Songs of Love and Death

“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.

Jo Beverley

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.

The Marrying Maid