Songs of Love & Death (9 page)

“It would be wrong,” the dark lord growled in her ear, “and you know it.
What good can come from that?”

“We can pledge ourselves now,” Rob argued. “We can say our vows. I will keep them, as will you. There can never be any other for you or me.”

“By your beliefs, it must be in a church,” Oberon argued. “Think of the scandal. Your reputation…”

It was as if all around held their breath, as if the very room, the old house, the one built by Robert Loxsleigh in a faery glade guarded by five
oaks, held its breath. Even the song stopped. But Oberon had misplayed his hand. Martha’s morals still quailed, but to let innocents die for her reputation would be vile.

She looked into the man’s eyes. “I will lie with you tonight, Rob Loxsleigh, my husband in all but the ceremony.”

The chorus burst into song again, a song of wild rejoicing that clashed with thunderous rage. Rob took her hand and raced her out of the ancient part of the house, back to the entrance hall, lit now by a branch of candles. The noises faded and then stopped.

Martha knew that the faery had gone. Gone on to other entertainments.

Rob took her into his arms, holding her tight and close, burying his head in her hair.

Her loose hair, Martha realized, as it had never been except between brushing and pinning.

He separated and kissed her, a gentle, reverent kiss. “You will not regret this.”

“No, I don’t believe I will.” But she swallowed before saying, “Do we do it now?”

He smiled. “We have all night. You’re damp in places and wet in others. Come up to your room and be comfortable.”

She went up with him, hand in hand, but still embarrassed. She could hear servants around, woken from sleep and talking softly. About her. They would all know…

But she would not sacrifice hundreds to her discomfort.

He led her to a room where three maidservants worked, still in their nightwear with tied shawls atop. They cast her looks, but smiling ones. Did they know? Did everyone here know?

The room was lit with candles and warmed by the flickering flames of a new-laid fire. Two of the servants were running warming pans through the bed. The other was spreading a nightgown over a rack before the fire.

“I’ll leave you in their care,” Rob said, smiling down at her.

She could do nothing but smile back. “I’m all awhirl.”

“I know. Be comfortable. I’ll return later.”

The subject still embarrassed her too much for speech, but she nodded.

He left and she surrendered to the maids’ care. They gave her small beer to slake her thirst, and stripped off her damp outer clothing. Martha wouldn’t let
them strip her naked. She retired behind the screen to take off her shift and put on the nightgown.

The maids toweled dry her hair and then settled her into the warm bed with a cup of chocolate and a sweet cake. There was a plate of fruit as well, but Martha could eat nothing.

The servants left. She sipped the chocolate, which was richer than any she’d tasted. And she waited.

All awareness of faery had gone, making her realize how it had lived in her for days, ever since that encounter in the park. Instead, there was a growing peace, a growing certainty that all was now right, despite the lack of church and clergy.

She was drinking the last of the chocolate when Rob came to her, shining and handsome again, in a rich, blue robe.

“My peacock, I see.”

“At your command,” he said, crossing the room to her. “Always.”

He extinguished the candles until only fire lit the room and came into the bed beside her. “I’m sorry it must be this way, my love, but it will be holy.”

He was naked and she had to look away, even though she said, “I know it.”

Wildly she thought,
It would never have been like this with Dean Stallingford!

He took her hand and she felt his warm lips on her knuckles. “Look at me, Martha.”

She turned her head shyly, but he’d pulled the covers up to his neck. There was nothing to embarrass her except that he was here, a man in her bed.

He took her hand, her left hand, and slid a ring onto her third finger. “My pledge to you, dear heart.”

Martha raised her hand and saw a complex ring of gold, set with small, smooth stones.

“I’ve carried that for years, love, as I sought my marrying maid. Come, let me love you now.”

He gathered her into his arms and kissed her, and there was all the magic she remembered from that other kiss, so long ago, a day ago. Heat and sparkles danced through her and this time she felt no need to resist. Shyly, she kissed him back. Her hands encountered his skin and she laid her hands on him, uncertainly but with growing pleasure.

She moved against him, her whole body twining with his so they seemed
one. Especially when he raised her nightgown high, then took it off. She stared up at the bed canopy as he put hands to her naked breasts. And then his mouth. But then she was lost to anxiety and swept up into his passion, her need building so that when he thrust inside her, she cried out as much in satisfaction as in pain.

The pain was short and soon forgotten. The pleasure built until she thought she’d die of wanting more. Until it came, and she didn’t die, but ended up hot and sticky in his arms, laughing softly at the splendor of it. “So that,” she said, “is magic.”

He chuckled into her hair. “If it’s magic, it’s a magic available to everyone, love.” He nuzzled and kissed her there. “Thank you, my dear, my darling, my marrying maid. We will be gloriously happy—”

But Martha suddenly sat up. “Mother!”

