Title: Bats in the Belfry
Chapter I: A New Orleans Nocturne
Fandom: X-Men: Evolution
Author: Carmine LaCroix
Summary: Nocturnal New Orleans has in its possession a hidden city – a deeper, older world where magic, voodoo and the haunted hold dominion over the night. When an unlikely group of college students find themselves thrust into the midst of a centuries-old blood feud, a territorial battle that has been waged in the darkest corners of the city for generations, Mardi Gras becomes the stage for struggle and sacrifice as one girl, a Rogue amidst her peers, comes face to face with the worst the Crescent City has to offer: They say, in the city, that the Devil walks the streets like any other man, and Death runs the rooftops like a gauntlet.
Rating: Mature
Pairing: Rogue/Gambit
Secondary Pairings: A variety, noted at the beginning of each chapter.
Warnings: Sex, death, het, slash, blood and booze. (Graphic imagery, strong language, scenes of a sexual nature, etc.)
Author’s Notes: Full notes are at the bottom, but in brief, this is story classifies as supernatural, horror, dark romance, dark humour, and Alternate Universe. Please do read the full post script on this story’s development; you may be pleasantly surprised at what you’ll find here.

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Bats in the Belfry
Chapter I: A New Orleans Nocturne

…

But where the path we walk'd began

To slant the fifth autumnal slope,

As we descended following Hope,

There sat the Shadow fear'd of man;


Who broke our fair companionship,

And spread his mantle dark and cold,

And wrapt thee formless in the fold,

And dull'd the murmur on thy lip,


And bore thee where I could not see

Nor follow, tho' I walk in haste,

And think, that somewhere in the waste

The Shadow sits and waits for me.

---

The first time is all about expectation. Doors sliding open with a strained hiss, the initial waft of humidity sloughing into the cavernous room could be compared to an asphyxia-inspiring hug from a distant relative that you don’t particularly want to get chummy with. There’s nothing graceful about it, though intimately, the dead heat of a New Orleans nocturne can stir up tendrils of romance in even the most implacable of individuals.

No matter how far she’d gone, regardless that foster care and eventually college had taken her from the balmy breezes and heavy, magnolia-laced melancholy of the South, it was hard to forget the old ache that draws the soul back to the places it knows by feeling alone.

To Rogue, the air tasted like home on her tongue.

“Man, it’s hot, isn’t it? Whew!”

Others, she reasoned, just didn’t get the appeal.

She slanted her eyes at her target, muscles coiling reflexively, ready to strike with the heel of her hand.

At her side, her brother fanned himself with a handful of brochures he’d collected from a nearby stand. At intervals, she caught a waft of Kurt’s sweat mixed in with the tepid breeze the makeshift air-conditioning produced.

Flexing her fingers, stretching the beaten leather of her cut-off biker’s gloves across her knuckles — worn more for comfort than to make a statement — she contemplated hitting him for disrupting the three feet of air about her immediate person.

Rogue liked her space. Kurt, as it were, liked invading anyone’s space that could bear him.

Instead of giving into her more primal desires, she smirked. Tipping her head to the side, she drawled, her voice gritty from the four-hour flight and the sudden slap of nighttime heat through the air-conditioned airport. “You’re melting.”

He rolled his eyes, his neck craning lazily to peer at her.

“Am not.”

“Are so,” she declared, pointing at his shirt collar. Anyone looking at the pair of them standing beside one another wouldn’t have guessed the familial relation. Lost beneath the garish splatter of brightly-coloured hibiscus flowers decorating Kurt’s shirt, was a stained streak of watery blue. “Either your hair is leaking, or your brain’s comin’ out your pores,” she deadpanned, sizing up his Hawaiian-inspired travel ensemble – a slap to the eyes next to her black on black attire. “Could be either,” she appended thoughtfully. “Ah wasn’t sure if grey matter turned blue from oxygen deprivation as a baby.”

He swiped at his neck, fingers coming away a similar shade of cobalt.

“Ah told ya ta use Manic Panic,” she said airily, hooking her fingers into the belt loops of her monotone jeans, and tossed a strip of platinum over her shoulder. “Next time ya decide ta dye your hair, Kurt, let me bleach it first.”

“Oh no,” came the wary interruption. Shuffling up to the siblings, hips wiggling, a bright pink carry-on in tow, Katherine Pryde shook her finger at her roommate. “I don’t want to hear him complaining about having his hair fall out because you over did it, or something. Look at it!” Kitty waved her hand in front of his face, unable to reach Kurt’s full height. “It’s fuzzy enough as is without drying out the roots!”

Rogue merely raised an eyebrow.

Ignoring her, Kitty confided to Kurt in an over-shot whisper, “It took her a year to get her bangs that white, and that’s after, like, three visits to the salon in town and like, nine bottles of toner.” Fretfully, Kitty added, “Do you know what that does to your hair’s natural oils?”

“Remind me ta ask Wanda when we get back ta New York,” Rogue said through a forced, saccharine grin. “She taught me everythin’ Ah know. Maybe Ah’ll stop by her place, ya know… ta get some advice for Kurt, of course.”

Kitty blanched, making the mental link without further prompting. Wanda wasn’t the problem: it was one particular person that she lived with.

“Hey!” Kurt snapped his fingers, forgetting about his botched dye job in favour of Kitty’s horrified expression. “Doesn’t Wanda live off campus with what’s-his-name? That guy you dated?” Kurt stroked his chin. “Larry? Lane? Lyle?”

“Nothing! No one! I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Kitty chirped, doing a rapid about-face. “Hey, Scott!” she called shrilly across baggage claim, her shoulders turning rigid at Kurt’s taunting. “Where’s the airport shuttle? Or should I call a cab? Or maybe, like, find a bus or something!”

“I know!” Kurt bellowed.

Rogue stifled a snicker as Kitty appeared to shrink in on herself. With the other passengers of Flight 166, New York to New Orleans, turning towards them, it seemed for a moment as if the petite brunette wanted nothing more than to sink into the floor.

“LANCE!” Kurt declared triumphantly, pumping a fist into the air and bounding after her. “Lancey-poo! Lancey-sweety-bugga-bum!”

Lifting their joined hands in perfect synchronicity to allow Kitty to duck between them, the only two Grad students among the motley crew of NYU misfits parted and returned to their leisurely stroll to the baggage claim without breaking stride.

“We’ve got a rental,” Scott reminded her as Kitty darted beneath the slim cover of his girlfriend.

Jean, shaking her long russet hair over her shoulder and giving him a quick smile, added, “And a fantastic hotel right at the heart of the French Quarter with three suites, booked especially for us courtesy of Mr. Summer’s connections through his work study.”

Scott flushed, shoving his glasses further up the bridge of his nose.

“Professor Xavier thought it would be a good experience, seeing the architecture here firsthand,” he muttered. “It’s really generous of him, you know.”

“Of course,” Jean agreed, giving his fingers a squeeze. “Anything to further his intern’s field experience before starting his first major restoration project.”

Despite the fact that it was night time out, it was a rare occurrence to see Scott without his shades. This wasn’t one of them. Rogue had known for ages, back when they’d first crossed paths in the foster care system, that Scott’s sensitivity to light was his only disability. While it had taken him years to come to terms with it, it had never bothered her. In fact, she thought it made the otherwise straight-laced academic look a little edgy. Pity she hadn’t had the foresight to tell him before Jean had waltzed on in and done it first.

Whatever affections the fledgling architect and she had shared had been demoted to almost sibling-camaraderie the instant the long-legged, to-be-geneticist had swooped in one particularly bad night in Rogue’s junior year.

