"Come on, get up." He offered his hand and helped me to my feet. "Now I want you knock me all the way across the gym."

He had the gall to put a twinkle in his eyes.

The rest of the class formed a circle around us, an audience that I didn't want and that made me bristle. Wolf hated fighting. She was better at cowering. Inside, I was whining.

Craig bent his arms and hunched like he was getting ready to charge me. If he charged, I was supposed to drop, letting him trip over me, and shove, making sure he lost his footing. Sure enough, he ran at me. I dropped. Instead of tripping, though, he sidestepped. If I'd shoved like I was supposed to, he would have lost his balance. But I just sat there, allowing him to jump behind me and lock his arm around my neck.

"I know you can do better than that. Come on, let's try it again."

I could fight, I was strong enough. But I had no will for it. Too used to being picked on, a victim by habit. I closed my eyes, feeling like a kid who'd flunked yet another test Slowly, I got to my feet.

Craig faced me again. "Okay, let's try something. This time, imagine I'm your worst ex-boyfriend, and this is your chance to get even."

Oh, that was easy. That would be Bill. All Craig had to do was say it, and I saw Bill there, and all that anger came back. I clenched my fists.

Being angry meant not holding back, of course. I wasn't sure I could have pulled the next punch if I'd wanted to, once I had Bill on the brain.

Craig charged. I ducked. Then I shoved, leading with my shoulder and putting my whole body behind it. I connected with his side. He made a noise, a grunt of air, and flew. Both his feet left the mat. Women squealed and dodged out of his way as he crashed to the floor, bouncing twice. He lay on his back and didn't move.

The bottom dropped out of my stomach and I nearly fainted. I'd killed him. I'd killed my self-defense instructor. Shit.

I ran to where he lay and stumbled to a crouch at his side, touching his shoulder. "Craig?"

His eyelids fluttered. A few panicked heartbeats later, he opened them. Then he grinned.

"Yeah, that's what I'm talking about! You gotta learn to hit people." He was breathing hard. He had to gasp the words out. I'd probably knocked the wind out of him. "Now, never do that to me again."

I gave him a hand up. He was rubbing his head. I bet he would hurt in the morning. How embarrassing.

"Wow," Patricia, coming to stand next to me, said. "Your ex must have been a real winner."

"You have no idea."

Between my mystery phone call and Rick's visit, I had my research assignments for the next week set. I worked on my mystery caller first.

The Center for the Study of Paranatural Biology was the government agency that had conducted the study on lycanthropy and vampirism overseen by the CDC and NIH. It was relegated to footnotes in the back pages of the obscure report that had been all but buried in the CDC archives. I couldn't find any names of people there I could contact. No one wanted to be associated with it. The people I called at the CDC hadn't heard of it. The NIH referred me to the CDC. It probably wasn't a real agency, but some kind of think tank. Or smoke screen.

I didn't usually buy into conspiracy theories. At least not where the government was concerned. After all, when Congress had trouble voting itself enough money to continue operating, how was I supposed to believe that this same government was behind a finely tuned clandestine organization bent on obfuscating the truth and manipulating world events according to some arcane plan for the domination of the minds and souls of all free people?

Unless vampires were involved. If vampires were involved, all bets were off.

I worked on Rick's flyer next.

As much as I hated to admit it, I started with the website for Uncharted World. The Internet had a thriving community that dealt in supernatural news. The trouble was separating the hoaxes and fanatics from the real deal. Most of what Uncharted World posted was sensationalist and inaccurate. But they had a search engine that filtered for "news of the weird," and with enough patience and by following enough links, I could trace the Web to good sources and cross-check the information to verify it.

I hit pay dirt when I found a collection of bulletin board postings and some missing persons reports filed with various local police departments. It seemed that about four months ago, an old revival-style tent had sprung up in the middle of the night on the outskirts of Omaha, Nebraska. Posters appeared all over the bad parts of town, the likely haunts of lycanthropes and vampires, advertising a cure based solely on faith and the intercession of a self-proclaimed holy man, Elijah Smith. I couldn't find any documentation of what happened during that meeting. The tent had disappeared by the next morning and a week later showed up in Wichita, Kansas. Then Pueblo, Colorado. Stories began circulating: The cure worked, this guy was for real, and the people he healed were so grateful, they didn't want to leave. A caravan of followers sprang up around that single tent.

Smith's congregation was known as the Church of the Pure Faith, with "Pure faith will set you free" as its motto. I couldn't find any photos, any accounts of what went on inside the caravan or what the meetings were like. I couldn't find any specifics about the cure itself. No one who wasn't earnestly seeking a cure could get close to Smith or his followers. People who came looking for their friends, packmates, or Family members who had disappeared into that tent were threatened. Interventions were forcibly turned back.

I came across a couple of websites warning people away from Smith. Some people screamed cult. After reading what I could find, I was inclined to as well.

Vampirism and lycanthropy were not medical conditions, so to speak. People had studied us, scanned us, dissected us, and while they found definite characteristics distinguishing us from Homo sapiens, they hadn't found their sources. They weren't genetic, viral, bacterial, or even biological. That was part of what made us so frightening. Our origins were what science had been trying to deny for hundreds of years: the supernatural. If there were a way to cure vampirism and lycanthropy, it would probably come from the supernatural, the CDC and Center for the Study of Paranatural Biology notwithstanding. In the case of a vampire, how else could one restore the bloodless undead to full-blooded life? Faith healing just might be the answer. That was the problem with trying to expose Smith as a fraud and his church as a cult.

I didn't believe there was a cure. Someone would have found it by now.

"Welcome to The Midnight Hour. I'm Kitty Norville. Tonight I have a very special guest with me. Veronica Sevilla is the author of The Bledsoe Chronicles, The Book of Rites, and a half-dozen other best-selling novels that follow the trials and tribulations of a clan of vampires through the centuries. Her newest novel, The Sun Never Rises, has just been released. Ms. Sevilla, thank you for being on the show."

"Please, my dear, call me Veronica."

Veronica Sevilla, whose birth name was Martha Perkins, wore a straight, black knit dress, black stockings, black patent-leather heels, and a black fur stole. Her dark hair—dyed, I was sure—framed her pale face in tight curls. Diamond studs glittered on her earlobes. She sat back in the guest chair, hugging herself, hands splayed across opposite shoulders. It wasn't because she was cold or nervous—it was a pose. Her official biography gave no age or date of birth. I couldn't tell how old she was by looking at her. Her face was lined, but not old. She might have been anywhere from forty to sixty. There might have been surgery involved.