Songs of Love & Death (5 page)

LeBlanc smiled at me. “Granted, there are some aberrant effects from time to time. But so far, that’s been a very small percentage of the test pool. And the survivors are, as you yourself have experienced, perfectly happy. They have a love that most of your kind seldom find and even more infrequently keep. There are no victims here, wizard.”

“Oh,” I said. “Right. Except for the victims.”

LeBlanc exhaled. “Mortals are like mayflies, wizard. They live a brief time and then they are gone. And those who have died because of my work at least
died after days or weeks of perfect bliss. There are many who ended a much longer life with less. What I’m doing here has the potential to protect mortal kind from the White Court forever.”

“It isn’t genuine love if it’s forced upon someone,” Murphy said, her tone harsh.

“No,” LeBlanc said. “But I believe that the real thing will very easily grow from such a foundation of companionship and happiness.”

“Gosh, you’re noble,” I said.

LeBlanc’s eyes sparkled with something ugly.

“You’re doing this to get rid of the competition,” I said. “And, hell, maybe to try to increase the world’s population. Make more food.”

The vampire regarded me levelly. “There are multiple motivations behind the work,” she said. “Many of my Court agreed to the logic you cite when they would never have supported the idea of strengthening and defending mortals.”

“Ohhhhh,” I said, drawing the word out. “You’re the vampire with a heart of gold. Florence Nightingale with fangs. I guess that makes it okay, then.”

LeBlanc stared at me. Then her eyes flicked to Murphy and back. She smiled thinly. “There is a special cage reserved for you at the Red Court, Dresden. Its bars are lined with blades and spikes, so that if you fall asleep they will cut and gouge you awake.”

“Shut up,” Murphy said.

LeBlanc continued in a calmly amused tone. “The bottom is a closed bowl nearly a foot deep, so that you will stand in your own waste. And there are three spears with needle-sized tips waiting in a rack beneath the cage, so that any who pass you can pause and take a few moments to participate in your punishment.”

“Shut up,” Murphy growled.

“Eventually,” LeBlanc purred, “your guts will be torn out and left in a pile at your feet. And when you are dead, your skin will be flayed from your body, tanned, and made into upholstery for one of the chairs in the Red Temple.”

“Shut up!” snarled Murphy, and her voice was savage. Her gun whipped over to cover LeBlanc. “Shut your mouth, bitch!”

I realized the danger an instant too late. It was exactly the reaction that LeBlanc had intended to provoke. “Murph! No!”

Once Murphy’s Sig was pointing elsewhere, Maroon produced a gun from beneath his desk and raised it. He was pulling the trigger even before he could level it for a shot, blazing away as fast as he could move his finger. He wasn’t quite fifteen feet away from Murphy, but the first five shots missed her as I spun and brought the invisible power of my shield bracelet down between the
two of them. Bullets hit the shield with flashes of light and sent little concentric blue rings rippling through the air from the point of impact.

Murphy, meanwhile, had opened up on LeBlanc. Murph fired almost as quickly as Maroon, but she had the training and discipline necessary for combat. Her bullets smacked into the vampire’s torso, tearing through pale flesh and drawing gouts of red-black blood. LeBlanc staggered to one side—she wouldn’t be dead, but the shots had probably rung her bell for a second or two.

I lowered the shield as Maroon’s gun clicked on empty, lifted my right fist, and triggered the braided energy ring on my index finger with a short, uplifting motion. The ring saved back a little energy every time I moved my arm, storing it so that I could unleash it at need. Unseen force flew out from the ring, plucked Maroon out of his chair, and slammed him into the ceiling. He dropped back down, hit his back on the edge of the desk, and fell into a senseless sprawl on the floor. The gun flew from his fingers.

“I’m out!” Murphy screamed.

I whirled back to find LeBlanc pushing herself off the wall, regaining her balance. She gave Murphy a look of flat hatred, and her eyes flushed pure black, iris and sclera alike. She opened her mouth in an inhuman scream, and then the vampire hiding beneath LeBlanc’s seemingly human form exploded outward like a racehorse emerging from its gate, leaving shreds of pale, bloodless skin in its wake.

It was a hideous thing—black and flabby and slimy-looking, with a flaccid belly, a batlike face, and long, spindly limbs. LeBlanc’s eyes bulged hideously as she flew toward me.

