I'm sorry, but there isn't much X-Men in this chapter.  However, I think it is enjoyable and important.  Just one recap: Echil is Mystique's firstborn child (according to me).

***

Thief of Spirits

***

De Blood and de Rats

***

"Talk," Jimmie muttered.  "When have Remy and I just talked?"  He fingered the glass of sparkling, tasty chemicals.  The boy shrugged and took a sip.  Sickly sweet and slightly noxious, he loved its delicious taste.  Half of him did, anyway.  He dragged the other half along, kicking and screaming, "Poison!"

He put the glass down and the screaming stopped, a little.  It was no wonder he was a light eater.  The other half despised soda, ice cream, pizza, organic produce…everything, even water.

*Poison!*

Jimmie pushed the glass away.  It popped and fizzed enticingly, but his stomach had turned.  He looked at the dent four hours had put in his soda.  Only a third of the root beer was empty and his cup was still half full.  Disgusted, he stood.

He followed Mell out the door.  As always, she didn't see him.  His adoptive sister slid into her car, her only possession that was worth anything.  She would be fine, Remy wouldn't find out she had been drunk.  They'd get home all right.  Jimmie didn't go down the same way as Mell.  It wasn't safe.

The boy walked a bit on the street until he came to a filthy, darkened tunnel that some people called an alley.  Foreboding and dark, it was a horror film director's dream.  Looks were deceiving.

That was part of the reason why he never trusted his eyes.  The other part was that he would go blind in two years, but it was beside the point.  The seeming death trap was his safest route home.

Still, it was a long way and Jimmie was tired.  He wanted nothing more than to snag a ride home with Mell, but Gambit said no contact so Gambit got no contact.  So the boy walked everywhere.  To stave off the boredom and exhaustion, he played games.  How close to danger could he come and still be entirely safe?

Very close, it seemed.  Blue eyes looked to home, blind to the walls and barriers before him.  The LeBeau complex lay bright and entreating, which he thought was ironic.  Looks were deceiving.  The alley was safe -for the moment, at least.  Home, beautiful and grand, was deadly. 

The ways to home were what Jimmie saw, every last one.  Then, parts of the maze of pathways grew dark.  There were gangs on those roads, pitfalls and predators.  Slowly, slowly the universe ran down those ways and returned with its findings until only one good path remained.  Only then did Jimmie begin to walk home.  It was the safest, the quickest way.

But the rats.  Jimmie hated rats more than maggots and clowns, mold, spiders and teletubbies combined.  They scrabbled behind the blackened, crumbling walls; hidden from a world that didn't believe they existed.  Scratch, scrape, those are happy sounds.  They found a dead dog on the roof, full of little puppies in her womb.  Tonight they all feast, but the swamp rats will get the most.  Jimmie snarled.  Of course it was swamp rats: red eyed kings that ruled the weaker city vermin.  Destructive, cruel, grasping, ruthless, in short: LeBeaus.

Jimmie stopped.  The path of safety had shifted.  A cutthroat had wandered into the boy's way a few turns ahead.  He stopped, concentrated for a moment, and then backtracked to a sliver of a gap between two buildings, barely three feet wide.  He walked through and  made a left, then a right.  Back on the path home, he continued on.

The little shadowed streets grew narrow and cluttered with debris.  It was the back way between factories and warehouses.  Deserted.  Crumbled mortar and age eaten brick littered the ground.  What wasn't in chunks was thick dust and grime caked down upon itself until it resembled a dirt road.  Ah, nostalgia.  If someone wanted to see old cities, he didn't go to Roman ruins or dig under volcanic ash.  He visited the areas that were pointedly taken off the tourist map -the city map, for that matter.  Something ancient hid in the tiny hidden back ways.  Jimmie would have liked it, if not for the rats.

Jimmie rolled his eyes and sidestepped the empty glass bottle as it crashed onto the spot where he had been a moment before.  He looked up and shook his head at the alley cat on the roof high above him.  It looked back lazily, then disappeared somewhere he that didn't really care to find out.  Blue eyes, a voice said.  Such vivid blue eyes for a cat.  On the scrawny side with mangy black fur and rat-breath, its eye color was the only thing of note about the stray.

The glass shards glittered, bringing a bit of light to the murky place.  Jimmie left them littered there to brighten the atmosphere.  For all his kind thoughts, he didn't care about picking up trash or paying a cent of his dues to society.  Society was a civilization of crooks.  Some, like the LeBeaus, just took that fact to a deeper level.

