Red Rider's Hood by Neal Shusterman Page A

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.
    â€œYou 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.
    â€œThere are werewolves because one of your ancestors got bit by one,” I told him.
    â€œThat’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.
    â€œEverything 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.
    â€œMost 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.
    â€œWe 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.”
    â€œSo, what’s your point?”
    â€œI’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 heardthis 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.”
    â€œSix billion,” I told him.
    â€œWhatever. Anyway, Mother Nature scratches her head, thinks for a while, and says, ‘Hey, I know—I’ll come up with a predator as smart as a human. One with a thirst for human blood.’ She can’t use evolution, though, because that takes too long, and she don’t got that much patience. She needs to work herself up something real quick…so what do you think she does?”
    I wanted to answer with something obnoxious, like “She goes on eBay,” but the truth was, I couldn’t answer him. All I could do was listen, my mouth dry, my throat closed up, and my eyes fixed on those yellow eyes in front of me.
    â€œMother Nature,” Cedric proclaimed proudly, “creates werewolves to solve the problem. Oh, she’d been working on us for a thousand years or so, and with each generation we’ve gotten stronger. Hungrier.”
    Cedric’s logic was as twisted as his supernatural DNA. I found myself amazed by how he stretched everything to fit the way he saw the world. A person could fall into that, believing the things he said.
    â€œIn ten years, how many more gazillions of people will be on this world if something’s not done about it?” he said. “A few million werewolves could take care of the problem just likethat,” and he snapped his fingers, like he