When Worlds Collide

WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE (NC-17)

Disclaimers Apply

 

A/N Mille grazie to Goddess Foxfeather, Queen of Mad Plotbunnies
and BUSIEST WOMAN ALIVE ™ for betaing sooooooooooo much stuff… J Readers/Reviewers: I wanted to wait and update when Desert Rose, who sent me the plotbunny
for this fic, got back to me, but she seems to have vanished into thin
air. Haven’t heard from her in about
two months. So, I am going to sally
forth and hope for the best. Now, at
long last…chapter five!

 

 



“Anyone
ever tell you that you need to keep your damn hands to yourself?” Rogue
snapped, batting away Remy’s wandering fingers.

“I jus’ wanna
make sure you all buckled in, chere,” Remy said smoothly, pulling the car away
from the curb and into the swing of New Orleans traffic.

“My
seatbelt,” she growled, her accent thick, “ain’t on my ass!”

“What a
lovely derriere it is,” Remy opined.

“I will
touch you, so help me…”

“Promise?”
Remy asked, grinning.

“You have
no idea,” Rogue muttered. She had
recently learned to control her mutation for short bursts, the longest being
half an hour before she started to feel the pull of someone else’s mind
entering her own, their very life force seeping into her. “Stop smilin’ like a jackass,” she said
tersely. “We’ve got work to do and you
flirtin’ ain’t getting anything done.”

“Whatever
you say, cherie,” Remy replied, still grinning.

“Where are
we going, anyway?” She let her fingers
dig into the upholstery of the well appointed car, trying not to show just how
unnerved she was by the city’s driving patterns. “And have you people ever heard of turn signals down here?” she
said after what she considered a near miss with a rather large SUV.

“We headin’
to Metarie, cherie.” He ignored her
second question but made a point of flipping the turn indicator on as he pulled
onto the freeway. She seemed to relax fractionally,
so he continued. “It kinda a suburb
mais we ain’t goin’ for de folks dere.”

“Oh?”

“Non…we
going’ for de cemetaire. It got one o’
de largest one in de South.”

“Why?” She tried not to sound petulant, but it did
not work. She really did not like
cemeteries much, which most found surprising.
They assumed Goth equals morbid and she did not appreciate that. “Can’t we go in the morning?”

Remy slid a
sideways glance at her and smiled. “Don’
worry, belle cherie…I ain’t gonna let nothin’ get ya in de night, d’accord?”

“I’m not
afraid of dead people,” she snapped. Just
the undead…ghosts and zombies and whatever hides under your bed when your five
and only comes out at night…

“Sure,
chere. I know you ain’t scared o’
nothin’,” he soothed.

Rogue
wanted to be more irritated with him but could not find it in herself. Instead, she caught herself watching him out
of the corner of her eye as they headed towards Metarie, looking at his hands
on the steering wheel and the way he pursed his lips to whistle along with some
tune playing in his head. Stop it,
Rogue. You’re being stupid. You don’t
know him, don’t want to know him and don’t need to know him. Once you’re done
finding this Death guy, you’re going back north and you’ll never see Remy
again, so stop having sweaty thoughts about him!

“We here.”

“Huh? Oh…” Rogue flushed under her pale
makeup. They had reached the gates of
the cemetery, a former race track[1],
according to Jean, without her noticing they had even exited the freeway.

Remy
grinned to himself , reaching across her to unlock the door,
accidentally-on-purpose brushing her breasts in the process. “Desloee, cherie.”

“Do it
again and draw back a nub,” she snarled, getting out of the car before Remy
could decide to perform another act of dubious chivalry. He strolled up beside her, standing outside
the locked iron gates. “We goin’ over?”
she asked, already reaching for a high bar.

“Non. Step back, chere…” He pulled her back by virtue of her arm and peered into the
darkness inside the cemetery. “Baron
Cemetiere!” he called. “Baron La Croix!”[2]

“Who?” Rogue
asked, suddenly more afraid than she would let on. The air seemed to shift subtly around them and become
electric.

“Stand
back,” Remy snapped as she took a tentative step forward. He pushed her back physically, not noticing
that he pressed against her chest as he moved her. Rogue was too startled to protest, Remy’s sudden tenseness making
her more alert to the dangers around them.
“Baron Cemetiere! Baron La Croix!” he called again, louder.

“Qui s’appelles
moi?”[3]
The vowas was barely loud enough to be heard but was deep and rolling, invested
with power.

“Les
etrangers[4],”
another voice said, equally bass but more rounded, like the owner had more
humor than his companion.

“C’est Remy
LeBeau. You know me,” he added in
English for Rogue’s sake.

“Remy,” the
first voice said. A form resolved from
the shadows and it was all Rogue could do not to scream in shock. A man, or what was once a man, stood before
them, obviously dead and on his way to dust. He was dressed in what had at one
time been the height of fashion but was now almost two hundred years out of
date, shredding in places to mere scraps of fabric. He smelled, Rogue noticed, not of rot like she would expect, but
of rum and tobacco.[5] “It been too long, mon fils.”

“Desolee,
mon ami ancien, mais je suis un membre des guildes ici…”[6]

“Say no
more,” the corpse-man said. “This your
friend?”

Rogue felt
Remy nudge her forward and heard him hiss something that sounded like ‘respect’
as she staggered to the gate. “I’m
Rogue.”

“I’m sure
you are. I’m called Baron
Cemeterie. La Croix, show yo’self…” The man did not take his eyes off of her as
his companion materialized out of the darkness to stand next to him. This one was no better than the first. He was equally dead, but instead of being
clad in funeral finery, he was in robes of some sort, a pattern that made Rogue
think of old-fashioned priests in their cassocks. He wore a cross suspended from his neck and she had the
disturbing feeling it was made of bone.
“La Croix, he the quiet type, eh?
But he got ears ta hear an’ eyes ta see, oui?”

