Sirin and Sarnosh. Sirin of the golden eye. Sarnosh of the thick black scale. Both brothers in the assassin’s caste. Two Naga loyal to Sorago. Loyal to the Candlefly clan.

Above, the sound of sirens. And humans, yelling. Such a fearful, excitable lot. They’re like ants whose hill was knocked over by a child’s boot.

Lucky to have rescued the bodies from the street before the police arrived. The shootout with Mookie Pearl ended poorly for the two human killers – for Sorago, that fact offers little surprise. Those two were not assassins. They were dumb brutes.

But Sirin and Sarnosh…

At Sorago’s nod, the two of them stoop by the two corpses. Their teeth flick forward, glistening. They nip the necks of each corpse. Fresh blood flows. Their tongues flicker out, catch a copper smear on each, suck the blood back into their mouths. Then they clamp their mouths on the wounds. Noisily gulping.

When finished, they stand.

Spall and Lutkevich’s bodies are hollow, now: like tires, deflated. Eyes bulge in shrunken faces. Fat tongues thrust out of wine-dark lips.

Both of the Snakefaces shimmer. Their flesh rippling, scales like an array of mirrors turning – and like that, they are changed.

Spall and Lutkevich stand before Sorago. Over their own dessicated corpses.

Dopplegangers. Fairly good ones, too – the eye color is different (it always is); the skeleton beneath the skin isn’t quite right (it never is, and it’s not even a skeleton so much as it is a shifting cartilaginous mass meant to simulate a skeleton).

But, otherwise, good enough.

Not-Spall and Not-Lutkevich step forward.

“Humans,” Sorago says, making a face like he just ate a week-dead rabbit. His fangs click together – the sound of a thumb running across the tines of a plastic comb. “Inefficient and weak. The only reason they have claimed the Infinite Above is by dint of their number. But we start doing the good work today, my brothers.” And they really are his brothers. Both egg-mates from the same brood-whore. “You know the task at hand?”

They nod. Together Sirin and Sarnosh hiss: “May the Candlefly light the dark.”

Sorago bends down. Grabs the cell phone off each thug corpse. Spies a flash of human pornography on the one screen: two women, each with her head between the other’s legs. Like a crass facsimile of a Naga’s breeding circle. He scowls, hands one phone to each of his egg-mates.

“I will call soon.”

They nod.

“Destroy the remains.”

Sorago turns and walks down the tunnel. As he does, he hears the sound of his brothers hissing and spitting on the three corpses – the sizzle-pop of skin, soon the melting of bone. The smell in the air is one of vinegar and rot. Sorago smiles, and disappears into the dark.