Phase 4

It was quiet in the streets. It generally was, and the two Visiths had learned to be wary if it wasn't. The Callers had suddenly withdrawn from this area months before, not before time following the campaign Shelob and her pack had wrought against them. It had been a bloody conflict across at least two Winters, and Shelob had lost more many more than the Callers had including her partner Sûrgarge, who'd been killed by rookies in a firefight. This killing had the effect of making the job of the Callers much harder, and Kirsev and Morgolloth had been called on almost nightly at one point. They hadn't been associated with the Tsodik before but Shelob had needed a good Vixen. Now they were friends, even though the Callers had left and there was no need for Kirsev to stick around.

But here they were, months later, running errands for Shelob. They hadn't heard from her in most of that time, running only occasionally into members of the Tsodik in the streets and hearing that there was no news.

Morgolloth was lost in this chain of thought when Kirsev put an arm out to stop him. In the street ahead she could hear voices - young voices, laughing and shouting. "NAs," she told him flatly. "This is ridiculous. We're late already."

They stood there, waiting for the gang to approach. As they did, one boy stood forward from the others, ragged clothes and unkempt hair hard to make out in the dark streets. "Cabrones," he said, as salutation. Morgolloth growled and made to step forward, but Kirsev held him back with a pinch. "You gonna let your puta tell you what to do, cabrón?"

The leader stepped up to Morgolloth. He wasn't tall as the Visith Nightshadow but he probably would be. "She got no hair because she sick, hombre? Or you just like it that way, neh?" He turned his face to look at Kirsev. "You shiny like that anywhere else, mi flaquita?"

Kirsev sighed, and took a step forward, brushing one side of her trenchcoat aside and drawing a knife from her belt before the youths realised what was happening. As the danger dawned on him, she was already drawing the cruel blade along the soft flesh of his upper arm. The scant moonlight illuminated the scene as the lad, upper body clad only in a T-shirt, felt and saw the long wound open up and begin bleeding profusely as Kirsev spat on her knife and rubbed it idly with the forearm of her coat, watching as the boy clasped his arm in agony. Morgolloth smiled wryly, pushed the others aside and moved slickly through the group, Kirsev following.

They walked side by side as the group hurled abuse after them, moving with a cool grace until they turned the next corner. Morgolloth giggled; Kirsev shot him a sharp look. Without halting, she accelerated to full stride, Morgolloth struggling to keep up.

The rest of the journey to the Tsodik passed without incident; the two barely exchanged a word, and their tormentors hadn't ventured through the streets after them.

The rendezvous had been at Shelob's base of operations for a reason: The basement had only one entrance. The place used to be a café, or so they had been told, and Shelob had been the owner back then, too. She'd been in there on Zero Day, and survived it, living in the darkness for months until Sûrgarge and his Visith cronies had dug her out whilst looking for a place to sleep. The Tsodik had been born out of that sleepless night - the next morning a grateful and tousle-haired Shelob had been sworn in as Visith, and the rest was history.

The Tsodik had been a three storey building in the centre of the town, but the upper part was all but gone bar a skeletal hand of structural girders. Entrance was from the street through a delivery hatch; ordinarily, one had to know its precise location, but tonight Shelob and another Visith were standing alongside it.

Shelob was tense and jittery, quite unlike her usual calm self. Like Kirsev she was bald, but wore red dye on her head. She had done since Sûrgarge had died. Her and the other Visith wore black trenchcoats, but hers had been Sûrgarge's, shiny and leather, the coat of an Aleph. Although shorter in stature than any of the other three, Shelob demanded more respect, even when fidgety.

The other Visith was male, and Morgolloth didn't recognise him as Tsodik. His eyes were set deep into his long face, and Morgolloth suspected him to be from Eastern Europe, which garnered some brownie points. They interlocked fingers and pulled them brusquely apart, nodding slightly to each other as they did so. Shelob and Kirsev brushed the backs of their hands together slickly. Following this greeting, Shelob began to speak hurriedly.

"Kirsev, Morg - thanks for coming. This," She indicated the other Visith. "Is Boris. He's from the Dalet up north. He ran in a pack with Sûrgarge years ago. That's one reason he's here. Another is that he speaks Basque."

Kirsev raised her eyebrows, mind working quickly. "The client is from the Basque?" Straight to business. That was Kirsev. "What symbol do they run under, Shelob?"

Shelob grimaced. "They don't, Kirsev, that's the thing. Look - " She motioned with her arm and Morgolloth followed with his eyes to a battered, tatty van with sprayed, stencilled letters on the side. He could make them out if he squinted - D42623.

"Tekkis," He muttered, and Kirsev stamped her foot impatiently. "What's this about, Shelob?"

Boris made to open his mouth but Kirsev interjected. "No. He didn't ask you."

The feeling was tense and pregnant with awkwardness, and Shelob shivered visibly. "The Tekkis wanted a Vixen. Kirsev's the best I have."

The Vixen sighed and kicked open the delivery hatch, spilling sputtering yellow light into the dark street. She jumped down into the basement below. Morgolloth looked at Shelob, a look of apology in his darkened eyes.

"Perdón, Shelob," He muttered as he slipped through the hatchway clumsily. "Perdónale a mi flaquita."