Remy
nodded. “We ask entrance, messieurs.”

There
seemed to be unspoken communication between the men inside the gates and Rogue
strove to remain calm as she took in their appearances all over again. Just when she was ready to panic, Baron Cemeterie
said, “We know why y’all come and we gonna help out. Death…he steppin’ on toes.
Dis sorta ting gotta follow rules, eh?
An he ain’t doin’ it.” The gates
swung open of their own accord and Remy took Rogue by the elbow, leading her
into the dark cemetery.

La Croix
smiled at her and the effect was a mixture of disturbing and charming. She could see how, in life, if he had ever
been alive, he would have been quite handsome, but now, all she could see was
death. “Y’all are lucky,” he said in
his rolling tones, dat you caught us here.
It almost time fo’ us to move…”

Remy nodded
understandingly. “Merci…”

Cemeterie
motioned for them to follow him and headed down the narrow path winding between
graves and crypts, taking them to a very old part of the cemetery. “Samedi est
avec Brigitte an’ nothin’ good gonna come a that,” he said abruptly, stopping
before a crypt and waiting as the door swung open for them.

“Your
office?” Rogue giggled despite herself.
At Remy’s hard glare, she had to fight the urge to burst into tears out
of sheer nervousness.

The barons
looked at her with twin expressions of amusement before La Croix laughed lyrically. “You brave, eh? Ta joke wid death…”

Cemeterie
smiled as kindly as he could. “Death
ain’t fear, child. Death quite
beautiful if you know how ta look at it…”

Remy’s jaw
was ticking as he clenched his teeth together.
He did not like dealing with these men unless he absolutely had to, and
part of the reason why was his uncertainty over their nature. Part of him wanted to believe they were
mutants like he was, that they just looked the part whereas he could hide his
nature. Another part, the superstitious
part, was not so sure. “We come cause
dis mutant call Death…”

“We know,”
Cemeterie said over his words. “We been
waitin’. Samedi, he ain’t gonna like us
doin’ dis widdout him, mais we canna let dis man ruin tings, eh?”

Rogue
swallowed hard. “Things?”

“Petite
fille,” La Croix said, his voice filling the stone chamber, “don’ worry bout
dem dat don’ concern you…you worry bout stoppin’ dis man an’ we worry bout what
we worry bout.”

She
frowned, not quite liking the cryptic answer but not willing to argue with the
man. “Yes, sir,” she said under her
breath. Remy jabbed her hard in the
side and she was sure she saw the other men smile.

“Messieurs,
I bring somethin’ in return fo’ yo’ help…”[7]
As he spoke, he produced a velvet bag from an interior pocket of his long
coat. “Tobacco an’ some rum an’ goofer
dust,” he said.

“Merci,” La
Croix replied, taking the bag and handing it to Cemeterie. “Now, we can tell y’all what’s needed…”

Cemeterie
nodded. “Death, he been lurkin’ in de
old places, de ones dat all but forgotten. He ain’t true Death. He takes from de livin’ ‘fore we ready for ‘em. He like un vampire, mais he take dere
essence, not dere blood.”

La Croix
continued, “Find de river o’ blood and follow it to it’s source. You gonna need
help.”

“And
offerins,” Cemeterie added. “Follow it
to de source and dat be where he go to ground.
Bring him to us an’ we take care o’ him for ya…”

Rogue had
the distinct feeling that they were being wordlessly dismissed after a moment
of silence had passed. “Remy,” she
breathed.

“Bon nuit,
gentilehommes,” he said, bowing deeply.
Rogue followed his lead, letting him pull her from the tomb. It was a strong urge to run that nearly
overcame her when they got out into the night air. “Walk, chere,” Remy said quietly. “Show respec’ fo’ ‘em.”

“I’ll
respect the hell outta them once we’re in the car and out of here,” she
whispered harshly. She could not be
sure, but she thought she heard a faint laugh behind them. “How do you know them?”

“Some
things,” he said grimly, “you better of not knowin’.”

“I’ll go
with that.” She had never been so happy to see a car in her life when they
reached the cemetery gates.

Remy waited
until they were well on their way before speaking again. “I’m takin’ you back to where you stayin’. You ain’t up to dis…”

“Like Hell!”
she exploded. “You take me home and I’m
kicking your ass into the nearest swamp!”

Remy
snorted. “You nearly pee yourself over
dem two!”

“Remy, they
were dead!”

“Belike…”

“How does
that not bother you?”

“Better dem
den me, eh?”

“Arrrgh!” She was saved from further argument by the
ringing of Remy’s cell phone. He
answered it tersely, listened for a moment, then hung up. “What?”

“Bobby an’
Belle…dey not checkin’ in an’ she ain’t answerin’ her phone…yo’ friend Jean ain’t
getting’ a read, Scott say.”

“Shit.”



[1] The cemetery
in Metarie used to be a horse racing track.
The man who owned it was partners with someone who tried to screw him
out of lots of money so he got his revenge by turning the land into a cemetery
and making it useless to his former partner who stood to inherit it. It’s MASSIVE, spanning both sides of the
freeway and going on forever. Has some
of the most fascinating tombstones.

[2] Two aspects,
of sorts, of Baron Samedi. They guard cemeteries and protect the dead. Not as powerful as Baron Samedi. More like his helpers.

[3] Improper
French but proper Cajun for “Who calls me?”

[4] Strangers

[5] Traditional
offerings for the guede and loas of death and the afterlife in Voodoo and
Santeria.

[6] I’m sorry,
my old (age) friend, but I am a member of the guilds here…

[7] Guede and
loas always want something in return for their help. Always.