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Angels stood high on pedestals, their wings clipped and broken by time and the elements Madonnas in prayer looked over lichen-covered to shade over the grounds The land had been built up Here, farther along the Mississippi, they were on higher ground than in the city of New Orleans And the long-dead, original owner of the property had planned his faht in dirt and built it up, so that an incline formed from the rear of the house Gravesites dotted the landscape

All the way up to the crypt

"Let’s go, shall we?" Sean said lightly

They started through the graveyard Pierre began saying a Hail Mary

Jeanne joined him

Jack stuel, fallen to the dirt The wind rose; they heard a strange keening, and realized it was the sound of the air rushing around the many tombs and their funerary art

They stopped at the crypt Once it had been protected by iron bars, but the bars had been ripped away

Double oak doors protected the inner realain, it seemed that thunder shattered the very earth

Sean pushed open the oak doors and played his flashlight over the interior of the toht coffins there, all on open shelves, four to each side of the door

"Shall we?" Seandown and searched in it for crowbars Pierre stepped forward, taking one "Jack, guard the lady and child, please I’m far more familiar with corpses" Jack looked at Sean, who nodded He took a crowbar himself and lit into the first coffin

This fellow had already turned to dust

He heard Pierre working behind hi Their hearts

The second htly over his bones His clothing was elegant, hteenth century

The third man had already been decapitated And a stake lay where the heart had been Sean shivered, but said nothing

"Pierre?"

"Nothing but the truly dead, so far," Pierre said

Sean broke into the fourth coffin He was startled, stepping back, when he found a young woman there

He’d seen her, somewhere, some time He didn’t know her, but

Yes, she’d worked in Jackson Square He’d seen her reading tarot cards when he’d talked to Marie Lescarre

"Who--" he began

Her eyes flew open She stared at hi at hiht by the look in her eyes "Lieutenant, thank God!" she said She lifted her arms to him "Help me, help me "

"My God!" he muttered Another woman Aaron had taken and er He had to get her out

"Sean, no!" Pierre warned sharply

And then he knew Knew before she raged upward, fangs brilliantly white and visible Yet, as her hands caught his shoulders, her e

He threw her back into the coffin

"Don’t hurt me," she whispered "I’m old, really old, I’ve been around forever, I don’t kill--" she said forlornly, her voice treood bite out of my neck," Sean said

"He wants you dead I’d happily kill you!" she hissed suddenly

Sean gritted his teeth She looked so alive So natural

Like Maggie Was thisthe already dead?

"I will kill you!" she charged suddenly, starting to rise again

Jack swept by hiainst her heart

And push it through

She let out an unholy screa than the crack of thunder

They stared at her She must have been old, as she had said She seemed to crackle and fade to dust as they stared at her Her flesh leathered, stretched taut over her bones, cracked Soon, she was little ray skin over bone

None of them could pull their eyes away They just stared

Until they heard the sound of clapping

They spun around

Aaron Carter had eed from the last coffin on the other side of the crypt He was sreat vampire hunters have killed a debutante Bravo!"

"The tarot reader? Oh, yeah, poor girl How many corpses can we accredit to her?" Sean asked

"Oh, this century, she’s not been here very long She rids the streets of the homeless and runaways Ah, but you have seen her before Years ago, she was one of the freshest, sweetest little things you ined Rich, quite a catch Ah, well "

"You’re heartbroken, I can see," Sean said, his own heart sla fast and furious