Red Rider's Hood

Grandma slapped a Band-Aid over one knee and moved to the other one. 'You got a foolish streak in you, Red.'

'What's that supposed to mean?'

'It means that you should back off and leave wolf hunting to those who know how. I'm sure you'll get your car back in time. Now hold still.'

'Marissa and I can help the hunters.'

'Yeah,' Marissa said. 'We can be kind of like . . . apprentices.'

Grandma looked at my hands, which weren't scratched enough for Band-Aids, and shook her head. 'They gave you a warning today. You keep sticking your nose in this, you're gonna wind up part of the problem.'

'Cedric took your money, and my car. I can't just sit around and wait for someone else to take care of it. That's just not the way I'm built.'

'You keep it up, and you won't be 'built' at all. You'll be in pieces. The Wolves will see to that.'

I squirmed a bit at the thought and hopped off the table.

'There,' Grandma said. 'Good as new. Now you both get on home?and Red, don't you dare tell your parents what you've been up to.'

We left without another word about my run-in with the hunter?but even before we reached the bottom of Grandma's long stone stoop, Marissa and I were already making plans.

'You still remember it?' Marissa asked.

I nodded. 'Four-L-Y-C-Nine,' I told her. I had burned that license plate number into my memory as the black Harley had sped off. It wasn't something I was going to forget anytime soon?but it was also something I wasn't gonna tell Grandma. Some things she just didn't need to know.

'I've got an aunt who works at the Thirty-fifth Precinct,' Marissa said. 'She could run the license plate and tell us who owns that motorcycle. We'll have their name, address, every­thing we'd ever want to know about them.'

'What do you think the hunters'll do when we show up at their door?'

Marissa grinned. She was up for this just as much as I was. 'Maybe they'll be impressed that we actually managed to track them down. But then again, maybe they'll leave motorcycle tread marks on our faces.'

'One thing's for sure,' I told her. 'If they don't want us to be part of the problem, then they'd better find a way to make us part of the solution.'

After all that riding around town looking for my Mustang, it finally turned up just a block from my front door.

It was the very next day. Marissa was off trying to get her aunt to trace that license plate, and I was walking back from the supermarket with a bag of groceries for my mom, trying to pre­tend, if only for a few minutes, that this was an ordinary summer.

Then a glint of red caught my eye, and I saw it, right there at the intersection. My Mustang, with Cedric Soames behind the wheel. Even though I knew he had taken it, and knew he must have been driving it, seeing it with my own eyes made me crazy. It made my blood boil so hot, my brain stopped working right. The light changed, and he floored it, like he was drag-racing everyone in the city. It wasn't just him in the car. There were at least five or six other guys with him, squeezed in.

I dropped the groceries and took after them on foot. I didn't have a chance of keeping up with them, but the traffic and lights slowed them down just enough for me to keep the car in my sights. I was in pretty good shape, but not for this kind of sprinting. I must have rammed into half a dozen people on the sidewalk. What would I do if I caught up with him? I didn't know. He had almost killed me before. Closed off my windpipe until I had almost blacked out. All I knew was that I couldn't stop chasing him as long as I had that car in my sights.

He made a left turn far up ahead, and when I got to the cor­ner, I thought for sure he'd be long gone. But I was wrong. My red Mustang was parked on the street, just a block ahead. Cedric and the others weren't in it, but it was no mystery where they had gone. The car was parked in front of the Cave?a sleazy pool hall where my mama told me never to go. Well, she wasn't here now.

My heart pounding and my head light from all that running, I stormed toward the car. I'd never hot-wired a car before, but I knew how it was done. Usually people do it when they're stealing the car. I'd be doing it to get my car back.

I got close enough to see my reflection in the sideview mir­ror, when out of nowhere something dark and sleek pulled in front of me. A jet-black Harley. How did the hunter know I was here? Had he been following me? I tried to get around him, but he rolled his bike forward to block me.

'All I want is my car,' I told him. 'Why can't you just leave me alone?'

Then came that same hoarse whisper I had heard the day before. Only this time it said, 'Get on.'

I shook my head so hard I felt my brain rattle. 'After what you did to me yesterday, there ain't nothing you can say that'll get me on that motorcycle.'

And then the hunter flipped up the visor that hid his face. 'Red, you are one stubborn little cuss.'

Whatever I was feeling just a second before was blown so far away, I couldn't even remember it.

'Grandma?!'

'That's right. Now get your butt on my Harley, before any of those Wolves see us.'

I was too stunned to do anything but obey. I hopped on behind Grandma, she popped a wheelie, and we burned rub­ber all the way to her house.

I suppose all the signs had been there: She knew all about wolfsbane, and more about Xavier Soames and what happened thirty years ago than anyone else. Still, the concept that my sweet old grandma was a werewolf hunter was just too much to wrap my mind around.

'Not just me,' she said, once we got to her house. 'Your grandpa was, too.'

Grandpa had died long before I was born. Looking at all the photos of the two of them around the house, I couldn't imag­ine him hunting wolves any more than I could picture Grandma doing it.

Grandma went to the bathroom and picked out her helmet hair until it was a full gray Afro once again. She caught my dazed look in the mirror. 'Surprised I have a secret side, Red?'

'I guess I always thought of you as the bingo type, not the wolf-hunter type.'

She let out a deep, hearty laugh. Then she glanced at the Band-Aids that still covered my knees. 'Sorry about yesterday,' she said. 'I only meant to scare you, not knock you off your bike. Guess my riding skills aren't what they used to be.'

I thought of the way she wove in and out of traffic as we rode home today. 'You're pretty good, if you ask me.' And then I added, 'Maybe you could let me take it out next time.'

She didn't answer, but she didn't need to. The look on her face told all. I didn't ask again.

A heavy pounding on the front door nearly scared me out of my skin. For a split second I thought the Wolves had followed us here, but it was just Marissa. She had this paleness about her, and wide eyes, like she had been doing some mischief with bones herself.

'Red, I know who the hunter is. You're not gonna believe it.'

But when she saw Grandma, still in her leather pants and jacket, Marissa realized I already knew.

'You're both too clever for your own good,' Grandma said, shaking her head in both exasperation and admiration. 'Run­ning a check on my license plate!'

'If we could do it, Grandma, don't you think the Wolves can, too?'

'It's no secret to them, Red,' she told me. 'They've always known.'

Now that I thought about it, it made sense. Now I under­stood why Cedric was always so nasty to me?and why he seemed to have a grudge against her the day he stole her money. Then something came back to me. 'Blood money. The Wolves called the money Cedric stole from you blood money. Why?'

'Because Cedric's a fool. He thinks we killed wolves for reward money. The truth is, people did give us money after we got rid of Xavier and his pack. We didn't ask for it, but they gave it to us anyway. Envelopes were slapped into our palms or slipped under our door. That was the bread I've been hiding all these years, the bread Cedric stole.' And then she let loose a sneaky little laugh. 'If he had any sense, he would have killed me right there in my basement, instead of letting the smell of wolfsbane keep him away. See, to Cedric I wasn't worth his trouble. He thinks I'm too old and feeble to be a threat to him?and that will be his downfall.'