The files were from the vampire file and included their histories, wars, clans, and info on individuals, as well as a lot of hooey, better known as information obtained from confidential informants. Jodi had included a few folders from the witch file cabinet containing info on the local witches, but a quick search through the boxes that comprised my filing system revealed nothing about weres.
I updated the file on the vamp war of 1915, including the info from Bruiser about his mother, Lady Beatrice, e-mailed it to Jodi for her records, and Googled weres. There was a lot of stuff on the net in just the last two days. A lot of stuff, though at this point, I could find no other types of weres on the Internet—only cats and wolves. I surfed photographs, some of them Hollywood stills, some that might be real, of weres shifting. Found some viral video of the real thing, of a South American were-cat, a male jaguar who looked deadly in either of his forms. There were interviews with were-cats, putting to rest rumors about rabies among the species, discussing mating habits, and a frank discussion of transmission of the were-contagion, one thing that Hollywood got right—a bite. The cats all agreed that biting a human was against their laws and the one crime worthy of a death sentence. Which meant that Leo and Bruiser were probably safe from reprisals for killing Henri and the other wolves, assuming Roul was serious about pursuing Leo only in human courts of law.
Once, while I worked, I felt ... something. An odd reaction, as if I wasn’t alone. I got up and went through the house, stepping silently, a vamp-killer in hand, listening, watching, scenting quietly. But I was alone. Evangelina hadn’t come in. No one was there and no unfamiliar scents lingered on the air to mark intruders. The sensation wasn’t like my predator senses, alerting me as when something, or someone, hunted me, but it was odd. And it faded quickly.
Back at the laptop, I researched real wolves, and discovered that there were only four kinds in the U.S.—the gray wolf (Canis lupus), Mexican gray wolf (Canis lupus baileyi), the red wolf (Canis rufus), and the coyote (Canis latrans). I hadn’t even known the coyote was part of the wolf family. I’d thought they were a type of wild dog. Around the world, the species and subspecies of wolves was varied, with the gray wolf the largest, and the only one that might be big enough to shift, mass for mass, from a modern-sized human to a beast. I’d seen them change, and there hadn’t been any obvious mass transfer, so I was betting on gray wolf for the weres I’d fought, though the coat color differences seemed more doglike, with a heavy shift toward Siberian husky.
The rest of the morning, I studied the history of weres online, looking into the worldwide mythos while keeping an eye out for anything new that might pertain to skinwalkers, not that I had much hope. I routinely Googled skinwalkers and had never discovered anything about a nonhuman or a subspecies like me. There was a lot of nonsense about weres online, but nothing suggested a skinwalker. As usual.
By noon I was hungry again, tired, and annoyed. Rick still hadn’t called. A small part of my brain was whispering that I deserved to be dumped, that I was nowhere near attractive enough to date pretty boy Rick LaFleur. A bigger part of me was whispering that I deserved to be dumped because I’d abandoned my no-sex-until-marriage, Christian-children’s-home upbringing. I was sleeping with him, I’d skipped church to be with him, and I’d caught myself cussing without my life being in danger. Oh, and I’d been having erotic thoughts about Bruiser when I was sleeping with Rick. Guilt. Guilt like a heavy wool blanket.
Other women didn’t have guilt, I knew that with a certainty. My house backed up to a whorehouse and none of the girls working there seemed to have any guilt at all. But a truckload of guilt was dumped on me for sleeping with one guy. Go figure.
Not able to deal with my own traitorous brain, or thoughts about my possibly traitorous boyfriend, I flopped down on the bed and closed my eyes. And when that made the images in my head worse, I grabbed my gym bag and hopped on Bitsa hoping that a good pummeling at the dojo might help.
My new sensei was a hapkido black belt, second dan, with a black belt in tae kwon do and a third black belt in combat tai chi, though he had given up competition years ago. Everyone who trained with him knew he thought competition was for sissies and martial arts were for fighting and killing. His style was perfect for me, because I studied mixed disciplines and had never gone for any belt. I trained to stay alive, not to look snazzy, all belted up, or to show off a wall full of trophies. My fighting style could best be described as dirty, an aggressive amalgam of styles, geared to the fast and total annihilation of an attacker.
The dojo was in the back room of a jewelry store on St. Louis, open to the public only after store hours, but open to a select few students during the day. I had quickly made it from casual sparring partner to serious student and I had my own key. I parked Bitsa at the curb and turned down the narrow service alley. It was all of thirty inches wide, damp and dim.