(She’d hated frat parties ever since.)

Folding her arms across her chest, Rogue reigned in a scowl. It earned her an “accidental” bump to the hip as Bobby sidled up to her. She curled her lip in his general direction, but didn’t dampen the glare she sent the redhead.

“I’m looking,” Bobby said out of the corner of his mouth, cramming his passport and used boarding pass into a back pocket. “Hell, I’m expecting her to start smoking out the ears any second, Rogue,” he continued surreptitiously. Jean remained blissfully unaware of the invisible death-rays Rogue was shooting at her… likely due to the fact that Kitty was using Jean as a buffer against Kurt. “Looks to me like you’re losing your touch.”

She grunted and turned back to the conveyor belt as it chugged into motion.

Kurt, distracted by the sudden movement, abandoned his ongoing Pryde-pestering and leapt into action. He made a dive for the first bag that tumbled out of the holding area, allowing Kitty to re-emerge into the open.

“You’re going to be sullen this whole trip, aren’t you?” Bobby asked, clasping his hands in front of him and rocking back on his heels. “Because you know, frat boys and sorority girls were made for each other, and there isn’t any amount of evil-eye-giving that’ll break those two up.”

Grinning darkly, Rogue cast him a sidelong glance. “Ya know what’s great about this town, Bobby?”

He shook his head.

“New Orleans is the witchcraft capital of North America.” She winked. “Ah’m sure there’s a voodoo doll somewhere with Jean’s name on it just waitin’ for me ta give it a proper use as my pincushion.”

He shook his head. “This is where three years of post-secondary education’s gotten you?”

Rogue smirked. “Naw, sugah, Ah graduated from the School of Revenge long before Ah ever even thought about getting’ stuck with ya’ll.”

Grinning broadly, Bobby scrubbed his sides and stretched, draping an arm around the goth’s shoulders. “Don’t lie. You know you only decided to Major in Art History because of me.”

She shrugged him off, masking her discomfort with a sneer. “Last Ah recall, you were the one copying off of me during the Advanced Topics midterm.”

Feigning innocence, Bobby fixed her with a megawatt smile – displaying a perfect row of pearly white, orthodontically-untouched teeth. “Lies!” he declared. “Besides, who specializes in mortuary art?”

Rogue snorted, collecting her battered backpack from the conveyor belt and hefting it over a shoulder.

“Just because you can’t tell a sarcophagus from a salad bowl, doesn’t make it any less valid an art form,” she said.

“Hey, I only took that class to keep you company!” he protested. “Without me there, you’d have spent a whole semester in a dusty corner of the library –”

“Heaven forbid Ah should actually learn something –”

“My point!” he said, exasperated. “Glad you’re finally cluing in. College isn’t about learning, it’s about practical life lessons.”

“Ah don’t think finding out how much you can drink in a weekend before we have to take ya to the hospital counts as a ‘life lesson.’”

“No, that was a pop quiz for Jean.” Bobby waved her off, eyeing his own pristine pack rounding the bend of the conveyor. “Before I realized she’d switched majors,” he added in an undertone. “Seriously, who drops out of pre-med? Woulda been nice if I’d gotten that e-mail!” he said loud enough for Jean to overhear.

“Yeah, good thing you didn’t die of alcohol poisoning or anything,” Kitty piped up, twisting her mouth to restrain a grin.

Rogue rolled her eyes. “Good thing Scott drives like a damned maniac when the upholstery is threatened by Bobby’s puke, ya mean?”

“You’d have come to my funeral, Rogue,” Bobby declared with a grin. “You’d have made sure I had the best damned tombstone in the whole cemetery.”

“Ah’d like ta use my degree for research instead of practical application, Drake,” she quipped.

“See, you need me! I keep your life from falling to unspeakable levels of ‘oh ehm gee boring!’”

Bobby matched her, retrieving his own bag and nearly dropping it on her foot when he decided it was too heavy to lift.

“Crap, I knew I shouldn’t have packed so much,” he muttered. With a jovial shrug, he straightened and batted his eyelashes at her.

“Ro-ogue,” he called in a sing-song voice, even as she’d begun backing away from him.

“Drag it!” she spat. “What do Ah look like, a pack mule?”

Bobby opened his mouth to reply.

“Don’t answer that,” she warned, cutting him off.

“I still think we should have done Cabo,” Kitty complained to no one in particular, straightening her short shorts.

Rogue fixed her with a wry glare.

“What?” she trilled, seeing Rogue’s expression as she brushed past her. “It’s our last spring break together before graduation! Cabo would have been perfect!”

“Cabo would mean less time perfecting the anaemic look Ah’m goin’ for!” Rogue shot over her shoulder as she strolled towards the doors, Bobby flopped after her, making scraping sounds as he pulled his backpack behind him.

“But New Orleans has a beach?” Kitty protested uncertainly, startled into motion at the chorus of chuckles from her friends.

Scott pulled away from Jean for a moment, their fingers still entangled, and whispered the correction in Kitty’s ear.

“Swamp!?” she all but shrieked a moment later.

“I’ll get the car,” Scott volunteered, hastening to beat it out of baggage claim before Kitty could sink her claws into him for not vetoing the group’s vacation choice.

Passing Rogue, he flashed a quick, genuine smile that she interpreted as invitation to follow. Scott’s ‘good boy smile.’ It was warm enough to give a gal a healthy glow right about the midsection.

“Rally the troupes?” he asked as he strolled past, not waiting for an answer.

Haltingly, Rogue nodded.

It took a friendly knock to the shoulder from Bobby, trying to control his sniggering with a knuckle shoved between his teeth, to collect herself. He dropped his bag again with a muffled, “Oops,” and nearly tripped over himself in the process.

“The alligators’ll kill ya faster than skin cancer!” Rogue called back to Kitty, though not without despairing a little for the klutz using her pant leg to hoist himself upright, and begrudging the quickness at which Scott had brushed her off.

Incensed, Rogue set her shoulders, her sneakers scuffing over the day-dusted floors with new determination as she made a bee-line for the door. Scott’s neatly tousled head disappeared around the bend.

Behind her, Kurt was trying to mollify Kitty.

“Don’t worry,” Kurt reassured her. “By the time this weekend is over, you’ll be too wasted to remember you didn’t get the chance to sunbathe.” He shrugged, collecting her carry-on for her.

Kitty scowled, giving him her patented ‘I don’t think so, Mister’ look.

Kurt rolled his eyes, grinning. “Common, it’s Mardi Gras. You have to at least get into the spirit a little.”

“If getting into the spirit means spending the night hugging a toilet bowl –”

“Shotgun not rooming with Kurt!” Bobby brayed, the sound cut-off as Rogue’s bag clipped him in the side, and he struggled to maintain his balance, staggering out the door after her into the humid night air.

“Ah called Kitty already,” she snapped, narrowing her eyes in search of the nearest Rent-a-Car booth, subconsciously trying to see where Scooter had zipped off too.

“What?” he asked, affronted. “I thought you and I would finally get a romantic weekend together? I’m hurt, Rogue,” he said, clutching his chest dramatically. “Right here.” Jabbing himself between his pectorals, Bobby pouted.

“Sugah,” Rogue returned blandly, “Bein’ stuck to your hip all the time is one sure-fire way to guarantee Ah’ll die a virgin someday.”

