The more he thought about it, the more the Light Bearer’s words made sense. Their fears were unfounded and they adhered to stupid rules in the hopes of gaining entry to a place that was in all likelihood sterile and bland. What good was freedom if the Hated One’s strict moral code hung over them at every turn? In Perdition all options were open and nothing was denied them. Kaarl’s mission would not be easy, but the challenge was part of the fun. No one on Earth would thank him for his efforts; for it all to work they could never know what his true objective was. In the long run, though, they would be grateful; Kaarl would help them find their way to Perdition and a better afterlife.
His train of thought was abruptly derailed when the twins began to gravitate towards one of the busier-looking bars. O’Malley’s was an Irish themed establishment with wooden panelling decorating its facade and the compulsory shamrocks painted on its windows.
‘No more drinking,’ he told the twins when he realised where they were heading. ‘Not yet, anyway. It seems like we barely left Faithless.’
‘We are getting some money, relax,’ replied Vetis. ‘We won’t be in here long.’
‘We must have passed at least twenty bars,’ said Kaarl. ‘Why this one?’
‘The clientele, the availability of escape routes, minimal security. I could go on for ages,’ Verin told him. ‘The main reason, though, is that there is no door charge here and we are penniless, in case you had forgotten.’
The girls discreetly showed him how to create the illusion of a valid ID before they got to the door. It was a strange custom, restricting alcohol to certain ages, but one Kaarl was familiar with, thanks again to the Internet. There were very few minors in Perdition and if you were old enough to sin you were old enough for gin.
As the demonic trio held up their conjured fake IDs for inspection the doorman gave them a cursory look, smiled at the girls, stone faced Kaarl and then they were through the doors. The twins walked Kaarl up to the bar and found him a space.
‘Stay here,’ said Verin. ‘When we come back, it’s time to leave. Quickly but without drawing too much attention.’
Kaarl watched as the girls sauntered over to two men in expensive-looking suits and started talking. Within minutes Verin was sitting on the lap of one and Vetis was sitting close to the other, with one of her arms at a strange angle under the table. Another minute passed and all four of them were heading off to a door marked “Men”.
Kaarl was disappointed that there was not much difference from similar places in Perdition. It had music, that was one obvious change, but he didn’t care for what was playing. There was a conspicuous absence of brawls and sex but Kaarl knew those things were frowned upon in public in the Mortal realm. To see a bar without them was a little strange but he could still sense a somewhat muted undercurrent of lust and violence in the drunken crowd. Overall, the atmosphere was familiar in more ways than he would’ve liked.
As he continued to look around, he noticed a young lady with her head slightly down and her eyes directly on him further along the bar. He’d seen the twins give men and Demons a similar look when they wanted to tease them but he could tell the Mortal was genuine. Kaarl hoped she didn’t attempt to make an advance; he did not care for the distraction and had no idea how to make her go away should she try.
‘She’s cute,’ said Vetis, appearing beside him. ‘If we didn’t have to go right now you could totally bang her.’
Verin was right behind her and the twins steered Kaarl away from the bar and out of the door.
‘That was fast,’ said Kaarl as they headed in search of another street and bar. ‘I thought that sort of thing took a bit of time.’
Vetis looked at him with feigned disgust.
‘We are not sluts, Kaarl,’ she said. ‘Why put out when a punch to the brachia gets the same result, and without the stickiness or bad aftertaste?’
The girls laughed as they compared their takings. It was apparently a contest between them and Vetis was winning with five hundred dollars to Verin’s two hundred and change.
The girls repeated the rip-off at eight bars over the course of the evening and had taken just over four thousand dollars between them. Vetis had been the clear winner, raking in almost two and a half grand. The twins were clearly good at picking wealthy marks but the amounts taken by each of them were really luck of the draw. Although Kaarl was loath to interrupt Vetis’s victory dance, he had been curious about something since the third mugging.
‘Won’t this little crime spree draw attention to you girls?’ he asked when he was sure he wouldn’t be overheard.
The twins laughed for a while at their own private joke before they let Kaarl in on it.
‘Can you imagine that, sis?’ said Verin, not caring who could hear her. ‘Hello, is this the police? I’d like to report a mugging. This smoking-hot blonde girl offered me a good time in the toilets at the club then knocked me out cold and stole all my money.’
‘If for any reason they did call the cops,’ added Vetis, ‘like for insurance purposes or whatever, I guarantee you the location changes and the description becomes some male ethnic minority of stocky build and average height.’
‘Shame on them,’ laughed Verin.
As soon as they were able to, the twins hailed a cab. When they got in, it too had its own distinct smell but Kaarl had no problem identifying it after his taste of L.A. nightlife. It was body odour and cheap aftershave.
‘Where to?’ the surly cab driver asked the trio, making no attempt to hide his glances at the girl’s “assets”.
‘The Omni,’ replied Verin and the driver nodded before tearing his eyes from the twins and using the rear-view mirror for its intended purpose as he pulled out. In the grey-black of early dawn Kaarl marvelled at the mortal city as they made their way towards the hotel.
A group of people staggered down the street in the muted light of the very early morning. In some ways his first hours in the realm had shown him it shared many things in common with Perdition. The similarities were only minor disappointments, however; Kaarl had dreamt of visiting Earth for almost three centuries and was finally there. Setting was everything. The clips and images he had seen on the Internet in no way gave a true impression of what it was really like. Perdition was a vast city, many hundreds of times larger than Los Angeles, yet besides the tower his father worked in, the buildings were mostly one to three storey affairs. In L.A. skyscrapers and large apartment blocks were commonplace. Seeing them on a screen did not do them justice.
While the twins held their own conversation, he tried to absorb every detail of his new home and the soon-to-be birthplace of the empire he would build in Lucifer’s honour. The taxi ride to the Omni was like a safari, but at the end of it he would be one of the animals instead of a mere visitor to their jungle.
The crisp, air conditioned splendour of the Omni was strange on arrival. Cool or cold, depending on your point of view, was not something one felt in Perdition. The foyer of the hotel was tiled with an intricate tan and white stone floor that exuded elegance. It reminded Kaarl of Soul Reaper Tower’s grand entrance in some ways. Although less than six hours had passed since then it felt like a much longer time to Kaarl. He had travelled untold distances from Perdition to Earth in the blink of an eye and his new body was starting to feel the fatigue.
Verin and Vetis handled check in and had to use a great amount of their womanly charm to do so. The trio were well before the normal appointed time for check in and the fact they were not using a credit card made matters worse. The middle-aged concierge did his best to uphold hotel policy; however, the gorgeous blonde demonic bombshells took no prisoners when they wanted something. The girls won through in the end with dazzling charm and generous flashes of their side boob.
Five