Red Rider's Hood

It was all coming together for me now. Marvin had been hanging out at that intersection, casing cars for things to steal?it was bad luck all around that I got caught at that par­ticular traffic light on that particular day. But then again, maybe it wasn't luck at all. Maybe it was fate. The second Marvin told Cedric it was me?the wolf hunter's grandson?taking a big bag of cash to my grandmother, Cedric wasted no time in get­ting to Grandma's house before I did.

Marissa pulled her chair closer to Grandma's. 'Will you tell us everything you know?'

Grandma looked at us and sighed. 'I suppose I have appren­tices now whether I want them or not.' She went to a bureau that held dozens of photo albums. She was a photographer, after all, so photos filled every nook and cranny of her place. As a little kid, I had been through just about all of those albums. They were filled with pictures of her with Grandpa, and of their trips to strange and faraway places. But today, Grandma pulled out a photo album from the bottom of the lowest drawer. This one was full of werewolves, and of her and Grandpa's efforts as werewolf hunters. The pictures of the wolves were all taken with a telephoto lens from a safe distance, some with special film to catch them in the dark. The grainy images of snarling beasts were more disturbing than anything I had seen in my sixteen years. They didn't quite look like natural wolves, but like something almost prehistoric. Like a cross between bear and wolf, but with teeth sharp as a shark's. It was horrifying. It was fascinating. My eyes were drawn to each of those pictures, and I couldn't look away.

'We used these photos to identify them,' Grandma said. 'There's something about the eyes, the hair color, and the set of the jaw that doesn't change. Once we had a good picture of them in werewolf form, it was easier to figure out their human identities.' She pointed to one particularly nasty-looking wolf. 'That was Xavier.'

I couldn't look at the picture for long. I couldn't get the feeling out of my mind that he was glaring back at me.

'Grandma, why don't you tell us how it happened the first time, and how you beat Xavier and his gang.'

Grandma took a moment to look both of us in the eyes. 'I thought it would be a story I would take with me to my grave. I wish I could have, but seeing how the evil's back just as strong as before, it's time the story was told.'

Grandma pulled a loose brick from her fireplace, and from behind it took out a music box. 'I've always kept this at hand,' she said. 'Just in case.' She opened the lid of the music box, and it played 'Amazing Grace.' There wasn't any jewelry in its red velvet lining. Instead there were bullets. Silver ones. They were tarnished to the point of being almost black, but you could still tell they were silver. I found myself backing away at the sight of them, and I almost tripped over the little table behind me.

'It's true, then,' I said. 'Silver bullets kill werewolves!'

'It's simple science,' Grandma said. 'Werewolves are aller­gic to certain metals. They have a violent reaction to silver. Get some silver wedged in their body, and the allergic reaction kills them in less than a minute. The problem for their prey is surviving during that last minute. That's why bullets work best. You can get them from a distance, and run away safely.' And then she got sad. Thoughtful. 'Your grandfather and I? we knew what was going on in town. No one else wanted to admit it. No one else dared to believe it. So we did research. We traveled the world, digging through crumbling books in old libraries to learn all we could. All the details. How fast does a werewolf run? How deep does a bite have to be before they pass the curse on to you?'

'How deep?' I asked.

'Not deep at all,' said Marissa, giving me a smug smile. 'I've been doing research on lycanthropism, too.'

'Huh?'

'Lycanthropism,' said Grandma. 'That's just a fancy word for the werewolf curse. But really, it's nothing more than a supernatural virus. It gets passed on in the saliva, like rabies. If a bite breaks the skin, there's a pretty good chance you've got it.'

I shivered.

'After your grandpa and I learned all there was to learn, we came back. We brewed ourselves a wolfsbane cologne and wore it everywhere we went, keeping track of the people who avoided us because of the smell. To be double sure, we went to their homes every full moon, to see if they were there or not. The ones who were never home we knew were werewolves.

'Then one full moon, we went out on our motorcycles, and went after them one by one. Xavier was the hardest. He always kept himself shielded by the pack. He'd let all the others take the silver bullets meant for him. Selfish to the last.'

'But in the end, you got him,' I said.

'Yes, we did, Red.' But she didn't say any more about it.

It was all too hard to take. Being deaf, dumb, and blind would be better than knowing the truth. These were dark days, getting darker by the minute, and I didn't even want to think about the nights. I looked to Marissa, who seemed almost hypnotized by the sight of that little musical jewelry box. On the cover was a mountain lit by a full moon. I opened it to the sound of the innocent music, and the sight of the not-so-innocent silver bullets.

'I've never used a gun, Grandma,' I said. 'I don't ever want to.' Once, when I was little, I saw a man get shot. It happened right in front of me, on the street. Ever since then, you could say guns and me didn't get along. My dad calls it 'ballistiphobia,' but I call it just plain hatred. Either way, I didn't know if I'd ever be able to touch a gun, much less fire one. I guess Grandma understood, because she took the music box from me and gently closed it.

'I don't blame you, Red. I don't blame you at all. You've got a decent heart,' she said, although I wasn't sure whether or not I really did. She put the box away, and hid it behind the loose bricks again. 'Different times call for different weapons.'

Marissa rolled her eyes. 'C'mon,' she said. 'You gotta kill werewolves with silver bullets. Everyone knows that.'

But Grandma shook her head. 'If there's one thing I learned in all of this, it's that instinct counts for a lot. If Red's instinct is to stay away from bullets, then maybe he should stay away from them.'

I turned to Marissa. 'What does your instinct tell you?'

Marissa looked at me, then at Grandma, and closed her eyes, going deep into herself, I guess, to tug at some of those instincts. She took a deep breath, and another, then she opened her eyes.

'It seems to me my instincts are telling me only one thing... that Cedric Soames is going to be harder to defeat than his grandfather.'

There are werewolf legends, and there are werewolf facts. Grandma knew the difference, and that night, until the sun made a lonely appearance on the horizon, she gave us a crash course in the Lycanthropic sciences, as she called it.

On the power of the moon, she told us this: 'The full moon ain't an exact sort of thing. The phase of the moon is always changing slightly. For three days, the moon is full enough to boil the blood and make a man turn wolf. The second day the curse is at its strongest, and the higher the moon is in the sky, the more deadly the wolf.'

On werewolf appetites, she told us this: 'In human form, they can eat anything humans eat, although they're partial to meat. In wolf form, they're driven to eat their weight in meat each night, and it must be the meat of a fresh kill.'

On the mind of the werewolf, she told us this: 'The mind of a human infected with the werewolf curse doesn't always start off being evil, but the way I see it, a person turns evil real quick.'

On werewolf redemption, she told us this: 'Ain't no such thing. No antidote, no remedy, and no turning back. Only way to save a werewolf's soul is to end its misery, and hope the good Lord truly does have infinite mercy.'

And of our chances, she told us this: 'We all have to die someday. Let's hope we die as humans.'

By dawn, my eyelids felt as heavy as the boughs on her tree-lined street, but a plan had already started forming in my mind. Marissa went home, and I closed my eyes to take a quick nap? but when I woke up, it was already late afternoon. Grandma was still sleeping. I didn't wake her. Instead I slipped out and set a scheme in motion. It would take everything I had inside me to pull it off, and now I was restless as a caged animal, eager to get started. My plan was twisted and nasty and clever and cruel. I left that morning with a grin on my face, feeling as wicked as a wolf.