Songs of Love & Death (40 page)

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.”

“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?

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…

“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.”

Thirty minutes wasn’t even enough time to alert the Dalvarr Trade Collective or Widestar corporate legal division, and Filar knew that. Just as he knew there was no way the
Pandea
had the ability to pay a three-hundred-thousand credit “tariff.” This wasn’t lawful possession. This was thinly disguised piracy. Extortion.

Serri was out of options. All she had left was her anger—and nothing to lose by unleashing it. She fisted her hands at her sides. “You motherless son of a Garpion whore! It’ll be a cold day in hell before I’ll allow you or your people access to my ship!”

Too late she realized the translator’s vocabulary was limited to trade, technical, and legal terms. His Esteemedness looked genuinely puzzled. “We do
not see what climactic conditions have to do with the fact that we have in our possession an order of procurement authorized by the Council of Jabo Station United.” He wheezed loudly. “And by the way, we have three maternal parents, none of whom reside in the Garpion Sector.” His four tiny eyes blinked rapidly. “Thirty minutes, Captain Beck.”

Serri strode from the office, hands still fisted. She had thirty minutes to collect her business partner, Quin, and try to figure out why Gop Filar so desperately wanted the forty-seven containers from Widestar that Rez Jonas assigned to them three shipdays ago. She should never have trusted Rez, but one of Quin’s favorite lectures was that personal grudges had no place at the trading table—especially grudges with ex-lovers and ex-employers. Rez and Widestar fit both categories. Quin’s Skoggi senses had picked up nothing duplicitous during the transaction, though admittedly Rez made only a brief appearance, his assistant handling the details.

Unless Quin lied about what he sensed.

No, she couldn’t believe that. Quintrek James of Daq’kyree’s detractors had many unkind names for the former High Council administrator, but liar wasn’t one of them. If anything, Quin could be brutally honest, and his empathic ability tended to keep others honest as well. The fact that Quin could read her emotions never bothered her—and had proved handy in more than one sticky trade negotiation. Business was growing, enough that after six years as the
Pandea
’s pilot, she’d been able to buy a thirty-percent share of Quin’s transport business two months ago. The
Star of Pandea
was now her ship too.

So were the
Pandea
’s troubles.

She spotted Quin’s felinoid form in a booth at the Wretched Beast, one of Jabo Station’s more popular multispecies bars. He was large even for a Skoggi, his head and shoulders clearly visible above the glossy blue tabletop. Black fur covered his pointed ears, wide side ruff, and back, all the way to his plumy tail, but he had a triangle of white over his eyes and muzzle that extended down his chest. In almost direct contrast to his fur and his bulk was the wraithlike silver-skinned Kor in bright yellow robes sitting across from him.

Damn. She didn’t need an audience to their troubles. Worse, the Kor were chronic meddlers and Thuk-Zik was no exception. If she even hinted something was wrong, the yellow-robed male would latch on to her like a high-security docking clamp.

But Thuk-Zik was rising even as she approached. “I must be on my way. Good trading, Nom Quintrek. Nomma Captain Beck.” He moved away, the hem of his robe fluttering as his clawed feet tapped against the metal decking.

“Good trading, Nom,” Serri called after him, keeping relief at his departure out of her voice.
Thank you, saints and blessed Vakare
. She slid into the booth.

Quin was nudging his bowl of meat tea with one wide furry paw, causing the gelatinous liquid to shimmer. “You should have been here five minutes ago,” he said, with that lilt his voice held when he spoke Trade-Standard. “We had quite a chin wag about who’s brassed off at whom at Widestar Trading.”

She glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one—especially another Kor—was within earshot, then lowered her voice. “Widestar is going to be brassed off at us. Filar has a grab order with our names on it—unless you have a spare three hundred thousand to make him go away. He knows damned well we don’t. He’ll be at our airlock in twenty minutes.”

The white muzzle raised out of the bowl. Golden eyes narrowed. “Tailless bastard!”

