Title: Bats in the Belfry
Chapter II: Tomb It May Concern
Fandom: X-Men: Evolution
Author: Carmine LaCroix
Summary: Nocturnal New Orleans has in its possession a hidden city – a deeper, older world steeped in seduction, murder and madness. 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 sacrifice as one girl, a Rogue amidst her peers, comes face to face with the deepest of mortal fears: 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

Warnings: Het, Slash, Blood, Guts, Sex, Mayhem
Author’s Notes: Lucia de'Medici sucks.

---
Bats in the Belfry
Chapter II: Tomb It May Concern
---

Certain truths make themselves manifest naturally, as is the way of the universe - the sky is blue; the grass is green. Other truths come into being because we make them so: Lies, for example, if often repeated convince those uttering them that they are, indeed, simple fact. Such things can be absorbed and adopted with time, and with subtle shifts in the patterning of these assertions, they come to form, refashioning a person’s existence to fit into the subtle web of day to day life. Such humble things have primitive power in them; it is wielding that power and reshaping it to suit one’s ends that takes certain skill.

Seated on a low couch, the stuffing long worn into hollows and the upholstery threadbare from use, Mattie looked out unseeing onto the flags of the courtyard where a garden used to be through both the peeling screen and the padlocked security door.

Seemingly alone, she gave no indication of the Work being done, save for the low ululation in the back of her throat, the rolled whites of her eyes, flickering beneath half-lids, and the vaporous, incorporeal form gathering behind her left shoulder.

Small and wavering, a translucent, wisp-white hand seemed to form from the thin mist to settle on her wrist, and as the temperature in the room dropped another ten degrees, it seemed as if the very air itself whispered something into her ear. She nodded, and seemingly speaking to no one, Mattie returned in kind, “Go, then. Ensure that she will come.”

Then Mattie was alone, blinking into the darkness as the feeble light from the kitchen burnt out with an electric crackle, with only the vague recollection of frost, melting on her skin in the shape of a child-sized handprint.

---

The Pontchartrain Expressway spilled out before them; a long, serpentine stretch of concrete, buffered by equally dilapidated sound barriers still baring the faint markings of a receded waterline. A hurricane two years prior had dealt the city a devastating blow, breaching the levees and causing torrential floods in locations where the land fell below the water table. On the outskirts of the Crescent, the only visible marker of the catastrophe that had been Hurricane Katrina was a continuous, rust-brown stain that lost height the closer to the Quarter they got.

Apart from the jarring break of the occasional pothole, the ride settled her. Knowing that the heart of the tourist district still stood was comforting, but beyond the walls where the suburban sprawl became industrial bone yards, Rogue wondered about the condition of the poorer urban districts: the Ninth Ward, Faubourg Tremé…

So many souls ferried out without warning, and many more paying the boatman’s fare out of the refusal to leave their homes.

Rogue wasn’t even sure when she’d drawn her hand back from Bobby. Face turned to the window, her raggedly cut bangs swept against her slitted eyelids as she took in the night.

A curl of sadness stirred with the thought that this Mardi Gras would be spent washing down the hurts of the city with the raucous sort of revelry New Orleans was known for. It pulled at her, that knowledge, but it hadn’t been enough reason to turn down the trip.

She’d have liked to inhale deeply, to try and take in what little of the city she could, testing the air with her senses, but the force of the wind through the car made that impossible. Instead, she wet her lower lip; the faint trail of wetness drying to a slick, cool patch on her mouth.

“Hey? Is anyone alive back there?” Scott called from the front. Rogue strained her eyes open to the passing scenery, appreciating that his was voice muffled by the force of the wind. It was still loud enough to carry. She bristled; irritated that she couldn’t fully lose herself to her thoughts with everyone around her spouting inanities.

“Think you can turn it up?” Kitty was asking, leaning against her seatbelt before Kurt could beat her to the CD changer. “Or maybe change it? This sounds like a funeral march,” she said, her distaste evident in the nasal dip in her tone.

“Dirge,” Rogue corrected under her breath.

Knowing Kitty, she was wrinkling her nose at Scott’s choice from the ‘easy listening’ section. Rogue didn’t blame her, and her comment went unnoticed.

“Rogue?” Scott called from the front. She ignored him, pretending to be preoccupied with the landscape. “Do you have your iPod?”

Childishly, she decided that even if the mp3 player wasn’t at the bottom of her bag, she wouldn’t lend it to him.

Fortunately, she didn’t have to feign disinterest long.

“Whoa.” The exclamation was little more than a whisper, but it caught Bobby’s attention. He leaned around, propping his elbow on Kurt’s headrest and scrunched his features with speculative curiosity.

Out of the darkness and almost completely butted up against the grey sound barrier, the shadows parted to reveal a brilliant, gleaming stone city. Like jagged teeth to the gaping maw of night, the vaulted tombs seemed to gnaw against the darkness. Made of marble and white stucco, they appeared contemplatively serene in their angular irregularity – a crocodile’s grin, lying in wait for the unsuspecting passerby.

The word, “Greenwood”, painted unevenly by hand in blocky capital letters flashed against the side of a long caretaker’s shed facing the highway, and Rogue craned her neck to be certain. All too quickly, the words “Cypress Grove” passed next, its sibling cemetery.

“No shit,” she breathed, startled at the quickness at which the brilliance dissolved back into the bruised hues bordering ten o’ clock, still trying to see though her seatbelt was hindering a full hundred eighty degree turn.

Bobby made an amused noise, settling back and jerking his thumb at the opposite side of the interstate.

“You know,” he said, “they say size doesn’t matter, but if you had just seen the look on your face –”

Rogue glanced at him, her attention snapping sharply to a point beyond his shoulder.

Reacting before considering the rudeness of her action, she slapped an arm across Bobby’s chest, shoving him back into the leather upholstery, simultaneously ripping off her seatbelt.

It popped with a muted click, and Rogue flung herself across Bobby’s lap to plaster her face against the opposite window. Fumbling with the button to roll it down, her knee positioned precariously enough for Bobby to yelp something panicked about his ‘bruised manhood’ and ‘not being able to have children’, Rogue laughed outright.

“I think she just giggled,” Kitty exclaimed, sharing a worried look with Kurt. He snorted into his fist at Bobby’s pained expression after confirming for himself that, indeed, his ordinarily sullen sister had her butt in the air and was grinning like a cat that had gotten the cream.

