THE WEREWOLF’S SIN takes place fifteen years after THE WEREWOLF’S KISS, when all of the loups-garou are at crucial points in their lives. Walt Marley has been given the gift he wanted all his life: his sister Sylvie Drago has made him a loup-garou. But because of it, their horrified, heartbroken father has disowned them both. Lucien Drago feels a gulf opening up between him and his beautiful wife, and Achille Broussard has been shattered by a violent tragedy.

     The werewolves’ vulnerability has left them open to the influences of the sociopathic Lycaon, the ancient King of Arcadia, cursed by Zeus to become the first werewolf.  Lycaon challenges his own first victim, the legendary Apollonius of Tyana, the werewolf who initiated the code of ethics by which the modern-day loup-garou community lives. Only Sylvie Marley Drago, and her husband Lucien, can prevent Lycaon's horrifying revenge against the werewolves. And one of them must make a desperate sacrifice

 Excerpt from The Werewolf's Sin:

            She was so still that Walt at first thought nothing was happening. Then he saw the changes in her face, small at first, then becoming momentous. Her body contorted, and he knew it was painful for her, but Sylvie kept her calm composure as long as she could, which was almost until the last minute. Walt knew that each werewolf transforms at his own pace, in his own order: with Sylvie, the fangs grew out first, the bones of her head elongated and tilted, her face coated with a light sheen of red hair, the cheekbones standing out prominently, the eyes and brows swept back dramatically. The hair on her head burst forth in a shower of copper fireworks, settling into a long, thick mane flowing down her back, almost to her knees. Her hands and fingers elongated; three-inch claws, clear as crystal, erupted from her fingertips. She grew taller, her upper body more powerful, her shoulders wider, until she was seven or eight feet tall.

            Under an enchantment, Walt watched without moving, without fear.

            She opened her eyes. They were a bright turquoise blue, the Marley family trademark.

            She stood up, towering over his mere six foot, two inches, and pulled him to his feet. One hand gently caressed his hair, like a mother strokes a much-beloved child. The other arm wound around his back and pulled him closer to her, lifting him slightly and arching his back.

            Her voice was clear, slightly deeper, more sonorous.

            "This is your gift, Walter. From Zizi to Lucien, from Lucien to me, and now from me to you."

            She bit her own lip, and Walter could see the scarlet bead form under the razorlike fangs.

            He felt more of a sting than a pain as the fangs went into his chest. He was a little surprised: he thought it would be a large wound. But all that was needed, he found, was a transfer of the genetic material from her saliva and blood into his body.

            The instant it happened, he knew it. His eyes flew open wide and his breath caught in his throat as the rush of energy hit his blood and his brain. He was glad she had a firm grip on him or he would have fallen as his knees buckled with the unaccustomed power flowing into him. It was like, but not exactly like, getting an electric shock that jolted every part of his body at once.

            He cried out, and the sound was like the same cry he made at orgasm, only orgasm had never been this intense.

            She raised her head, the blood still on her lips and fangs. "Now, take control of it, Walt. It's best to try and learn this from the very first. Feel what's happening to your body and try to direct it. Picture in your mind what you're becoming, what's happening to you. Don't just let it wash over you; feel every part of your body as it changes."

            With the greatest discipline he had ever mustered, Walt felt his body change. He tried to identify each mutation in each limb, in each organ. It was as if he, like Lucien, was a conductor, bringing all the instruments to life at their proper intervals.

            "Now try to slow it down. Keep up with it." She lowered him to the floor.

            The pain was just incredible, he knew, but somehow, he didn't feel completely attached to the pain, although he could see his body react. He was so amazed watching what happened that the pain was secondary to the astonishment.

            And behind the astonishment, joy.

            He looked at himself, then at Sylvie, and he laughed. It was wonderful!

            With a gradual, but swift, subsiding of the pain, he was left aware only of the power, the new energy flooding him. He became calm, steady, sure of himself.

            When he stood up, a lot of that steadiness left him.

            Good God! he thought, she's seven or eight feet tall and I'm looking down at her from at least six inches! He looked at himself, at his chestnut brown pelt, at his own claws, deep brown instead of her crystal. He felt something brush him from behind: his hair, grown into a supple cape over his shoulders and down his back.

            He held his hand in front of his face and flexed the claws. He couldn't get over it. Another thing: he could see! Really see, as if the great chandelier had suddenly burst into light. He knew it was his new vision, sharpened for the night.

            "You look okay, I guess," Sylvie said. He knew from her voice that he was beautiful! "Can you talk?"

            He tried. His speech was incoherent, but his voice was a deep sonic boom.

            "It will happen as your body adjusts. For once, I've got the edge on my smart-mouth brother."