I brought my shield up in time to intercept her, and she rebounded from it, to fall back to the section of floor already stained with her blood.

“Down!” Murphy shouted.

I dropped down onto my heels and lowered the shield.

LeBlanc rose again, even as I heard Murphy take a deep breath, exhale halfway, and hold it. Her gun barked once.

The vampire lost about a fifth of her head as the bullet tore into her skull. She staggered back against the wall, limbs thrashing, but she still wasn’t dead. She began to claw her way to her feet again.

Murphy squeezed off six more shots, methodically. None of them missed. LeBlanc fell to the floor. Murphy took a step closer, aimed, and put another ten or twelve rounds into the fallen vampire’s head. By the time she was done, the vampire’s head looked like a smashed gourd.

A few seconds later, LeBlanc stopped moving.

Murphy reloaded again and kept the gun trained on the corpse.

“Nice shootin’, Tex,” I said. I checked out Maroon. He was still breathing.

“So,” Murphy said. “Problem solved?”

“Not really,” I said. “LeBlanc was no practitioner. She can’t be the one who was working the whammy.”

Murphy frowned and eyed Maroon for a second.

I went over to the downed man and touched my fingers lightly to his brow. There was no telltale energy signature of a practitioner. “Nope.”

“Who, then?”

I shook my head. “This is delicate, difficult magic. There might not be three people on the entire White Council who could pull it off. So… it’s most likely a focus artifact of some kind.”

“A what?”

“An item that has a routine built into it,” I said. “You pour energy in one end and you get results on the other.”

Murphy scrunched up her nose. “Like those wolf belts the FBI had?”

“Yeah, just like that.” I blinked and snapped my fingers. “
Just
like that!”

I hurried out of the little complex and up the ladder. I went to the
tunnel car and took the old leather seat belt out of it. I turned it over and found the back inscribed with nearly invisible sigils and signs. Now that I was looking for it, I could feel the tingle of energy moving within it. “Ha,” I said. “Got it.”

Murphy frowned back at the entry to the Tunnel of Terror. “What do we do about Billy the Kid?”

“Not much we can do,” I said. “You want to try to explain what happened here to the Springfield cops?”

She shook her head.

“Me either,” I said. “The kid was LeBlanc’s thrall. I doubt he’s a danger to anyone without a vampire to push him into it.” Besides. The Reds would probably kill him on general principle anyway, once they found out about LeBlanc’s death.

We were silent for a moment. Then stepped in close to each other and hugged gently. Murphy shivered.

“You okay?” I asked quietly.

She leaned her head against my chest. “How do we help all the people she screwed with?”

“Burn the belt,” I said, and stroked her hair with one hand. “That should purify everyone it’s linked to.”

“Everyone,” she said slowly.

I blinked twice. “Yeah.”

“So once you do it… we’ll see what a bad idea this is. And remember that we both have very good reasons to not get together.”

“Yeah.”

“And… we won’t be feeling
this
anymore. This… happy. This complete.”

“No. We won’t.”

Her voice cracked. “Dammit.”

I hugged her tight. “Yeah.”

“I want to tell you to wait a while,” she said. “I want us to be all noble and virtuous for keeping it intact. I want to tell you that if we destroy the belt, we’ll be destroying the happiness of God knows how many people.”

“Junkies are happy when they’re high,” I said quietly, “but they don’t need to be happy. They need to be
free
.”

I put the belt back into the car, turned my right hand palm-up, and murmured a word. A sphere of white-hot fire gathered over my fingers.
I flicked a hand, and the sphere arched gently down into the car and began charring the belt to ashes. I felt sick.

I didn’t watch. I turned to Murphy and kissed her again, hot and urgent, and she returned it frantically. It was as though we thought that we might keep something escaping from our mouths if they were sealed together in a kiss.

I felt it when it went away.

We both stiffened slightly. We both remembered that we had decided that the two of us couldn’t work out. We both remembered that Murphy was already involved with someone else, and that it wasn’t in her nature to stray.

She stepped back from me, her arms folded across her stomach.

“Ready?” I asked her quietly.

She nodded and we started walking. Neither of us said anything until we reached the Blue Beetle.

“You know what, Harry?” she said quietly, from the other side of the car.

“I know,” I told her. “Like you said. Love hurts.”

We got into the Beetle and headed back to Chicago.

