I know it was damned unprofessional, as well as totally out of character for me. I'm not in the habit of sleeping with brief acquaintances.  I am a scientist, and I was supposed to be studying Roderick's lycanthropy. I've spent a lot of time asking me why I slept with Roderick. Maybe it was my lack of sleep from the night before. Maybe it was because he just churned up a bunch of emotions left over from my divorce. Maybe it was animal magnetism.

It was interesting though. Roderick was very, very inexperienced, but he was willing to learn. I guess being a werewolf makes you keep from getting close to people.

It was still the afternoon when I left Roderick's place. I walked home to my apartment feeling puzzled about what I had done, but not really regretting it.

The next day I started working on isolating the lycanthropy gene.

Roderick was very gentlemanly about everything. We were very discreet. I even ended up slipping back to his aprtment a few other times.

But on the next full moon, my theory that Roderick's werewolfhood was hereditary was shot to pieces.

I'd gone to sleep early, exhausted from twelve hours at the lab. The next morning I woke up curled on the floor. There was blood all over me. My door was broken down.

"Yes," I yelled. "I just got in this morning and found that someone broke in."

"I heard some noise last night, but I didn't think anything of it until this morning. when I saw the door broken. Should I call the cops?"

"I already have," I lied.

I took a shower in an attempt to wash the blood off me. Then I accessed the morning papers. The cover of the Daily News blared at me from my computer screen: Giant Wolf Kills Two in Brooklyn -- Maims Cop.

I was in a state of denial. I called the Navy Yard to make it hadn't been Roderick. Of couirse, it wasn't.

You see, I was wrong about lycanthropy. It isn't a mutation. It's a retrovirus that changes your genetic makeup. And it can sometimes spread the way other viruses do.

I have my own lab now, in an old warehouse in Kansas City. Instead of being a research scientist, I am a research subject. I don't take it as well as Roderick did. It must be because I haven't ilved with it all my adult life. Or maybe it's just the female temperament.

All I know is, when it's getting to be that time of the month for me, I get really crabby.

~