Spluttering, Bobby’s mock-offence morphed into true indignation – a difficult feat for the New York-born, self-proclaimed class clown. Sure, he was a sweetheart, Rogue reasoned, and he tried so very hard to epitomize every full-blooded American girl’s wet dream of the perfect guy, but the faultlessly trimmed and painstakingly spiked blond hair? The meticulously clean nails? The immaculately pressed chinos that hung a little too high on his hips? The Old Navy polo shirts that he insisted on tucking in down the front of his trousers with the up-turned collars?

Hopeless closet case.

Rogue knew, despite all outward appearances and feigned metro-sexuality, that Bobby Drake’s bag was only as heavy as it was because of the amount of hair care products he’d packed. No straight man cared that much about the maintenance of their frosted tips.

“Bitch!” he breathed, his blue-eyes huge.

“Sister,” she shot back with a grin.

“One day, Rogue,” he said, wagging a finger for emphasis. “One day you’ll realize that the best-est, most beautiful thing was sitting right there in front of you the whole time, and you were too preoccupied with some lanky Phi Gamma Delta with an eye-condition and a flat butt to care.”

“Ya noticed his butt too, huh?” she asked, raising a bemused eyebrow.

Petulantly, Bobby returned, “No. Gross.”

“Look,” Kitty was saying hotly, her voice echoing into the airport parking lot, “I just think that it was more important for us to stick together for break. How many opportunities are we going to have like this again?”

“We’ve gone to the beach plenty of times, Katchen,” Kurt tried to soothe her with her personalized pet name. Fluent in six languages, Kurt could crack jokes in German, his native tongue, back-pedal in English, insult you in Latin, make you think he was complimenting you in French, curse your mother in Italian, and then apologize in a garbled Spanish. Presently, he was finishing his term barely passing Cantonese, his Lit and Languages degree not seeing him past the romantic set.

It all sounded horrendous to her, his translation skills better than his spoken attempts, but at least Kurt knew how to work the ladies when they bar-hopped over the weekends. Few women, Rogue had learned, could resist a guy who could tell them how beautiful they were when he rolled his consonants just right. Even if the guy in question was a lean five foot four with blue hair and a bad fashion sense.

Gallantly rolling Kitty’s garish luggage alongside his own, Kurt added, “And this will be just as much fun. I promise. We can even –” He flinched, suddenly uncertain of the offer he was making her. “Go shopping?”

Rogue raised a speculative eyebrow, but Kurt threw her a warning look. Out of all of them, and even having the brains to put her a year ahead of her peers in Computer Science, Kitty was still the youngest, and lordy, could she play the part up.

Give the girl calculus, and she was all business. Try to tell her that her less-than-stellar geography skills had gotten her landed in the party capital of the South instead of in Mexico where she could pluck the granules of sand from between her butt cheeks for a week, and it was like watching a baby seal-clubbing marathon on repeat.

Painful to watch, but so morbidly fascinating that you couldn’t turn away.

“Kurt!” Kitty whined plaintively.

Rogue saw it happening in slow-motion: The cheerful façade her brother wore stuttered, unstable around the edges. Kurt knew damned well there was nothing he could do about it, and he also knew, judging by the panicked look he cast in her direction, that she’d sooner kill herself than have to listen to her roommate whine all weekend because he hadn’t had the foresight to arrange things differently.

“We have reached an impasse,” Bobby commentated, his breath a warm cloud against her cheek. He smelled like peanut butter disguised by breath mints. “Can Mr. Vaughner maintain his cool before such a display of nauseating cuteness? Let’s watch.”

Kurt was going to crack, his eyes going wide, mouth dropping open as Kitty pulled out the pout. He stammered something unintelligible, and Rogue smirked.

“Five bucks on Kitty,” she said below her breath.

“No deal,” Bobby returned, his attention fixed on the stammering, blue-haired boy. “Crappy odds.”

She couldn’t watch. Dear lord, Rogue thought, someone make it stop before it’s too late.

Kurt made a gurgling noise at the back of his throat. Panic was imminent, touchdown in three, two…

“Hey!” Jean said cheerfully, breaking the spell. If anything could be said about Scott’s girlfriend, she had almost uncanny timing, almost as if she knew she was needed, and exactly when she was needed.

Rogue tried not to retch.

Given the option, she’d have been mentally broadcasting, “Not here, not now, not ever, go away,” loud enough to shatter glass.

Jean Grey didn’t pick up on it. So much for hoping she was psychic.

Exhaling heavily as Kitty turned away, Kurt mouthed a relieved, oblivious, “Thank you.”

Shaking her bangs from where they’d slipped to cover eye, Rogue regarded her roommate haughtily, choosing to ignore the willowy redhead’s existence. Kitty pressed her lips together, taking back her luggage and flouncing past to catch up with Scott’s brisk clip as he emerged from a Budget Rent-A-Deathtrap nearby.

“Hey!” Kitty chirped, beaming openly. “Did you hear that, Rogue? Kurt’s taking me shopping! I hear Riverwalk is just fantastic. Miles of boutiques…”

Muffling a snort, Rogue returned the wink Kitty sent her. There was a reason she’d managed to survive two years in the same room with the girl. Kitty Pryde was too damned smart for her own good; manipulation, Rogue had learned early, was one of the stronger elements of the Kitty’s skill set.

“Never trust anyone acting that sweet,” Bobby consoled Kurt. It did nothing to stop his baffled frown. “Especially if you’ve just spent the last ten minutes teasing her about her ex.”

At the corner, Kitty leapt into the air with a loud ‘whoop!’ of excitement. “It’s silver!” she called, dancing on the spot a moment before trotting back to the group. A car turned over in the distance, a throaty purr of an engine preceded by the blink of blue-tinted headlights spilling across the parking lot. Scott, it seemed, had gotten their transport.

“Es-ca-lade?” Bobby called in question, adding jerking head movements and snapping his fingers in time with each syllable.

“Es-ca-lade!” Kitty shouted back, canting her hips left and right in celebration – a reasonable semblance of Pryde’s version of ‘white girl getting jiggy with it.’

“Great,” Rogue groused. “Drivin’ an SUV ain’t an excuse ta blare that godawful rap music ya’ll like so much!” she called.

“Hip-hop,” Jean corrected.

Rogue ignored her.

At her side, Kurt wolf-whistled as Scott pulled up with the car. The windows, glossy-black and gleaming, rolled down as he popped the trunk.

“Nice work!” he called appreciatively, admiring the ride as he circled to the back with the others. “Xavier hooked this up for you too, Scott?”

“Not quite,” Jean answered with a smile. “This is the only car that will fit all of us as a group without resorting to a van.”

Scott called, leaning across the front seat and opening the door, “It was Jean’s idea!” He beamed, and for a moment, Rogue took in the intensity of his smile. If it wasn’t for the slight tilt of his head, and with his glasses on, she could for a moment imagine as if it was directed at her, rather than to Ms. Perfect at her side.

Jean brushed her arm, waving to Scott, and Rogue couldn’t jerk out of the way fast enough.

Like hell she was going to spend the weekend pining over what those two got up to again, she thought, stalking to the trunk. Bobby and Kurt high-fived each other, oblivious to her sudden urge to scream. Instead, Rogue kept her jaw clenched, and her fingers wrapped around the straps of her bag. She barely noticed as Kurt, Bobby and Kitty stowed their gear.

She didn’t need him, she told herself. She was over it.

New Orleans was a writhing cesspool of fun. Damned place only woke up after the sun went down, and that offered ample opportunity to drown herself in the largest cocktails you could find in North America. If she was lucky, she reasoned, hell, if she could sneak away for even a little while, there were even a few clubs that catered to her particular musical tastes.