“Metairie. It’s Metairie!” Rogue pointed, though the gesture was unnecessary.

“It hurts, is what it is!” Bobby whimpered, trying to shove her off from the hip and gasping as Rogue’s knee slipped.

“It’s so…” Rogue was at a loss for words; the megaliths, monuments, obelisks and crypts enormous compared to those she had just seen. It sprawled for acres in the dark. “It’s huge!” she said, awed. There were no signs distinguishing Metairie from its neighbor, but somewhere, on that side of the road, the cluster of mausoleums from the biggest, wealthiest place of rest bled into Lake Lawn. There were six in the area, bunched together, but only the four cemeteries were visible from the highway.

Bobby made a choked sound, a cross between a whimper and a squeak, and slapped at her fruitlessly.

Cast in shadows, the barrier that divided the cemetery from the interstate blocked the nearest mausoleums from her view, and straining to see better, to see more of a towering society tomb, Rogue angled herself, her shoulder sliding into the back of Kitty’s chair.

Before the shadows and gleaming marble of the crypts, a small, stiff figure rose out of the gloom. A statue, Rogue thought, but so close to the interstate?

Rogue blinked, trying to better see the figure of a child. Backlit by the narrow sliver of blue-tinged moonlight, she thought she saw the cherubic curve of a round cheek, the angle of the face throwing the features into sharp contrast. For a moment, she fancied that she saw the bright shine to the boy’s eyes – a mark of the sculptor’s skill, no doubt, and an old tradition at that – glass stones set into the eyes instead of actual jewels. She hadn’t thought they’d continued practicing that in the Southern United States; too many crooks to keep that sort of thing in tact for very long.

What a waste that something so delicate, and so detailed should be kept so near the rising pollution cast off from passing motorists.

“Hey,” she said over her shoulder, straining to keep her eye fixed on the small figure. “Do you see that?”

Blinking as her eyes began to water, Rogue started as the figure raised a hand in salute – bringing two fingers to its forehead, its elbow bent at a sharp angle.

Not a statue, after all: someone was sitting on the wall.

With a whooshing gasp of pain, Bobby knocked her in the ribs, and Rogue slipped even as she strained to place the neutral expression on the boy’s pearlescent face. Her grasp jerked on the window ledge, and with a loud curse, her chin smacked into the door handle as she dropped to the floor of the SUV.

“Goddamnit, Bobby!” she spat, using her elbow to haul herself upright. When she craned to see where the boy had been sitting, the wall was perfectly empty; the only elaborate shadows cast from the cemetery proper.

“You can take the girl out of academia,” Kitty sighed, putting on exasperated airs. “But you can’t take –”

“The weird, creepy cemetery fetish out of the girl,” Kurt finished for her.

Bobby attempted a half-hearted high-five, and gave up in favor of clutching his kidneys.

“Damn!” she exclaimed again, clambering off Bobby’s lap as it passed. “Did anyone –?” Rogue stopped herself, peering over her shoulder at Metairie’s receding bulk as the night swallowed it once more. She wanted to ask if anyone else had seen the kid with the oddly shining eyes on the wall – but even in her head it sounded as if she’d cracked herself a little too soundly on the chin.

She grunted, prodding gingerly at the sensitive spot below her lip, and gave Bobby a look that teemed with the promise of toothpaste in his sheets, toilets flushed while hot showers were taken, and salt swapped for sugar in his morning coffee.

“Earth to Rogue?” Kitty tried, draping an arm over the backrest.

Kurt, smirking, put his thumb and pinkie to his ear and mouth. “I'm sorry. Ktch. Rogue’s not in right now. Ktch. Please hang up and try again later.”

“Ah’ve gotta see them,” Rogue declared, restraining herself from stealing one last glance at the necropolis by pressing her shoulders back into the seat cushioning. She opened her mouth to shoot down any possible protests, and promptly shut it as she noticed that three of her friends were staring. “Ah have to. Ya hear? Ah’ll go by myself, but Ah’m going,” she said obstinately.

“Sure thing, Crypt Keeper.” Kurt waved her off, turning back to the front. “I’ll be at the bar,” he yawned, stretching.

“I’ll go,” Kitty volunteered, her sensible tone belaying the bevy of conditions she was about to lay down. “But only if it’s during the daytime, only if we go with a tour, and only if we stick to the really safe places in town. And, like,” she pulled a face, “nothing that takes us to any place where there are alligators, spiders or snakes.”

Rogue raised an eyebrow, nonplussed, and Kitty beamed.

“Ya know there is one cemetery next to a beach, Kit,” she said sarcastically.

“Oooh! Let’s do that one!”

Rogue rolled her eyes.

“Might I remind you,” Kurt interrupted. “This is supposed to be a vacation. I thought we agreed to leave all credit-collecting activities behind?”

“He means ‘professor-ass-kissing’,” Bobby corrected.

“This isn’t an extra credit assignment, dear brother, this is my hobby,” she argued, ignoring Bobby for the moment. “A non-conformist, anti-establishment, highly specialized approach to understanding why cultures beautify something seriously ugly.”

“Everyone needs that,” he conceded, though it didn’t sound as if he believed her for one instant. “Couldn’t have a thing for kite flying, or trading cards, or burning her Barbie dolls… No, little Rogue Darkholm had to be the weird one in our family. That’s what mom gets for encouraging individuality in her household.”

“Because Raven is such a natural nurturer,” Rogue drawled.

“Hey, she adopted you, didn’t she?” Kurt shot back. She swatted at him.

“I think,” Bobby managed with an exaggerated wince. “Rogue just likes dead stuff because corpses don’t complain half as much as her mother does. You,” he puffed, hoisting himself higher in his seat, “nercophile, you.”

Sobering, she fixed him with a wry look and folded her arms across her chest.

With an unabashed grin, Bobby tried to nonchalantly adjust himself so that if Rogue decided to take aim, she wouldn’t hit any vital, already sensitized areas.

“What did ya just call me?” she demanded, her tone stake-sharp.

Kitty tutted, reprimanding Bobby in a sing-song voice, “Amateur.”

“That at least negative sixty brownie points, right there,” added Kurt.

Bobby’s smile faltered, becoming strained at the edges and taking on a wary, brittle quality. “Shit,” he squeaked between clenched teeth, barely moving his lips. “Why sixty?” he asked, his voice cracking as the look Rogue gave him darkened.