*Hungry,* a voice -his own- pleaded.  That was a first.  Strangely, it didn't seem to be speaking to him, as if he were below notice.  Annoyed, Jimmie stuffed the voice back inside him and screened out the universe.  He didn't want to hear any more voices.  He picked up the pace and hurried home.

~*~*~*~*~*~

The cat with bright blue eyes pauses mid-step.  She stays there, frozen like a statue.  She collapses and twitches two times, three.  She falls unconscious.  Moments pass by, and then the cat opens her eyes.  They are an unremarkable, dull gray.

A little particle of the universe told its darling boy that, but he didn't hear it.  Not the slightest bit put out, it beamed away on a ray of light and watched with delight as a brick decomposed.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Far away, the owner a pair of startling blue eyes waited for dark to come.  It would not do to go blind, for that was what light did to eyes such as his.  Long ago, it had not mattered.  Before electric lights and gaslights, before lanterns and candles, before fire, it had not mattered.  It was not before; it was now and now he laid trapped, predator turned into prey, forced to watch the world through animal eyes. 

But the boy looked in the light and the boy saw.  Was he a stronger breed or a diluted one?  Did such trivial things matter anymore?  No, one's breeding no longer mattered; survival was what gave one prestige. 

A whimper in the corner made the eyes shift.  The human child he had lured away from the light behind the protection of dark glasses and the guise of humanity huddled in the blackness.  So strange that she should fear utter darkness: his savior. 

Or perhaps not so strange.  Instinct, ancient primordial fear told her the darkness was to be feared.  Her species' ancestors had died in the dark.  It was why they had abandoned the forests of eternal night and ran to the day lit savannah.  His father's people had followed, learning to suffer starlight and to hide underground from the sun.

Humans, as the prey came to be called, learned to harness firelight as a weapon against the dark predators.  They forgot their place as prey with time, but not their fear of darkness.  It was forever engrained in their brains from those first hairy ancestors.

The human girl didn't know that, ignorant as she was of her history.  History said she was prey, but she would never believe it.  Some strain of arrogance had leaked into the human race at some point.  It had not always been that way.  The monkeys had and still did know their place.  There were the stronger and weaker.  Humans were weaker, but they refused to accept it.  Instead they hid behind light and called themselves brave. 

He eyed the human with distaste.  She could not see him -not even his eyes, though they glowed.  That small, acceptable light was too dim for her primitive eyes.  But he could see her; he could see her cower.  The girl was not bound.  Fear kept her still.  Yes, without their light, humans showed their true nature.  He saw her eyes and recognized the look.  A baby mouse caught by a cat had that look.  Rabbits' eyes quivered that way when the hawk swooped down.  Prey.  Without their disgusting light, humans were prey.

The human's eyes reminded him of another pair, the familiar blue eyes of a child who seemed to be human, but somehow wasn't.  Perhaps the boy was a diluted breed that would one day father the next great line.  He shook his head.  Foolish dreams and nothing more.  Blue eyes and nothing more.  The skin was too dark and the build all wrong for the child to be one of his people.  And the hair, though faintly pleasing, was too colorful.  Whites, blacks, the rare silver, those colors were proper shades for hair, and not red gold.

The boy was one of the Changed, one of the humans who where also something else.  Like arrogance, the Change had leaked into human blood.  All the Changed traced their lines back to certain mutants, as the Changed called themselves sometimes.  There was no pattern for when or where a new Changed line would begin.  His people only tried to find one because the Changed were dangerous, stronger than their fellows.

He snarled and the sound frightened the human to tears.  He stood and left her in the dark for another room lit by technology to the intensity of starlight.  A child -a proper child of his people- scrambled to her feet.  She bowed and left in a hurry, a trail of white hair flying behind her.  It disgusted him that the small child, barely more than an infant, and his prey had seen the same number of years.  Fifteen…humans aged too quickly.                     

He looked back at the dining room that he had stridden through moments before.  They bred too quickly as well.  What was worse, they were ignorant of it.  His prey carried a child she knew nothing about.  His people knew the very moment life began.  The voices: the spirits of wind, blood, fire, of the stars themselves spoke to his people.  It varied.  Some could just hear from certain sources or were forced to ask to receive an answer.  Others, like himself, heard everything and almost infinite knowledge was force fed them.  Almost.

