There was a smell beyond the waxy scent of the candles―something unpleasant that I couldn't name―but whatever it was, it made my neck hairs stand on end. At the front of the church, where the pulpit once stood, was another girl in black, but her dress was nothing like the wrinkled cotton the girl at the door wore. It was the kind of silky, slinky dress you might wear to a fancy ball, but I don't think she was going anywhere. She stood there in the spot like she owned the place. Not just the place, but the Canyons themselves―and being the leader of the Crypts, I guess she did. I approached her.
"Cedric sent you," she said, more a statement than a question. "I've been waiting for you." Her voice was both powerful and musical. Commanding, yet soothing. It was the type of voice that could lull you to sleep. Just listening to her made my defenses relax, like some strange reflex deep down inside me.
"Yeah, I got a letter for you," I said. As I got closer I could see the strange accessories of her outfit. Odd white earrings dangled like icicles from her lobes. A black, spiked bracelet was wrapped around each of her wrists. She was African-American, and yet oddly pale at the same time. Her skin didn't have that healthy chocolate tone that my grandfather's had had. Instead, her skin was almost purple: the color of a bruise. I handed the envelope to her. She took it with her long fingers. Her nails were painted the same color as her skin, looking like roaches on the end of her fingers. Rather than opening the envelope, she took a long look at me and said in that deep musical voice. "You're not a true Wolf. I can smell it; you reek of mortality."
"That's not your business," I told her. "That's between me and Cedric."
"Fair enough." Using a fingernail as a letter opener, she sliced the side of the envelope and pulled out a note. I watched her eyes as they darted back and forth across the page. I sensed intelligence there.
"Where are the rest of the Crypts?" I asked. "Or is the whole gang just you and the girl at the door?"
The look on her face darkened. "If you're trying to count how many of us there are, to report back to the Wolves, you won't be able to―but believe me, there are many more of us than there are in your little pack."
I put up my hands apologetically. "Didn't mean to rub you the wrong way. Just curious."
She took a moment to judge me honestly and said, "The Crypts are all here. You're just not looking in the right places."
She finished reading the note. Her dangling earrings rattled with every movement of her head, and only now did I realize what they were. Human finger bones.
When she was done with the letter, she turned her eyes from the paper to me again, studying me as intensely as she had studied the letter. "What's your name?"
"Everyone just calls me Red."
She grinned. "Are you the Red Rider?"
I have to admit I was impressed. I didn't know I had a reputation. "Yeah, that's me. So how come you know me?"
"You don't remember me, do you?" she said. Again, a statement more than a question. I found it hard to believe that I could forget someone like this, but I drew a total blank. She smiled even wider. It was almost warm. "I used to be your babysitter. In the days before."
All at once it came to me―not a memory of her face, but a memory of her style. The way her hands would move across a game board. The way she would sing to me when I went to sleep. For an instant I flashed on a memory of her perfume―sort of vanilla and spice. She didn't smell like that now, though. She had the same strange, unnamable smell as the rest of this place.
"Rowena?"
"So you do remember me!"
I nodded. I couldn't imagine my parents trusting me to the hands of a babysitter like this.... But I guess she wasn't always like this.
"You were a sweet kid," she said.
I frowned and pushed up my shoulders. "Yeah, well, sweet doesn't get you much in this town."
"It can get you further than you think," she said.
"Were you always so mysterious? I don't remember that."
She responded with a silence as mysterious as her words. Pulling a pen out of thin air, it seemed, she flipped over the note and scribbled on the back of it. "Take this back to Cedric," she said, handing it back to me.
She took no care to conceal the note in an envelope, or even to fold it so that I couldn't read it. Somehow I sensed she wanted me to read it, so I did. The message read:
IT IS AGREED.
SEND HIM AT MIDNIGHT,
THREE NIGHTS IN A ROW.
"You can go now," she said.
"Can I ask what the message means?"
"Better if you don't."
Knowing I'd get no more out of her, I turned to go, and as I neared the door, the first girl appeared out of the shadows, opening it for me.
"A word to the wise, Red," Rowena called out from behind me. "If you can't stay on Cedric's good side, then stay out of his way entirely."
Then the door slammed closed behind me, and I was alone in the stark shadows of the dead industrial canyons.
12
A Few million werewolves
Being a double agent takes a toll on you. You spend your days lying, pretending to accept friendship like you mean it, knowing you're going to betray those same people who trust you. Cedric had so much power in his gang, but in a way I had even more power than him. Their fate rested entirely on me. I could save them by telling the truth. I could destroy them by lying. No one should have that much power.
When a growing half-moon hung above the city, Cedric took us all back to the roof of his apartment building, to give me the big talk. It was a week until the night of first change.
"You want to know why there are werewolves?" Cedric asked as we sat in rusty chairs on the roof. It wasn't as dark as it had been that first time, and I found myself less terrified than I had been then. The memory of being held out over fifteen stories of thin air isn't something that fades too quickly. Somehow I couldn't help but think this was another test.
"There are werewolves because one of your ancestors got bit by one," I told him.
"That's not what I mean." He pushed himself closer, the legs of his chair scraping on the gritty tar paper of the roof. The rest of the Wolves sat in a circle around us, like this was another secret rite of the werewolf order.
"Everything on Earth is here for a reason," Cedric said. "Trees are here to make oxygen, worms are here to make dirt. There's no such thing as a freak of nature. If it's here, it's naturally meant to be here."
Unnaturally, in your case. I didn't dare say it out loud.
"Most other animals got predators to keep their population down―but see, us humans are too smart for predators. Even the stupid humans like Klutz."
The others razzed Klutz, and he threw a few well-placed punches to shut them up.
"We build walls and fences to keep the predators out," Cedric said. "We put 'em in zoos, and the ones that get loose, we can put 'em down with a single rifle shot. See, we got brains."
"So, what's your point?"
"I'm getting to that." Cedric leaned forward. "It used to be that diseases kept the human population in control. Before we knew how to fight them, things like the plague came and wiped out people like flies―but not anymore. We got vaccines, and antibiotics, and Pepto-Bismol and stuff, so suddenly the bugs ain't so bad anymore." He looked around to make sure he had everyone's attention, although I got the feeling they'd all heard this a dozen times before―every time a new Wolf was going to be "made."
Cedric spread out his arms. "So here I am, Mother Nature, trying to figure out how to keep humans down, on account of the population is reaching like a gazillion."