“Thirty for calling her the ‘n’ word,” Kitty supplied, “and thirty for mentioning Mrs. Darkholme. Double the score.”

“Back away, man,” Kurt said, gesturing airily over his head. “Slowly.”

“I can’t!” he said, still grinning, though his eyes had widened to show more of the whites than normal. “You can’t escape a moving vehicle with a seatbelt on!”

“Ya’ll can come with me ta make up for letting me face-plant, Drake,” she decided aloud, her tone pleasant enough, considering her chin was beginning to throb. “Ah’ve got a long list of places ta visit while we’re here.”

Freezing, his knee halfway to his stomach as if to protect himself for a much worse onslaught, Bobby peeked through splayed fingers. “That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

“Just go with you to a few graveyards and Kurt won’t have to rent me a tomb with a view back in New York?” Bobby asked.

With a dubious snort, Kurt muttered, “The night’s not over yet.”

“Sure,” she returned, offering no more, and no less than Bobby absolutely needed to hear. What remained unspoken was the fact that New Orleans had some forty-two cemeteries to call its own. That made for a lot of ground to cover, and while there was no foreseeable way to get to them all, there was at least one on her list. A small, curious feeling was left in the wake of seeing that boy sitting at the edge of Lake Lawn and Metairie, and while Rogue brushed off the salute as a trick of the light, she’d make it her priority to find the statue. Surely, that’s all he was – who on earth would let their kids out to play in a place like that past eleven on a Thursday, she scoffed to herself.

The look of relief crossing Bobby’s face smoothed his cheeks back into his trademark ‘good-boy’ grin. He thought he was getting off easy. Satisfied that she’d found something to look forward to, ignoring the flash of Scott’s sunglasses in the rear view suddenly became a whole lot easier.

Rogue brushed at her bangs, combing them through with her fingers so they hung messily across one eye. She lifted a shoulder, gave Bobby a sly pout, a wink, and flopped backwards to her side of the car, her legs splaying in a most unladylike fashion. A moment later, the wind ruffled her hair again, sending the neat part into a mess of deep brown and white stripes.

“Hey, Jean?” Kitty began, turned back to the front as Scott pulled onto the off ramp. “So, I was just wondering…”

A jingling, halting, tinny-sounding melody cut her off mid-sentence. Startled, Kitty looked down, her ponytail swinging.

“Phone!” Kurt supplied needlessly, as the garbled blare of Paris Hilton filled the car.

Rogue winced. Scott groaned. “Pick it up!” Bobby brayed loudly, following up with a comment about how Paris was hot, even in jail stripes, and Kurt said with more insistence, “Phone!”

“I can’t find it!” she yelped, diving into her bag.

And the commotion began again.

“Who the hell is calling you now?” Rogue snapped, grimacing as the chorus set itself to repeat.

“Bet its Lance!” Kurt volunteered, plugging his ears with his fingers and craning around to grin widely at her. At that moment, he chose to start singing.

“Your right to criticize what I listen to has officially been revoked!” Scott shouted laughingly.

“Why isn’t Rogue’s brain leaking out her ears?” Bobby yelled over Kurt’s attempt to drown out the sound of the ring tone by yelling the words to something that belonged back in the nineties, buried alongside Kurt Cobain and the Seattle grunge scene.

“Should Ah start spitting pea soup and spinning?” she shot back. “Ah live with her. Ah’ve developed an immunity!”

“It makes my teeth hurt! Like nails on a chalkboard!” Bobby wailed. “Make it stop, make it stop!”

“Phone!Nevermindhellohellohellohello!” Kurt screeched, his voice cracking mid-melody.

“Ah ha!” Kitty yelled, holding the tiny thing aloft in triumph.

“Hellohellohellohello!”

A collective breath was sucked in as she flipped it open, and finally:

“Hello!?”

---

“Bonsoir.”

A terse noise from the other end of the line met his mild greeting. Smiling demurely, Remy LeBeau stepped off the corner of Dumaine, fingers ghosting over one of the cast iron posts that supported the second-level balcony over his head – recently used as a makeshift escape route, but far more serviceable for its intended use.

Idly, he plucked a fallen bougainvillea blossom he’d knocked free with his descent, and fixed it in the boutonniere of his jacket as he propped his shoulder against the post.

“Remy,” came the weary greeting, a note of threaded boredom in Jean Paul’s tone. “There has not been one evening this week when your father has not berated me into seeking you out, and subsequently, not an evening this week when I’ve been able to walk this city without this dreadful cellular phone. I despise it, cousin,” he added needlessly. “It makes me feel like a dog sworn to follow at his master’s heels – a master who is little more than a petulant child himself.”

“Should I call y’ Benvolio and we’ll be done with it?” Remy asked, feigning coyness at the quip. He tipped sideways, a hand in his pocket, and strolled around the corner. With his free hand, he felt out his pack of cigarettes and procured a lighter from the pocket of a passing pedestrian.

“Ha,” Jean Paul returned blandly, not liking the joke in Remy’s tone. Or perhaps he sensed his sure-footedness over the line; his even, unhurried gait as Remy took to the streets where the cobblestone turned to cracked cement.

“Has Rosalind found you wanting?” he pressed, and Remy could all but see the wry twist of his mouth. “Where have you been?”

Remy could hear the sounds of the Quarter behind the low static crackle over the line, barely discernable to human ears. Jean Paul was nearby.

“Just having a snack,” he said, sliding his gaze over a couple on the far side of the street, their backs to him as they strolled along before the row of galleries and jewelry artisans that made Rue Royal prime pickings for any respectable thief. He ignored the quip about Rosalind, though he was fairly certain that one's name had been Rachel. Or was it Rosemary?

No matter, it wasn't his job to carve her tombstone.

“Oh?” Jean Paul could barely conceal the disparaging tone in his voice. He added, “While the day I admonish you of your actions will be a miserable one for a snowball that mistakenly finds itself in the third circle of hell, I ought to at least give you the news.”

