After they’d left, I’d fallen unconscious once more. I woke to frantic voices as Annabella and Maria scrambled to reach the boat, having tracked my phone’s signal. Veronica, Mauricio and I were all groaning in pain as Annabella reached the lip of the boat.

I coughed and my throat was raw. “They took him, Anna, they took my pup.”

“Who?”

“Helix,” I said, climbing away from the entangling ropes. Veronica was sitting up and looked cleared headed than I felt. She gasped when she saw me, left arm swelling and right ankle three times its usual size.

“They took Helix? Who did?”

“Oceana Rescue,” I said with a growl that promised dire things indeed. “You have to help me find them, V. I lost him because I saved you.”

“Of course,” she said without hesitation. She slid her body under my right arm, and helped me hobble out of the boat. “Are you okay?”

“I’ll heal in about twelve hours,” I said absently, eyes on the Sea but of course the boat was gone. Helix was gone.

“I’ll find out who took him and where before then,” she promised. “Lets get back to the house, dearest, we’ll find out where he is and get him back. I’ll call everyone I know that operates in Mexico.”

The news told us before her contacts did though. Maria came scrabbling into the kitchen where Annabella was cleaning a gash on Mauricio’s back while Veronica ate between phone calls. Helix was on the news, being dropped into a tank at an aquarium in Mexico City. He was alive but for how long? Whites cannot survive without cross currents, which means they cannot survive in captivity long before exhaustion kills them.

Would he survive until I got there to get him home?

It took us two days to follow his path to where he’d been taken and by then, there were no more news stories. Like his kidnappers (shark-nappers) were keeping quite until they were sure he would survive in a plexiglass prison. Once at a hotel near the center of the city, I put in my ear buds, music blocking out the sounds of so many humans so close together.

I could feel him, could sense him in this tangle of human and other life. Could pick out the song of his soul from those alive and those long past. I left Veronica on the phone at a hotel trying to find him and went to search on my own. She could track my phone as long as it was one and was deep in conversation with an aquarium researcher about who could have taken Helix.

The music thrummed through me, feet hitting street, wall, roof in time to that eternal baseline as I bolted through the city. Night blanketed all with its shadowy embrace and I used my tendrils to propel me over the streets, buildings and blocks of Mexico City.

They had Helix and that would not be tolerated.

They were going to put him on display.

They were going to murder my pup.

I had to save him first.

All the gods, old and new, help them if I couldn’t.

I felt the old ones beneath me, heard their ancient voices from the waters deep beneath the city built upon the ruins of another. I felt them shift at the taste of my rage. I fought not to call them to my aid, not to tear the entire region apart to sooth my fear, my grief, my crimson rage.

It was a harder fight than I like to admit.

I looked at the GPS on my phone then down at a rather ugly building proclaiming it was an aquarium. I could feel the waves of endless frustration pouring upward from the squat building, far more than it should have held. I felt lifeless sea water beneath me.

I felt Helix dying.

I walked out of an alley between two buildings and onto the sidewalk, just another tourist. Big black and grey flowing skirt hiding quick drying leggings, thigh holsters with knifes, and soft leather shoes underneath. An equally loose black blouse with a riot of white shark embroidery hid my bikini top, another pair of blades and gills. My black backpack hid my tendrils and my hair was in a tight braid. I held my phone in my hand as if I was following directions as I walked to the building that held the entrance to an underground labyrinth of an aquarium.

A bored woman at the door took my pesos for a ticket before telling me the last show finished an hour ago but the aquarium was open all night for tourists with jet lag. Lucky me.

I wanted to scream, tear down doors, demand the return of my child.

Instead, I picked up a guide and strolled through the building, eyes locking onto “Staff Only” doors as I tested the feel of each for Helix. Deeper and deeper I went into the aquarium, walking past mismatched biosphere representations until I came upon the start of the primary shark tanks. Every other exhibit I walked past seemed empty, the residents hiding from my coiled rage. Smaller fish know when an angry predator is about.

Not so the sharks. They lined the glass of the tank, gliding in wide circles that brought them within arms reach if not for the 8” thick tank walls. I descended far enough to see down to the bottom of the sunken ship tank and there he was.

Lethargic.

Slow.

Barely moving enough to breath and so afraid.

Rage flooded me and I slammed my hands into the tank wall, power rippling from my fists and startling Helix. The sharks that had been my company so far fled from the power and so I was alone when I came to the bottom of the staircase for the exhibit. Helix noticed me then, his mind so weak with exhaustion. He couldn’t afford to stop moving because there were no cross currents to rest in. The chemicals in the water burned his gills and the dead fish he’d been force-fed making his stomach churn. My son, my pup, my Helix was dying.

Of course, a random woman shaking the entire tank with her fists is going to attract attention. From behind one of those Staff Only doors, a tall man with broad shoulders emerged, face irritated. He looked around the viewing area that held only me and the tank. He sounded harassed when he asked, “Did you hit the glass with a bat or something?”

“He’s dying.”

“The sharks are fine, they’re sharks. Did you hit the glass?”

“He is not fine, look at him.”

“I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

I gave up with being civil and playing by the human’s rules. They were inefficient anyway. So I played by my own. Which was me at that man’s throat, his body hoisted into the air on arms that were so much stronger than he could know. “He is dying, you arrogant prick. How do you access the tank?”

He started stuttering and yelling, which was damned unhelpful if you ask me. Turns out that being smacked into 8” of shark tank glass will knock out a fully grown man if you just try hard enough. Or don’t care about hiding anymore. Take your pick.

I took his pass card and left him breathing on a bench. The area behind the Staff Only door was pretty predictable, a one way wall showed the shark tank and its inhabitants. Other directions held all the minute of running an aquarium, cement floors and metal stairs. First things first.