“Pay your tab. We need to get there before he does.”

T
HE VOICES IN
Nicandro Talligar’s head were talking to him again. It came with the job.

“Status?” asked a familiar gravelly male voice.

Nic tucked himself into the recesses of a maintenance alcove in the corridor outside the Wretched Beast and flexed his left wrist, activating the tympanic implant’s transmitter. “Filar took the bait.”

“Any reason to believe he suspects?”

I’m not Brackton
, he almost told Leonoso, but held back. His case agent didn’t need to be reminded of the mission failure at Able-Trade. But Nic
wasn’t
Depvar Brackton. He’d never blown his cover, not in five years, not even when threatened with death. After what happened at Widestar, the job was everything to him. The agency knew that and—he suspected—used that.

“Everything’s clean.”

“Keep it that way. Next contact in thirty-eight.” The transmission cut off with the usual sharp click.

He was about to move out of the alcove when a woman in a dark green flightsuit jogged by, her long dark braid swinging across her back. The ship’s patch on her left sleeve was emblazoned with a silver star. A very large black-and-white Skoggi in a matching dark green CI—command-interface—vest bounded on all fours by her side. The patch on his vest showed an identical silver star.

Nic’s chest suddenly went tight. He recognized and expected to see the
Skoggi. Quintrek James—a familiar name in political circles—was owner of record of the
Star of Pandea
, a jump-rated short-hauler working the ass end of the Dalvarr System along with the usual assortment of pirates, mercenaries, and con artists. Which was the reason Nic Talligar was here—tracking cargo that the Dalvarr Intelligence Agency had, three days ago, deliberately placed on board Quintrek James’s ship.

But what in hell was Serenity Beck doing here? The answer was in her green uniform with its silver star emblem on the sleeve. She was ship’s crew, very likely ship’s pilot.

Death threats he could handle. But Serri Beck was trouble—a seriously unexpected complication. And one that made his chest go tight and his breath hitch.

If Nic thought Serri disliked him six years ago, there was no doubt in his mind that she was really going to hate him now! Damned shame he couldn’t return the favor. But six seconds of watching her sprint past him just destroyed six years of his hard-won sanity. And might well destroy his career.

He almost flexed his wrist to contact Leonoso. But he couldn’t—not for thirty-eight hours. Mission rules. Cursing himself silently, he waited for a boxy anti-grav cargo auto-pallet to whirr by before slipping out of the shadows to follow her. Some rules were about to be broken.

....

S
ERRI QUICKLY TAPPED
in the codes to open the freighter bay’s airlock. Quin bounded through ahead of her, tail flicking as if to propel him forward. The Skoggi raced across the metal decking for the hulking deltoid-shaped ship that nearly filled the bay. Rampway lights, triggered by the thought-receptors in Quin’s vest, winked on as he approached.

“Try scrambling the airlock codes to give us time,” he called out. “I’ll bring main systems online.”

“They’ll fire the ion cannons at us before we even hit the lanes,” she called back as the airlock door wheezed closed. Not many stations packed a full complement of ion cannons. But Jabo had a reputation for using them to prevent captains skipping out on dockage fees.

Quin hesitated in the ship’s hatchway. “I’m not looking to escape but to obfuscate. If they can’t get in our cargo holds, they can’t rob us of our cargo.”

There was that. Serri programmed in a second override to the corridor airlock pad, then bolted for the rampway. If the manifests were accurate, Filar’s
interest in their cargo made no sense: forty-seven containers of Tillithian fermentation essence. A small winery operating out of a hydroponics outpost was the documented recipient. Partial payment was in account on Jabo. It wasn’t the usual setup, but they needed to stop for fuel and water anyway. Even full payment wouldn’t cover Filar’s bogus importation tariff.

“Anything?” she asked Quinn as she jogged onto the bridge.