Remy paused, his ears pricking. “Y’ think I should maybe get a psychic instead? It’d save y’ the roaming time.” He waited as Jean Paul feigned a dramatic sigh of irritation. In the background, the first tinkling notes of a saloon piano carried across the line – antique, the wood lending a richer sounding because of its age. It was followed by the staggered thrum of a standing bass. The band was warming up at Café Lafitte in Exile, and Jean Paul, predictable as ever, wasn’t even bothering to cover up the fact that out of the many two hundred and forty one year old instruments in the city, he still couldn’t seem to tear himself away from the one that acted like a red flag for his location. That Jean Paul made a point of haunting the oldest gay bar in the city wasn’t lost on him, but that he was within a block of Remy’s current location almost made it humorous. Almost.

“Or should I be callin’ someone else in my top five?” Remy smirked, turning in the direction of Canal street, and set off at an unhurried clip, cigarette in hand.

“Yes,” Jean Paul said stiffly. “His name is Jean Luc LeBeau, and he otherwise responds to you when you refer to him as ‘père’.”

“Does y’ snowball need an ice castle?” Remy returned conversationally. “I hear property taxes are way down in the third circle.”

“Fine,” Jean Paul said. “Don’t talk to him. Ignore your family altogether, shirk your responsibilities to the Guild, and please do continue demonstrating your obvious lack of sympathy for your poor, dear foreign cousin – beleaguered with Emil’s ongoing, incessant disregard for everything because he thinks that someone should fill your shoes while you’re off… playing with your food.”

“I miss y’ too, Jean Paul,” Remy returned with a hint of amusement.

He sniffed in response, the sounds of the bar fading in the background. Jean Paul was on the move.

“You are utterly exasperating. Honestly, the sacrifices I make on your behalf should have canonized me twice over by now.”

“Were such a thing possible.”

Remy took a haul from his cigarette, holding it in as he flashed a winning grin at a passing gaggle of middle-aged women gathered around a window display of over-priced Faberge egg replicas. One actually stopped mid-oogle to stare as he passed. He winked at her as she leaned in, trying to judge for herself whether the unusual color of his eyes were indeed because of contact lenses… or something unnatural. He didn’t give her the chance to decide, and in a moment, he’d slipped from her scrutiny and reappeared on the other side of the street.

“Remy,” Jean Paul deadpanned.

“Oui, coco?” he asked, exhaling as he waited for the woman to turn around. She didn’t see him at first, choosing instead to questioningly tug at the arm of one of her companions. Remy dipped his head, stepping backwards up onto the front steps of a shotgun cottage-turned photography gallery, and waited.

One breath.

“Call me that once more, and you’ll find yourself boxed up in an unassuming, unmarked crypt left to weather your eternity in darkness, clawing at the mautadite turn of the century craftsmanship that built your final resting place.”

Two breaths.

The woman turned, spotted him, and leapt in surprise. He could all but taste her heart as it jackrabbited to match her expression.

Remy dipped his head obligingly, doffing an imaginary cap in her direction, and returned the cell to his ear.

“That bad?” he asked Jean Paul, flicking the half-smoked cigarette beneath the tires of an oncoming truck and crossing from St. Anne to Orleans, cutting between the human traffic easily as his attention wandered to the cloudy, blue swath of night overhead.

Starless, sightless dark arched forever onwards beyond the gabled roofs and ornamental wrought iron fittings that protected the upper balconies of the Creole townhouses. Here and there, chipped triangles of glass were mortared into the walls that blocked off interior courtyards – the less expensive alternative to cast iron spiking used to keep rowdy tourists from climbing the facades of the buildings. Remy’s attention drifted, disinterested with the fact that such basic precautions couldn’t keep him out if he’d decided on a whim to rob the entire street.

One evening, he might just do it to get a rise out of Jean Luc.

He hummed, standing perfectly still at the intersection as the sparse crowd moved around him, only half-listening to Jean Paul’s continued complaints. The corner of Orleans and Royal was where decisions were made. Unbidden, his attention fell to the left – the short stretch of Orleans street that bled into a sparse swatch of green grass, and beyond, the back entrance to St. Louis, nestled between Père Antoine and Pirate’s Alley. These were grim stretches of darkened street, overhung with the tightly packed buildings on either side, and illuminated only by the spotlights reflected against the gleaming, white façade of the cathedral.

Remy’s gaze lingered a moment, fighting the disquieting urge to look up to the spires of the sanctuary overhead with their promise of solitude, and the graceful company of the bats that circled the bell tower.

“Are you even listening?” Jean Paul asked.

Not tonight, Remy decided, sighing inwardly. He turned away from his refuge in favor of the sharp clicking noise that echoed both in his ear, and a few yards away. It didn’t matter that Jean Paul, or anyone else from the immediate family, couldn’t enter the church, but it wouldn’t stop his cousin from deducing that he’d taken to haunting the belfry instead of returning to the Guild’s plantation each morning.

“Did y’ eat enough tonight, Jean Paul? Y’ soundin’ a little testy,” Remy returned.

Jean Paul avoided the quip, repeating himself for good measure. “Emil? I was trying to explain the problematic situation Lapin is creating?”

A glance to his right brought the quieter stretch of Bourbon Street’s seven hundred block into sight, and in the midst of it, matching him step for step, was the lean, shadowed form of his cousin. Jean Paul didn’t pretend to notice his presence, and the pair kept walking in syncopated rhythm, though a full city block separated them.

“Y’ came straight t’ me, didn’t you?” Remy said.

“How shall I put this?” Jean Paul questioned irritably, his silhouette disappearing beyond the corner. “If I was Benvolio to your farcical Romeo, Emil would be your Mercutio declaring himself ‘worm’s meat’ and brandishing all his glorified angst with the pomp of a well-earned Cheerleading trophy.”

“Y’ need t’ tell him t’ stop before he goes blind,” Remy supplied.

Jean Paul continued, apparently ignoring him in favor of hearing himself bemoan the pains of his afterlife, “He’s made himself a martyr to your cause, causing as much trouble as humanly possible by not only tormenting me, but traipsing about the swamps that are in obvious control of the Others at every conceivable opportunity. Clearly, he’s never troubled himself to read Shakespeare in his hundred seventy-one years of existence, or he’d be aware that after one festive jaunt into Boudreaux territory, he’d be at your defense one moment, and truly dead the next. Idiot.”

“Can’t blame Lapin if he doesn’t follow the script,” Remy returned, grinning as the footfalls through the phone sounded in sync with those approaching from Bourbon Street. “He’d have taken the cliff notes when he was alive anyway.”