The spirits loved or hated certain places, certain substances, secrets and people too much to tell others of them.  His people were one, the source of the Changed another.  The spirits loved his people, sang their children to sleep and mourned their loss.  Surely the Changed were beneath contempt.  They were abominations that disrupted the natural order.

He snarled again in contempt and took a seat on the bench where the child had been training her eyes to stand starlight.  A memory, perfect and eidetic as always, surfaced.  A face so like his own -but wild- stared back with rage.

"Echil," he murmured.  That was what it had called itself in the prey's pidgin.  Echil.  He had been confused.  It looked like him, but it called the herd of prey its family.  But  it stood fully upright and had the smooth, hairless features of a person.  Then a spirit told him it was prey, but changed.  The prey called it Spirit –a god.  He had no time to question the spirits further because Echil attacked.  It attacked him too viciously for a person, too quickly for prey.

He had escaped, but with great dishonor.  He was the first of his people to be harmed by prey.  But such a thing could not be called prey.  Echil was modeled after the feral cats of the savannah.  Its ears were sharp in hearing and pointed in shape.  Its strength and speed were frightening.  It was consumed by its aggressive instincts.  Echil followed scents and roared like an animal.  Echil, he later learned, was the prey word for the sabertooth.

Echil, it was the first Changed, but then there was another, then another.  They bred and their children were like them.  But then something good happened.  The Changed disappeared and all was good for a time.  Things went back to the old ways, until the prey surrounded themselves with light. 

Then, slowly, slowly the Changed began to appear again.  His people did not know why and the spirits could not say.  Their numbers increased and now they outnumbered his people.  What was left of his people.

He rose and banished the mournful thoughts.  He turned and walked through the passageway.  In the long hall, his eyes grew accustomed to darkness again as the light grew farther away.  Such convenience was for the children, who needed the transition. 

In the hall, the child bowed to him again.  "Have you finished you task, Lord Nakor?" she asked carefully in the old tongue.  He fought the urge to nod, a prey response, but smiled as an answer.  It pleased him that she had chosen to learn the old tongue at such a young age.  Nakor.  Yes, that was his name.  He had been born before the fashion of personal names had taken hold of his people and often forgot it.

"Have you finished with your task," he corrected gently, then gestured for her to return to the light chamber.  Then he stopped her.  His appetite had ceased.

"Child," Nakor asked, again in the old tongue.  "Do you hunger?"

After a moment, she smiled respectfully.  Her skill at facial expression wasn't expert enough for the Lord to know whether it was a yes or no, but her elongated fangs told him the answer.  Adults rarely felt hunger and were liable to lose it without notice, but children, troubled with the strain of aging, were constantly starving. 

"There is a meal waiting for you in the adjoining dining room when you finish your task."

She smiled with delight and disappeared into the light chamber.  Nakor, for his part, wandered the halls.  He overheard a conversation of a group of middle children -the equivalent of human "teenagers."

"...don't see what de deal is," a boy declared.  "We're strong, dey're weak.  Why do we hide from dem?  We are vampires..."

Nakor's snarl cut the youth's display short.  It was terrible enough that he used human language and speech patterns, but to call his people vampires was intolerable.  The Lord glowered at the young fool, and then smiled so subtly that his contempt was invisible.

"Yes, what is "the deal," as you put it?  They are weak; even the Changed are nothing to us."  He spoke in the current form of English deceptively smooth and soft, as if he too believed the boy's words. 

The middle child relaxed a bit.  Nakor grabbed the fool by the throat and lifted him up.  The Lord's smile turned ruthless and disgusted.  It was over pronounced so even a human could recognize it.  The belittlement was lost upon the idiot.

He dropped the middle child and herded him down the hall.  "If that is your belief, boy, then you are headed towards a rude awakening.  I wish to show something that is hidden from children.  It is an honor that you should learn of it so soon."  His voice made very clear that it was no honor.  At least the youth was intelligent enough to realize that.

Nakor went to one of the doors locked to children.  At the side panel, he pressed in the key plate easily.  In truth, it took strength that only adults possessed.  Children could not force it more than an inch and no human, no normal human, held a candle.  There was a click and the door sung open.  The boy backed away sharply.  Spirits had run to him, speaking of the pain and death within.

The Lord dragged him through the doorway.  "Falzei, this is the deal."  Falzei started at his name.  It didn't occur to him that it was nothing for his elder to ask a spirit to find his name in the logbooks.

