right before my eyes, the teeth in that glass began to change. They stretched and grew, the canines elongating, getting sharp, and growing until the horrible dentures were so big, they broke the glass.

  I couldn’t scream, I couldn’t breathe, then the bathroom door slammed open, and out loped a werewolf, with big, frizzy gray fur and old familiar eyes.

  “Been waiting for you, Red,” the Grandma-wolf said. “Glad you came by.” She picked up the wolf chompers lying on the table and stuck them into her toothless, wolfen mouth.

  “There we are,” she said, baring her teeth. “The better to eat you with!”

  She lunged at me, I screamed, and wham—

  —I bumped my head on the steering wheel of my Mustang.

  I jumped, still reeling, still believing that the dream was real. It took a few good minutes for me to convince myself that I was still there, in the parking lot, at the wheel of my Mustang, and not at Grandma’s house.

  As I caught my breath, and shook off the evil feel of the nightmare, I realized that part of the dream was real. The part about the moon…because it was night, the full moon was on the rise, and I could already hear the far-off howls of wolves on the prowl.

  The battery on my watch had died, so I had no idea what time it was, but time didn’t matter to me anymore—not in the normal sense. All that mattered was that the moon was full, and it was night, which meant that every second was an eternity, and dawn was a lifetime away.

  The howls echoed from the faces of buildings, making it hard to tell which direction they came from, and as I drove, turning corner after corner, I felt like I was chasing my own tail. And then I thought, Pretty soon, I will have a tail, if Cedric bites me. The thought was so powerful, it took my mind off the road, and before I knew what was happening, I barreled through a red light, and a Mercedes came flying out of the intersection, right into my path.

  I slammed on the brakes and cranked the wheel to the right. A horn blared, and I missed the Mercedes by inches, but I was still careening out of control. I hit the curb, pedestrians scattered, and I plowed over an empty bus-stop bench.

  No! No, not now! I can’t have an accident now!

  If this morning had blessed me with good luck, tonight was cursing me with bad. I threw the car into reverse, but the wheels just spun. I put it into drive, but that didn’t help either. I hopped out of the car to see green radiator fluid pouring out, and the broken bench wedged under the car in such a way that only one of the four wheels was actually touching the ground.

  My car! My beautiful car!

  But no, I couldn’t worry about the car now. Was that a distant scream I heard? A woman attacked by a wolf? Was it just my imagination?

  “You all right, son?” said an old man from the group of gawking pedestrians.

  “Get out of the streets!” I told them all. “Get to your homes before it’s too late!” But they just stared at me like I was insane. Nothing I could do would convince them of the danger. Now, with my car useless, I took off on foot.

  I ran till I was out of breath, and further, to the very end of my endurance. Sweat poured from me like rain, and a heaviness filled my lungs. My head began to spin, but I had to push myself on. I heard another howl, not so distant this time. A snarl—it could have been around the next corner. I had lost track of where I was, and realized I had no weapon—even if I found the Wolves, what could I do? Talk them out of devouring innocent people? As if they would actually listen. It’s what werewolves did—it’s what they were. Predators. The only way to stop a predator was to cage it or kill it, and I don’t think there were any bars in the world strong enough to cage in Cedric and his gang.

  If you can’t beat them, join them, said a nagging voice in my head. It’s what they want. It’s what you want. Don’t deny it!

  I put my hands against my head, trying to press the voice away, but it was too deep in me now. It’s out of your hands, the voice said. Let nature take its course. And accept your true nature. You’re one of them. You’ve been one of them since the moment you stepped into Troll Bridge Hollow.

  Then, out of nowhere, something huge, hairy, a
nd reeking like a zoo pounced and brought me down hard. I hit my head on the pavement. Massive paws pressed down on my shoulders, pinning me to the ground, and all I could see was a fang-filled mouth set in a wide-open snarl. My whole head could have fit in that mouth.

  I knew who this was. I knew from the single gold fang, dripping werewolf saliva.

  “Which side are you on?” said the familiar voice of a girl, from behind Marvin.

  “Marissa! Thank God you’re—” The Marvin-wolf snarled in my face. It was a deep, jagged roar—an awful sound, like the voice of a demon. I tried to see where Marissa was, but the Marvin-beast filled my entire view.