Laughing, he pulled her back down. “Someone’s already been dispatched to bring her here safely on the morrow. The explanations may be delicate, but I think she’ll be mollified by our wedding.” He cradled her face. “Any regrets?”

Martha shook her head. “None. This is right and true.”

“We’ll follow faery’s rules and all will be well, and when our son is of marrying age we’ll work with him to circumvent Oberon’s wiles.”

A distant look came into his eyes, and Martha said, “What? More trickery from them?”

He focused on her again. “No, love. But I’m aware of the gold now. After the kiss, it was a whisper, and all I’ve found is nearby pieces. Now, it’s a symphony on the air, a choir in my mind, from near and far. Tomorrow, will you come with me to find lost gold?”

She snuggled into his chest, also hearing this new, sweet song. “I will, husband. And right merrily.”

Bestseller Carrie Vaughn is the author of a wildly popular series of novels detailing the adventures of Kitty Norville, a radio personality who also happens to be a werewolf, and who runs a late-night call-in radio advice show for supernatural creatures. The Kitty books include
Kitty and the Midnight Hour, Kitty Goes to Washington, Kitty Takes a Holiday, Kitty and the Silver Bullet, Kitty and the Dead Man’s Hand, Kitty Raises Hell,
and
Kitty’s House of Horrors.
Vaughn’s short work has appeared in
Jim Baen’s Universe, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Subterranean, Wild Cards: Inside Straight, Realms of Fantasy, Paradox, Strange Horizons, Weird Tales, All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories,
and elsewhere. Her most recent books are
Voices of Dragons
and a new Kitty novel,
Kitty Goes to War.
She lives in Colorado.

In the clever tale that follows, she demonstrates that the line between dreams and reality can be a thin one—and that sometimes it’s hard to tell if you’ve crossed it.

The wires were obvious, strung with LED lights that switched on the moment the hero launched upward, illustrating the fact that no one had yet figured out how to get a real flight-capable superhuman to act in a play or movie or anything.

“Well?” Otto Veck, acclaimed director, looked at Charlotte.

The stage was a mess. A chain-link fence formed the backdrop, supposedly suggesting the shadows of a forest. A pile of stuffed black garbage bags made a castle shape. A woman in a white bustier, panties, fishnets, and a black garter with a cute little bow clinging to her thigh lay at the foot of the tower of trash as if she had just thrown herself off it, to her death. Nearby another body lay, a twisted man dressed in a three-piece suit with a tire iron sticking out of him, suggesting a sword at the end of a duel. The hero, a handsome man with a clean-shaven face, wearing an alluring amount of leather, had been kneeling beside the woman, hand to his chest, overcome by the wretchedness of the world. Then he flew away, straight up into the rigging overhead, vanishing into the heavens.

The scene was supposed to look a mess, but it didn’t match the picture Charlotte imagined. She winced. “Can we make it a little more… I don’t know… pretty?”

Otto tilted a thoughtful head, as if regarding the stage from a slightly different angle. It was Marta, the actress, who sat up, appalled. Fred, who played the fiendish villain/bureaucrat, stood and set aside the tire iron as he stretched muscles and groaned. Harry, who played the tragic hero too late to save his lover, but not too late to exact revenge on the fiendish villain/bureaucrat, slowly descended, hanging passively in his harness as the stage crew lowered
him back to earth. Out of character now, he looked tired.

“Pretty? You want this to be pretty?” Marta said. “What happened to the terrors of modernity? There’s nothing
pretty
about modernity.” She had her hands on her hips and glared with the air of an offended artist. The truth was, she looked good in the lingerie and knew it, and was probably afraid that “pretty” meant putting her in a floor-length gown.

Charlotte thought she had said something along the lines of wanting to recast classic gothic narratives as a vehicle for alienation—the terrors of postmodernity expressed as the sublime. They had the terrors of postmodernity down pat but seemed to be missing the sublime.

The last dress rehearsal was a little late to be rethinking the project. Was it too late to cancel the whole thing? It had all seemed so much more clever when she wrote it.

“Never mind,” she said. “It’s fine. It’s all fine.”

“Maybe the lighting,” Otto said, trying to be helpful. “More of a halo effect upstage.” He put on his headset. “Bob, is it too late to change that last lighting cue?”

She sat in her squishy velvet seat in the middle of the house and pondered. This was supposed to be her big break. Her jump from the bush leagues to the big-time, with a director like Otto, an award-winning actress like Marta starring, in a theater that didn’t seat its audience in folding chairs. Charlotte couldn’t help but feel that her career was already over.