            The friendly poke he gave her arm would have broken a strong man in two. She didn't even flinch.

            "Now I want you to stay very, very close to me," she said. "We can't stay down here, we'll have to go up above. This is your first night and you have to feed, so I'm taking you to Central Park where you can have a little more freedom. Stalking unobserved in the city is an expert's art, but if you're running flat out and don't stop, no one can see you, you'll be too fast. We're only going to slow down when we get to the park, but you're going to be distracted: nothing will look like you're used to. Your vision, your sense of smell and your hearing are all magnified; that and your new height are going to disorient you. Before we go, I want you to take a deep breath."

            He did, and was sorry. When he had walked in here as a human, it had smelled musty and unpleasant, but what hit him now was the reek of hell. He could smell a decaying rat that was probably a mile off. He could smell all the accumulated years of human and animal excrement and filth and and garbage up above. There was an odor in every speck of dust.

            At almost the same time, he was nearly knocked over by a wall of noise, a screaming, grating, banging cacophony that made him clap both hands over his ears.

            "This is probably the worst city in the world to learn to smell and hear, but you might as well start out the hard way. You'll learn to shut it off selectively," she assured him, "the same way you'll learn to shut out sounds. But you need these new senses to survive. Try now to take control of it, the same way you did with your transformation. You did very well with that, by the way. Much better than I did, even after eight or ten tries."

            Walt summoned the same discipline and awareness of his own body, and systematically shut down his senses. It was still awful, but bearable.

            "Now the true test, little brother, and the true rewards. Let's let you find out how it feels to be free."

            Taking his hand, she led him out of the tunnels, through the mazes, through unlocked doors.  The same trip that had taken an hour now took only seconds. They came out on the street in the darkness, on a deserted alleyway.

            "Take a deep breath, Walt," Sylvie said, "and let's go!"

            She had been right: it was all very distracting. The familiar world looked like fairyland to him, with the colors enhanced, the details sharpened, the dark corners lighted, and from a new, taller perspective. The sounds, too, closed in on him and then were gone as he passed, but they were getting clearer and more distinct. He could isolate whole sentences spoken in a single voice, a separate sound of glass tinkling or a taxi banging its way down Broadway. He shook it off, pleased, and stuck to Sylvie, moving like a flash of swamp fire just ahead of him. He caught a glimpse of people fanned by the wind the werewolves created, looking puzzled at the quick, passing breeze that blew their skirts or hair, and he laughed. His laugh, too, caught on the whirlwind, but before the humans could recognize it, it was gone.

            They had just entered the park up near the Museo del Barrio and the Museum of the City of New York, near 104th Street, leaping easily over the gates. It was still early, only about eight or eight-thirty, and a few people were still in the park, jogging or power-walking along the paths.

            "I know what you're thinking," Sylvie whispered. "What is anyone sane doing in the park at night?" She shrugged. New Yorkers, the shrug said, go figure.

            A strong-looking man in red jogging shorts whizzed by. Sylvie, her attention caught, gazed after him. Her eyes narrowed as she concentrated.

            "Him," she told Walt. "Let's follow him."

            Walt obeyed, keeping to the shadows with Sylvie, but he was clueless as to why she'd picked that particular man. He looked like a clean-cut, straight arrow type, a lawyer or some kind of professional man, probably with a co-op on the upper east side or the park and a commute downtown to Wall Street. Walt knew enough of the loup-garou's principles to know that a kill for justice was what they were looking for. This guy looked like his most serious offense was taking an extra deduction for business lunches.

             When the man stopped, taking a breather and stretching, Sylvie nudged Walt and whispered, "See if you can tell why he's your man. Try it. Pick up on his thoughts."

            Walt wasn't sure how he did it, but he was conscious of concentrating his gaze on the man's forehead, so completely that his vision blurred. Other pictures began to form, pictures that had nothing to do with the reality he was in at the moment. Walt saw the man with a nylon stocking in his hands; he saw several young women, screaming, strangling, terrified, dying. And he saw the man, masturbating over their bodies and smiling, then walking away.

            The pictures jolted Walt badly and he jerked back to reality, shaken and horrified.

            "Do it quickly," Sylvie advised. "When you're killing in the city, it has to be done quickly and quietly. I think you know what to do. I can't help you physically with it, you have to do it yourself. It has to be your kill, completely."

            Walt took a deep breath. The man looked so harmless that Walt hesitated: could he have been wrong? Once more, he probed the man's mind, just for a flash of truth, and got the same nightmarish pictures. Anger took him, and before the man knew what was happening, Walt had pulled him into the darkest part of the park.

            He knew what Sylvie had told him about speed, but he wanted this man to suffer. He wanted him to be afraid.