Nakor touched the wall.  It was plated in the metal that his people called Suith.  Suith was a substance beloved of the spirits.  It was so well loved that the spirits wouldn't even tell of the object or people hidden within or in contact with it.  The metal also hid its bearers from magical scrying and telepathy, among other things.

The Lord wore Suith as a ring.  Falzei had elected for a Suith nose ring.  All the people wore them, ever since the Inquisition, though few youths knew why or what the metal did for them.

There was a long ways to go and Nakor had very little patience.  He started down the long, metallic hall, trusting the middle child to follow behind.  "This is where the wounded are taken," he spoke in the new tongue.  He watched the youth through the corner of his eye.  The boy was obviously unused to the language, even though it was his native tongue.  Or at least it was supposed to be.  It pained Nakor to see his people's culture decaying, being overrun by human maxims.

"Wounded?"  Falzei finally asked.  The Lord smiled, silently saying yes. 

"Yes, wounded."  Nakor trailed his fingers along the wall.  "And it is where we keep our dead."

"We die?" the boy cried in human.

There was a scream, quickly silenced.

Nakor glared at Falzei.  "Never utter that language here.  They have endured enough."  He led the boy through a doorway.  Inside, hundreds of people lay on thin, soft beds.

"They are sleeping," the boy whispered, confused.

"That is how we wish to think of them, yes: only sleeping.  It is a comfort for the children, if they believe one day their families will awaken.  This," he gestured to the people, "is how our corpses look.  If we ever decompose, it takes longer than the few centuries we have watched over our dead."

"This many?"  Nakor smiled at the question.

"This is only one section of this Memoriam."

"Memoriam is a human word," Falzei protested.  Nakor eyed him distastefully.  The boy knew prey languages better than his own.

"And the term "human see, human do" was coined by the prey as well?" the Lord asked.  "This is one section of this Memoriam.  There are more rooms behind those doors and that stairwell goes down several flights.  The are seven such Memoriams, and we are now considering the location of an eighth.  It is more crowded in the others.  This is where we house those that died in the first years of our coming to the swamps.  Many friends lie here, and in other places.  Your aunt sleeps in Fifth Memoriam, if I recall."

"She transferred to New York."

Nakor smiled sadly.  "And the New York people are said to transfer here.  Still..."  He placed a hand on a child's brow, and then gently tucked a length of hair behind her ear.  Perfect ears, his daughter Manakae had always had the most beautiful, delicately pointed ears.  Her silver hair stretched for dozens of feet and the Lord reordered the interwoven pattern the braid made about her head until it lay perfect.

A foot of silver hair fell from Manakae's head before the braid began.  Hair was the only part of his people's bodies that never stopped growing.  Even their nails, strong hard as adamantium and just as unbreakable, never grew past a decent length.  He would ask one of the children to come and plait it again.  It was a joy for them and they were attracted to silver hair like humans to death.

He looked up and found Falzei waiting uncomfortably.  Nakor looked at his daughter once more, and then walked away.  "Still, there are fates worse than death, to use the human term.  I wish to show you my son next."

He led the youth out of the First Memoriam into the hall again, silently telling him to stay quiet as well.  They came to a different door and it was opened by a young man.  "Father, it is pleasant for you to visit," he said.  "May I ask the occasion, and why you bring such a young visitor?"  The little adult paused, and then murmured, "It is a youth, isn't it?"

Nakor froze, momentarily at a loss for words, then said almost too expressively, "Yes, it is.  This is Falzei.  His aunt sleeps in the Memoriam."

"Oh, I feel for your loss, young Falzei."  Nakor's son turned to smile sympathetically at the boy, but his gaze fixed upon Falzei's chest.  The youth cleared his throat awkwardly, and the young man tilted his head up to look into the eyes of Nakor's companion, almost.  Falzei bit his lip, and his eyes widened with fear.  He had seen Shilf's eyes.

"Shilf," Nakor said smoothly, "it is my wish that Falzei see the wards.  He will be volunteering in one, so I wish for him to see which suits him best."  The youth bit his lip harder, trying not to draw blood.  Nakor looked into his son's pallid eyes, and allowed a small wince.  Shilf smiled, unknowing, and led them inside.  Nakor spent much of his time studying human behaviors to hunt unnoticed.  He knew there was something ironic in being led by a blind man, but he found no humor it, just as he found no humor in the paradox of a dead immortal or the sadism of outliving his child.  Humans could laugh at anything, even their own doom.