Her phone rattled, and she dug in the pocket of her jeans for it.

The screen showed Dorian’s text: “Wrk late, won’t make dinner, sry, make it up to you.”

She quelled her disappointment and instead decided to admire Dorian’s dedication. An up-and-coming assistant DA like Dorian Merriman didn’t win cases like the one against the Midnight Stalker by going on dinner dates with struggling playwrights.

Otto and the three actors were all looking at her, and she might have blushed.

“Everything okay?” Otto said.

“Fine,” she said, putting her phone away.

“Are we done, Otto?” Harry said.

“We’re done. Call’s at five tomorrow.” Otto and the actors disappeared backstage.

Part of her wanted to curl up right here for the next twenty-four hours, until it was all over. Maybe she could sleep through it.

Instead, she found her coat and bag and went to catch a bus home. It was
early summer, still daylight, still warm. She could have walked the whole way, scuffing toes on the sidewalk and thinking of everything that could go horribly wrong tomorrow night. She didn’t even have to go on stage and she was terrified.

As an alternative to going home and stewing, she decided to take herself to dinner. Just because Dorian couldn’t go out didn’t mean
she
had to stay home. She had to celebrate either the beginning of her career or mourn its incipient demise. She had a favorite place, a hillside café with a rooftop patio, perfect for watching the urban neon sunset. And it arranged its wine list by price, which she thought was postmodernly classy.

S
HE DIDN’T PLAN
for the jewelry store next door to the café to get robbed while she was there.

She had just ordered a salad and a glass of zinfandel. Something to take the edge off while she stared at the hazy city sky and reminded herself that she was lucky and she had a great boyfriend when he was around, and her dream was coming true and the play really was okay and no one was going to write wretched reviews calling her names. Everything was going to be
just fine
.

Alarms started ringing, clanging mechanically, vibrating through the floor. The police sirens joined a minute later. A dozen customers and waitstaff crowded along the patio rail to see what was happening. Charlotte was already sitting there and had a pretty good view of the street. But like many others, she also looked up and around at the sky and rooftops, wondering which hero would swoop in to save the day: Breezeway? The Bullet? Captain Olympus himself?

The police sirens approached, howling, then a half dozen Commerce City PD squad cars roared up the street and screeched to cinematic halts, skidding to angles that blocked the intersections. Uniforms bounded out and pointed guns at the building. Out came the bullhorn, and one of the officers called
through it, “Come out with your hands up!”

Shouting echoed up the stairwell that led to the roof. Six men wearing purple Kevlar vests, fatigues, and ninjalike masks appeared. Two held heavy metallic briefcases, no doubt filled with something nefarious and stolen. Four held what had to be ray guns—plastic, streamlined, with parabolic dishes where the barrels should be. They made quite an impression.

They must have planned to jump to the next rooftop and keep running until they found a ladder to shimmy down while the police were still racing up the stairs after them. The police were a little too fast, and the thieves were a little too desperate, because they went for hostages.

The two gunmen pointed their weapons and yelled, “Freeze!” which nobody did. Instead people screamed and tumbled out of the way, covering their heads, falling to the floor, scrambling on top of each other. It was a pretty good strategy, because if they stayed in a mob and the gunmen fired, it would probably be somebody else who got shot.

Astonished, Charlotte just kept sitting there, back to the railing, instead of fleeing with the others. So one of the guys grabbed her, arm around her throat, and held her against the rail, purple parabolic dish to her temple.

Her captor shouted the obligatory “Nobody move!” She thought the other gunman was standing at the top of the stairs, pointing his weapon at the oncoming cops, preventing rescue. So much for a nice evening out.

Staring back at the gun, which had become very large in her vision, she wondered if the weapon would incinerate her or simply make her vanish in a stream of light. She wondered which one would hurt more. Maybe she wouldn’t have to go through opening night after all. Maybe Dorian would avenge her, after standing forlornly over her poor broken body. Would he feel guilty for missing dinner with her?

The tableau froze: heroine and villain, random crowd huddling like a Greek chorus, henchmen wreaking chaos. Time stopped, her heartbeat stilled to a moment of perfect silence, a universe holding its breath.

She didn’t know where the newcomer entered from, but the gun left her head and pointed at something else, and there he was in the middle of the patio, hands on his hips. He was also wearing a mask, and that may have been what set the gang of jewel thieves most on edge. One more variable must have been too many to handle.

The thieves had an out, and they took it: Her captor tipped her over the railing.

Charlotte gasped a breath as the sky spun past her feet. She was falling—then she wasn’t. She jerked to a stop, hanging two stories over the sidewalk.
She didn’t even have time to scream.