“There were no ‘cliff notes’ when he was alive, Remy,” Jean Paul muttered. “Emil is looking for trouble. Moreover, Jean Luc has grown concerned that you are participating in this… this…” Jean Paul continued to struggle for the word. “Bêtise.”

“Bitter?” Remy chuckled. “Or frustrated and using Emil as y’ scapegoat?”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps my intimate life is none of your concern.” Jean Paul paused, hesitating a fraction of a moment too long.

Remy closed his eyes to the night sky with a smile on his face and hummed. Sometimes, Jean Paul’s transparency was as staggering as running full-tilt into a floor-to-ceiling, freshly Windexed window.

“Since when do y’ have a ‘life’, homme?” he joked good-naturedly, prodding at the only true sensitive spot Jean Luc was in possession of.

“My,” he cleared his throat, “handicap is not the subject of this discussion.”

“Said the heart-beat challenged,” he drawled.

“For someone who’s half-dead himself, I’m surprised at your candour, Remy,” Jean Paul said almost petulantly. “Perhaps I’ll rectify that for you some day.”

“Promises,” Remy purred, opening his eyes to the threat. He surveyed the languishing form in the distance, and sedately, Remy approached him. Best to get it over with, he decided. “Don’t be jealous that m’ heart still lub-dubs for th’ femmes, Jean Paul. Green isn’t y’ colour.”

“As if you’d have the slightest inclination towards a proper palette were it not for my classic sentimentalities,” he returned. “Heaven forbid what you’ve been doing to yourself without me to turn on the lights for you in the evening when choosing your clothing. I’d be astounded if you could match together a pair of socks without assistance.”

The street dipped, and Remy turned, making his wavering, leisurely way up St. Peter’s to Bourbon where Jean Paul idled casually. He didn’t bother reminding him that he saw perfectly well in the dark. Doubtless, that wouldn’t change Jean Paul’s opinion of his fashion sense.

“So,” he said, leaving the invitation for conversation open to Jean Paul.

“So,” he returned.

Remy ducked his head, letting his bangs fall into his eyes as he subtly mimicked Jean Paul’s stance; head bowed conspiratorially, shoulders slouched with casual negligence, and one hand dropped into the pocket of his tailored slacks.

“Quoi?” he asked. “If this is gonna make my stomach turn, I’m not interested, Jean Paul. Keep y’ sordid business t’ yourself.”

“Arrête, Remy,” Jean Paul said stiffly. “I told you, I did not call to be poked fun at. This is a simple family matter that should have been dealt with weeks ago. Instead, Emil’s run around unchecked to draw undo attention to himself,” he insisted.

“I don’t think that’s the problem. You wouldn’t be shadowing me for three blocks for Emil’s benefit. He’s not worth the trouble half the time, and y’ know it – especially when any of the Boudreaux are involved. We don’t keep animals, cousin, much less play with them.”

Jean Paul scoffed, raking a hand through his dark hair in a gesture of frustration that was almost human. Some things, Remy had come to realize, you just didn’t unlearn with time. You aged and you adapted, but you never completely forgot what it was that made you mortal; all those petty frustrations and minor guilts? Well, when a man had an eternity to rethink the things he’d done, those old wounds had a tendency to fester with rot for just as long.

For Jean Paul, for most of the family, in fact, scars were treasured things that didn’t fade. They only got uglier with time.

“Jean Luc went to see Tante Mattie tonight,” he admitted finally, not turning as Remy drew abreast of him.

Silently, the pair paused, Remy nodding slowly into the phone, and Jean Paul staring straight forward, weighing out the consequences of having revealed such a deceptively inconsequential bit of information.

“Ah.”

Jean Paul didn’t frown inasmuch as the lines wrinkling his forehead suggested he wanted to.

“Your name came up,” he said neutrally.

Remy stifled a smirk. “Oh?”

Slanting his eyes to the left, Jean Paul sucked his teeth, making a small, disapproving sound against the roof of his mouth. “Monosyllabism doesn’t suit you, Remy.”

“What can I say? I’m the talk of the town?” he said, raising an eyebrow.

“What else is new,” Jean Paul muttered. “It’s a miracle that they haven’t dragged you off to the swamps just to be rid of you yet… Though I suspect that may be the root of Emil’s nervous habits. Belladonna has a tendency to grow bolder as the moon waxes.”

For emphasis, he looked upwards to the night sky, the pregnant bulge of the white-bellied moon peeking through the cloud cover – four days to full – and this time, Jean Paul scowled deeply.

“Filthy beasts,” he muttered below his breath.

The two men snapped their phones shut and slid them into pockets with eerie synchronicity. Untroubled, the pair fell into step alongside one another, taking to the Rue Bourbon’s weathered sidewalks with a familiarity that didn’t reflect their seemingly halcyon youth. Side by side, they appeared little more than two young professionals, somewhere in their early twenties, their collars open and ties forgotten in the surprising warmth of a balmy Mardi Gras weekend. What could be said of the two gentlemen that would offer interest was not the strange way in which they complimented each other – one of such fair complexion and dark features that it seemed as if he hadn’t seen the sun in years, and the other, carelessly scruffy with russet hair that he shook out of his eyes when it occurred to him to do so. Their strangeness was not in their matching stances, though the leanness of one didn’t overpower the light musculature of the other, and certainly not in the preternatural way their eyes took on a strange, near-phosphorescent gleam when the gaslight caught them just so.

Jean Paul, for obvious reasons, kept his gaze lowered to avoid any uncomfortable looks, but Remy…

“Y’ know what they say about women who know what they want,” he said, leering at the thought of Belladonna Boudreaux tearing herself away from her own issues for just a moment to see to his persistent advances. Fact of the matter was that she would give him the time of day: noon, tied to a post somewhere in direct sunlight.

Remy smirked inwardly. The fille had always been a bit kinky.

Jean Paul sneered. “Hardly. I’ve chosen not to preoccupy myself with such debased pastimes – especially not with the likes of those mongrels.”

“She’s frothing at the mouth for it,” Remy supplied idly, entertained briefly as Jean Paul stiffened; breaking his stride; scowled, shuddered and gave him a horrified look.

“Literally,” they both said at once.

