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.”
I’d heard of Arval, 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 thick-fingered 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.
Arval 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.