Red Rider's Hood

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.

MARVIN WEREW

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 me 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