They followed Shilf to a workshop.  There, people wove and worked other craft.  A child ran up to them.  "Shilf!" she cried, "Look at what I made!"  Nakor and his son winced, but Shilf knelt to take the small, painted clay doll.  He ran his hands about it.

"Very nice, Plajine.  What colors are his clothes?"

She giggled, "You're strange!  Blue, of course."         

"And his hair?"

"Silver," the child replied with a strange lisp, somehow amused that Shilf had to ask her. 

"Why am I not surprised?"

"What?"

"Nothing," Shilf said quickly.  Even if the girl didn't know what the human phrase meant, Nakor did.  It pained him to think of how his son had learned it. 

Shilf and Plajine went on.  He asked about what he couldn't see and she described it.

"...What color are the eyes?"

She smiled.  The child had a strange habit of keeping her mouth closed when she did.  Nakor had his suspicions as to why, but kept them to himself. 

Plajine cried, "Red!"

Shilf stiffened.  The doll slipped from his hands and shattered.  For a moment, the pair was still as the statue had been, then the girl began to cry.  Nakor's son took her in his arms.  "I'm sorry, my darling, darling spirit," he whispered.  "I didn't mean to.  God, I'm sorry."

"God?"

"Nothing," he murmured, but he began to shake.  "Please, say hi to Lord Nakor and  Falzei.  I...I have matters that need attending.  Would you show them around the wards for me?"

"Why do you talk so strangely, Shilf?"

Shilf patted her head and rushed away, pausing only to bow to Nakor.

Plajine sniffed a moment more, then grew joyful again.  She smiled deeply and open mouthed and Falzei bit back a gasp.  Where the fangs should have lain, there was only air.

"Hi," she said to them uneasily, then asked, "What is hi?"  Nakor evaded answering the question, but had the girl lead them around the remaining wards, each more sickening than the last.

Finally, the boy whispered, "Why?"

Nakor told Plajine there was a silver-haired girl her age sleeping in the First Memoriam that would very much like her hair braided.  Then he gestured for the boy to follow him. 

The Lord and the youth sat in a light chamber.  Nakor preferred to be in one when he thought and spoke of human things.  He liked to limit human things to the light chambers, the dining rooms, and the wards.  For a time he thought, gathering his thoughts on the matter. 

Finally, Nakor spoke.  "What do you know of the LeBeaus?"

~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Remy sat in the arm chair in the apartment.  Rogue, the only thing in the whole damn place he could call his, lay sprawled on the bed, reading a book.  He didn't care which book.  Frankly, he didn't care about much at the moment, except for getting healed.  And he couldn't go about getting healed until she fell asleep.  Unfortunately, she was engrossed. 

He pulled out the gloves that covered his entire hands and walked to her.  If he had to wait, then he was going to enjoy the wait.  He flicked off the lights and she glared.  He tossed the book across the room. 

"It's late," he said.

"It's barely sun down."

"It's been a long day.  Sunset is too late tonight," he replied.  After a short scuffle, Remy held her in his arms under the covers.  His shoulder screamed bloody murder, but he ignored it. 

"Sleep."

She laughed.  "You have got ta be kiddin'."

"Sleep or you'll learn about de other t'ing we can do in bed."

"One:  I'd love ta see you try it, coma boy.  Two:  that sentence threw sleep out tha window."

He laughed.  "Well, as for number two, dat is why Remy said it, ma Petite.  Number one: you disappoint Remy.  Sound like a damn teenager.  It ain't all about sex and touch.  Sometimes, it's seeing how far you can get dem to go."  Remy placed a hand on her heart.  After a quiet moment, the large silk shirt began to glow and he leaned close.  "How far will you go, ma Petite?  How far will I?"

Remy pulled Rogue beneath him and her breath caught in her throat.  The energy fled from her and he pulled back to a kneeling position by her feet.  "Sleep Petite.  If Remy remembers right, you told Cara we had plans tomorrow night.  You'll need de energy."

"I never said..."

"Ah, but she t'inks you did and are you gonna tell her different, dat her mem'ries are false?  Gambit don't like Cara, Belle.  She try to steal you from him.  Sleep or sleep wit' Gambit." 

Rogue closed her eyes and he tucked her in.  He blew a kiss to her forehead.  "Dat'll do, Rogue.  Sleep."  

Five minutes later, she slept.  Remy shook his head.  Sometimes, he swore his fille was narcoleptic.  He eased himself off the bed and walked softly to the bathroom.  He knelt stiffly and pulled the box from where he had kicked it that morning.  He rifled through looking for a small, plastic container.  Finally, it surfaced and he pulled it out.  He popped it open and frowned. 