…Remy was fond of a little thing called chance, and perhaps that made him unique among his kin. The incandescent shine of scarlet on black when his gaze trailed to the people passing was the only physical marking that set him apart, and for propriety’s sake, a subtle glamour distracted most people from the oddity. It was a little trick, easily bought from the city’s only Two Headed Doctor still in operation. The juju had taken at least a decade to perfect on his own, but by the fifties, the ladies caught only a glimpse of what he was capable of, and few ever lived to talk about the charming, handsome man with the red on black eyes. They earned him his moniker; rather nefarious, when considered – Le Diable Blanc, the White Devil; Jean Luc LeBeau’s very own gambit against his enemies. Or at least, that had been the plan.

Remy hadn’t been born with them, of course. If he remembered correctly, his eyes had been an ordinary shade of brown up until Jean Luc had found him in his twenty-second year. Then again, after almost seventy years into his renaissance, a guy seldom forgot those responsible for his particular deformities.

Not that he minded, really – but you couldn’t put it passed Jean Paul not to comment on his lack of discretion. Jean Paul, who was little more than a walking, talking corpse himself, still hadn’t gotten over the fact that Remy had been Turned, while he himself had been killed, brought back, and cursed into what he was.

Bitter? Remy cast a glance at his cousin. Non, ‘bitter’ didn’t cover it.

If anyone asked Remy (which they didn’t) he’d have told them he was almost content with his unnaturally long lifespan – even if it meant that his dry cleaning bills were a little higher than the average person’s.

Don’t listen to anyone who tells you soda water is the best way to get out bloodstains. They’ve likely never had a lunch that struggles when you take a bite.

“That mean my Romeo typecasting is down the toilet?” he asked.

“Flushed twice for good measure,” Jean Paul deadpanned.

The pair paused at the corner of Toulouse below the overhang of the Old French Opera House’s first floor balcony. Granted, it hadn’t fulfilled its function in entertaining the living for at least sixty years, but for Remy, personally, it provided a wealth of amusement each time Jean Paul decided that it was appropriate to get nostalgic.

Jean Paul had paused, staring misty-eyed at the palatial front doors of the converted Inn on Bourbon Hotel, the gilded gleam from within welcoming against the blare of Bourbon Street at their backs.

Thoughtfully, he cleared his throat. “You know,” he began, and Remy rolled his eyes. “Belladonna may very well be the cause of our problems, Remy.”

Remy made a noncommittal noise, forcibly restraining himself from any outward signs of sheer boredom at the promise of what looked like a very long, very familiar argument.

Jean Paul tipped his head to the side, stepping forwards beneath the hanging gas lamps that clung to the underside of the balcony to fully illuminate the narrow planes of his pale face. He blinked slowly, his pupils bleeding outward to round orbs of black, the ring of blue narrowing to a bare sliver of colour. He brushed his hair behind his ears absently, staring as if he were trying to recall some time and place long lost, but visible only to him as he looked into the building.

“I remember this place when it was just a corner lot,” he said softly. “There was nothing here when I arrived, only the inkling of an idea for something so grand – how amazing that I’ve seen what madness can construct, what it can destroy. Did you know, cousin, that I lived and grieved for my sister for nearly a decade before I died?”

Remy winced, but stayed otherwise motionless at Jean Paul’s back, watching the passing traffic on the street and trying to place the zydeco blaring from a nearby storefront. Hugh Boynton, probably.

“Jeanne Marie would have adored this place. She loved music. There was nothing like the Creole opera in Quebec, but Nouvelles Orleans held the promise of miracles.”

A mule-drawn carriage was slowing traffic as it took the corner. Carting along four tourists, fresh from Jean Lafitte’s; the plastic cups in their hands and raucous laughter were a dead giveaway that they’d recently indulged in the pub’s notorious Hurricanes. One girl leaned out, covering her mouth. Remy turned away before he could watch her get sick before the doors of the posh hotel.

“Sometimes, if I think back on it hard enough, I almost convince myself that it would have killed her to see the Opera burn as it did; to see this,” he gestured flippantly, “built in its place. Jeanne Marie was lucky that pneumonia took her on the ship; that she didn’t have to see such fine things at their pinnacle, only to have them destroyed before her.” He inhaled sharply, sampling the fragrances from the hotel lobby like taking a sip of wine. “I’ve lost my taste for this place since then.”

Jean Paul turned to face him, hands loose at his sides. “Time leaves a bitter taint on the tongue, Remy.”

What Jean Paul meant to say, Remy heard underscored in the tightness of his inflection: “Jeanne Marie would have hated what I’ve become.”

Levelly, Remy held his gaze, and for a moment, he allowed his control to slip so that Jean Paul could take the brunt of his true appearance, to see just how irritable Jean Paul’s trickery could make him. Remy hated it when he started talking about Jeanne Marie. There was nothing you could do for the dead except mourn, remember, and keep on living.

Evidently, Jean Paul had yet to grasp that concept… something apparently made much more difficult when you were dead yourself.

The guilt trip wasn’t working, Remy decided. He much preferred Jean Paul’s disdain for everything that moved, rather than his sentimental side.

“Maybe that’s just ash on your tongue, cousin,” he said. “The more time y’ spend putting kisses on your sister’s tomb, the less time y’ have t’ concoct ways of getting me involved in Jean Luc’s scheming.”

Suddenly predatory, Jean Paul advanced on him with deliberate slowness. Together, they blocked the better part of the banquette, forcing people to side step haltingly.

“Like it or not, Remy, Jean Luc believes that you are crucial in ending our suffering, and I, for one, would like nothing more than to lay my eternal, infernal body down one morning with the hopes that there will be a night when I won’t wake up with the need to ravage whatever good and innocent thing crosses my path, just to keep myself from turning into the monster the Boudreaux family would like me to be.” He hissed, “I would desire nothing more than to have my bones laid beside my sister, and my soul repaired from the tatters its currently in. You cannot possibly fathom the depths of what the family has undergone to end this war, and here, you stand by making crude jokes about the very creatures who’ve done this to us – your blood kin.”

Remy inclined his head, his gaze dropping to Jean Paul’s pinched lips as a slow grin spread over his face. It began small at first, a tiny stirring at the corner of his mouth that drew upwards – all non-threatening gestures forgotten as easily as Jean Paul had tried to manipulate him.

Jean Paul stiffened, and slowly, Remy bared his teeth as subtly as a switchblade. The flash of incisors, slightly longer than the rest of his teeth, and infinitely sharper – lacking the enamel that would give them a polished gleam, but ultimately making them better to slide through skin – was still effective, even after all these years.

