He stared at me for another long moment. His eyes burned right through me. Then he stepped aside.
I was out of there like a shot!
In spite of my shaking knees, I ran all the way home.
Kim and Paul were doing their homework. Mr. Parker was still at Wolfe Industries and Mrs. Parker wasn’t home from her job at the day-care center yet. I hurried upstairs, went into my room, and closed the door.
I tossed the butterfly book aside. But when I finally sat alone with the werewolf book in my hands, I was afraid to open it.
I could see it wasn’t a real werewolf on the cover—I knew what they looked like! But the book was old and covered in leather. The leather was soft and felt like skin. Not human skin, it was too thick. No, it felt like werewolf skin.
“Go ahead!” I silently urged myself. “Do it!”
Finally I forced myself to open the book. The paper was yellow and crackly.
I still wasn’t a good reader even though I could speak almost as good as the other kids now. I’d only been reading for a short time and Kim told me she started learning to read when she was six, so I didn’t know if I’d ever catch up. But I figured even Kim and Paul would have a tough time with this book. The printing was small and faded with age. There were a lot of big words, words I’d never heard of.
But I hungered to know what I was. So I began at the beginning. And there, on the first page, were words that struck me with awe and dread.
“RULES OF THE WEREING”
There were seven rules.
Puzzling out the words, I whispered them over to myself, each one like a stab in the heart. When I was done I felt as if the “Rules of The Wereing” had been branded into my soul with hot metal.
The next chapter explained what the rules meant. The book said that “whether born or bitten” a werewolf would not undergo its first wereing—its first change under the full moon from human to beast—until the age of twelve. On its first wereing, the young werewolf had all the qualities of human and beast. However, once the new werewolf made its first kill, it gained the powers of the mature werewolf but it lost its “essential humanity.”
The words struck terror into me although I wasn’t sure what they meant. Struggling, I read further. The blooded werewolf, said the book, kept the cunning intelligence of its human side but lost its human compassion, sympathy, and understanding of right and wrong. The blooded werewolf was ruled by its thirst for power and its hunger for blood.
The monster’s senses—smell, sight, and hearing—were more acute than any wild animal’s. Its physical strength was equally supernatural. It could run as fast as the wind, climb the tallest skyscraper with ease, jump as high as a tree.
And the blooded werewolf could transform itself from human shape to werewolf at any time—except for the three nights of the full moon. While the full moon was in the sky, all werewolves were compelled to abandon human form.
The blooded werewolf, the book went on, was intelligent and more powerful than any beast known. Its awesome abilities were equalled only by its evil nature. The werewolf lived only to prey on all living creatures, especially children, and to make more of its own kind.
A chill settled over me as cold as the grave. I’d known I was a monster—now I knew what it meant!
As for the last two rules—that a werewolf cannot cross water and cannot tolerate silver—they didn’t need explaining but they didn’t mean anything to me.
After my hands stopped shaking I leafed through the book. There was some stuff about the history of werewolves. The original monsters came from some country I’d never heard of—Transylvania—but no one knew how they got there. Some said it was a curse, some said there had always been werewolves.
As I sat on my bed, thinking about what I had read, numb with dread and worry, my mouth suddenly began to water and my stomach rumbled dangerously. My nose tingled with anticipation.
I sat bolt upright, gripping the edge of the bed. It was the hunger of the beast!
But the full moon was over. What was happening to me?
Chapter 12
“Groooowl.” My stomach demanded meat. Had I done something by accident that made me a blooded werewolf?
“Paul, Gruff, Kim! Dinner,” called Mrs. Parker.
Dinner! I jumped up from the bed in relief. I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch, so of course I was hungry—just like any human. I flung open my door and followed the wonderful aroma downstairs. As usual, I was the first one at the table.
But for some reason when Mrs. Parker dished out the hamburgers and salad, I found I couldn’t eat much. I kept thinking of the werewolves’ horrible taste for fresh meat.
“Are you all right, Gruff?” Mrs. Parker asked, eyeing my plate. “You’re not feeling ill again, are you?”
“Oh, no,” I insisted and picked up my hamburger. But I really couldn’t take another bite. “It’s just that—I was thinking of becoming a vegetarian!”
Mrs. Parker looked startled.
Kim giggled. “Is this the same Gruff who didn’t want to wait for Dad to cook the steaks on the barbecue?” she said, reminding me of a mealtime experience I would just as soon forget. There were a lot of those when I first came to the Parkers’.
“Hush, Kim,” said Mrs. Parker. “If Gruff wants to try being a vegetarian, that’s just fine.” She handed me the salad bowl. “It does mean you’ll have to eat your vegetables though, Gruff.”
Feeling like a rabbit, which was better than feeling like a monster, I piled more greens on my plate and began munching