Goth clubs in New York were fun, if you could deal with the caked-on white face makeup and squeaky PVC, but Goth clubs in the South?

Goth Clubs in the South had the sort of subdued class that called for crushed velvet instead of pleather… or so she’d heard. Jazz alongside industrial, orchestral symphonies and darkwave remixed with electroclash – the crush of the old world and the new present in the music, the fashion, and the mystery of sliding onto a darkened dance floor unknown and unfettered.

The thought prickled along her skin, and absently, Rogue scrubbed at the tattoo that covered the better part of her forearm – showing peeks of skin through a heavy black filigree, inked to look like cemetery gate iron work.

The tattoo was a mark of her preoccupation; a memento of how she thought life ought to be lived. The gate was supposed to remind her that self-restraint came before impulse. It worked, sometimes. Especially when it came to Scott.

Rogue sighed, sucking in a lungful of the still, dusk-kissed evening. It hung heavy about her shoulders, blotting out the noisome sounds from the terminal. For a moment, the world around her was still, sating her in the way that coming to a place long-anticipated only could. She savoured it before it could slip away entirely, but the feeling dispersed all too quickly.

“Anna?”

Damnit.

She exhaled heavily, noticing that in her reverie, everyone had managed to pile into the car… with the exception of the one person she really didn’t want to deal with.

“It’s ‘Rogue’,” she corrected, her teeth grit together. “Only my mama calls me that, and seein’ as how she’s been dead since Ah was four, that pretty much covers the past seventeen years or so bein’ known by the same thing.”

“Sorry.” Jean flushed and tucked her hair behind her ear. Nervous gesture, Rogue grimaced. What the hell did she have to be so concerned about? Jean’s life was perfect. “It’s just that… when you applied to Sigma Chi, the name you put on the application –”

“Ah know what Ah wrote,” she bit out in response. “Not that it matters now, huh?” Cocking her hip to the side, she took her measure. “Three years, Grey. That’s how long it’s been since Ah stopped caring.”

“Look,” Jean began, shaking the dismissal off by folding her hands before her and trying to look as non-threateningly diplomatic as possible. Damned sorority girls. Did they brainwash them with that sort of etiquette crap? “I can’t help that things aren’t different. It wasn’t within my jurisdiction at the time to accept or deny new pledges.”

She scoffed, hefting her bag while simultaneously deciding she was not having this conversation. “Sugah,” she said, the patronizing tone of her voice unchecked, “if ya still think that Ah applied to your silly little sorority thinkin’ Ah’d get in, Ah’m sure there’s a great mental facility ‘round these parts that’ll set ya straight. Lordy!” Rogue clucked, “Ta think that after all this time Ah might still be upset that Ah’d lost that bet ta Lance and had to apply ta Sigma Chi.” She shook her head, pitying. “Ya do know that Ah spent sophomore year living at Phi Upsilon Kappa, right?”

“Right,” Jean said, tight-lipped. “Brotherhood House.”

“Phuk House,” Rogue corrected dryly. “Phi. Upsilon. Kappa,” she ground out. “They don’t discriminate against the person sleepin’ on their couch. Hell, they’ll even cook ya breakfast if ya ask nice.”

“Look, Rogue, I don’t want to start this weekend off with an argument –”

“Save it,” she cut her off. “Last thing Ah need is ta make friendly with your sort.”

“I just thought I’d make an effort,” Jean said in a rush of air. “I know how close you and Scott are, and I thought you should know that I care about him deeply.”

“Great. Anything else?” Rogue spat. “These heart ta hearts really require Kleenex and box of chocolate, don’t they? And seein’ as how we have neither, Ah think it’s best we stop before ya get ahead of yourself and one of us gets all weepy.” She narrowed her eyes. “Ah highly doubt that your makeup’ll hold in the event that ya start cryin’.”

“You’re like family to him! Apart from Alex, you two know each other better than anyone, and I wanted you to know that even though we may have our differences, that Scott thinks of you like a sister is reason enough for me to make the effort!” she protested.

“Why?” Rogue laughed derisively. “Ya plan on tryin’ ta insinuate yourself inta my life now, Grey? You’re the one with the medical background; only parasites and diseases behave like that.”

Frustrated, Jean dumped her luggage into the back, blocking Rogue’s movement to do the same by putting her hand against the joint where the trunk would close.

Those inside the van had fallen to an uncomfortable silence.

“Jean?” Scott called, peering into the rear-view. He was too far away to catch the gist of the exchange.

Jean pressed her trembling fingers to her cheek. “We’re engaged,” she whispered, giving Scott a weak smile to distract him.

Rogue snorted outright. Dear lord, she hadn’t known Jean moonlighted as a comedian.

“Jean?” Scott said again.

“Just a second!” Jean called, her attention divided. In an undertone, she continued, “He wanted to tell you together, but since you’re making it impossible to –”

For a moment, it felt as if the air had been knocked out of her lungs. Winded, Rogue turned to stare at her. Carefully, Jean lifted a necklace from beneath her shirt. Belatedly, Rogue realized that she didn’t wear the evidence on her finger — they were keeping the engagement a secret.

Jean was serious.

Rogue’s mouth moved, but no sound came out.

Actually serious.

And Scott hadn’t told her. He’d kept it from her — something this big.

Collecting herself, Jean seemed to come to an understanding that hadn’t been there before. Rogue saw it in heat of her cheeks, the widening of her eyes. Like a sister. Scott cared for her like a sister, she repeated to herself. She should have seen it coming.

“Oh, Anna,” Jean said softly, taking with her the intimate knowledge that Rogue had thought of Scott as something much more as easily as it must have been to read it in her expression.

Shit.

Rogue swallowed and turned away.

“Move,” she muttered, finding her voice though it cracked.

Reaching as if she wanted to clasp her around the wrist, Jean was already forming the words to comfort and console. Reflexively, Rogue yanked her arm out of the way.

Jean paused, startled into seeing her reaction as if for the first time.

“Don’t touch me,” Rogue breathed, her voice dropped low and menacing, knowing that the threat weaved through her tone wouldn’t carry to those in the car. “Ever.”

Flushing with embarrassment, Jean drew her hand back to herself too carefully to be completely ignorant. Scott had told her, Rogue realized suddenly, and that betrayal compounded with the fact that Jean gave off the distinct impression that she knew she shouldn’t be privy to it set Rogue’s blood to a volatile boil. A quick glance to the front of the Escalade revealed Scott puttering with the dials on the CD changer, oblivious to how bad Jean’s slip had hurt her. How could he?

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean –” Jean stammered, laughing lightly to cover her distress. Every tinkle of falsely-forced mirth wrought out of Jean’s discomfort was like a spike to the heart. In that moment, Rogue’s dislike sharpened into something that rooted itself even deeper in her mind. It sung with the sharpness of a vorpal edge – ready to pierce and slice through the deepest illusions she could have concocted to shelter her fragile hopes.

“I just thought that if we talked, maybe took some time to get to know each other, you’d see that we have something in common.”

“Yeah?” Rogue chuckled, swallowing the choke of sadness that rose unbidden. They were nothing alike. That’s why Scott had chosen the perfect, leggy, red-headed sorority girl who wore pastels and fit nicely on his arm over the strident, stubborn goth he’d known since he was sixteen. “Like what? We listen to the same boy-bands?”

Jean shook her head, clearly uncomfortable.