The Skoggi was hunkered down in the command sling, lights on his CI vest blinking in syncopation with lights on the ship’s consoles as the vest translated his thoughts into actions on a ship made for humanoid hands, not Skoggi paws. “I’ve jammed the access doors to bays two and three. One and four, however, are being enthusiastically uncooperative.”

“And Filar won’t find it unusual that we can’t get into our own cargo holds?” Her partner’s perfect plan suddenly held huge flaws.

“Not when we tell him the winery has the only unlock codes. To prevent us from selling the essence elsewhere, of course. Considering that we took prepayment.”

Yeah, with an invoice for unpaid tariffs served on her as soon as she left the bank. Serri hated coincidence. She just wished coincidence didn’t like her so much.

She leaned her arms on the back of the command sling. “Let me take a look.” Quin knew his ship, but Serri had learned a few tricks from a—onetime—friend who’d worked security at Widestar and had a talent for things less than legal. But if it kept the
Pandea’
s cargo in her holds, it was worth the heartache of resurrecting Nic Talligar’s memory. She still didn’t know what hurt more: the fact that Rez Jonas—her almost-husband—was having an affair with his sultry-but-stupid administrative assistant at Widestar, or that her closest friend since her university days provided excuses for her almost-husband and Sultry-but-Stupid.

She’d been in love with Rez for over two years. But she’d been friends with Nic for seven. All Rez gave her was heartache and shame. At least from Nic, she’d learned something useful.

Like whom she could trust. And whom she couldn’t.

With a frustrated sigh, she brought up ship’s schematics. Losing cargo would not only hamper their ability to get future hauling contracts, but it would damage the reputation that Quin had worked so hard to rebuild the past ten years. If Serri could have, she’d make Quin dump the containers on Jabo’s decking and bolt. But Jabo Station packed ion cannons. And she had no reason to believe leaving their cargo behind would ensure their safety.

She had Cargo One jammed when the ramp alarms beeped. “Shit! The
motherless son of a Garpion whore is early.”

“Not Filar or his guards,” Quin told her as she tapped on the ship’s exterior vidcams. “Human male. No intention of violence.”

She glanced at Quin. He was using his Skoggi senses to take a reading. Their visitor might not intend violence, but… “I double-locked the corridor hatchway. How in hell—?”

She swung back to the monitors. It was as if her illegal tinkering resurrected a ghost. The scars on her heart suddenly felt fresh and raw. Her onetime close friend hadn’t changed much in six years, though his short dark hair looked a bit shaggier and he was definitely in need of a shave. But instead of a light green Widestar security uniform, he was in a black spacer jacket and dark pants. She’d bet, however, that his infamous charm hadn’t changed one bit. His lock-picking skills certainly hadn’t lapsed.

“You know him?”

She could tell by Quin’s concerned tone that he’d felt her surge of emotions. “He was friends with Rez Jonas when we all worked for Widestar.”

“Perhaps Rez sent him. Or he needs a job. Let him in.”

She hesitated, her mind seizing on something so bizarre she couldn’t discount it. She couldn’t believe—well, yeah, she could—that six years after she walked out on Rez, he’d still hold a grudge.

But if Rez Jonas wanted to get revenge, using his new position as Widestar’s director of Sector Three exports was a terrific way to do it. Sector Three—the Outrim region of the Dalvarr System—was the
Pandea’
s main territory. “Quin, has it occurred to you that Rez might have set us up?”

“All the more reason I wish to speak with this friend of yours.”

She shoved herself out of the command sling. If Quin was hurt because of some juvenile plan of Rez’s to get back at her, she swore she’d hunt the man down and pummel him out of existence.

“We have only ten minutes. See if you can’t jam Cargo Four.” She grabbed her Z9 laser rifle from the bridge’s weapons locker, then headed quickly down the corridor to find out just what Nic Talligar was doing on her rampway—and back in her life.

“I
F YOU’RE HERE
for a job, we’re not hiring.”