Hair in All The Wrong Places (20 page)

Colin stood and walked to the front of the cell. There was no door, so he suspected that the bars must retract or move to let people in or out. The hallway outside was wide, and additional cells lined either side of it. In the middle of the room was a bank of monitors and a single guard gazing casually at them. There were around twelve cells total, and most of them were occupied. Many of the prisoners looked human, though Colin suspected they were anything but.

However, there were a couple that stood out. Across the hall, almost directly across from Colin's cell, was what looked like a small purple dragon. It was the size of a large dog, and it was staring intently at the guard. In the cell next to the dragon was a huge, hulking creature. It looked like a human but at least ten times the size of a normal person. Massive hands gripped the bars, and every so often the creature would bang its head against them.

“Knock it off,” called the guard to the massive creature. “And you,” he said pointing at the dragon, “stop staring at me, you're freaking me out.”

Colin walked over to the bars separating him from Silas. “Silas!” said Colin.

Silas didn't move.

“Silas, come on. It's me, Colin. Please wake up.”

Nothing.

“Silas!”

Nope.

“Silas, wake up!”

“Won't do you any good,” said the guard from his desk. “We doped him up with so many tranquilizers he'll sleep for a week. Maybe longer.”

Silas!

Silas groaned and rolled onto his back. Then he started to drool.

Colin returned to the front of the cell. “Hey, you!” said Colin to the guard. “You have to let me out of here.”

The guard laughed a little too enthusiastically. “And why would I do such a thing?”

“Because there's still a werewolf out there and I need to stop it.”

“Ha! The Three Stooges already confirmed their earlier predictions of a third werewolf were false and that you two are the only ones of your kind in Elkwood. Which means one of you killed that boy. I don't want to speculate, but I'm thinking you're not going to be seeing the outside world for a long time so you should just make yourself comfortable.”

“You can't just lock me up here!”

“Let me ask you something.”

“What?”

“Are you in a cell right now?”

“Yes.”

“Then I'm pretty sure you're wrong about that not locking up thing.” Laughing, the guard turned back to the monitors.

“What time is it?” asked Colin, despair in his voice.

The guard sighed. “It's 7:00 a.m. Now quiet down. I'm reading my horoscope.”

Seven a.m.! School starts in less than two hours.

Colin felt helpless. How was he going to find the other werewolf and save Becca? The thought made him angry, and he felt the familiar increase in his heart rate. Skin tingling, the creature inside him began to stir … then stopped. Colin could still feel the wolf inside. He still felt strong. He could smell the sarcastic guard and the dragon and hear sounds from all over the complex, but he couldn't turn into the wolf creature. Whatever Mr. Emerson injected him with, it was working.

Who could the other werewolf be?

Elkwood wasn't a big town; Colin knew almost everyone. He tried to remember what Charles the demon had said.
What would I do if I was the other werewolf? I'd hide. But how would I hide?

Colin began to pace back and forth. Silas had come to town looking for the other werewolf. He said he'd tracked it here from California, and that it had already killed.

Colin punched one of the cell bars in frustration, which rang in protest.

“Hey!” said the guard. “Cool it, puppy dog, or we'll have to put you back to sleep. Those bars are pure titanium. You won't be breaking through them anytime soon.”

Colin sat down on the cell floor. Ever since he'd started changing, he'd been able to think with such perfect clarity. He could process information quicker, easily
filling notebooks full of details about his change into a werewolf. Now it felt like he was trying to think through a fog. Whether it was the effects of the tranquilizer or the injection to suppress his change, it was messing with his mind.

Colin closed his eyes and concentrated, letting his senses spread out through the complex. The cellblock exploded into brilliant colors. He could pick out the guard's heartbeat along with everyone else's. Silas was snoring. Snippets of guard's conversations outside the cellblock filtered in. There was a lot of chatter about the capture of the two werewolves.

“The older guy killed that Bale kid and turned the Strauss kid,” said a guard somewhere on the floor above.

“I hear the research department can't wait to get their hands on the werewolves,” said another.

A radio communication caught Colin's ear. “They're bringing in the old Strauss lady now. Seems like she ran out of juice.”

So his grandmother had finally run out of steam.

I wonder how much damage she caused?

Colin sniffed the air. There were so many foreign scents in here that it made his head swim, and he couldn't keep a clear picture of his surroundings. The dragon gave off a smoky scent, but the giant creature stank like garbage and reminded him of Gareth Dugan.

Must be a full ogre.

A few of the other inmates had a scent similar to the goth twin's mother.

Vampires.

On that pleasant realization, he caught a familiar
whiff of lavender.

Granny Strauss.

The elevator doors at the far end of the hallway swished open revealing two large guards escorting his tiny grandmother. A distinctly burned smell followed both guards. Colin smiled.

They must have met the wrong end of a lightning bolt.

His grandmother was handcuffed, her clothing looked a little scorched, and her hair stuck out at odd angles. Colin noted that she looked very happy with herself.

Her blind eyes searched the cellblock as she walked until she settled on Colin. “Thought you might get yourself caught up here,” said his grandmother.

“Hi, Gran,” said Colin, genuinely happy to see her.

Amazing what a difference a week can make.

The elevator doors opened again, and Mr. Emerson walked out. Colin could now easily recognize the smell of his aftershave and—

Aftershave. Scent.

The realization hit Colin so hard he thought he might throw up. He began pacing back and forth, trying to put the pieces together.

“Put her next to the dragon,” ordered Mr. Emerson.

Colin was vaguely aware of the guard pushing something on his control panel, and the bars in the empty cell next to the dragon retracted into the ceiling. The old woman shuffled in and turned around to let one of the large guards remove the handcuffs. After her escort exited the cell, the bars slid smoothly back into place.