“Remy,” Jean Paul said his name bracingly, his eyes narrowing at the brazen show.

“Blood kin?” he questioned, his tongue making a quick swipe against a canine and coming away striped with scarlet. Jean Paul’s expression darkened.

“Th’ last I heard, Jean Luc took someone’s advice a little too readily,” he murmured. “I’m no more your cousin than I am Henri’s brother or Jean Luc’s son. Your problems aren’t my problems, because if they were, then I’d actually have a reason t’ get involved.”

“You have been ‘involved’ since before you were born, you fils de putain,” Jean Paul spat. “Jean Luc made you what you are, and for that, you are indebted – bound by the same curse as the rest of us, fed with the LeBeau bloodline.” He stopped, looking more desperate than incensed at the old argument. After a pause where Jean Paul forcibly collected himself, he continued stubbornly, “You were meant to end the war. You will end the war. It has been foretold.”

“He only made me because some long-dead witch doctor told him to. I am a practical joke t’ the Boudreaux, cousin,” he said, a trace of venom turning his tone spiteful. “At the drop of a hat, Bella could tear out m’ heart, feed it to Julien, and he’d still have time t’ ask someone t’ pass the salt before I hit the ground.”

Jean Paul settled, resigned to ignore his protests. He took a step backwards, and then another so that he could rest a hand against one of the posts that held the balcony aloft. “That they believe you will destroy them is enough to give you power over their Guild, Remy,” he said firmly. “It doesn’t matter than you can’t see if for yourself, we believe. We have to.”

Falling to pensive silence, Jean Paul regarded him quietly as his motions stilled. Around them, life continued to move forwards in the rushing, noisy bustle that clogged the major artery of nighttime New Orleans. Bourbon Street, like the LeBeau clan, came to life after the sun set. Turning back to the hotel doors, Remy forced down the burbling, insistent roil of failure he so often chose to ignore.

“I don’t believe in prophecies,” he muttered, more to himself than to Jean Paul, whose breathing had slowed to the point of being almost absent altogether. He shouldn’t need to hunt, but in the temper he was, Jean Paul, the crusading Frenchman, was not good company to maintain his spirits.

“No, you put your stock in ephemeral pleasures because you can’t fully turn away from the part of you that knows you are better than both your family, and better than the mortal lives you crave. Neither alive, nor wholly damned – you are superior to, and simultaneously worse than us all, Remy – and that’s why I know you will be the one to liberate us.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, the dredges of his good mood evaporating entirely.

“Then come,” Jean Paul insisted, brightening as much as he was capable. “If not to see Jean Luc, then visit with Tante Mattie. She, at least, can tell you more of what she’s seen this evening in the bones.”

The blue ring of Jean Paul’s iris was almost gone, consumed by the darkness. Seeming to sense the change in himself, Jean Paul stepped backwards off the curb stiffly.

“Will you find Emil?” he asked, his tone hollowing in increments. It was the hunger – an all-consuming thing that was terrible to witness firsthand, especially in such a public place. It became clear to him in an instant – Jean Paul hadn’t fed before coming to find him after waking that evening. Merde.

“Jean Paul?” he said, a little louder than intended. He was slipping, and it was visible. While it wouldn’t be a problem under other circumstances, to succumb to the thirst in such a public place would be catastrophic for the Guild.

Emil’s gallivanting would be nothing compared to a massacre in the middle of a packed, public street. Remy had seen what Jean Paul was capable of. This was not good.

“I haven’t much time, Remy – if you won’t find Emil, then at least wait for me until I take my dinner,” he said urgently, the richness of his accent becoming grittier, less whole each moment that passed. Soon, his vocal chords would stop working altogether.

Turning on the spot, Remy tracked him with his eyes.

Why in hell hadn’t he eaten tonight?

“Where?” he asked instead.

“The Iberville Projects,” Jean Paul replied, starting as a horn blared from his right. The oncoming traffic had stopped for him as he staggered backwards into the street, but only just. “The place where Jean Luc likes to think.”

“Go,” Remy whispered, seeing the thinning skin around Jean Paul’s mouth – the protuberant way his teeth seemed to stretch the skin across his upper lip. Cheeks thinning into hollows, dark circles appearing where his eyes sunk into himself, Jean Paul looked more like a corpse than ever. Emaciation, the loss of fluids – though he had none of his own to speak of – the curse rose at these moments in the starkest way it could, drawing back the magic of blood sacrifice to show the members of the Thieves Guild as they truly were.

An oncoming silver Escalade stopped short before the hotel, its horn blaring, and Jean Paul slammed his fists into the hood, nails gouging eight lines down the grill. The decorative emblem popped, and in the time it took to fall to a ground with a clatter, Jean Paul had disappeared in the pedestrian confusion and with the retreating light of the moon behind the clouds.

A pretty redhead leapt out of the car, coming to the front even as a startled Remy backed away, scanning the area for his cousin though he knew Jean Paul was nowhere to be found. Rental car, he guessed, checking the plates. He hoped they’d had the sense to take out insurance.

“Wow, what was that?” the redhead said, soon joined by a wiry book-type who’d seemingly forgotten that the sun hadn’t show its face for several hours. A pair of red-lensed sunglasses sat on the bridge of his nose.

Another door opened, and a slight brunette on a cell phone peeled her bare legs from the leather interior, chattering amiably to someone on the other end of the line.

“Like, no – Kurt’s hair dye left blue all over the headrest – but that’s not why… No, I don’t scream for just anything. Scott hit something.” She paused, fidgeting with the hem of her shorts. “I don’t know, Pietro. There aren’t any animals in the city, are there? Rogue? Are you okay?” she called into the back of the car, the phone still pressed to her ear. “No, don’t tell Lance anything,” she added into the phone hastily. “He isn’t obligated to worry about me anymore,” she finished as another two young men piled out of the car behind her, one, who did indeed have blue hair. “No, I don’t care if he wants to know if I’m alright –”

“Day-um!” another whistled, scrubbing at the back of his head as he emerged from the back, stepping up on the riser to see over the roof and down the hood. “Kurt, I think I might join you for that drink.”

The blue haired one – Kurt, apparently – blinked between the blond and the front of the car. “Think whatever it was we hit is dead?”

