Songs of Love & Death

A minute later, he went out again. I settled down to mark some essays, and this time I wasn’t disturbed for almost an hour, when I heard a low but terrible sound outside, a deep groan that sounded almost human.

I jumped up and flung the door open, calling his name. It was dark outside, the profound darkness of night in the country, but even deeper than usual because there was no moon. A single, low-energy bulb fixed to the right of the doorframe cast a little murky light in a small semicircle around the steps, but beyond that I was blind.

“Cody?” I called again, my voice strained and cracking with worry. “Cody, sweetheart, where are you? Come here, Cody!” I hurried down the steps.

“Katherine?” The voice came out of the darkness, a voice I’d never expected to hear again.

Then a man walked out of the darkness, and it was Cody Vela, alive, stark naked, and staring at me with a look that mingled confusion and longing. He came closer still, close enough to smell, and the scent of sweat and musk took me back to the day we’d met, and stirred the same desire.

“I thought you were dead!” I cried.

“Me, too.” He shivered convulsively, and he reached for me at the same moment I reached for him, and then we were hugging each other, and it was crazy, but I’d never wanted anyone so much in my life, and nothing else mattered. I could feel that he felt the same way, and when he started to nuzzle my neck, and his hands moved down to squeeze and caress my bottom, I almost fell onto the ground with him. But even though he was naked, I wasn’t, and the awkwardness of trying to get undressed was just enough to give me pause, and so I managed to pull him inside, where it was warm, and we could make love in the comfort of my bed.

The first time was hungry and desperate, but after that we were able to take things more slowly, indulging in sensuality and exploration, teasing and playing, until, finally, resting, we talked.

I expected an explanation, a movie-worthy plot involving doubles and disinformation, or lies and kidnapping, but there was nothing like that. He had no idea how he’d turned up naked and disoriented in the woods outside my trailer.

His last memory before that was of intense, agonizing pain. He’d been on the edge of death, horribly tortured by three men, one of whom he knew, two he’d never seen before: “But I’d know them again,” he said darkly.

The traumatic memories made him break out in a cold sweat; although he spared me the gory details, his hands went convulsively to his genitals, ears, mouth, knees, chest, seeking the remembered damage.

But he was whole, there were no wounds, not a trace of any injury, as I had already so pleasurably discovered. He’d switched on the small, pink-shaded light on the night table as we talked, and it was clear to us both that his lean, muscular body was unmarked except for the pale, curved line of a very old scar on the side of his neck, and a screaming face tattooed on his left bicep.

I thought about drugs, hypnotism, false memories, but before I could say anything he continued. “I wanted to die. After what they’d done to me, I knew I couldn’t live, but dying was so hellishly slow. But then I knew it was happening, because the pain wasn’t so bad, and I couldn’t see, or hear those bastards taunting me anymore—I realized they must have taken me somewhere, and left me, because I wasn’t in my house anymore. I wasn’t tied to a chair. I was curled up on my side, on the ground, outside—hard earth—sticky with blood, but not really hurting, and Lobo was licking my face.”

He reared up in bed, alarmed. “Lobo! I yelled at him to run when those guys grabbed me—but he must have come back. If those bastards got him—”

“He’s fine,” I said, putting my arms around him and hugging him tight. “He came here to me the morning that… that they said you were dead. I’ve been looking after him. He’s outside—do you want me to—?”

I started to get up, but he pulled me back until we were both lying down again. “Later. Long as I know he’s okay.”

“So Lobo found you,” I said. “And then what, the police arrived? They took you to the hospital?” I was struggling to make sense of it.

He made a small, negative movement with his head on the pillow. “No cops, no doctors, no hospital. Just Lobo. But that wasn’t right, because he was huge—or I was really little—and he put his head down and picked me up, very gently, in his mouth.

“I wasn’t scared. I was glad. I relaxed, and knew he was going to take care of me. I thought I’d died and been born again as a wolf cub—as one of Lobo’s pups. I thought, I get to have another chance at life, this time as a wolf, and I thought maybe that would be better than what I was the first time around.”

I said, “So you died and turned into a wolf?”

He laughed, and rolled on top of me. “Does this feel like wolf to you? Is this fur? Are these claws? Is my nose cold?” He licked my face, then kissed me and laughed again. “I’m not dead, and I am definitely still a man!”

“I don’t understand.”