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  Outside, the Krimson Kiss wasn't much to look at. A large blocky stone building with two large neon K's on the roof, blazing – what else? – crimson light into the darkness. Like everywhere else on the street tonight, there was a long line of less-than-patient would-be patrons standing outside. But I figured there was a good chance I would rot away to a pile of zombie dust before the line budged a foot, so I took hold of Devona's hand and pulled her along with me to the front. A tall, broad-shouldered satyr was working the Krimson Kiss's door that night, and he stood behind a velvet rope barrier, well-muscled arms crossed over his body-builder chest, grinning at the crowd through his curly reddish-brown beard. He was naked, as was customary for his kind, but since he was covered with thick fur from beneath his washboard abs down to his cloven-hoofed feet, he didn't really need any clothing.

  I started to say something to the satyr, but before I could get a word out, I felt pressure as a hand gripped my shoulder. I turned around to see a petite woman dressed in a 1920's flapper outfit glaring at me. Her skin was covered with pulsating lesions, and when she opened her mouth to yell at me, I saw that her tongue was covered with blood-fattened ticks.

  "What the hell do you think you're doing?" she said, her words made mushy by all those ticks. "I've waited hours in this line, and now that I'm next, I'm not about to let some chewed-up deader and his leather-clad slut cut in front of me!" She bobbled her head as she spoke, making the locks of her pageboy haircut swish back and forth and causing the ostrich feather tucked into her headband to jerk about spasmodically. Her lesions began to throb violently, presumably as a result of her anger.

  "Surely those aren't those real ticks." I leaned close to the flapper and squinted my eyes, while at the same time reaching into one of my pockets and palming one of the objects I found there.

  "Of course they're real!" she said indignantly. "They're the very latest thing. Take a look if you don't believe me."

  The flapper stuck out her parasite-infested tongue for my inspection, and that's when I flicked my lighter and touched the flame to the insects. The blood-gorged bugs popped and sizzled and leaped off the flapper's tongue like… well, like dying ticks leaping off a burning tongue. The woman shrieked and batted her blazing tongue with both hands, while tears streamed down her face. "My babies!" she shouted. "What have you done to my babies?!"

  At least, I think that's what she said. It was kind of hard to tell with that flash-fried tongue of hers.

  I then turned to glare at the rest of the people at the head of the line, and in my best gruff cop voice said, "Anybody else got something to say?"

  A tall man dressed like a mortician with an inside-out face stepped forward, but before I could do anything, Devona bared her fangs at him and hissed like a cougar on crack. The tall man swallowed – a very disturbing sight considering the state of his face – and quickly stepped back in line.

  I looked to Devona. She kept her fangs bared, but I could see the satisfied twinkle in her eyes.

  A hearty laughed boomed out, and Devona and I turned to face the satyr.

  His teeth were perfectly white, perfectly straight. "Thanks for that – it was the most fun I've had all night! But even though I'm a great fan of street theatre, I'm afraid the two of you will just have to wait in line like everyone else."

  There was some half-hearted applause from the people behind us, but it cut off when Devona whirled around and hissed again.

  I sighed. It had been a long day, and I'd never had much tolerance for people who thought they were God's gift – on in this case, Dis's gift – to the world. "We're going into the club to look for someone, and you're going to let us in. Now."

  The satyr's left eyebrow climbed toward one of his horns. "Really?" he said, his voice dripping sarcasm. "And just how is this miraculous event going to take place?"

  The asshole was really getting up my nose, but even though I was no longer a cop, I had a cop's training, and I knew that it's best to negotiate whenever possible. And I did have a few darkgems on me to offer as a poor excuse for a bribe.

  "It depends," I said. "What would it take for you to help make it happen?"

  The satyr ran his fingers thoughtfully through his shaggy beard. "Oh, I don't know." Then he looked at Devona. A smoldering lust came into his gaze and a sly smile spread across his face. "She's not bad-looking, and even better, she's feisty. Fifteen minutes alone with her in the back alley, and I'll let you both in. What do you 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 wee-wee.

  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 brim
ming 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 descendant 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. "Arvel. He owns the place."

  I'd heard of Arvel, but I'd never met him before. I thanked the Mariner, and we started to go.

  "Wait!" he said desperately. "I have a tale to tell thee!"

