Red Rider's Hood

that one of my Wolf brothers would be right there to help me fight them off.

Wolf brothers.

It kind of tweaked my spine to think of them as brothers . . . but then, being a brother didn't always mean that you meant one another well. My mom, who was an all-occasion Bible quoter, often told of poor Abel, who was killed by his brother Cain in a field. So if the Wolves were my brothers now, did that make me Cain or Abel? I knew I shouldn't think too much on it, but lately I couldn't help it.

With so much on my mind, I wasn't as observant as I should have been. I was ambushed halfway down the alley. My attacker fell on me, big and broad, cutting across my vision like the moon eclipsing the sun. He smashed into me, and I bounced against a big green Dumpster, my head making the metal ring like I was a bell clapper. I turned and swung, but I was so dis­oriented, I caught nothing but air. The momentum of my own punch spun me around, I slipped in a puddle of alley scum, and hit the ground. When I looked up, I saw that it was none other than Marvin Flowers.

My brain was still too scrambled to speak, but that was just fine with Marvin.

'There's something you had better get straight,' he growled. 'You wanna be a Wolf, I got no problem with that. But you stay away from my sister.' There was a fury in his eyes, and it was nothing like the fury of a wolf. It was human through and through, but that didn't make it any less dangerous.

I could have fought with him, but it wouldn't have been too wise. I was a head shorter, he was still beefed up from his years of football, and his fury gave him even more of an advantage. No, it was unlikely that I'd win this fight with muscle, but maybe I could put a dent in him with words, before he dented the Dumpster with me.

'What's the matter, Marvin? Wolves aren't good enough for your sister? Maybe I should tell Cedric, and see what he thinks?' That gave him pause for thought. With my back against the Dumpster, I pushed myself back to my feet. 'How long have you been waiting to get made, Marvin?' I asked. 'How many months? Cedric must not be too happy with you if he's waited this long.'

The anger didn't leave Marvin's face, but his eyebrows knot­ted with something between confusion and disgust. 'What are your lips flapping about?'

'You might act like a werewolf, but you're not one! I saw you touch that silver candleholder. If you were a real werewolf, just touching it would make you swell up like one of those bal­loons in the Thanksgiving Day parade. You're just a pledge like me, and you're mad because you think I'll get 'made' before you do.'

'You don't know what you're talking about,' he grumbled, but I could tell I had my thumb on a nerve now. 'You think you know things,' Marvin said, 'but you know absolutely nothing.'

'You forget that my grandma's a werewolf hunter, and taught me all there is to know about it. So you could say I knew exactly what I was getting into when I decided to join the Wolves. Probably more than anyone else who's ever joined.'

Marvin was quiet. I knew I was getting to him. 'So tell me, how come Marvelous Marvin Flowers hasn't gotten the bite yet?'

Then Marvin's blank expression stretched into a smile, which was never a good thing. 'Maybe Cedric wants it that way,' he said. 'Maybe Cedric needs a human lookout on the nights they go wolfing.'

Well, it made sense, but there was something beneath Mar­vin's gold-toothed grin that was as slimy as a morning snail trail. It made everything he said suspect.

'So, are you gonna stay away from my sister, or not?'

'You were the one who sent me in her direction when you went to steal my grandma's money.'

'That was then,' he said. 'This is now.'

A truck turned down the alley. I suppose the sight of other activity in the alley made me feel a little bit bolder. 'I make no promises as far as your sister is concerned.'

Marvin pursed his lips and nodded. 'We could have been friends, Red. But it looks like you just made yourself an enemy.' And with that, he grabbed me, lifted me off the ground, and hurled me with his beefy, varsity-trained arms into the Dumpster.

I landed in the trash headfirst, and it was the worst kind of garbage. Rotten vegetables, greasy pasta dregs, and other awful restaurant trash. I righted myself, which was hard in the slip­pery grunge, and suddenly felt something brush across my leg. A pink tail slithered past, attached to a nasty-looking rat. I scrambled to get away, but it didn't matter. Rats were every­where.

'Marvin!' This was one of those high Dumpsters, and climbing out wasn't going to be easy. A rat eyed me with dead-eyed suspicion. 'Marvin, I'm gonna kill you, you creep!'

The groan of the truck engine grew louder. Hopefully who­ever was in that truck had seen Marvin throw me in and would help me out. I tried to work my way to the side of the Dump­ster, but it was slow moving, and I kept slipping on the maggoty garbage. There was the sudden clang of metal against metal, followed by another clang, and the whole Dumpster shifted. The rats scrambled up the sides and escaped in a way I could not. That's when I realized what was going on?and what Mar­vin had intended when he tossed me in here.

The truck that had turned down the alley was a trash truck.

The Dumpster began to rise and the floor to tilt, garbage pouring all over me. My feet slid out from under me on the slippery rot. 'Hey,' I screamed, 'stop!' But who was I kid­ding? No one could hear me over the drone of the trash truck. As the Dumpster tilted, I saw that the garbage wasn't just food crud. There were planks of wood, broken bricks, and iron rods from some nearby construction. In a few seconds it was all going to be on top of me, and I thought, What a stupid way to die, tossed out with the trash. I pulled my knees to my chest, gripping my head in crash position, like they do on doomed airplanes, and I said prayers I thought I had forgotten as the whole Dumpster was flipped upside down. I fell into the truck. Iron rods came down on me, missing most of my body, but scraping up my arms real bad. A brick nailed me on the forehead in spite of every attempt to shield my face.

When the trash had settled, and the Dumpster was banging its way back down to the ground, I ran a system check on my whole body. Once I was sure I wasn't dead, I struggled out from underneath the garbage. The trash truck was almost full. I never thought being in a full trash truck could ever be a good thing. But all that garbage beneath me allowed me to get a good grip on the truck's edge and pull myself up. The truck had already left the alley, and with my arm slung over the edge, I waited, hoping that the driver didn't get the bright idea of turning on the compactor while I was hanging there.

We stopped at a red light, and I leaped out, falling to the road. It must have been quite a sight to the other drivers, but that was the last thing I cared about right then. At a nearby cor­ner I snagged some ice from a street vendor's soda bin and pressed it to the knot on my forehead.

So Marvin wanted a war. That was fine by me, because I was more than ready to fight one.

11 The Canyons

My mom must have known I was into something over my head. I could tell by the way she looked at me, and the way she judged my answers to innocent questions, as if there was hidden meaning in everything I said. I think my parents would have canceled their vacation if it hadn't already been paid for. They were taking a two-week cruise on the Mediterranean. Their second honeymoon. It was fine by me, because I didn't have to go skulking around anymore and make up stories about where I had been. And besides, I was getting more and more restless. I couldn't imagine being confined on something as small as a ship.

Right before they left, Mom did something strange.

'I want to give you something, Red.'

I followed her into her room, and she went to a secret com­partment in her jewelry chest and pulled out a little coin on a chain. She pointed to the face on the front. 'This is Saint Gabriel,' she said. 'Saint Gabriel of the Sorrowful Mother. He's a patron saint of young people.'

The coin was silver and looked very, very old. At first I hes­itated, almost afraid to touch it, as if the silver might . . . I shook off the feeling. I had no problem with silver. None at all. I took the coin from her and rubbed it between my fingers, just to prove it to myself.