  “Answer me!” Marissa demanded. “And if Marvin smells that you’re lying, he’ll swallow you whole!”

  I believed he could. That horrible mouth. Those awful teeth. And I also believed that he could smell a lie.

  “I…I…”

  Marvin’s claws began to dig into my shoulder.

  “The truth!” Marissa said.

  “I…I don’t know,” I told her. “I don’t know which side I’m on.” I had no choice but to admit it now.

  It wasn’t the answer either of them was expecting, but it must have smelled true, because the pressure on my shoulder eased. Marvin backed off of me. Finally I could see Marissa behind him, standing on the cracked sidewalk of the dimly lit street.

  “You can’t be on two sides at once,” she said. “Choose, or get out of the way.”

  I looked at snarling Marvin, then I looked back to her. “How about you?” I asked. “Which side are you on?”

  She didn’t answer me right away. “You were right all along about Marvin,” she said. “He’s been a full-fledged Wolf for a month, but I didn’t know until last night.” She looked at him lovingly, and gently brushed a thick lock of fur back from his eyes. “He became a Wolf to save our family.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Wolves won’t attack other Wolves’ families. They’re the only ones in town who are safe. So Marvin became one of them. He sacrificed himself to save me and our parents.”

  “You weren’t off-limits last night.”

  She grinned. “I attacked first. All bets were off. But Marvin here protected me.”

  Marvin let out a gentle purr. It had never occurred to me that Marvin might have a reason to be a Wolf beyond his own selfish ambition. Now I understood why he hated me so much. He had ensured Marissa’s safety by becoming a Wolf—the last thing he wanted was to see her dating a Wolf-in-training.

  “Marvin turned on the pack last night, by saving me,” she said. “Now he has no choice but to fight against Cedric, too.” Only then did I see that Marissa held the crossbow to her side.

  “Grandma! Where is she? Is she all right?”

  Suddenly Marvin turned his head, hearing something I couldn’t hear.

  “They’re coming!” Marissa said. “Run, Marvin!”

  Marvin glared at me—the same glare I’d seen when his eyes were human. Grandma was right; there was something about the eyes that never changed. Then he bounded off with the speed of a cheetah: a brown blur down a dark street, gone in an instant.

  Marissa ducked into a doorway, disappearing into the shadows. “So you were right about Marvin being a werewolf,” she said from the darkness. “But you were wrong about him being bad.”

  The air around us became silent. Too silent, like the moment before a storm. “Better hide, and hope we’re downwind,” Marissa said.

  But I didn’t hide. I stood there, out in the open, and watched the wolf pack come around the corner. They were all there, bounding headlong on all fours, like racehorses, with Cedric in the lead and Loogie winging just a few feet above. They saw me right away and came to a halt. I had no idea what they were going to do.

  “I know you’re after Marvin,” I said. “With all of you on it, you’re sure to catch him.” Yeah, I thought, and with all of you on it, no one else in town will get eaten by werewolves tonight. I wondered if Marissa had thought of that, too.

  Cedric couldn’t speak in wolf form, but his body language was easy to read. A quick gesture of his head called me over to him. I stepped from the curb, and then Cedric Soames, the cold, callous leader of the Wolves, knelt down. He wanted me to climb on his back and ride with them. So I did.

  Suddenly something grazed past my ear and struck a werewolf to my right. A roar of pain, the wolf turned, and I could see sudden shock and agony in its green eyes. A/C has green eyes, I thought. That wolf is A/C! Suddenly he collapsed to the ground, writhing in pain. A silver-tipped crossbow arrow had pierced his flank.

  A second arrow whizzed out of the darkness, nailing a mailbox across the street. Cedric roared and took off. I gripped his fur to keep from falling. The rest of the wolves followed, and before long we were racing at full speed, ignoring the shooter, following Marvin’s scent instead of Marissa’s. I turned back only once to see A/C roar, squirm in pain, then go limp.

  Which side was I on? There was no time to search for answers. All I could do now was ride on a werewolf’s back, toward a destiny as hidden as the dark side of a full moon.