“That we both want Scott to be happy,” she said quietly. “And that maybe, I don’t know.” She gestured furtively with her free hand, slapping her fingers to her leg and then trying to work them into a pocket to keep the offending digits out of sight. “That maybe you and I being friends would mean a lot to him. You’ve been through so much together, growing up –”

At Rogue’s glare, Jean clamped her mouth shut, eyebrows rising of their own accord. “Not that, I mean, I don’t know the specifics, obviously, but I know that you were there for him when he needed it, and I know he was there for you.”

And now he was going to leave her, Rogue realized, for Jean, she thought vindictively. For good. She’d lost him. She’d lost him and he’d lied to her and he’d told Jean things that she’d trusted him with. No one knew the whole story about what had happened with Cody — no one except those closest to her. How could he?

Rogue voiced none of these thoughts, instead, she asked between the tightened, compressed breaths she was taking, “A big, happy family, right?”

Scott would get his custom tombstone afterall: Scott was a fucking dead man.

Missing the tightness in her jaw entirely, Jean seemed to relax. “Yes!” she breathed, giving her a relieved smile. “Exactly! I can’t tell you how much it’d mean to Scott and I if we could get together from time to time for dinner, or drinks, after you graduate, of course –”

Vaguely, Rogue wondered when Scott had ceased being an individual, and merged into a ‘unit’ with Jean – when had he forgone his independent, rational side and decided that this was a good idea?

She glanced into the van, noting the stiffness to Bobby’s shoulders, the hurried, sheepish look shared between Kitty and Kurt as they surreptitiously tried to lean closer to hear better. Scott, however, was now fiddling with the radio and didn’t seem to notice that anything was amiss.

“… Because more than anything, I want to be your friend, and maybe,” Jean hesitated, her hopeful smile unwavering, “someday you’d consider me a sister?”

Well, that just rounded everything off nicely.

Rogue turned, lifting a shoulder in a half shrug and smiling beatifically. With a bat of her eyelashes and an enormous, vapid smile, she lilted, “Gag me.”

The battered backpack landed with a muffled whump atop Jean’s immaculate suitcase. Barely glancing at where Jean had left her fingers, Rogue strained upwards, the tips of her fingers catching the edge of the door even as one foot came off the ground, and she stood arabesque-like with even balance.

She didn’t bother telling her to move her hand as she slammed the trunk shut.

“Rogue!” Jean yelped, leaping backwards just in time.

Smiling smugly, Rogue strolled to the side door, ignoring the protest that Jean had nearly been hurt in favour of the concentration of internalized hostility she had nursed into an even hum. It drowned out the startled complaint.

“’Bout time ya figured out who th’ hell yo’ dealing with,” she drawled, her inflection buttery smooth as she slipped into her natural Mississippi-bred cadence.

The light simmer of anger was comforting, dulling to a muted drone to fill her ears, forcing a bubble of adrenaline into her veins and thinning out with each breath she took.

She flashed a wicked grin at Bobby as she settled back into the cream-coloured leather interior, sinking at least two inches into pure, posh bliss. He sighed and scrubbed his forehead, figuring it was a lost cause to tell her that acting the way she did was wrong, and shifting to give her an extra inch of space so their knees wouldn’t brush.

He was disappointed, and it showed in the same way the dimple in his chin appeared.

Good, she thought defiantly. Arguing was a waste of breath when the kid gave her no challenge. She liked Bobby well enough without that caveat on their friendship.

Two rows in front of her, Jean slid into the passenger seat and shut the door, unhurt physically, but smarting from the brush-off, no doubt.

“Everyone in?” Scott asked, checking the rear view. “Seat belts on?”

Rogue slumped lower in her seat, bringing her knee up to rest against Kurt’s seatback, lodging her leg in place with her foot dangling. Slouched lower, she didn’t have to see Scott compulsively shoving his glasses up his nose again. She didn’t have to mark the way his eyebrows rose or the shy way he dipped his chin when he smiled, seeing everyone settled and pronouncing it, “Good!”

She stared out the window unseeing as the engine turned over, making a low rumbling growl that turned to a purr a second later.

“Why’s everyone so quiet?” he asked, his voice a detached hush that carried over the light sound of jazz from the front.

Jean adjusted her side mirror, offering Rogue a flash of green eyes, and the quick downturn of her mouth before turning away. Rogue’s gaze lingered a moment, feeling her anger ebb, trying to figure out what the hell it was Scott saw in her that he couldn’t find right in front of him.

She flinched, realizing that was the same thing Bobby had said: the best things were right in front of some people, and they never even knew it.

But… engaged?

“I think we’re all just a little travel-worn,” Jean replied finally, with a certain stiffness that hadn’t been there before.

Compulsively, Rogue pulled at the leather around her wrists, annoyed that the stitching was frayed, that the gloves had already begun to crack from such frequent wear. Absently, she plucked at a thread, her chipped nail polish tacky and seemingly incomplete. She’d forgotten to clean the black lacquer off before they’d left that afternoon. There hadn’t been the time. Funny thing, that – time. It seemed suddenly as if she’d had years to tell Scott how she felt about him before Jean had stepped in.

What a waste.

Rogue sighed, and with the exhalation the burble of anger ebbed. She caught her breath, hoping to keep it simmering. She looked up sharply, narrowing her eyes at Jean and trying to bring the feeling back with double the force. Straining, she realized after a moment just why her shorn-down gloves had suffered such punishment. Stunned, she lifted her fingers, one at a time, from the seams. She’d twisted the shit out of them personally.

She felt rather than saw Bobby turn his head to watch her. On the other side, the road took a smooth corner, and turned to highway.

Rogue swallowed, all too aware of the settling calm in her mind, and frustrated, just to fill the space a moment, she ripped off the gloves and slapped them to her lap hard enough for her leg to sting.

That too was short-lived.

Her palms were warm and damp; prickling where the night air rushing from the windows and spilled into the car.

For a moment, but only just, her hands didn’t feel like hers. Something inside her shifted, an uncomfortable evasion into emptiness when she found she couldn’t be angry anymore.

At the heart of it, Jean was right. Scott’s happiness was important to her, but that she wasn’t enough to make him happy? No. No, he had Jean for that, and Rogue hated herself all the more for her inadequacy.

Pressing her lips together, Rogue breathed in deeply, taking in the saturated smells of the freeway; oil, gas, and beyond the sound barrier walls, the damp smell of deep suburbia – cooling, sun-bleached brick and watered lawns.

The light, cool touch of Bobby’s fingers on her palm startled her, sharpening the defensive tension in her gut to a fine point before it uncoiled, quieting.

Her fingers fell limp, submitting to the reassuring gesture, and gently, he curved her fingers around his. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.

Consolation wouldn’t cut the hurt, and in some way, Bobby understood that. That sort of friendship couldn’t be cultivated; it had to be shared between those who understood it firsthand. It had to be born out of trust, and quiet conversations held in the strictest confidence.

The kind of acceptance Bobby offered was not unlike something she and Scott had once had, but now, knowing that Jean knew what she had told Scott on pain of their friendship left empty pockets behind.

That was an overstatement: It felt like a gouged-out hollow somewhere in the vicinity of her ribcage.

Lord, she had never felt such a concentrated ache before. It seared more than she could have imagined, and she’d smile and bear it because that was the loyalty she thought she’d owed him for keeping her secrets.

What bullshit.

Rogue sighed, her eyes slipping shut for just a moment, and opening again to the rush of air streaming into the SUV, letting it fill the empty spaces left over from where her anger couldn’t fill her.

It was easier being pissed off about something, anything, at all.

Being angry kept her from feeling quite so lonely.