I laid my hand on the tank, closed my eyes and concentrated. They responded to my calls, the song of the Elder seeking their help once more. They knew in their DNA what that song was, even if all they’d known if life was captivity. That song told them to dance with the great white in their tank and I opened my eyes to see two of the larger reef tips flank Helix and use their noses to push against his pectoral fins to help him keep moving. They started a slow, steady push around the ship. If a shark could be said to sag in relief, the minute changes in how Helix held his fins would have said as much.

Turning back to my mundane surroundings, I looked around to see a series of metal stairs leading up to the top of the tank with cat walks branching off to other exhibits, a pair of doors labeled “Supply Elevator” and a series of offices. I flew up the stairs, hitting every third one to the top of the tank. There was a walk in shelf that was accessible behind a clear door. They had to be able to get scuba divers into the tank to clean and care for the animals after all. And to bring in stolen wild ones. Resting next to the entrance was a large stretcher like the one I’d seen used to bring an injured dolphin to a sanctuary but much bigger. There was only one animal in that tank large enough to need such a stretcher- Helix.

I left it where sat and set my skirt and shoes beside it. Then came something I wasn’t sure I could do. I called to the water in the air, the humidity caused by so many water tanks and systems in an underground manmade cave system. The water answered my call and I used it to short lights throughout the facility, turning the bright aquarium into a series of black labyrinths lit only by tiny orange emergency lights along the human’s walkways. The tank became a dark abyss as I tossed my things into my backpack and set it beside the tank.

I dove into that abyss, eyes widening to use the scanty light and my senses expanding to the edges of the tank, vast though it was by human standards. I launched from the walk in’s drop off toward Helix, tendrils and legs flaring with speed. I came to my pup as his escorts brought him to me, took over keeping him moving and tried not to break down.

Helix shuddered in pain wherever I touched him, the chlorine in the water having burned his skin so much even my lightest touch was painful. His eyes were blurry with it and even rolling them back didn’t protect them from the sting of the dead sea water and its load of chemicals. I held him in my arms and felt him slipping away.

I pleaded with him not to go, told him how he was the best of brothers and how I would always love him. I whispered that over and over to him, the tears leaking from my eyes lost in the salt water around us. His voice was ragged as he whispered to me.

It is not your fault, Elder-mother. The humans are as they have always been and when you are ready, you will wash the world away. That is the Great Song of the Elders. I wish I could have been there when it was sung. I love you.

I can’t clearly remember what we said to one another after that, me begging him to breath and not give up but that wasn’t his choice. Him whispering to me his love for his brothers and sister, his love for me. Of all sharks, great whites cannot be kept in captivity because of their vast environmental needs and Helix had held out for days in order to see me.

It was as if my presence gave him permission to go, my arms and love what he needed to cut lose from the mortal coil that in the end releases us all. I felt the last shuddering flash of water across his gills as his body shook and contorted. I held him close as those glossy eyes lost their shine and depth, becoming as lifeless as the humans claimed they were.

Humans see what they reflect in the eyes of a shark.

My own eyes were glowing with molten rage and quicksilver grief as we sank to the bottom of the tank. My chest heaved to drag the artificially oxygenated dead sea water across my gills as I held him close, shaking with grief too profound to move. The other sharks in the tank continued to circle me, the reef tips letting their fins glide across my shoulders, tendrils, across Helix’s still form as they shared my pain. The other species kept further away, the darkness making them uneasy when all they had known was light for most of their lives.

Eventually, my phone’s shaking ripped me from my grief and I gently placed Helix’s body on the floor of the tank. I slammed my way to the surface, covering twenty meters in seconds to clear my lungs and answer Veronica’s call.

“I can’t find him through any of my contacts,” she said as soon as I said her name. “No one knows where he was taken or even who that rescue team was. They’re a sham, just like-”

“I found him,” I cut her off, crawling out of the tank in the dim emergency lighting. Guess the lights were still out. I gave her the name of the aquarium I was at as I wrung out my hair. Pulled on my clothing, laced up my shoes and shrugged into my backpack. “They weren’t rescuers, V, they were thieves. They wanted him for display.”

“Is he ok?”

“Do whites survive in captivity?”

“No…” she whispered. She’d heard me shedding water often enough to recognize the sound over the phone. She knew what I sounded like dressing. “He’s gone?”

“In my arms.”

“Oh, Gwen, God, I’m so sorry. I- you- what do you need? Do you need me there?”

My voice was as empty as I felt all of a sudden. “I took out the lights here. From the sounds coming down the stairs, it seems to be causing quite a problem. I’m going to leave now. Helix isn’t here anymore.”

“I know, Gwen,” her voice was the softness of quilts Mauricio’s mother made, the warmth of the cocoa we shared. “I’ll come pick you up.”

“I’ll meet you at the hotel,” I told her as I started up the stairs. I saw better in the dark than any human, avoiding them would be easy. “I need to move, think, run. I love you.”

I hung up on her protests, turned off the phone and tucked it behind me into my backpack, tendrils securing it in a zippered pouch within. I was on the streets again in twenty minutes, darkness ever my friend.

I flung myself onto the unfamiliar streets, through crowds of people and ran for hours, never able to get away from my own thoughts.

I let him die. I failed my brother, my son, my family.

I couldn’t use that fury to pull the ancient waters and gods to the surface and drown the city. I wouldn’t kill millions of innocents.

But not all were innocent and even insurance companies can hurt. Especially the exec I’d seen order Helix loaded onto a truck instead of released back into the ocean. I’d been unable to get to him in time, but I knew the human’s face. Now that I knew where Helix had been taken, it would be a matter of time until I found that man. Until I got to take him away into the night and let him learn true terror.

I couldn’t wait.