New York Times
bestselling author Jo Beverley is the author of thirty-two novels of historical romance, including
Something Wicked, Dangerous Joy, Tempting Fortune, An Unwilling Bride, A Lady’s Secret, Lord of Midnight, Lord Wraybourne’s Betrothed,
and many others. She’s the winner of five RITA Awards for best novel, and is a member of the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame. Her most recent novels are
The Secret Wedding, My Lady Notorious, The Secret Duke,
and
The Stolen Bride.
She lives with her family in England.

Here she tells the story of a man wooing a very reluctant maid—with his life and the lives of all his relatives in the balance, all doomed to die if he can’t overcome her resistance. Which is
not
going to be easy.

St James’s Park, London, 1758

I
T WAS AS
if a new song entered his world, or a new taste, or a new sense—and yet one instantly recognized.

Rob Loxsleigh turned to look around the park, striving to make the movement casual to his chattering companions, so noisy in their silks and lace, but already fading under the power of his new awareness.

There.

He smiled, with delight but with surprise.

The woman in gray? The one strolling through the park at the side of another woman just as ordinary, wearing a plain gown with little trimming and a flat straw hat?

She was his destined bride?

He’d been told he’d know, and for years he’d sought the unignorable. Sometimes, with a particularly pretty girl or fascinating woman, he’d tried to believe his desire meant that his quest was over. A kiss had quickly proved him wrong.

Now, however, he
knew
. She alone seemed real in an unreal world and his body hummed with a symphony of need, not just desire, but a hunger for everything she would bring.

Now, within weeks of disaster, Titania had sent his marrying maid.

. . . .

A
PRICKLE ON
the neck.

When Martha Darby turned, she saw a man looking at her. A London beau in silk and lace with powdered hair and a sword at his side. A peacock in company with other birds of fine plumage, their bright laughter and extravagant gestures indicating that they’d escaped the gilded cage of court in the nearby Palace of St. James. But why was one of them staring at her, a very sparrow of a spinster?

He turned back to his companions. She’d imagined his interest, but now she couldn’t help staring at him. He seemed somehow brighter than his glittering companions. Merely the effect of a suit of peacock blue silk, she told herself, but he did seem perfectly made and he moved with such grace, even in ridiculous shoes with high red heels.

“Such extravagance in their clothing, and a shower of rain would ruin all.”

Martha turned to her mother, smiling at the practical comment. “I’m sure chairmen would rush to carry them to shelter. Let us admire nature instead. Trees welcome the rain.”

They strolled on their way.

Martha and her mother were enjoying the park, but also, it must be admitted, some glimpses of the follies of the great. Martha had certainly seen nothing like those courtier peacocks in York. But then, in York, she’d lived quietly for so many years, helping her mother nurse her father through a long, distressing illness. This visit to a relative in London was to help them regain their spirits and be ready to pick up life, but Martha wondered what form her life could take. She was too accustomed to quiet and routine and too old for adventures.

Unless…

She was looking at that man again! She quickly turned away. “Let’s walk toward Rosamund’s Pond, Mother.” Away from temptation.

Temptation?

Ridiculous. Lord Peacock was a wastrel courtier and she was the virtuous daughter of a canon of York Minster and at twenty-four, long past the age of folly.

Yet she looked again.

Just to be sure she was safe, she told herself.

Safe? Did she think he would pursue her? Laughable…

But then she realized that he
was
looking at her again. He smiled.

She turned her back, heart pounding. Lud! Had he caught one of her glances and taken it as admiration? Even as lewd encouragement? Heaven defend her!
The court was notoriously licentious. She urged her mother to walk more quickly, but plump Anne Darby was never energetic. Her strolling involved many pauses to admire a vista, or yet another pelican. For some reason this park was full of them. Pelicans and peacocks…

“Come, Mother. We must hurry.”

“What? Why?”

Martha came up with the only possible excuse. “I need to piss.”

“Oh dear, oh dear. Yes, very well.” Her mother did walk faster and gradually Martha’s panic simmered down. They were safe and she would not come here again.

“Ladies.”

Martha froze, then would have walked on if her mother hadn’t already turned, incapable of being cold or discourteous. Thus she must turn too, already knowing who had spoken. By logic, surely, not by a frisson on the back of her neck and a strange tension deep inside.