  "Sorry, but we're rather busy at the moment," I said and started to pull Devona away from the old man's table. Once he got going with his story, there was no stopping him.

  Devona resisted and stood her ground. "We really are too busy to stay, but why don't you go on over and tell her?" she said, pointing to Glassine. "I'm sure she'd be glad for the company."

  The Mariner glanced over at the Transparent Woman, and for the first time since I'd known him, he broke into a smile.

  "Thanks. I think I'll do that."

  "Not until I'm done with my meal, you old fart!" the albatross squawked.

  The Mariner gave the undead bird a solid thump on the head to quiet it. "That's old salt, featherbrain." He gave us another smile and a nod, picked up the plate with his bird's meal, and started toward Glassine's table, walking with a rolling seaman's gait.

  I looked at Devona and she shrugged.

  "So I'm sentimental," she said. "Sue me."

  "I can't. No lawyers in Nekropolis. They're too scary even for this city."

  Devona and I made our way over to the Arvel's table. Given the way they eat, ghouls tend to run to fat, but this specimen was the largest I'd ever seen. His face was practically all jowl, his thickfingered hands so swollen they resembled flippers. He was bald, as all ghouls are, male and female alike, and he had the same eyes – completely black, no white of any kind. His fleshy lips were ridged like a reptile's, and his mouth was lined with double rows of tiny piranha teeth, top and bottom.

  Ghouls normally go naked, and Arvel was no exception. We were saved, however, from having to gaze upon the entirety of his body by a large drop cloth that was spread across his chest and belly, a cloth covered with bloodstains and gobbets of partially chewed meat.

  Arvel was so huge that he had to sit in a specially constructed chair made of steel and bolted to the floor in front of a cherrywood table which had been cut in a half moon in order to accommodate the vast spill of the ghoul's stomach.

  Vermen waiters tended him constantly, bringing him a steady stream of meat and blood which they shoved and poured into his mouth. Arvel chewed and swallowed, his flipper-hands resting on the tabletop, unneeded. I wondered how long it had been since he'd last lifted them. Quite some time, I suspected.

  His moist black eyes were fixed on the big screen TV and the image of a buxom young English actress who was succumbing to the satanic charms of Christopher Lee's Dracula. He didn't take his gaze off the movie as we approached his table.

  "Excuse me," I began.

  "Shhh!" he admonished, a bit of bloody meat falling out of his mouth and sticking to one of his upper chins. "Forgive me, but this is the best part!"

  Christopher Lee made his move and the girl swooned as Dracula put the bite on her.

  Arvel let out a wet, bubbling chuckle. "They always react so melodramatically when he bites them. A ghoul wouldn't waste precious eating time on such carnal preliminaries." He looked up and saw us for the first time. "Pardon me for speaking so crudely, Miss. I didn't realize a lady was present."

  Devona didn't respond. Vampires and ghouls, despite their dietary similarities, don't get along too well. Vampires consider ghouls disgusting mistakes of Unnature, while ghouls
view vampires as little more than walking leeches with an unholier-than-thou attitude. I tend to agree with both sides.

  "What can I do for you two fine people this glorious Descension Day?" Despite his appearance and physical mannerisms, Arvel's voice was smooth and cultured, as if he'd OD'd on Masterpiece Theatre. Even so, he didn't stop his gluttony to talk to us, but rather continued speaking his refined words through mouthfuls of meat and blood, spilling liberal amounts onto the drop cloth as he conversed.

  I introduced us, and his lamprey mouth twisted into a delighted grin. "Your reputation proceeds you, Mr. Richter! I've heard quite a bit about your exploits, but I never thought I'd be fortunate enough to actually meet you!"

  He clacked his teeth together twice, and a verman scurried up.

  "Bring chairs for my friends," he ordered, his tone cold, completely devoid of feeling. When the rat-man had scampered off, Arvel was once again the gracious host. "Carbuncle will be back momentarily. While we wait, would either of you care for a beverage?" He smiled sheepishly, suddenly embarrassed. "Forgive me, Mr. Richter, I forgot that you have no need of nourishment. But surely you won't pass up a tankard, Ms. Kanti? We serve the best blood in Nekropolis. It's the real thing, too. None of that horrid aqua sanguis for us here at Krimson Kiss." His smile widened, and I could see bits of flesh caught between his tiny sharp teeth.