---

Full Dark in the Vieux Carré tastes of deceit and despair. It carries with it the sounds of lust; the paltry, earth-bound joys wrought from too much drink and too little inhibition, and the stubborn, ephemeral splendour humans cultivate when the sun’s glow dulls on the horizon.

Artificial light, harnessed energy, pre-recorded music as clear and cold as if in an amphitheatre with no one around to hear it. Miracles of the modern world, to be shared with, disposed of, and appreciated by those who have watched the mannerisms and technology change, much like the living amongst which they spend their nights.

There is an old adage that those who walk the shadows have engendered amongst themselves, and it was that saying that Jean Luc LeBeau repeated below his breath before rapping on the side door of the house he had visited every fortnight for the past centennial:

“That which does not fade, must be ruled eternally.”

Whispered against the pitted wood as if asking permission for entry, the crack of the locks within were, as always, harsh against his sensitive ears. The door creaked open, leaving the scent of mouldering wood and peeling paint in its wake, and admitted him to the front rooms of a Creole cottage nestled between the last remaining townhouses on Basin Street. The skyline beyond was contrasted by the newly dilapidated apartment complexes buttressing the line where the old District once drew its markings, and behind him, beyond the small alley, St. Louis One hunkered within its cloistered walls.

“New” is a relative term. Eighty years, at best, yet Jean Luc could remember the first bricks that were laid atop the place that was once called ‘Storyville’, burying the old with the new, as vividly as he remembered the last time he watched the sun set.

He had not aged in the years between the markings of memory, though the city had, and recalling the taste of the air of the place on his tongue had left far less to be desired as he’d grown wiser.

Wisdom, a Bokor had informed him many years ago, was something that could be cultivated as surely as his ambitions. As it was, two hundred and sixteen years amassed a substantial treasury of experience.

“Late,” she grunted, stepping backwards to admit him to the Hounfor. She kept her face draped by the shadows out of precaution, though he saw her as clear as if the noonday sun could still be chased beneath his boots.

“My apologies, Tante.” Jean Luc bowed low, showing his respect to the old witch by baring the back of his neck, the length of his bound hair slipping over a shoulder with the smooth movement. She was not nearly old enough, nor strong enough to best him if he were to offer his hand, but Mattie Baptiste’s customs were so unlike his own that she took no offense.

“None followed, but as y’ well know, I must be certain, and certainty takes time t’ assure. Such is our agreement.”

She waved him in, sticking a gnarled fist into the alleyway and beckoning to the others on the far side of the street.

“Lord knows y’ have all th’ time in the world, Jean Luc. What’s a few moments more t’ the likes of your kind?” she reprimanded him, though the humour of her statement was not entirely absent.

When his son and daughter in law made no movement to follow, she nodded as if she’d expected their reticence, shutting the door on their still forms below the one working electric lamp post on the street. Neither cast a shadow on the broken concrete, only the gleam of the slightest iridescence over the eyes belayed their location. With Mattie, however, Jean Luc thought perhaps that it was something more than just the telltale shine of phosphor in the gloom. It was a respectful gesture on both the parts of Henri and his wife, Mercy, to make their presence known to the old woman, but he doubted Mattie would have ignored his guard just the same. The witch kept her secrets, and they kept theirs, unless, of course, a price could be negotiated. What the Guild could not take through its own power could be acquired by other means.

“It is not unappreciated that y’ invite my kin into your temple,” he said, smiling benignly, grateful that she showed his blood kin the same hospitality she offered him.

“Y’ would not benefit by killing me, Jean Luc,” she said tiredly. “And y’ children know as much, I’m sure.”

“That we did not kill y’ tante, nor y’ grande tante, has established something of a tradition in our family, Madame,” he offered simply. “No good would come of such a slight.”

Mattie laughed easily, a deep, resonant sound that would warm him were such a thing still possible. “Ah, mon seigneur,” she beckoned him forward, indicating that he should follow her to the back rooms where their meetings were regularly conducted. “May y’ sense of humour never leave y’. Mam’zelle Marie was always fond of y’ in that respect.”

“An’ I was fond of her,” he replied in kind, crossing the floors of the Temple in silence. Where Mattie’s bare feet made the lightest sound, easing around the cascarilla markings and the offerings laid atop them on the ground where the hardwood changed to hard-packed earth, Jean Luc was utterly silent.

The division between faith and practice was as blurred as the bound serpents that wrapped around the central pillar of the Peristyle. Where the poto-mitan rose to the ceiling, the serpent Loa, Aida-Wedo and Damballah-Wedo, joined together in an ongoing dance that rose towards the heavens. Jean Luc bowed his head respectfully as he passed the painted pillar, feeling the heavy tranquility of long-passed rituals settle around him the deeper into the sanctuary Mattie led him.

The cottage, though appearing like any other ramshackle dwelling from the outside, was for all purposes a living, breathing entity. The strength of worship that took place in the front rooms fed the place with its fervour, the strength of possession and the presence of the Mystères saturated the very air with their character, but beyond where the floor cut feet into the earth, the smell of sacrifice was nearly as strong as the pungent waft of darker, more dangerous dealings.

Mattie Baptiste was the last in a dwindling bloodline. In terms that mortals understood, mortals predisposed to the most primal knowledge that was, she was what the remaining Vodouisants of New Orleans called, “two-headed.” She was human, but she looked into both worlds easily.

“Come children,” she goaded the shadows as they passed, with less concern for the things that eased from the night than the creature who dogged her steps silently. “We have business t’night with Monsieur LeBeau.”

From the darkness, a stirring chill crept outwards as if sighing, tasting his heels as he passed them. They shrank away from the slats of light that spilled into the kitchen where the woman stopped to collect her curios, but nonetheless, they did not escape Jean Luc’s notice.

“Mattie,” he said, his inflection neutral though the word carried a warning. “There is no need for the spirits in this matter.”

“There is always need of their council,” she returned offhandedly, her arthritis-twisted fingers rifling for her instruments. “Perhaps now more than ever. Th’ ancestors are ever present, Jean Luc – they cannot leave us; much less we can forget them.”

The room seemed to darken in increments, edging against his peripheral vision. Inwardly, Jean Luc sighed, his eyes effortlessly adjusting to the gloom. It could be pitch black, and the precautions Mattie took would be just as useless as they were against Jean Luc’s enemies. Both families had little trouble seeing perfectly beneath the cover of night, and ironically, Mattie showed both families the same habits. It was rather a pity that the opposing Guild were frequently unable to restrain themselves, and it had occurred to him more than once over the course of the last century that Mattie’s precursor had undoubtedly met a violent end because of the selfsame meticulousness exacted when undergoing their meetings.

It was a rather unfortunate circumstance that Mattie’s mother never really had the touch. Doubtless, her efforts to protect her daughter had been in vain – as far as Jean Luc knew, Mattie had been all but reared by the side of her family that cultivated the Paris-Glapion notoriety. They were rarely referred to as such in this century, but then again, flaunting one’s legacy had gone out of fashion in the twenties. Only the tomb in St. Louis one still bore the name, and the history books, of course.

Besides, Mattie appreciated the anonymity, as did her exclusive clientele – himself included.

Jean Luc would have preferred different circumstances for their meetings, but patience was a virtue that the Thieves had been afforded many moons ago. What was a few minutes in comparison to an age or an eon?

Their enemy Guild had not yet grasped that particular concept, and he feared in the way his kind could, that one day Mattie’s life would be the price demanded for their impulsiveness.

Seeing that Mattie would not yield, knowing that she wouldn’t, Jean Luc poured himself into a chair at her table, set his hands in his lap, and crossed his legs below the numerous shawls that decorated the surface of the Bokor’s workspace.