He stood mere feet away, his silk suit embroidered with silver thread as well as colors. The lace at throat and wrist would have cost a fortune, and his neckcloth was fixed by a gold pin that sparkled in the sun, as did rings on his fingers and the jeweled hilt of his sword. As did his eyes, as green as a summer leaf. His handsome, lean face was painted to give him fashionable pallor and then to restore color with rouge on cheeks and lips.

He was ridiculous, but Martha was powerfully aware of being dressed in mourning gray with only a silver pin for ornamentation, and of never having let paint touch her face. She should have been disdainful, but instead the peculiar sensation within could almost be awe.

He was smiling directly at her now and holding out a handkerchief. “I believe this is yours, ma’am?”

Martha glared at the linen, ferociously irritated that the handkerchief was indeed her own, marked by the embroidered forget-me-nots in one corner. How had it come to fall out of her pocket?

Before she could lie, her mother said, “Oh, see it is, Martha! How kind of you, sir.”

He bowed to them both in the most extravagant manner imaginable, dancing the handkerchief in little curlicues. “I am in heaven to be of service to so enchanting a lady.”

Martha plucked the fluttering linen from his fingers. “My thanks to you, sir.”

He put hand to chest. “No, no. Thank you, ma’am, for providing me the opportunity to do this small kindness.”

Providing?
Was the wretch implying that she’d dropped her handkerchief on purpose? It was a well-known device of foolish women, but she would never stoop so low!

She sent him an icy look, but he’d already turned another bow on her mother. “Robert Loxsleigh, ma’am, at your service.”

Sensible Anne Darby curtsied, blushing, flustered and delighted. “So kind, so kind. Mistress Darby, sir, of York, and this is my daughter, Miss Darby.”

More bowing and greeting, and all of it mockery. If only her mother hadn’t been inveigled into exchanging names.

“May I hope to encounter you again in London, Mistress Darby?”

Martha quickly answered. “Alas no, sir. We leave tomorrow.”

Her mother began to protest, but Martha shot her a ferocious glare.

“Thus Town is left desolate. But York will soon rejoice. A charming city. I know it well, as my home is near Doncaster.”

Martha could have groaned. That he was also from Yorkshire would make her mother regard him as a friend.

“We really must go, Mother,” Martha said with meaning, reminding her of her spurious need.

“Oh, yes, sir, I’m afraid we must. I do hope we will meet again one day, in York, perhaps?”

He bowed to both of them, but was looking at Martha when he said, “I’m sure of it, ma’am.”

“Oh, my,” said her mother, watching him walk back to his friends, so lithe and elegant despite uneven ground and those shoes.

“Oh, what idiocy,” Martha said, steering away at speed.

That was the end of that—except that she was holding her handkerchief as if it were precious. She screwed it up and thrust it into her pocket.

“Why did you say we were leaving Town, Martha? We are to stay three more days.”

“Because I thought him up to no good.”

“Truly? But…” Her mother sighed. “We can’t be liars, can we, so we must leave. All for the best, perhaps. We can stay longer with your Aunt Clarissa in Newark.”

And thus I am punished, Martha thought. Aunt Clarissa was a very silly chatterer. It was all the peacock’s fault. Mr. Robert Loxsleigh had been playing a game for the amusement of his idle friends and fecklessly upset her life.

And yet—and yet—as she resisted an almost overpowering need to look back, Martha knew she would never entirely forget an encounter with a peacock in St James’s Park.

R
OB RETURNED TO
his companions, protecting Miss Darby from their curiosity by letting them assume he intended a seduction. It was no lie. If Miss Martha Darby seemed likely to succumb, he’d bed her tonight.

She was the one, the one, the one, his marrying maid, which meant that at first kiss his talent would awake, and when they lay together, it would roar into full power. He would be at last a true trouvedor of Five Oaks, and his family would be saved.

Rapid seduction was unlikely, but a kiss? Perhaps if he pursued her now. Not to do so was like refusing water when parched, but she seemed to be prim to a fault. Perhaps even a Puritan. His very appearance would have counted against him and any boldness could ruin everything. No, he must resume simple dress and manners and then court her carefully.

There was so little time, though. Just two weeks to his birthday.

To doomsday.

But he’d found her at last, and she would be willing to be wooed. Faery would make it so.

Zounds! They left Town tomorrow. He separated from his companions, suppressing panic. He needed to untangle himself from court, say farewells, settle bills—

The Darby ladies would travel the York road, however, and surely on the public coach. He could follow post chaise and catch them in days.

