Grandma nodded, scrunching her face up to try to hold back the tears. "To someone with the werewolf curse, the stuff's like cyanide. He left a note. He said this was a better test than waiting to see what happened when the moon rose. Because if he was a werewolf, he didn't want to live long enough to actually become one."
Grandma cried, and I reached out to hold her hand. So in a way, it had been blood poisoning after all.
"I'm sorry," I said.
Grandma quickly mopped up her tears. "It was a long time ago. But if his sacrifice is going to mean anything, we have to finish the job. We have to get rid of Cedric Soames and his new gang, and make sure not a single one of them survives this full moon." Then she took a good look at me. "Is there anything else you found out about them? Anything that can help us?"
"Nothing else."
"You sure?"
"Of course I'm sure."
"All right, then."
I didn't tell her that Cedric had offered me a city―or that part of me had liked the idea.
None of the Wolves questioned my loyalty anymore. They didn't look at me funny, didn't doubt my motives. Except, of course, for Marvin, who just got more and more bitter with every ounce of acceptance I got. I had respect down there in the Troll Bridge Hollow now, and it made me feel powerful. It was the kind of sneaky, addictive power that kept making you want more. I wasn't exactly sure why I had so much respect now. Maybe it was because I knew so much about "the Confederation of Werewolf Hunters," which didn't even exist. I even made up names for some of them. I got them off the spines of books on my grandma's shelf and mixed them up. "Herman King." "Stephen Melville." Or maybe they respected me because I had ventured into the Canyons and had actually set foot in the Crypts' lair. Of course, the Wolves wouldn't admit that they were afraid of the Crypts.
"They're just a bunch of girls," Klutz had said over a game of pool in the Cave one day. Some of the Wolves grunted in agreement.
"Just a bunch of girls, huh?" Cedric smacked him in the head. "You're even dumber than you look. Girls can be just as tough as guys when they wanna be. Sometimes even tougher." He took away Klutz's cue and made a shot for him, even though Cedric wasn't in the game. "All I know is I wouldn't want another war with the Crypts―and I ain't ashamed to admit that either." Then he gave Klutz a twisted grin. "Of course, if you want to take them on by yourself, be my guest― and see if you don't end up like Bobby Tanaka."
"Who's Bobby Tanaka?" I asked.
"You mean who . . . was Bobby Tanaka."
A/C chuckled nervously. "Yeah," he explained, "he was a Wolf, but the Crypts kinda put him in past tense."
"Got him with silver?" I asked.
Cedric shook his head. "No."
"But I thought 'silverizing' was the only way to kill a werewolf."
"It is," Cedric said. "But some things are worse than death."
It seemed to me the temperature in the room dropped, and the Wolves let out a collective shiver.
Klutz began to look a little pale, like all his macho was leaking out through the holes in his Nikes.
"We don't talk much about Bobby anymore," Cedric said. "Or the Crypts. They stay on their side of town; we stay on ours. Everybody's happy."
"So why did I get sent over there?" I dared to ask. "And who did she want you to send for three midnights in a row?"
I thought Cedric might whack me in the head, too, but he didn't. He just gave Klutz his cue stick back and took Loogie's soda, like it was his own. It was an unspoken rule: Whatever was yours was also Cedric's. Which maybe explained why none of the Wolves ever showed up with their girlfriends.
"You're full of questions today, Little Red."
But Cedric offered me no answers. Instead, he demanded to know more about the so-called Confederacy of Werewolf Hunters, so I made up stories about John Steel and Danielle Grisham, and how they were, at this very minute, flying in from London.
As for Grandma, she thought the stories I was feeding the Wolves were a fine thing. "When you're at war, like we are, it's not called 'lies,' it's called disinformation," Grandma said. "Spreading disinformation is a powerful weapon. If they think they're outmatched and outnumbered, they'll be scared and start doing stupid things. That's when we'll have them!"
I couldn't tell her how spinning all those lies to Cedric was making me feel all twisted up inside.
I had once told Cedric that Grandma had a secret room where she kept all her werewolf stuff. Good thing he never came back to look for himself because there was no such place. There was a darkroom, but that hadn't been used for years. All that was in there were old photographic supplies. Grandma's werewolf work was done out in the open; the only thing shielding it from prying eyes were her Venetian blinds.
Four days before the first full moon, she was working a blowtorch, melting down silver jewelry into bullet slugs on the same table where she served Thanksgiving dinner.
"Silver bullets aren't exactly an item you get at Wal-Mart," she told me. "You gotta make them yourself, but you have to be careful."
I watched her pour the molten silver into little molds, like she was making a pie. She had bought a whole bunch of .22-caliber shells and had removed the bullets, replacing them with the silver ones once they had cooled in the mold. "Not exactly rocket science," she said, "but if you do a shoddy job, the bullet may just blow up in the barrel―or in your hand."
"I hate guns," I mumbled to myself, but Grandma heard.
"Don't you worry, Red―I got you covered," she said. She took off her protective glasses and went into the closet, coming out with something you don't usually find in your grandma's closet. It was a steel crossbow.
"Ever use one of these?"
"No," I said. I had spent a couple of weeks in summer camp once and did some archery there, but this wasn't summer-camp archery we were talking about.
"I'm making you some silver-tipped arrows. They'll do the job."
I took it from her and held it by its smooth ivory handle. It was heavy, but so well balanced, it felt half its weight. A crossbow was different from a gun. Crossbows were always in the hands of good guys. At least in the movies. I found that I could stand to hold it, in a way I could never stand to hold a gun. This was a fine anti-werewolf weapon.
"A werewolf's a big target, but it'll also be moving," she said. "You're going to need practice."
13
Abject End Park
Crossbow practice needs space. Crossbow practice needs solitude. And, most importantly, crossbow practice requires a target―in my case, a very big target―and one that can stop an arrow without splintering it. Like the massively thick oaks that have taken over Abject End Park―the border between our part of town and the ruined buildings of the Canyons.
I figured the best time to practice would be at dawn. Aside from the occasional cop car or garbage truck, the city would still be asleep―and so would the Wolves, sleeping off whatever mayhem they had gotten into the night before. As long as I got back home before any of them were up and about, they wouldn't know what I was doing.
I set my alarm for 4:30 a.m. and was in the park just as the sun was beginning to rise, turning the eastern sky a grimy yellow. It was barely sunrise, and the day was already beginning to get hot.
Marissa was already there, waiting for me. "So you made it."
She stifled a yawn as she stepped out from the shadows of the bushes.
"I told you I'd be here," I said.
"I came prepared." She picked up a heavy thermos, unscrewed the lid, and poured us both a cup of hot chocolate. "I should have brought something cold, but I gotta have my morning cocoa."