  19

  A Gut Full of Stones

  Marvin stayed one step ahead of us, weaving in and out of the city for what seemed like hours. Several times the pack broke up and tried to circle around him, but just as he had weaved his way down the football field when he was Marvelous Marvin, star running back, he kept just out of the pack’s reach. This chase was a waste of the pack’s time. I knew it, and most of the pack must have known it, but I wasn’t going to lean over and whisper into Cedric’s ear. Every minute the pack was forced to follow Marvin was another minute they weren’t “wolfing.” Whether he intended to or not, Marvin Flowers saved a whole lot of lives that night.

  As I rode Cedric, like the lead man in a posse, I began to feel a strange sense of power. You could lead this group, that mischievous voice in my head kept telling me. Consigliere? Sure, maybe for a while, but then there was Denver. I had already claimed the Mile High City as my own. In a few years’ time, I could be there, handpicking my own pack. This night’s wild ride through the moonlit city was just a taste of what it could be like. Then I looked up at Loogie, flitting back and forth above us. The possibilities were endless.

  As dawn approached, it seemed that Marvin was finally getting tired. The pack wasn’t just following his scent anymore, now they could see him. Even I, with my limited human vision, could see him loping steadily in front of us, crossing through the mist of a lonely, run-down park. I recognized it right away. It was Abject End Park, gateway to the Canyons. Marvin was leading us back to our new lair. Maybe he knew it was over for him, and he wanted to end it there. Or maybe he had something else in mind.

  We reached the old dance club. The dense mist of the Canyons poured in through the door. Cedric stalked in first with the pack close behind. I hopped off Cedric’s back. There was something wrong in here, but I wasn’t quite sure what it was. It was something I had caught out of the corner of my eye, but I hadn’t seen it long enough for it to leave an impression on my brain.

  “Marvin, we know you’re in here,” I said. Cedric growled in a fury. I put up my hand to calm him down. “Let me handle this for you,” I told Cedric. “I promise you won’t be disappointed.”

  Cedric snarled at me again, then watched to see what I would do. The whole pack kept their eyes on me as I stepped out into the middle of the old dance floor. I had to be referee here. Maybe, if I played this right, everyone could get what they wanted. But then, how could that be, when all Cedric wanted was to see Marvin dead?

  “Let’s make a deal, Marvin.” I had no idea what the deal could possibly be, but I knew if I kept talking, it would keep Cedric and the pack from tearing the place apart looking for Marvin so they could tear him apart. “A deal, Marvin. A really good deal.” Why I wanted to save Marvin, I had no idea. He had done nothing but make life miserable for me since that day he washed my windshield. “Cedric and the pack will l
et you live, in return for something,” I said.

  Cedric’s eyes narrowed, and he bared his teeth at me. This had better be good, the look said.

  “Something in return,” I said again, stalling. And then it came to me! “Cedric will let you live…but someday, he will ask you to do a favor for him. And whatever that favor is, you can’t refuse.” I glanced to Cedric, and that angry wolf gaze changed into a coyote grin, because what I offered Marvin had come straight out of one of Cedric’s beloved Mafia movies!

  We waited, and after a few moments Marvin came slinking out of the shadows, onto the dance floor. The pack surrounded him, and Cedric went back to growling, just in case Marvin had forgotten how furious he was.

  Then the feeling fell upon me again. Something here didn’t look right. As the pack formed a growling circle around Marvin, and as Marvin crouched and crawled on his belly like a naughty dog, I tried to retrace all the things I had seen over the past few seconds that could have given me that freaky feeling. I glanced at the door: still partway open, with mist spilling in. I looked down to the dance floor, now scuffed and scratched by werewolf claws. I lifted my eyes up to the old disco ball, swinging slightly up above, all sharp and pointy.

  Sharp and pointy?

  I glanced up again. That was no disco ball! I wasn’t quite sure what it was at first. It looked like a ball of gray clay, with silverware sticking out of it in all directions. Forks, knives, spoons. Silver ware.

  Then I realized that the ball of clay in the middle might not be clay at all. It might just be plastic explosive.

  A wire stretched from the little ball across the ceiling to a far wall. Leaving the dance floor, I followed the path of the wire to an old DJ booth, where I saw none other than my own little old grandma, dressed in black like a special-ops agent, clutching a detonator.

  She snapped her head to see me at the threshold, and her jaw dropped. She was scared. Scared of me—scared that I would give her away to the wolves. I turned to look at them. They were all on the dance floor, going up to Marvin, one by one swatting him with their paws, like some sort of wolfen punishment ritual.