“Y’ come for advice,” she said finally, setting a small, well-worn bag before him.

The scent of the patched satchel was atrocious – an affront to the nostrils of any sensitized beast. It rattled across his nerves, setting a deep, smouldering flame to burn in his marrow. Nostrils flaring as the scent of carrion spider monkey overpowered him, Jean Luc stiffened, reining in his control as fiercely as Mattie let loose her powers.

So preoccupied with the offending stench of long-dead marsupial, Jean Luc barely noticed as she claimed the seat before him.

“You try my patience with your parlour tricks, witch,” he seethed through clenched teeth.

Across the table, the shadows shifted, and Mattie peered through them as they collected about her like a mantle. She gathered the tatty sack in her palm, weighing its contents discreetly. Each jiggle and bounce simultaneously made the extra stretch of flaccid skin beneath her chin match the rhythm, and instinctively, Jean Luc focused on the heated, warm expanse of chocolate flesh at her neck. The first waft of her sweat was as sharp as the roil of bone dust and lime from the bag in her hand.

“Y’ searchin’ f’ something, Jean Luc LeBeau. I feel it as surely as I feel my skin crawl when y’ look across this table and feel m’ pulse at the back of y’ throat.”

Sighing as she spilled the bones across the table, Jean Luc’s attention expanded.

He tipped his head back, mouth opening instinctively to scent her on his tongue, and sure enough, through the cloying tang of magic, the Bokor’s flavour settled like orange bitter in his throat. Mattie’s powers were such that they called to his most basic nature: the devil inside; the one that knew no restraint; the cursed remains.

“I consider it impolite t’ show y’ teeth like that, Jean Luc,” she chastised him, bending over her work. Fingers grazed the bones tremulously, sending thin tendrils of dust into the air, trapped by the burgeoning shades that she willed into form.

Caught in the amber gleam cast by the guttering candles, the voice of the bones curled around the small kitchen, setting Mattie’s heart skipping. Jean Luc felt it too, and with the practice of a century and a half, he reigned in the more basic urge to reach across the table and take what he desired.

“The question is ever the same,” he breathed, swallowing her scent hungrily even as the palette she offered shifted with the sweetening spread of fear.

“And m’ answer is just as constant,” she breathed tremulously, her eyelids fluttering as the spirit of the bones filled her. Mattie rocked backwards, the chair skidding across the tile floor and jerking as the power took her.

Flinching back into control, Jean Luc covered his nose with the back of his wrist as Mattie’s consciousness stepped aside, and the others took over her body.

“Neither family can escape their fate,” she intoned in a voice that belonged only in part to Mattie, but enriched by those he’d once known in his human life, though they returned more fearsome and powerful than they had been when they’d walked alongside him. It was a legacy spindled into the shadows, woven with time and worship, and for a moment, like every other time Mattie became their horse, Jean Luc thought for a moment he saw their faces shift behind the whites of her eyes.

“Y’ were raised, Jean Luc, though y’ no longer remember why. It is a curse that binds y’ t’ eternity in the fashion that y’ were shaped – better than the zombi, but only f’ the souls y’ forced t’ steal t’ keep yourself alive. Th’ blood,” she rasped, her gnarled fingers skittering across the bones, “it’s the sacrifice that wields the power.”

“I know too much of sacrifice,” he hissed. “Give me council, Mattie, fille de Philomène, grand fille de Marie. Je te vois! Donnez moi votre conseil, je vous en prie.”

“Your demands are ever th’ same,” Mattie said, almost tiredly – a sliver of herself peering through the many masks of her ancestors. “And our response remains unchanging.”

“Then tell me, witch, how do we end th’ war?” Thirsting as though he hadn’t taken his dinner not more than an hour ago, Jean Luc ground his nails into his palms, cutting into flesh but drawing no blood. Rarely did his meals fill him, though perhaps, that was the point. The scent of the woman before him, the sulphuric taint of the dead, ground egg shells, long-rotten offerings masked with tea olive perfume – Dieu. Jean Luc gasped; it was as if the Widow Paris herself sat before him. The reminder made him ache with the memory of simpler times.

“How do we best our enemies?” he demanded, pushing thoughts of Marie aside in the attempt to focus fully on her granddaughter. “There must be a way!”

“Y’ spill each other’s blood. It is a mark of y’ penitence for the sins y’ can no longer recall.”

Hissing, fighting down the bloodlust, he spat at her. “Y’ try m’ patience. These are answers I’ve known for a hundred and fifty years, answers given freely from your mother, and your mother’s mother before her. Marie – I see you in her face. I know you, sil-vous-plait! Enough of your trickery.”

“Y’ are a slave t’ y’ thirst, as empty with greed as a belly that can never be full,” she murmured, her eyes rolling full white as the trance consumed her. “Y’ walk as de zombi, but crave de blood of de living – ever at the crossroads, unable to make passage where St. Peter don’t want you. There is no end t’ those whose bodies do not fade. Y’ shall walk de earth eternal, soulless and inconsolable for y’ crimes, but de true curse is that y’ can never make it right. Y’ will never have a mortal death, and as y’ can never remember de t’ings that made y’ a human of flesh and blood, y’ can never absolve y’ self or those who suffer alongside you. This is y’ charge, Jean Luc LeBeau. May it be a lesson t’ those who are unfortunate enough t’ gain y’ interest.”

“I will change it,” he vowed, a solemn promise hissed through lengthening canines. “I will end this suffering for me and my own, and my enemies will spend eternity gnashing at themselves like the animals they are for the slights they have made against us.”

“Y’ will try, as y’ have tried in the past,” she reassured him without comfort. “What foolish, heartless creature steals de life of an innocent t’ further his own ends?”

“Y’ mock my kin,” he warned. Mattie’s sightless eyes, yellowed with age at the corners, saw through him easily. Her eyelids fluttered, the shadows around her clinging to her warmth, the very pulse of life that kindled the Bokor’s strength. “Remy is no longer of any concern t’ the Guild of Thieves.”

“Remy is all of y’ concern. Y’ made him what he is,” she rumbled. “Heed dis warning, Jean Luc: the painted girl comes, and against her, none shall stand who have forgotten de weight of their souls. Y’ boy can only help or hinder her – he who lives and breathes but craves the same as you, exempt from all but one of the rules that bind you to the night.”

The air thinned, and just as quickly as it came, the darkness receded, drawn back into the cracks and crevices to observe, but ceasing their interference.

Mattie slumped forward, the table shifting with her weight as the bones scattered. Several fell to the floor, though Jean Luc could no longer detect their presence by the smell alone. Yet again, Mattie had exhausted their potential, and it would be another two weeks before the stores of prophecy could be replenished. By then, the moon would be waxing, near gibbous, and travelling to Mattie’s squat, sloped-roof cottage nestled amidst the red-brick towers of the Iberville Projects would become dangerous.

He sighed, releasing a long-suffered sound that was as weary as he felt.

After a moment, Mattie stirred. Jean Luc had already placed her recompense on the table, a neat, crisp stack of bills at their agreed-upon denominations.

“Mon dieu,” she murmured, wiping the thin beading of sweat that had collected above her upper lip.

Jean Luc looked on soundlessly, contemplating. A painted girl? There was no use pressing the matter, as Mattie would not remember the details of such a cryptic message. He would confer with the family, the prophecy put to the Guild as quickly as possible before the Others could catch wind of it. Two weeks to the waning moon and its relative safety from his enemies, and it was as if eternity’s measure halved itself each month. Bothersome, he thought.

