Thirty Six
20 December, 2001, Amsterdam, Netherlands
The lights were dim and the music was subdued. No one had come here for entertainment. There was a thin mist near the floor and an old, tiny television played highlights from an erotic feature, near the corner of the bar.
The front room, consisting of a bar, the mist and about ten nearly deserted small tables, was quite dim and featureless. The bar served several occult drinks, which were displayed on a small blackboard beside the television. The names of the drinks were scrawled in chalk and almost unreadable, but they included such specialties as extra-virgin blood, smyte and spinal scotch.
Loki rolled his shoulders back and listened to the crack. He nursed his smyte in his left hand, sipping on it occasionally. Smyte was the underworld’s answer to rye and coke: instead of coke, the barkeep squirted in a few drops of holy water – just enough to make it burn going down.
To Loki, smyte was just watered down rye, though it was by far the only thing served he could stomach. The bar didn’t even serve regular water. But then, no one had come here for the drinks.
Above the list of drinks on the chalk board was the only other advertisement in the entire establishment. Not even a name —this place didn’t have one— just a picture. Drawn crudely in red chalk, an inverted crucifix made of two perpendicular syringes informed all who entered what they would find.
But that was in the back room. Loki hadn’t come here for that. What he wanted was a few stools down the bar, sipping at some black fluid which looked most like motor oil.
His name was Derex, and no one was quite sure what he was. He didn’t strictly fit the description of any specific demon or creature, leading some to believe he was a custom job —made to order by a vengeance demon, perhaps. None of this really mattered. What mattered was that Derex knew a guy who knew a guy, so it was said.
“Stay here,” Loki advised Oz who sat, uncomfortably on his own stool, sipping his own smyte. Loki stood and ambled over to the odd looking Derex.
Derex turned, his shrunken head and wiry hair resting on a tiny neck between bulky shoulders. It looked as though someone had shot an octogenarian in the face with a shrink-ray. His voice, however, was surprisingly deep for the size of his voice box. Then again, there was nothing inhuman about the rest of him. In fact, he looked like a rather muscular, well built man. “What do you want?” Said the small head, no larger than a grape fruit.
“I hear you know a guy,” Loki said casually, “who might know a guy who’s a necromancer.”
“I know tons of people go by the name guy,” Derex answered, sipping his oily drink.
Loki smiled and turned to the barkeep. “Another of whatever that is for my friend,” and the conjurer sat down beside the cranially deficient man.
Derex laughed out loud. “It’ll take a lot more than a drink to get me to give up guy!”
Loki though this over. “What do you do, Derex?”
The man shrugged his comparatively massive shoulders. “Make appearances, mostly. ‘Come see man with extremely tiny head.’ That sort of thing.” He took a long, abject swig from his drink. "Keeper keeps me on a pretty tight rope. 'Come out: Look ugly. Go back to your cage.' Sometimes he whips me. Sometimes he feeds me crap from a dumpster somewhere. Most of the time - I want to rip his guts out. Him and the whole circus deal. Fucking bastaarden, all of them."
“Wouldn’t you like to get away from it all – get out of this place and see the world?” Loki made a sweeping gesture to emphasize the expanse of the world.
“How would I do that?” Derex said, annoyed, “I got no money. I live in a cage and my Keeper pays my bar tab, assuming it’s not too big. How could I afford to travel? To live?”
“What I’m offering would let you be free – free to live like a king.” Loki let that settle in as he sipped his smyte again. He gave a subtle not to Oz who was still sitting at the other end of the bar.
“What exactly are you offering?” Derex asked, stifling the hope he felt at an offer like that.
“Teleportation,” Loki answered simply. “Poof, you’re in an unused five star hotel room for the night, no one’s the wiser. Poof, you’re in and out of a bank vault — no one knows. Freedom,” Loki emphasized, “freedom to be – to steal – to kill... whatever, whoever you like.” He took another sip of smyte. “That’s what I’m offering. You just need to tell me about guy. Where do I find him — how do I get there?”
Derex’ eyes were gleaming with anticipation. He had never considered the advantages of teleportation. Freedom was something he had only ever dreamt of since... Freedom to kill. “Guy’s name is Indris. He lives across town in a big mansion-type thing. Necromancer –yeah– keeps a lot of dead people on hand: sometimes corpses, sometimes vampires. Sometimes other things.”
Loki nodded. “Thank you, you’ve been very helpful.”
“Teleportation?” Derex demanded, standing as Loki did, his tall body more than making up for the height loss caused by his small head. “Give it to me.”
Loki nodded. He took a small sack of dust from his pocket and undid the drawstring, taking a small pinch and sprinkling it into the oily black drink. “Lychus, m'chara... yadda, yadda, duchus, m'chara, blah, blah, blah — you’re done.” He pointed to the motor oil and its magically dusty surface. “Drink up.”
Derex took the drink and guzzled it down. He sighed and set the empty –yet still oily– glass back on the bar. “That’s it?”
“That’ll do for one return trip,” Loki nodded, handing the small bag of dust to Derex. “A pinch will get you anywhere you want to go –and probably back again– before it wears off. Sprinkle it in your... tar or on your hotdog — I don’t care. Just don’t waste the last of it on a trip to Antarctica. There’s no guarantees here.” Loki tried to advise him, but Derex was already stuffing the small sack into his pocket, planning where he might go now that he was free of the retched Keeper. “I suggest you make a trip to the bank first,” but Derex held up a hand.
“I’ve got some personal things to take care of first.” He raised his hands uncertainly, then looked to Loki. “Thank you— and I hope you find what you’re–” and he accidentally vanished into thin air.
Loki shrugged and turned back to Oz, taking his original seat. “Indris, the other side of town.”
Oz nodded and both men stood, laying down the cash for their drinks. “Are you sure that was a good idea?” Oz indicated the stool recently occupied by ‘man with extremely tiny head.’
Loki shook his head, amused. “A small-headed Dutch man. What could possibly happen?”
Derex looked up from the fresh corpse of the Keeper. "Dank voor de dranken, bastaard," he spat on the bloodied body, tossing the knife unceremoniously down on to it.
The Holders would be here soon, he knew, but Derex wouldn’t wait around. He had other fish to fry.
Anyanka, he thought with a sneer, you’ll pay for doing this to me...
“I’m lost,” Oz said with a frown as the two walked quickly over the bridge and down the street.
Loki raised an eyebrow. “No you’re not — you’re in Amsterdam, on... unpronounceable street.”
“No, no. I mean, why are we here,” Oz pointed to the tall, admittedly impressive Dutch mansion before them. “What does a necromancer have to do with your... profession?”
“Well, it’s all well and good to dish out souls like penny candies, but most people assume that along with their soul comes certain... certainties. For example,” Loki said, holding up a finger as they approached the front gate, “the entire concept of life after death. Perhaps the single most useful, or at least most recognized value of a soul. But have you –having a soul– ever experienced it?”
Oz shrugged. “I suppose not.”
“But you know what’s waiting for you?” Loki raised a skeptical eyebrow. “What’s waiting for you and Jade, enough to die together for her soul?”
Oz frowned. “Do you?”
Loki shrugged. “I always figured it was pretty much irrelevant in my case. But the question has always plagued me. Do I know? No.” He pointed to the house before them. “He does.” With a creak, the tall iron gate before them swung inwards. A light rain began to fall.
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