She wasn’t sure how it happened, but she could see how it ended up: The masked man, the hero, gripped her hand and held her dangling thirty feet up. She swayed and came to rest against the concrete wall. His other hand held the railing. He must have dived over the edge as she fell, faster than a heartbeat, faster than a blink. He must have grabbed her, grabbed the railing, and stopped her mid-plunge. Her shoulder throbbed with the pain of being wrenched. His must have felt worse. Now they hung there, looking at each other.

“I’ll need you to climb up,” he said, voice tight with strain.

“What?” she squeaked.

“I’m fast. Not all that strong,” he gasped.

He lifted her partway until she could grab hold of his jeans, then his shirt, then his shoulder, panting and panicked, too shocked to be scared, unbelievably remembering not to look down. She used him as a ladder, until she put her arms around his shoulders. He swung his leg up to hook it over the railing, shrugged to hint that maybe she should make her way to the railing as well. She meant to dig her fingers more tightly around his shirt, but she got the muscle of his shoulder. He only flinched a little. She managed to slide over, hook her elbow over, then her leg, and the two of them rolled onto the patio together.

The ray gun–toting thieves had used the distraction to flee.

Charlotte and her rescuer looked at each other. He was nondescript, but the mask made all the difference. Without it, she’d have glanced at him once, maybe admired the muscled shoulders under the almost-too-tight T-shirt. No uniform, just T-shirt and jeans, plain black boots, well worn. But he wore a mask, a length of black cloth with eyeholes over his head and tied in back. She stared at his eyes, brown, rich. With the mask, it was like looking at someone through a window. She wasn’t sure she could really see him. He held her arms—maybe she looked like she was going to faint, falling backward, making him rescue her all over again.

Imagine it—her, rescued at the last second by a real-life hero! Just like one of her plays. Unbelievable. Thrilling.

He was breathing hard. The feat hadn’t been easy for him; sweat shone on his neck.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“I should be asking you that,” he said, smiling. He had a very nice smile.

“No… well, yes… but you—that was amazing.” She sounded a little breathy. “I’m fine. Are you?”

“Just fine,” he said. He never stopped smiling.

Then, just as a crowd of police trooped up the stairs, he ran—and yes, he was fast. He sped to the other side of the roof, to the back of the building, where a fence gave him a chance to jump off, climb down, flee, and vanish—all in seconds. She couldn’t see movement, arms and legs pumping, just this shape that flowed away. Then it was dusk, and she couldn’t see anything.

“A
ND YOU HAVE
no idea who he was?” the detective asked again.

“No. I have no idea.” When she arrived at the police station, someone put a blanket over her shoulders and a cup of coffee in her hands. Then she started shivering. She hadn’t realized she was cold.

The detective stared at her, annoyed, because she was clearly making his job more difficult. Sighing, he pulled over a three-ring binder, opened it in front of her, and started turning pages. “Are any of these the guy who rescued you?”

This looked almost like the binders the theater got from agents—catalogs of actors. The first round of cattle calls. Instead of headshots, the detective’s pictures mostly showed blurry full-body action shots of the masked vigilantes. She recognized a lot of them from news clips and reputation: the Invincible, dressed in red, white, and blue, who as far as anyone could tell really
was
invincible and could fly to boot; Black Belt, who dressed like a ninja and could shoot laser beams from his hands; Quantum Girl, a woman in a silver leotard and spike-heeled boots who could teleport; and more. There were maybe two dozen of them—more than she’d realized. No one knew much about them, where they lived or what they did when they weren’t out fighting crime. Maybe they had secret identities. Maybe they had secret hideouts, like Gothic castles. Maybe they were robots who only emerged when there was crime to be fought.

In her play, she had assumed that her hero was a person with a heart to break like everyone else.

She flipped through the whole book and shook her head. “He wasn’t anybody I recognized. He didn’t even have much of a costume, just a mask. Shouldn’t you be going after the thieves instead of him?”

“I need all the information I can get for the report,” the detective said flatly.

She finished making her statement, which she couldn’t see being very useful to any investigation. All she had seen was a swarm of masked men running around performing some mystery play.

“Charlotte!”

Dorian Merriman, hot-shot assistant DA, on the fast track after that Midnight Stalker trial—front-page stuff. She hadn’t called him about what had
happened. He had just known, probably through one of his connections in the police department.

He rushed to her side, heroically even, but she was a little too wrung out to be impressed by the feat.

“Are you all right? What happened? I came as soon as I heard. Are you hurt?” He turned to the detective. “Is she hurt?”

“She’ll be fine,” the man said. He straightened the pages on his desk, signaling that they were done.

“Hi,” she said, her smile weak.

He knelt by her side, smoothed back her hair like she was a child, and she beamed back at him. “Now let’s get you home,” he said.