“Now listen here, Beatrice,” began Mr. Emerson. “I
don't know why you suddenly felt the compulsion to help your grandson when you clearly knew what he was or why you put at least ten of my best men in the hospital last night. The fact is, we still need you to maintain the cover over Elkwood, and I need to know we can still trust you to do so.”

“Don't you worry about the weather,” said Mrs. Strauss, “I'll keep us hidden like I always do.”

“I'd like you stay here for a while and cool down. And then we'll talk about getting you back to Elkwood.”

“That seems reasonable,” said Colin's grandmother.

Colin noted the slight change in his grandmother's heartbeat.

She's lying.

Colin focused back to the task at hand. The werewolf Silas was hunting had been bitten outside of Elkwood and then came back here. Elkwood was too small a town to try to hide in plain sight. But if you're a werewolf and you want to hide it, especially if you know there's another werewolf in town, you'd want to keep yourself hidden by disguising yourself. You'd want to keep your head shaved so no one notices the change in your hair. You'd want to wear something that would throw off the scent of the other creatures in town, the vampires, the werewolves—

Mr. Winter is the other werewolf!

It all made sense. He was out of town all the time. Since he got back from his last trip, he had been sick, and his usual butt-hole-esque behavior had gotten worse. He'd threatened Colin in the bathroom and made jokes about Sam Bale's death. Mr. Winter would also know that there was another werewolf in town because he was
in the town hall meeting the night it was interrupted. The same night Silas bit Colin.

And the aftershave! He was using the aftershave to cover his scent so a vampire or werewolf couldn't recognize him! Mr. Winter killed Sam Bale.

He's going to kill Becca!

“You have to let me out!” Colin blurted, his face pressed against the bars. “I know who the werewolf is.”

Mr. Emerson turned around. “You're the werewolf. You and your friend there. I know you don't want us to know, but one of you killed that boy.”

“It's not true! Mr. Winter is the killer!”

“Mr. Winter? The biology teacher? Don't be ridiculous. He's a member of the town council and a consultant for us. He's been a part of the Elkwood community since the start. Mr. Winter is more than aware of the town's true purpose.”

“And he hates it,” said Colin, his mind racing. “That's why he leaves on vacation all the time. He must have been bitten while on vacation. Silas said the werewolf had killed someone else and he had tracked it here. Mr. Winter went through the same changes I did. He's acting erratic in class, he's shaved his head to hide the hair growth, and he wears aftershave to cover his scent. The day Sam Bale was killed, he was away sick! You have to believe me.”

“Colin Strauss, I have absolutely no reason to believe you. All of this sounds ridiculous. You'd say anything to divert attention away from yourself at this point.” Mr. Emerson moved closer to Colin. “The truth is, I don't know what you're capable of. But we're going to find out.”

“Your daughter is in danger! Don't you care?”

“Becca is under guard and will go to school like normal, and neither you nor your friend can hurt her.”

Colin slammed the bars. He reached for the wolf inside him, but it was still too far away somewhere behind the fog.

“Try and keep that anger in check,” threatened Mr. Emerson, “or we'll have to put you down.” With that, he turned and walked toward the elevator.

Colin looked over to Silas who was still sleeping and then to his grandmother. An overwhelming sense of helplessness filled his heart.

“Do you know for sure? Are you absolutely certain Winter is the killer?” asked his grandmother.

“You two pipe down,” said the guard from his desk.

“I'm certain,” said Colin. “It has to be. It makes perfect sense.”

“And you can stop him?”

“I have to try.”

“Hey! What'd I just say?” called the guard. “I won't hesitate to tranquilize you wolf-kid, and you,” said the guard, gesturing to Colin's grandmother, “that sort of insubordination is what got you thrown in here in the first place.”

Colin's grandmother gripped the bars of her cell with both hands. Her cloudy eyes staring out toward the guard. “Oh, I didn't get thrown in here.”

Colin felt the air in the cellblock change.

“I wanted to be here,” said his grandmother.

Electricity shot from her hands and spiralled up the bars of the cell. The control panel in front of the
guard began to spark and then exploded, throwing the guard backward. Mr. Emerson turned from the elevator along with the two large guards who had escorted his grandmother. Another shot of electricity flashed across the bars of the old lady's cell and jumped around the room. Colin stepped back from his own bars as lightning struck them.

“No!” shouted Mr. Emerson.

The bars on every cell began to raise slowly, much to the surprise and joy of the inmates.

“Go get him,” said Colin's grandmother with a smile.

Colin dived under his bars and stood just as the first large guard reached him.

The guard had at least one hundred pounds on him, but Colin still had his increased strength and sense even if he couldn't fully turn. The guard made to grab him, but Colin ducked under those large arms and drove his fist hard into his stomach. Colin heard the guard's lungs deflate as he gasped to catch his breath and crumpled in a heap. Jumping over the body, Colin met the other guard head on, grabbing the big man's fist and flinging him across the cellblock where he crashed into the wall and slid to the ground.

Other inmates escaped their cells; some were fighting while the ogre was trying to squeeze under his cell bars, getting angrier and angrier.

Turning, Colin came face-to-face with the barrel of Mr. Emerson's gun.

“Sorry, kid.” Mr. Emerson fired, and time slowed down.

Colin could hear the chaos of the cellblock, the
creature's angry shouts, and his grandmother's maniacal laughter as lightning zapped around the cells. The tranquilizer dart exited the gun, and he knew that he could dodge it. He shifted his weight and jumped high into the air, over the dart, over Mr. Emerson, and landed lightly. Colin turned, grabbed the key card clipped to Mr. Emerson's belt, and punched the man square in the jaw. Mr. Emerson folded to the ground.

Colin hated that it felt so good. After all, he just knocked out his new girlfriend's dad. Not the best way to win him over.