“Je m’excuse, Jean Luc. I beg your pardon if I have caused y’ pain. I did not mean offense –” Mattie stammered, trying to mend the hurts she had caused him.

“A hazard of the job,” he consoled her, indifferent to the look of concern that crossed the old woman’s face. Curious, he amended, that her prophesizing should include mention of Remy. The last of Mattie’s line to have discussed his adopted son had been Marie Eucharist, sister to Mattie’s mother and confidant to both he and his father, Jacques. Jean Luc paused, appraising her nervous gestures – her broad face, flat features, the honey-dark complexion of the last in a line of formidable Creole women – and saw no resemblance to the women he’d dedicated to memory. Curious, indeed – not that the sight had skipped her mother, Philomène, but that Mattie had mentioned something of worth spoken by only one other person who had served his Guild since before even he had been initiated into their customs.

Did a centennial dampen the necessity of change? If it behaved in any way like the longevity of his affections, Jean Luc knew that a thousand years could pass, and he would not forget the intelligence, mercy, or generosity of Marie Laveaux.

Curious that Mattie should doubt the selfsame prophecies once given to him by her Aunt, and curioser still that she should call Remy by name.

After a moment, Jean Luc settled into his seat, deciding that he could spare a few minutes on the topic of the estranged boy.

“And where is my prodigal son this evening?”

---

The backs of her knees tasted like salt, but his focus was hardly on the light drape of her legs over his shoulders. Patiently, he pressed her thigh into the rumpled coverlet, already halfway to the floor, and dragged his tongue from canvasing her body to peer up at her.

The girl hardly noticed the pause in Remy’s ministrations, the muscles in her stomach clenching with the coaxing insistence of his finger pads as he sought out the bones in her hip to pin her to the sheets. She bucked against the bed, making the springs creak, burying the sound of her choked pleading under the grated bending of old brass.

She blossomed before him, the dewy, promising perfume of lust as warm and welcome as the flushed petals of heated flesh inches from his chin.

A small patch of wetness marked an uneven oval below her bottom, and adamant that she remained subdued beneath his careful attentions, Remy grazed his nails against her thigh when she fought to raise herself to his mouth.

Impatient girl, he thought, smirking into the juncture where her thigh met the light dusting of blond hair between her legs.

That slight movement of his lips against her skin was enough to draw a shudder from her.

“Shhh, ma belle,” he whispered, his breath heatedly intimate, given the location he found himself in at the foot of the tipping mattress. “It’ll be all over soon.”

“P-please,” she moaned, straining to bring him closer, trying desperately to feel with the reckless sort of abandon that teetered between agony and ecstasy. How incredible it was that anyone could give themselves so easily to passion; he marvelled at it, it drew him in much in the way that the tightened, throbbing knot below his thumb pulsed to life with the brush of his finger.

The girl dissolved, the tangle of limbs scented with sweat and cheap perfume dampened beneath the rush in his ears. She groaned to show her appreciation, but Remy’s attention sharpened to the point where he could no longer hear her moans beneath the steady, sure sound of her heartbeat.

It swelled, reddening the neat knot of skin he found between her folds, and carefully, not willing to spoil the sugared temptation of the first rush, Remy placed his mouth against it.

She throbbed eagerly against his tongue, the sound of her blood the richest melody of all, and Remy moaned at the nearness of her pulse. The vibration sent a shudder through her limbs once more.

Shutting his eyes to the darkened room, he drew back, savouring the quickened tempo, the anticipation, the flood of pheromones as he nuzzled her thigh. Scenting her, his nose found the thinnest, most sensitive juncture, and for the first time that evening, Remy felt his limbs jerk in anticipation.

“Baby?” she asked, above him, the lilt in her tone dulled by the sound that awakened his instincts. “You’re not done yet, are you?”

Laughing easily like the drunks on the street corners below, Remy dug his nose into her flesh. Pressed right up against her femoral artery, he caught the first flicker of doubt.

In the darkness, he rolled his eyes up to the girl, making her breath catch from the sudden shock of their strangeness as he dropped his glamour. Tongue laving over the thin skin, he watched as her expression turned from slurred neediness, to question, to wakefulness.

He hadn’t needed to see her face to catch the flutter of caged panic that kicked her heartbeat into overdrive.

“Why, we’re just getting’ started, chérie,” he purred, breath hitching at the first nick of her skin. He sighed with the following rush of wine-laced, crimson bliss that filled his mouth as the vein broke against his teeth, and then…

Then, Remy LeBeau was lost.

---

Post Script:

- Quote (below the chapter title): By Lord Alfred Tennyson (A.H.A. In Memorarium)

- Bokor/Two Headed: A Two-headed doctor, a witch.

- Vodou: Haitian spelling. In New Orleans, there is hoodoo/rootwork (magic, both black and white), and Voodoo, the religion (although some people will argue that “Voodoo” is a mis-spelling.) We are addressing both in this story, the religion by reference of worship of the Loa and ancestors and the presence of the Peristyle (the temple), and the backrooms which give birth to the magical aspect of this story; New Orleans hoodoo, a touch of witchcraft.

- The Loa/Lwa: The spirits/gods, les Mystères. (Translated from French as, “the mysteries.”)

Extended Author’s Notes:

Towards the end of “The Ante” (which, at the time of this posting, is not complete as of yet – close, but no cigar, as they say) I was becoming increasingly upset with the fact that my “time” in New Orleans was almost over. If writing’s a mental playground, you’d figure, the more time you spend thinking about a place and trying to bring it to life, the richer the experience is. For a few years, I’ve lived, eaten, breathed and slept this NOLA-centric story, and knowing that I’d get maybe a sliver of time spent in subsequent work, I decided that I wasn’t done with the setting. No way. I needed to do something else before the muse packed its bags. So I sat down, and started this story on one balmy night in July of 2007, swearing to myself I wouldn’t start posting it until it was finished. It’s been my “secret project.” (It’s not finished. I’m breaking my own rules… as it were, the muse – fickle little bitch that she is – won’t let me get on with anything else until I put something up… some consolation for the people who’ve been waiting. I’m hoping that in doing this, I can get on with life and wrap up the beast of a chapter I’m working on for you-know-what.)

The end result is something of an Alternate Universe piece, in the sense that the structural ties of X-Men: Evolution are being carried over into a supernatural setting. The things that make these characters who they are in Evo are present, though the idea of a “mutant” is wiped clean away. Instead, I’m offering you monsters, and blood, and tradition, and murder. I’m offering you the seductive thrall of necromancy, vampires and voodoo, the light caress of the spirit world, the thrall of lust, and the chilling embrace of a haunting. I offer you Remy LeBeau, heir to the most powerful blood clan on this side of the Atlantic, and Rogue, a girl whose hidden gifts have brought her to this magical place in the most dangerous time seen by any immortal.

I should warn you now, this is a dark ride down the spiral, but it is not darkfic per se. Part of the appeal of writing for me lies in the description, and where there’s a shambling corpse, I can guarantee you that I’ve been traipsing through the gore. Really, though, I wanted to write dark romance, with a touch of naughty humor, and a lot of biting, sucking and disemboweling, and this is what I came up with.

It is a little different than what you may be accustomed to, as it has been written with an adult audience in mind, and certain themes that may be unsettling to sensitive individuals. The research that has gone into this story is extensive, and it’s at this point that I need to extend thanks to the twenty or so individuals who have helped me nurse the story from its infancy.

So wash your hands, wipe your feet, and follow me through the side entrance, if you’re willing.