Songs of Love & Death

“Neither do I, my love. I’m just telling you the last thing I remember, I guess it was a dream, and I was asleep until I woke up in the dark out there and heard you call my name.” His face wrinkled in puzzlement. “How did you know I was there?”

“I didn’t. I thought you were dead, I told you.” I closed my eyes and held on to him as tightly as I could, feeling the unmistakable warmth and weight of him pressing me against the bed, inhaling his scent, yet even still fighting the fear that I’d lost my mind. “Oh, this must be a dream,” I said sadly.

“Does this feel like a dream?” he asked. “How about this? Hmmm?”

Surely no dream could ever be so real, so physical.

We made love until sleep overwhelmed us both.

When I woke, the little room was full of daylight, and I was alone in a bed with tumbled sheets and the heavy, cloying odor of sex. He must have just gotten up to go to the bathroom, I told myself, but anxiety made me sit bolt upright, and I couldn’t keep it out of my voice as I called, “Cody?”

There, blocking the doorway, in his customary sleeping spot, was the wolf. He lifted his head in response to his name and sleepily blinked his amber eyes. I recognized the animal I loved, but this time I also saw a second awareness, a different intelligence, looking back at me, and I knew.

I CAN’T SAY that I understand, even now, but there’s no doubt that the wolf Cody rescued was no ordinary animal. Once upon a time, a man called Cody saved a wolf. Later, when the man was about to die, that wolf saved him, taking his soul inside himself. I called the wolf Cody before I knew how true that was.

He comes out at the dark of the moon. For me, it’s wonderful. Life has been good to me. I have my work, the company of my wolf, and four nights a month, the undivided attention of my lover. For him, he’s told me, the wolf-time passes like sleep. He’s conscious, he can think like the man he was only during the moon-dark days, and although he loves me dearly, there’s more to life than love. I’m not afraid of him, but there are some bad men out there who should be.

When you really think about it, which is more frightening: a man who turns into a wolf, or a wolf who becomes a man?

Linnea Sinclair

A former news reporter and retired private detective, hot new author Linnea Sinclair is the author of eight butt-kicking action-adventure science fiction romance novels, including Finders Keepers, An Accidental Goddess, Games of Command, The Down Home Zombie Blues, and her Dock Five Universe series: Gabriel’s Ghost (RITA Award winner), Shades of Dark, and Hope’s Folly. Her most recent novel is Rebels and Lovers, the fourth book in the Dock Five Universe.

In the fast-paced, action-packed story that follows, she proves once again that trust between lovers, once lost, is a very hard thing to regain. In fact, attempting to regain it might just cost you your life…

Courting Trouble

“Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today.”

—Mark Twain

Captain Serenity Beck knew the very moment things went horribly wrong. It happened right between the words “confiscate” and “impound,” which—thanks to the translator encircling her left ear—she heard twice: first in Nalshinian and the second time in Trade-Standard.

“We repeat. Refusal to pay grants us license to confiscate your cargo.” The bulbous orange triped that bore the title of Esteemed Dockmaster of Jabo Station reached forward to stroke the blue-tinged holoscreen hovering over his desk. An image of the Star of Pandea appeared in the lower left. “And, if necessary, place your ship under impound.”

“It’s not a matter of refusal.” Serri spoke slowly, hearing the echo of her cadence through the dockmaster’s lang-trans, which—since Nalshinian ears were under the jaw—dangled around his blubbery neck. “We’re a Dalvarr-licensed hauler under contract to Widestar. You have no authority to impose a tariff.”

“We have your ship in our bay.” Filar jabbed one stubby digit at the Pandea’s image, setting the metal rings on his billowing sleeves clanking. “Possession, Captain Beck. It is eleven points of all law. Therefore, we shall present ourselves at your airlock in thirty minutes to collect the cargo.”