Red Rider's Hood (20 page)

I couldn't imagine the feeling. “It's okay,” I said. “It's okay.” But I knew it wasn't. It would never be okay.

Cedric tried to hold back his pain and looked at me with anguish in his eyes. “Why?” he said. “Why did you? Why did you, Red?”

“You said werewolves were a part of nature,” I told him. “And maybe you're right. But it's also part of nature for humans to protect themselves. That's why, Cedric.”

He closed his eyes, either from the pain of the vampire bites, or maybe from the pain of my betrayal. Then he opened them again. “Mother Nature's a tough old witch,” Cedric gasped out. “Like your grandma.”

I could feel his heart beating, but with nothing to pump, it just pounded against itself.

“Finish it,” Cedric said. “Please, finish it.”

I knew what he wanted, but the silver had all been spent. No more arrows, nothing. And then I realized that there was some
silver left.
Keep it close to your heart,
Mom had told me. I did, and I guess it protected me. I reached into my shirt and pulled out the little coin with the image of Saint Gabriel. I took it from around my neck and gently lifted Cedric's hand. There were bat bites all over his palm, little bloodless wounds. I took the coin and pressed it into his palm, closing his fingers around it.

“I hope this pays the fare, Cedric,” I said gently, “to wherever you're going.”

He gripped the coin tightly, making sure the silver touched the open wounds on his hands, and he closed his eyes. He shuddered once, shuddered again, and then he was gone.

I stared at him long after he was dead, and when I finally looked up, a beautiful girl in a flowing black gown stood before me.

“Hello, Red. Sorry it had to end like this, but what kind of babysitter would I be if I let Cedric get you?”

Grandma and Marissa came up behind me. “Who in blazes is that?” Grandma asked.

“Rowena,” I told her. “Queen of the Crypts.”

Out of the mist behind her stepped Loogie, in human form. Well, sort of human, considering his recent undead status.

“We missed one!” said Grandma.

Rowena put up her hand. “Don't worry about him,” she said gently. “He's one of us now. We'll keep him out of trouble.”

Loogie looked at Cedric's body and lowered his head in respect.

“Go home,” Rowena told us. “My girls will clean up the mess.”

“We have to count the bodies,” I told her. “To make sure we got them all.”

Then Rowena came over to me and whispered into my ear. “You'll never get them all,” she said. “They're werewolves, and no matter how many you kill, there will always be one more.”

The thought made me shiver, but I knew it was true. Grandma got all of Xavier's gang, and still the wolves came back. Even if we got all of Cedric's, it didn't mean we were safe forever.

“The Wolves all had families,” Rowena reminded me. “They won't take kindly to what happened here tonight—and who knows if there's a baby brother or sister who took the bite. So my advice to you, Red, is to fix that car of yours, and make sure it's faster than anyone can run—man, or wolf.”

She backed away. I nodded to her in understanding, then she and Loogie turned into bats and flew deep into the Canyons.

“Hmm,” said Grandma. “Vampires, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“Somebody else's problem.” She turned and walked away.

I took one more look at Cedric, the immortal leader of the pack, not so immortal after all. Then Marissa gently grabbed my arm, to lead me away. As dawn broke over the city, we walked out of that dismal place, across Abject End Park, and headed for home.

I
've been watching the news,” I told Marissa the next day in the antique shop. “There aren't any reports of a gang war, or anything. It's like it never happened.”

Marissa organized a shelf of knickknacks, not looking at me much. “I guess the Crypts cleaned up real good,” she said. She glanced at me once, then looked away. “I did see one report, though,” she told me. “They were talking about a pack of stray dogs roaming the streets. Animal Control is on it, but they haven't found anything.”

“I guess they never will,” I said. Then I reached over and took her hand. “I'm sorry about Marvin.”

She tried to force a smile. “My parents think he ran off to Hollywood, like he always threatened to—and don't you tell them any different.”

I'm sure her parents knew the truth, though, or at least some of it. I could see it in their eyes when they came by to pick up Marissa that afternoon. There are just some things parents
know about you. Like whether or not you're a werewolf.

As for my parents, when they came back from their trip, they knew something had happened to me while they were gone, they just weren't sure what it was. “You're growing up, Red,” was the closest my father came to putting his finger on it. The way they looked at me freaked me out so much, I gave myself the silver test—we all did, Grandma, Marissa, and me, gripping a silver spoon tightly in our hands—making sure it was silver and not just stainless steel. No reaction. It was the last time the three of us met together as a team of werewolf hunters.

With my car in the shop, I did a lot of walking over the next few weeks, just to listen to the gossip in the neighborhood. According to the rumors, the Wolves just disappeared, as they had twenty years ago. Some people thought they just left to find a better town to terrorize. “Good riddance to bad rubbish,” they would say. There was, of course, a story being whispered about a single, hairy creature descending from the skies during the next full moon, draining all the blood from a couple of vicious junkyard dogs, but no one really believed it. Aside from that, the neighborhood was soon back to normal, short a handful of troublemakers that no one was going to miss.

