say?”
Devona’s pretense of fierceness dropped away, replaced by shock. She looked to me, unsure how to respond. But that was all right-I knew exactly how to respond.
I still had hold of my lighter, and now I slipped it back into my pocket and exchanged it for a small burlap- wrapped ball tied with a thin white ribbon. I tossed it toward the satyr and said, “Catch.”
He caught the ball in one hand and then turned his palm up to examine it.
“What’s this?” he said, frowning in suspicion.
“Inside is some hair shed by a hellhound with a serious case of mange. As for what it does, it functions as a highly effective depilatory spell.”
The satyr’s frowned deepened into a scowl. “Depilatory? What’s that mean?”
A second later, he found out precisely what it meant when all of his hair-atop his head, on his face, and most especially from his waist down-slid off his body and fell to the ground in large clumps.
The people in line took one look at what the satyr’s groin fur had been hiding and started to laugh-and despite her injuries the burnt-tongue flapper laughed loudest of all.
“You wanted fifteen minutes with me?” Devona said, giving a certain portion of the satyr’s anatomy a pointed look. “That thing’s so small, it would’ve taken me half an hour to find it.”
More laughter, and the satyr-who was now absolutely and undeniably naked in the most profound sense of the word-wailed with embarrassment and took off running. The crowd on the sidewalk obligingly parted for him as he clip-clopped away on his goat hooves, bawling like a baby, which I decided was only appropriate considering he had an infant-sized weewee.
The satyr had dropped the hellhound fur ball when he ran, and I bent down, retrieved it, and tucked it back into my pocket. As I straightened, Devona said, “Is there anything you don’t have in those pockets of yours?”
“Yeah. A wallet. Who needs one in Nekropolis?”
I offered her my arm, she took it, and together we walked into the Krimson Kiss.
The atmosphere of the Krimson Kiss was even seedier than Skully’s. Bare dirt floor, crude wooden tables and chairs, guttering candles shoved into beer bottles…Vermen servers scuttled from table to table, the humanoid rodents taking and fulfilling orders with obsequious speed. The creatures stand between four and five feet tall and usually walk with a hunched-over shuffle, though they can move damned fast when they want to. They only wear clothes when working for humans (or humanlike beings), and the servers in the Krimson Kiss wore white waistcoats liberally splattered with bloodstains, equally stained white shirts, black pants, and black bow ties. No shoes, though. No amount of darkgems could get Vermen to cram their long clawed toes into such tortuously uncomfortable things. One passed close by me, carrying a tray loaded with pewter tankards. It was a female, I think, though I have a hard time telling one gender from another when it comes to vermen. She twitched her whiskers as she went by, and I couldn’t help feeling a wave of disgust. I’ve made a lot of adjustments since coming to Nekropolis, but for reason I’ve never have been able to get used to vermen. Maybe my mother was frightened by a Mousketeer when she was pregnant.
The Krimson Kiss’s clientele was a mix of vampires, lykes, and ghouls, with a scattering of demon kin and a few less identifiable beings. Some were watching a horror movie playing on big screen TV-I didn’t recognize it, but it was one of those English ones, in color, with lots of blood-and laughing uproariously. But most were busy gorging themselves on the establishment’s specialty-plates heaping with slabs of raw, wet meat and tankards brimming with blood, all provided by the Krimson Kiss’s claim to fame: the Sweetmeat.
The ghastly thing filled a recessed pit in the center of the club, a grotesquely fat blob of pink, boneless flesh from which a dozen stunted, withered arms and legs jutted forth. Vermen waiters ringed the creature, cutting off hunks of its flesh and slapping them on serving trays, filling mugs from brass spigots surgically implanted in its sides, all as fast as the ravenous crowd could order them.
Once a verman sliced off some meat, he took a step to the right and cut another. By the time he had taken three more steps, the first cut he had made was already healed.
The Sweetmeat possessed a horrendous, toothless maw on its back, and a line of vermen passed down metal buckets full of a grayish glop which they dumped into the obscenely gaping mouth. Bucket after bucket after bucket. No slowing, no end in sight.
“Lovely, isn’t it?” I said sarcastically.
Devona didn’t answer; she looked like she was too busy trying to keep from vomiting.
“Do you see Varma?”
She took her eyes off the Sweetmeat-and was more than likely quite grateful for a reason to do so-and scanned the room.
“No.”
“Then let’s start asking around.”
It would’ve been more effective if Devona and I had split up, but I was mindful of the fact that she didn’t have much experience outside Gothtown-maybe even outside the Cathedral, I suspected-so I thought it best if we stuck together. I didn’t see any friends or better yet, anyone who owed me a favor. But I did recognize a few of the beings stuffing their faces, so we began with them.
Glassine, also know as the Transparent Woman, was eating alone. Supposedly she was the descendent of some English scientist who’d invented an invisibility potion a century or so ago. Unfortunately, her attempts to recreate her relative’s formula had only met with partial success, rendering her skin invisible but not the muscles, veins, organs, and bone underneath. She didn’t mind answering a few questions, but she’d never heard of Varma and had never seen a Bloodborn of his description at the Krimson Kiss. She actually turned out to be rather chatty and even invited us to join her, but we declined as politely as we could.
Glassine sighed. “I get that a lot, especially when I dine out. I tend to spoil people’s appetites.”
I said something about not having an appetite anymore myself, but I couldn’t help sympathizing with Glassine. In my current condition, I doubted too many people would want to have a meal in my presence, either.
Next we spoke to Legion-or at least, whoever was inhabiting his body at the moment. Legion appears to be an ordinary-looking human in his late twenties, usually dressed in T-shirt, jeans, and running shoes, but he makes his living by renting out his body to spirits who are eager to experience physical pleasures once more. Whoever-or whatever-was possessing Legion at the moment was so busy cramming food and drink into its host’s mouth that he barely paused to answer my questions.
“Yeah, I’ve seen Varma around a few times. He comes in here now and again for a tankard of blood, but far as I know, he hasn’t been in for a couple weeks.” Legion burped loudly and wiped a smear of blood off his mouth with the back of his hand.
“I don’t suppose we could talk to any of the other entities inside you for a moment, just to see what they might know?” I asked.
“Hell, no!” Legion-or rather his current occupant-said. “I paid good money for my time in this body, and I’m not about to give up so much as a second of it!”
“Speaking of money, tell me something,” I said, genuinely curious. “Where do spirits get darkgems anyway?”
A sly look game into Legion’s eyes. “You’d be surprised at the sorts of things you can find out when you’re both invisible and intangible. There are all kinds of valuables out there, ripe for the taking-if you know where to look. Now fuck off and let me eat.”
Legion returned to gorging himself, and Devona and I walked away from his table.
“Do you think he makes good money renting himself out like that?” Devona asked, mouth pursed in distaste.
“I don’t know, but I bet buying antacids and paying for detox treatments must cut a damned big chunk out of his profits.”
We moved on to the Mariner’s table. The old man looked miserable as ever, and while he wasn’t partaking of any food or drink himself, the dead albatross hanging around his neck was tearing at a raw chunk of Sweetmeat with sickening gusto.
When we asked him about Varma, he shook his head. “But you know who you should be asking?” The Mariner turned and pointed to an obese ghoul sitting at a large table in the rear of the place. “Arval. He owns the place.”