As he walked toward his rooms, he wondered how Oberon had hidden Martha Darby for so many years? He visited York quite often.

That didn’t matter. Titania had prevailed. The heir to Five Oaks had found his marrying maid with time enough to woo and win her. It was always so. The dark Lord of Faery had never won this fight, not in five hundred years.

M
ARTHA SLEPT BADLY
and spent the first hours on the crowded York coach braced for pursuit. What—did she think Mr. Peacock Loxsleigh was racing after on horseback, intent on dragging her from the coach for ravishment?

Such scenes, alas, had featured in her dreams. How could a lady’s mind produce such things? She had never even flirted, for a canon’s daughter should not. She’d had a few suitors over the years, all clergymen, but her mother and sick father had needed her, and truth to tell, none had truly appealed.

Now she was free, and returning to York to live a full life. She was emerging from a chrysalis, but too old, dull, and dry to become the simplest sort of butterfly.

Except that…

No! She would not allow that man in her mind.

She did have a suitor. A perfectly eligible suitor.

Dean Stallingford had been a good friend to her family in recent years and had expressed his interest just before this journey, saying that he wished to make his intentions known before she was exposed to London’s temptations. Martha knew she should have committed herself then, but for some reason the words had stuck in her throat. He was fifteen years her senior, and a widower with three young children, but that was not to his discredit.

Very well. She would accept him when they returned and become a married woman with house and family to manage and a place in York society, but she was aware that he sparked no excitement within her. Robert Loxsleigh had created sparkles in a moment.

Such madness must be why women succumbed to seduction, racing fecklessly to their ruin. She was in no danger of that, but she wished the coach had wings. She wished they weren’t to stay for days at Aunt Clarissa’s. Once in York, she would become Mistress Stallingford as quickly as was decent, and be safe.

She repeated that like a litany over two long days of travel, and as they climbed out of the coach in Newark. They were soon in Aunt Clarissa’s modern brick house, awash with her chatter. Clarissa Heygood was a childless widow, having lost her soldier husband early to war, and enjoyed visitors very much. That evening they took a stroll around the town, eventually taking a path by the river. Martha enjoyed the exercise after so much sitting, but she dropped behind for relief from her aunt’s endless flow of gossip.

Her own company, however, gave space for dismal thoughts. Marrying Dean Stallingford would mean remaining part of the chapter of York Minster,
and that felt… cloistered. Even York itself held no savor. She had few friends there because her time had been so taken up with her father’s care.

She was frowning at some innocent ducks when a man said, “Heaven is before me. ’Tis the lady of the forget-me-nots.”

Martha turned, heart pounding, and indeed it was the peacock. Except now he was a much more ordinary bird—if such a man could ever be ordinary. He wore riding breeches and boots with a brown jacket and his hair was unpowdered. Hair of burnished gold.

Stop that. It was a russet shade catching the setting sun.

“Alas,” he said, those green eyes laughing at her, “she has betrayed her handkerchief and forgotten me.”

“I certainly have not!” Regretting that, Martha walked on to catch up with her mother and aunt, alarmed by how far they were ahead.

He kept up without effort. “You remember my gallantry, Miss Darby?”

“I remember your impudence.” Heavens, when had she ever been so rude? Cheeks burning, she walked ever faster.

He stayed by her side. “For returning your handkerchief? A harsh judgment, ma’am.”

Good manners compelled. She stopped and dipped a curtsy. “I apologize, sir. That was kind of you.”

He smiled. “Then may I call on you at your inn?”

Martha thanked heaven she could say, “We stay in a private home, sir.”

“How pleasant for you. The home of the lady ahead?”

She could do nothing about it. He outpaced her with ease and made his courtesies to her mother, who of course introduced him to Aunt Clarissa, who was in ecstasies to give him carte blanche to call at her house whenever he wished. Martha was in danger of grinding down her teeth, and when he left with an invitation to sup at Aunt Clarissa’s within the hour, she could have screamed.

But what protest could she make? Both the older ladies thought him charming and were not immune to his good looks, either. Then, as they hurried home to make preparations for a guest, Aunt Clarissa stopped to exclaim, “From Five Oaks! Why, he must be a son of Viscount Loxsleigh. And by the stars, I do believe he has only one. Lud, we will have a future viscount to sup!”