There were some people out there who knew the truth, though. I know this because of all the envelopes that kept showing up in my mailbox and under my door. Thank-you notes, packed with money. Secret payments from relieved citizens, just like the ones Grandma had gotten years ago. It turns out she and Marissa were now getting those envelopes, too.

“Ain't no shame in accepting payment for services rendered,”
Grandma said. I put mine in the safe, where Grandma's first batch of blood money had hidden all those years. “Summer job,” I told my parents, and although they usually asked me a million questions, this time they knew enough not to.

Rowena was right about one thing. Every now and again, I would catch nasty, evil looks from people who had a son or a brother in the Wolves. Maybe they were just normal human beings, hating me for taking away their loved one, but then again you never know for sure what's boiling in a person's blood. But as long as my Mustang is in top shape, I don't need to worry. I can outrun anything.

Anything, that is, but the memory of Cedric Soames.

It took me a month to dredge up the nerve to walk down Cedric's street. I half expected to see his ghost in the shadows of the alleys, but instead, all I saw was his sister, Tina, playing hopscotch with her friends out front. She stopped for a moment when she saw me, then continued her game.

“My mama says Cedric got himself a good job, far away, and he ain't gonna be back no more,” Tina said.

“If that's what your mama says, I guess it's true.”

“I don't believe it, though,” Tina said.

“So where do you think he is?”

Tina hopped four times, picked up the little beanbag, and went back to the first square. “I think he got himself arrested for all that bad stuff he does. I think he's locked away in a dark, dark place.” And then she left the little chalk squares of her game and came right up to me. “I'll tell you this, though,” she said, staring me in the eye like a devil child. “There ain't no
place in this world or the next that can hold Cedric in. He'll come back, Red, you wait and see. And when he does, those who crossed him are gonna pay.”

As she went back to her game, I swore to myself I would never go down Cedric's street again.

It didn't make a difference, though, because Tina turned out to be right. One year after the Wolves fell, Cedric came back.

My parents weren't off sailing in the Mediterranean this time, but they were out for the evening. I came home to an empty house, or so I thought. I didn't think there was anything significant about the day. I mean, there are some days that just burn themselves into your mental calendar. August 4 was that date for me, Marissa, and Grandma. That was the day the Wolves fell, but that anniversary had already come and gone without any fireworks.

What I didn't consider was that the lunar calendar doesn't quite track along with the months. The date was August 9. The second full moon of summer. I had gotten a summer job taking old junkyard cars and restoring them, so was pretty dirty when I got home. I figured I'd clean up, then call Marissa, to see if she wanted to go out for a burger or something. I went into my bedroom, half lit by the fading twilight. That's when I saw him.

I was so surprised I let out a quaking groan of fear—not a scream, because your first reaction is never a scream. The scream comes later, when your mind has a chance to catch up with your gut, and you know what you're dealing with.

He was there, in the corner of the room, watching me.

I got my balance back, took a deep breath, and slowly approached.

There on my bookshelf sat a skull. I didn't recognize it at first, until I took a good look at the teeth and imagined what a pair of lips might look like in front of them. Grinning. Scowling. There was no doubt. This was the skull of Cedric Soames.

Grandma had told me that werewolf flesh turns to dust much faster than human flesh, but she had also told me that their bones last an eternity. “Hard as diamonds those bones are,” she had said, “which means the earth can never quite be free of a werewolf.”

How the skull got here, I didn't know. I thought that maybe his creepy little sister, Tina, had broken in and set it on my shelf to freak me out. Or maybe Loogie had flown it in on bat wings, to make sure I never forgot. But the Soames family had moved clear across the country a few months after Cedric disappeared. And as for Loogie…well, everyone knows a vampire can't enter someone's house without being invited.

As I stood there, my heart beating in overdrive, the last of the twilight faded, and the skull on my shelf transformed into the skull of a wolf.

Grandma and Marissa came over that night. We all sat on my bed and stared at the werewolf skull, which just stared back at us, unblinking, its fangs glistening with some kind of strange ectoplasm, like supernatural saliva.

“What's it doing here, Grandma?” I asked. “What does it want?”

Grandma just shook her head. “I know an awful lot about werewolves, Red, but don't know everything. Could be that
Cedric was just too powerful to die outright. Could be some part of him is trying to come back.”

“Why me?” I asked, but I already knew the answer. I was his
consigliere.
And I was the one who betrayed him.

The skull vanished when the moon began to wane, but appeared again at the next full moon, and it has been coming back ever since. I've grown used to it now. Well, maybe not used to it, but resigned to it, like a death-row inmate is resigned to his fate. Because, you see, when I wake up in the morning, always just before dawn, that werewolf skull is closer to my bed that it had been when I went to sleep. Each month it gets closer, no matter where I set it before I go to sleep. I don't fear it will devour me, but I do know this: One day I'll wake up to find it clamped down on my arm, breaking just enough skin to pass down the curse.

But that hasn't happened yet, so for now I wait, looking deep into those hollow eye sockets, whispering to it so only he and I can hear.

“My, my, Cedric, what dark, empty eyes you have.”

“The better to watch you with, Red…The better to watch you with…”

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