It wasn't what he remembered being there.  There was a cell phone and small card.  On the card was scrawled a phone number and the message:  "Bloody Mary bled BLUE."  Then, in his own handwriting: don't blame Jimboy and don't tell. 

Remy sighed and made the call.  He was too tired to think about it.  After a few rings, it picked up, but there was no speaker on the line.

"Bloody Mary bled blue," he said finally. 

*Hello, Remy!*

He started at the familiar voice on the phone.  "Merin?"  The woman handled the mutants' secrecy at the café with her strange mind tricks.  What did she have to do with his injuries?

She laughed.  *You ask that every time, Remy, thief of blue blood.*  The line sounded practiced.  *And how do I answer, Remy?*

Something clicked and Remy suddenly remembered.  "Y.  E.  S." he laughed.

*Very good!  Now that we've dredged up those recessive memories, we can get to fixing that medical emergency.  What was it this time?*

"Remy was near de wrong girl at de wrong time."

*Oh, Remy!  After all this going steady talk?  Rogue is going to kill you.*

"Not what you t'ink, Merin.  Didn't talk, didna touch.  Her guardians made de wrong assumption too." 

*For the sake of your hide, that better be the truth, Remy.  You keep a box of band-aids somewhere.  A big, tall white box with Disney world themed band-aids.  Don't know why, but you never touch it.  Open it up.  You'll find what you're looking for.  And bring Jimmie by the lab soon.  He's due for a check-up  I'll get a replacement for what you use tonight then.  How's the thieving going?*

"Good enough fo' two."

*Well, that's good.  Not picking pockets anymore, I guess.  What kind of work do you do now?*

He smiled.  "Remy still independent, Merin.  Don't you worry now," he reassured.

*Just keep on being independent, Remy.  Avoid the gangs like the plague.  Especially the Thieves' Guild.  They're no good, those LeBeaus.*

"I'll keep dat in mind, Merin."    

She hung up, leaving Remy confused.  He was missing something.  He still dug back into the medical junk pile and pulled out a white box after a moment.  He suppressed a shudder and Mickey stared at him.  He opened the lid and among the nest of band-aids, there were several vials of...

Impossible.

He held the ice blue liquid in the light and it was as he feared.  Remy swallowed.  How had he gotten his hands on it?  More importantly, how was kind, innocent, ethical Merin getting it?

Trembling slightly, the thief loaded the vial into the waiting syringe and injected it into his arm.  For a few seconds, there was nothing.  Then she began to shake violently.  It stopped quickly as it had began, but the pain was gone.  His wounds were healed.

Remy stood and groped for the light.  Finally, he hit it and the bathroom went pitch black  He tore off his shades and opened his eyes.  He stared into the mirror, watching his stunning blue eyes stare back at him easily, in spite of the darkness.

"Vampire blood.  Where de Hell did I get vampire blood?" 

Remy shuddered.  From a vampire, that's where he got it.  He remembered the rooms his father kept of them.  He remembered the screams, of humans.  The vampires had forgotten how to scream when Knave finished with them. 

You had to feed vampires human blood if you wanted theirs to have any healing properties.  That was the business.  If you wanted a miracle for your brain tumor kid, you paid 10 million and condemned ten people to death for one vial.  And people did it again and again.  Booming business for the LeBeaus.

"Where de Hell did I get vampire blood?" he asked any listening spirits.  As always, he never received an answer.  He went to bed, stumbling as the exhaustion of healing caught up with him.  Remy slipped under the covers and held Rogue to him.  How many times had he used it?  How many innocent people had he killed to avoid bum shoulders and crooked noses?  He tried not to think about the vampire blood.  It would wear off and if the strange phone call meant anything, he would soon forget about it anyway. 

Rogue shifted in her sleep and pressed against his heart.  The scars were clean and healthy, but still there.  It told him, you are LeBeau, in blood and deed.  Remy shuddered, wishing that he could forget that too.

***

Well, that's my take on vampires.  Mini plots, aren't they great?  Yes, I know I'm crazy.  I updated on Christmas Day.  But I can't sleep on Christmas Eve, so I typed to 12:30.  Technically Christmas, but not really. 

MERRY CHRISTMAS...scary present, but it works. 

Sorry, no Review responses this time.  Bad me, I know.  I'll do a real big one next time.