Remy took that as his cue to start moving.

“It’d be under the car,” the redhead said, rising from a crouch. “And there’s nothing there.”

Nope. In this town, the dead get up and walk away, Remy thought.

Shaken, and more than a little surprised that Jean Paul hadn’t tended to himself before trying to find him, Remy surreptitiously blended into the growing crowd of onlookers gathering around the front of the SUV. Guiltily coming to the conclusion that if he hadn’t been quite as adamant about avoiding any and all interaction with the Guild, Jean Paul wouldn’t have endangered himself as he had for his benefit.

Whatever it was Tante Mattie had coaxed Jean Luc into believing must have been good.

He’d be fine, he reassured himself, unwittingly accepting the fact that indeed, to some extent, he did care about his cousin’s welfare as much as he cared about his own – even if Jean Paul did, on occasion, behave like his father’s flunkie. No wonder Jean Paul hated his cell phone.

Emil wouldn’t have been able to endure the three hours from sunset to eleven without feeding, and that Jean Paul was even willing to try was a terrifying proposition indeed. It wouldn’t kill him, but it’d put him in a state not much better than the creatures that stalked the bayous on the outskirts of town.

Belladonna was waiting for something devastating enough to break the truce between the families. A little carnage would cut it, thought Remy wryly.

“If I’m supposed t’ save you, then who’s gonna save me?” he breathed, thinking that he ought to find Emil, wherever he was, before heading into territory he’d have avoided at all costs under any other circumstances.

Deciding it was a lost cause to stick around and explain the fact that his cousin had very nearly struck a match to the century-old blood feud, Remy turned on his heel, and collided solidly with something soft, catching in an awkward tangle of limbs.

“Hey!” came a muffled sound of protest from somewhere around chest height. “Watch where th’ hell you’re going –”

“Désolé,” he said hastily, pulling back and trying to smooth over his misstep with a slick bit of French.

A strip of hair caught in his mouth, and surprised that he’d somehow managed to steady her by putting a hand on her waist, a fist was still moving upwards in the direction of his chest, ready to shove him off.

At the last possible opportunity, Remy clasped her fingers below gloved knuckles, using the girl’s leverage to twirl her outwards. She moved with him easily, and as her chin turned up, white bangs flew from her face. Remy caught the parted, plum-painted lips, and the surprised look in startled green eyes before he spun away from her.

“Dance card’s full tonight, chère,” he said easily, flashing an automatic grin. “Maybe next time, hein?”

She flushed; lips clamping together as if she’d suddenly bit down on something she found distasteful.

The style of dress was somewhere in between emo and indie scenes, but her makeup was definitely Goth. How novel, he thought – another Anne Rice fanatic come to the Big Easy. Pity, there was no actual Lestat de Lioncourt to speak of in his city, but maybe, if he was up to it later, this little girl would meet a real New Orleans vampire.

As he was reaching to run a finger down the side of her face to mark of the heated blush that blossomed expectantly under his touch, she batted at him almost reflexively.

Surprised at the girl’s speed, Remy had a second to note the aggressive gleam in her eyes, the pretty twist of her stained mouth, and appreciate the softness of her skin below a particularly intricate black and white tattoo before the back of his hand connected with her forearm.

For a moment, it felt as if the bells of St. Louis cathedral were ringing in his head.

The sensation resonated within him with the strength of a depth charge – a kindled understanding in the darkness that reached into his chest and brushed over something at the very core of his being. It lit inside him, and the girl wrenched away, startled at having seemingly felt it too.

The scent of crushed calla lilies and loamy earth flooded Remy’s senses, and unable to think past the familiar perfume, Remy blinked down at her wonderingly.

Her mouth was moving, almost as if in slow motion as she drew nearer, her expression troubled…

“Your eyes –” she whispered. Her voice was like smoke – rich and grey; the brush of silk against dry palms.

Compelled, Remy’s limbs prickled with the desire to reach out and put his fingers against her throat to see if her blood was pounding in her ears too.

His fingers were halfway there when he finally realized what he was doing.

“Désolé,” he said again.

The entire exchange had taken less than ten seconds.

One thing was certain; he needed to get away from her. Now.

He was halfway up the street before he turned around, creamy white funeral flowers turning to soap on his tongue, finding himself unable to shake the curious sensation of being known. With her attention on him, he was held open at the ribs and stretched until it became uncomfortable, and secretly, he admitted to himself, a little thrilling.

She blinked. Even at the distance from which he stood, Remy saw the slow bat of thick eyelashes as they brushed the apples of her cheeks, her hand dropping to her side reluctantly in a manner that suggested she was too stunned to react. Instinctively, Remy called to the shadows. With his pulse thrumming, he disappeared beneath their comforting mantle… knowing that somehow, though it seemed impossible, she had seen through his glamour and taken in the full scope of his unsettling appearance.

Remy couldn’t see her in the dispersing crowd, but the girl’s face remained at the forefront of his mind like a time-washed daguerreotype – hauntingly insubstantial at the edges, but clinging to a desperate, tangible presence that brushed at his awareness.

Wetting his lips, he turned the corner to St. Louis where the gas lamps burned lower and security lights dimmed the storefront windows. Front doors were shuttered to him, and iron gates were drawn, barring entry to the courtyards. Seeing none of it, Remy shuddered against the sudden feeling of intimacy that clung to the edge of his thoughts.

He’d never known anything like it.

“Enter Juliet, stage left,” he mumbled, laughing a little to himself to break the tension, knowing that while the girl was very much alive, there was something decidedly wrong about her.

Exhaling, he laughed outright; drunken, deep laughter that embraced the sudden rush of fear – like dallying too close to the edge of a rooftop with wet shingles while knowing the body, no matter how far from human its become, is still incapable of flight.

Remy relaxed, smiling close-lipped as his pace slowed to a stroll.

So that was Rogue, he thought – finding that her name came easy to him, having heard her friend call it out only minutes before.

It figured.

Remy smirked, deciding that Emil was going to riot when he heard this one.

---

Post Script:

- Old French Opera House: Built in 1859, designed by Gallier. Burned 1919. Rebuilt as the Inn on Bourbon Hotel.

- Banquette: The sidewalk.

- Jeanne Marie Beaubier: Jean Paul’s twin sister. 1835-1850.

Translations:

Chère: dear

Désolé: Sorry