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 nights and the deposit took quite a good portion of their earnings from the lusty young men of L.A. The nearby porter, crestfallen at the party’s lack of luggage and therefore his tip, turned his attention to Vetis. She gave him a seductive wink and his face reddened a little. He wondered if the disgustingly handsome and lucky man was going to survive his five-day romp with the stunning blondes.
The dark grey carpet and neutral colours of the room were a surprise. It was still a stylish and sophisticated suite; however, after the foyer Kaarl had expected something more palatial. While the twins were busy getting acquainted with the mini-bar and the overly high and pillow-covered bed, Karl began reading the hotel’s Welcome Guide.
‘It says here you can get the Internet via the television’ said Kaarl as he turned the page. ‘Smart TV indeed.’
‘Good, we’ll need that to track down our financiers,’ said Verin, devouring a snack-sized Toblerone. ‘It probably costs a fortune to use it; all hotels are like that. We’ve had two beers and a couple of those little bottles of the hard stuff so we’re already down another twenty-five bucks.’
‘Then it’s back to the streets with you two and your twins again tonight,’ Kaarl replied, barely dodging one of the large cream pillows that was hurled at him.
Remote in hand, he followed the instructions in the guide dutifully and soon had Google up on the TV and the wireless keyboard so thoughtfully provided by the hotel.
‘Thanking you,’ said Vetis as she took it from Kaarl and her sister joined them on the bed. The twins began scanning the social pages, LA Times and various other websites listing the Who’s Who of the city. An hour later they had a list of thirty billionaires and multi-millionaires in L.A. and the surrounding areas. All of the people they had found either owed the big man downstairs a few favours, or were so corrupt and immoral that it was prudent planning for their immortal futures to get in Lucifer’s good graces.
‘That should be enough to start off with,’ Verin said. ‘We can get more if we need to as we expand. There will definitely be enough green between these fat cats to get the ball rolling, though.’
‘We’re going to need an account to put the money in,’ said Vetis, ‘and proper IDs; the trick we used tonight is going to be no good in the long run, especially for what you’re planning.’
‘Time to earn my keep then,’ said Kaarl, taking the keyboard from the sisters.
Chapter Six: Show me the money (#ulink_e6f1cb06-9d07-543a-99c3-75aeaee0245a)
Kaarl had sent an email to Lucas Alhberg, a twenty-five-year-old native of Sweden he had developed a firm friendship with online. On paper, Lucas’s life was quite pathetic; he was overweight, unemployed and living in his parents’ basement. On the web, however Lucas was a legend. His hacker tag XXXPLC17 (or ‘Explicit’ to those unfamiliar with ‘leet speak’) was infamous and he and his clan of fellow miscreants, fLaW, were widely known for bringing out the best quality pirate movies not yet released in the cinemas. Beyond that they also had a vast list of other technologically brilliant and shady accomplishments to their collective names; ones that would land them all in prison for a very long time if they were common knowledge.
Lucas’s uncle by marriage had been a resident of Perdition for over a decade. While society and his victims had viewed him as a brutal monster, Lucas had loved and respected his uncle. Seeing some of his mischievous nature in the boy, the feeling had been reciprocated. Although his life had ended in a hail of police gunfire, and he was still known better as the Beast of Boras, Lucas had nothing but fond memories of the man. Kaarl had, on a whim, tracked him down a few years earlier for a chat about their mutual acquaintance on Earth.
As soon as he’d worked out the basics of his plan, Kaarl told Lucas about his true nature and asked for help if he was chosen to lead Perdition’s charge. Naturally, Lucas had been very sceptical at first and believed Kaarl had been experimenting with hard drugs. His one-line reply had said as much: “Cocaine and Keyboards do not mix”.
When Kaarl responded with details that no one but Lucas or his uncle would know the hacker was convinced and in many ways excited. Always an open-mined individual, he had very little concern at finding out his online friend was actually a young Demon who might be visiting soon and needed a little illegal help on arrival.
He had promised Kaarl assistance with getting valid identities and anything else required. The Demon in turn had promised him money and a place in his organization when it was established. Lucas had already created lives for the trio and attached a list of birth details, social security numbers and other information when Kaarl emailed him from the Omni. He had also included the addresses of businesses in the immediate area that would be able to take photos for their IDs and made arrangements for a temporary solution to their banking needs. With the twins suitably impressed, Kaarl stole a few hours’ sleep to overcome his realm-lag.
When Kaarl woke sunlight was streaming through the windows of the hotel room. He walked out to the balcony and let it touch his skin for the first time. Too bright to look at directly, he instead closed his eyes and basked in its warmth. The red that played across the back of his eyelids reminded him of Perdition’s Sky of Fire but the sunlight felt so much better.
‘He looks like one of those guys in the prison movies,’ Vetis said to her sister. ‘Fresh out after twenty.’
In some ways I feel that, thought Kaarl.
‘It must be breakfast time,’ said Verin, reaching for the phone. ‘I’ll call room service.’
‘Call a cab,’ Kaarl told her. ‘Breakfast can wait; we have a bank account to fill.’
‘It’s like you don’t trust us,’ said Vetis. ‘We told you the money won’t be a problem. You’ve wanted to come here for so long;, why rush straight into the work?’
‘Because I want to stay here,’ Kaarl told them, ‘and I know you do as well. That means we need to perform. Once things are up and running we’ll have time to do whatever we want but I don’t feel comfortable sightseeing just yet. If we let Lucifer down—’
‘Breakfast isn’t sightseeing,’ replied Verin, ‘but fine. We’ll make bank so you can avoid an aneurism, then we are getting something to eat or you’ll have a mutiny on your hands.’
As the taxi fought its way through Los Angeles’ traffic, Verin and Vetis sat fidgeting with their hair and suffering the driver’s unwanted attention. The sunlight and smog gave everything an unusual tint as Kaarl watched the Mortals going about their business. Jogging, shopping, and playing with their children. There were no children in Hell and Kaarl’s eyes lingered on them for a reason other than novelty value; their smiles were genuine.
In the more impoverished areas they passed Kaarl gained a true appreciation of the gap between the rich and poor on Earth. Aside from a select few of the Damned, who enjoyed larger residences for their contributions to evil, housing in Perdition was relatively uniform. The average stone house in Hell made many of the dwellings he saw look like hovels. There were even people in the streets, and not just because they were too drunk to find their way home. They were actually living there.
