"You almost did, you crazy sonofabitch. Marlene had to take your ass to some Doctor Buzzard shaman to get the spell off of you!"
"But, damn, man, you have no idea - "
"The only reason you're alive is because you're packing fourteen inches, and she didn't want to take that rare natural resource off the planet!"
The two guardians stopped the debate midstream and looked at each other, one swallowing a smile, the other so embarrassed that he couldn't fuss anymore and had been temporarily rendered mute. Damali glanced at Big Mike and Rider. She couldn't help it, and it took everything in her to keep her jaw from dropping. Fourteen inches? Get out of here! Go Mike . . . She shook her head.
"Fellas, that was way more information than I needed to know." She tried not to laugh, or let her expression change as she'd made the statement, but her mind was still trying to cope. Nah. Bullshit. Rider always exaggerated and talked smack. Fourteen... ? Dayum, compound, bro.
Big Mike looked out the window and swallowed another chuckle. Rider scowled, shook his head, and sighed.
Try as she might, she couldn't stop giggling from time to time as they made their way to the Lakefront area. But as they neared the cemetery, they all became more focused and the mirth dissipated.
"All right - first we go check on the vault that he once occupied, then we cruise by his mansion on Lake Pontchartrain. We get a floor plan so we can come back with the full team later, if we can get inside, and then we go back home. Very simple."
"Well, at least his joint is lakeside and not on the Mississippi - closer to the swamplands," Big Mike said in a very cheerful voice that made both him and Damali smile while Rider grumbled.
"The only part about this I like, is the part about getting back on the plane - it's so damned humid out here you can cut the air with a knife... and let's not even begin to discuss the mosquitoes - New Orleans in the summer, in a graveyard and an abandoned vamp's mansion, ain't my idea of the quiet life."
Big Mike and Damali ignored Rider as they got out of the car and began walking toward the vault in the area that Marlene had identified. They passed rows and rows of the ten-foot-long white structures, their footsteps making quiet shuffling noises against the soft, grass-covered earth. Wet was the only way to describe the environment - in New Orleans nothing ever seemed to totally dry, Damali noted, remembering her own brief experience there as a child.
"They covered the bricks with white plaster because the damp air crumbled the bricks. Mar said Nuit's tomb wouldn't be white, though, but some type of marble... and he's in the black Catholic Creole section in the back. He was black blueblood. Said that's how her posse had found him twenty years ago."
"Whatever, Damali," Rider sighed. "All I know is, I'm worried about what might be still kicking inside the waiting wall - that section over there where the bodies go and have to wait until a real tomb can be opened."
He shook his head and spit. "Nasty, I tell you. We are in a place where, if the tomb was already locked for the one-year ordinance they'd dump a body in that very unsecured-looking waiting wall safety-deposit-box area - so the remains could be cremated by sunlight and heat... then just push whatever maggoty mess was left off the vault slab into a three-foot cavern behind it - within the vault, ladies and gentlemen, to make room to slide the next casket in. That is what we are about to walk into - in this insufferable heat!"
Rider slapped his neck and flicked the offending mosquito off his hand. "Even the bugs drink your blood out here!"
"Rider, please shut up," Damali said, exasperated. "You are not making any of this easier."
"Oh, please forgive me," Rider said with a wave of his arm. "My bad. Let me not cast a negative vibration on this fun excursion."
They walked a while longer in silence, only Big Mike's occasional private chuckles to himself breaking the barrier between them. When they came to a halt in front of the dark-gray marble tomb identified as Nuit's, Big Mike turned to Rider with a wide grin.
"Laissez les bon temps rouler - let the good times roll."
"Mike, did that female vamp tell you that? You are getting on my nerves, dude. Seriously."
Mike laughed. "Yeah, she did... over, and over, and over again. Iron lace and criminals... God, I love New Orleans."
Rider frowned and was about to speak, but Damali held up her hand.
"Fellas, please. Break it up. It's showtime. I need to concentrate if you want a seer." She needed to steady herself and hoped they wouldn't notice. Since her brief encounter with Carlos, she'd also been practically blind. It was as though holding him sent such a current through her that it had literally blown her mind like a fuse. Then, she had absorbed all of Marlene's pain right after. She was emotionally exhausted, and had trouble focusing on anything except Carlos's current location and safety. She was drawing a blank, but didn't want to shake her team members' confidence. Half of winning any battle required having one's head right. If you believed, had confidence, you could conquer anything. "You guys ready?"
Disgruntled, Rider finally nodded, glowering at Mike's happy expression.
"Pestilence, plague, those were the weapons of Nuit's era, D. Don'tcha think we should consider the fact that disease is still a standard way to off somebody?"
"There hasn't been a member of Nuit's line alive to bring back the plague or go in here in a long time," she argued.
"My point exactly."
"All right, Rider, listen. We get in, see if this is where he sleeps - then we're out. It's early afternoon. What can happen?"
"In the dark, with his last ounce of strength, the bastard could sit up quick and rip somebody's heart out." Rider glanced at Big Mike who was now serious. "Ain't funny, is it, Mike? Obviously you do remember some of the other aspects of New Orleans not in the 'must see' section of the travel guides."
Mike nodded and let out his breath, adjusting the duffle bag on his shoulder. "Two minutes - everybody hold a stake, I'll move the lid."