I am dreaming again, sitting on a jetty I have never seen.

“There is something truly unique about you, your capacity to care so very much,” she said in my dream, voice smooth as aged scotch with a touch of roughness. Her braids wove around her as she paced, always moving like a shark. “I have never known if that was good or bad.”

“Given my unique lack of strength cost me my son, it’s a bad thing.” I sounded as grief stricken as I felt, rage a sharp undercurrent in my tone. I was an adult in this dream, wearing the attire I wore when diving with the research team. The black and green suit clung to my body everywhere except my back, where a hole let my tendrils out. There were no marks on my bare arms or wrists, not like when I was awake.

#40 shook her head sadly. “That is not what I meant, little sister. You care about life, even if it bites you like your Star did.”

“Even white sharks feel grief at the loss of a pack mate, rare though those are. He didn’t mean to hurt me.” I looked down again and the marks on my left forearm were there now, the near perfect arc of teeth on top and bottom.

“Of course not, sister. You are loved by your family, odd though it is.”

I let that slide- of course a woman who would abandon her child in order to escape did not, could not, understand my family. My pups, my Veronica, Mauricio, Annabella and Maria, they were all my family. And with that came responsibility.

“What caused that wave? There shouldn’t have been a wave like that, we were on the sea side of the peninsula.”

“Who is a better question,” my eldest sister said, brow furrowed as she thought. “I doubt our father has woken up in millennia and that leaves, well, us. The 40 series could all potentially do that. You said you’ve calmed weather and wave.”

“So it makes sense one of us could create a local tsunami,” I finished. “Why though? I am no where near the company, I don’t even think I’m near you, sister 40. Why would they attack me?”

Unspoken was why would they hurt my pup or Veronica or Mauricio instead of me? What made me worth attacking? Unless....

“Simple, they want you back in custody and released someone to accomplish that since you’ve evaded capture thus far.”

“Helix was taken as part of a trap,” I whispered, agony fiery in my chest. “They thought to trap me but I moved too fast.”

“Possibly,” #40 agreed. “As I am not local, I cannot say for sure. There could be other players on the board of your game. Either way, do be careful, little sister.”

“You too, big sister.”

I woke up with a splitting headache, my arm a thrumming mass of pain and Veronica sitting next to me. We were on the boat kept for overnight research as I couldn’t stand to be any further away from the pups or Veronica. I’d been told the day boat that had been damaged in the wave would be in for repairs for another two weeks. I honestly didn’t care.

“You we’re talking in your sleep again,” she told me, setting aside a tablet. “Who is number forty?”

“My eldest sister, well half sister,” I answered, stretching. The Steri-strips V had closed my arm up with pulled but the overall pain of the wounds themselves was worse. Cargo ships full of worse, I acknowledged as I cradled my arm to my chest. They were healing fast for a human but I knew my energy levels were low from trying to block the wave, saving Veronica and Mauricio and the hunt for Helix. And his death. Grief is a physical weight sometimes, and that weight takes its own toll. “At least, I think so. The dreams started before the storm so I think it might be her. Or I’m going crazy. Take your pick.”

“You’re not crazy,” she assured me, her warmth comforting as she slid into the bunk beside me. “You are traumatized and angry and magical. If you say it’s your elder sister, who am I to argue?”

“You are mine,” I said gratefully and pulled her down for a kiss. “Mine.”

“Always.”

The next morning we took the boat back into shore, Star and Malcom heading out to the deeper hunting grounds near the mouth of the sea. The skies were clear with a light breeze in our faces as we turned into the marina.

Annabella was on the dock waiting for us and easily caught the securing rope I tossed her. Her voice held an edge of predatory anticipation as she spoke. “I think I found him, Gwen, the suit you said took Helix.”

“Did you,” I asked with a dark curve of my lips. “Whoever could he be?”

“He’s the son of the man who built that fancy aquarium you found the poor dear in,” she said, helping transfer Veronica’s diving gear over to the dock as she shut down and locked up the boat. “Cortez, Emmanuel Cortez is his name, scar matches your description and everything.”

“Time to get hunting,” I said, squaring my shoulders under the load of tanks and gear I grabbed to carry in. Veronica had been with me in the water when I’d told the boys of their brother’s death and the tanks needed to be refilled. “Do you have the information on your phone?”

“No... I am not good with those,” Annabella said indignantly while Veronica poorly held back a laugh. “Shush you, or no cheesecake.”

A serious threat, that.

Veronica raised her free hand in surrender. “My deepest apologies, chef and wrangler of the gods.”

They joked back and forth, their friendship easing my pain. I wasn’t alone in the world but my presence put them at risk. Was it better to leave or stay? Would leaving only leave them vulnerable to an attack by the unnamed (unnumbered) menace?

Could I bear to leave Veronica? The first person to love me? The first to teach me that touch is not a threat?

Damn me, but I could not leave her. Would never let anyone drive me away from her. So I began my mental checklist of things to come:

1. Recover my energy and heal the wounds Star had given me

2. Find and slaughter the suit who’d ordered Helix’s capture and death

3. Find and disable or kill whoever caused that wave

Ok, it was a short plan so far but it was a work in progress. I knew it hadn’t been #49, whom I’d partly raised. The only number that could overcome me would be…

The twins, 44 A and B. But why would they attack me? Why would they care?

I was still puzzling over this back at the mansion, Veronica having taken us there instead of her- no, OUR apartment. I wasn’t paying attention and when Maria came out of nowhere for a hug, I reacted.

No thought.

Just instinct alone.

She ended up on the second floor landing, thankfully using the training we’d done to roll with the fall and avoid injury.

I looked up with horror at what I’d done and leapt, easily catching the balustrade and heaving myself over it. I knelt by her and reached a shaking hand out to her. She looked at me with weary eyes before relaxing.

“Sorry,” I whispered to her, holding my hand flat and low.

She studied me for a moment before laying her hand in mine. “I’m not hurt. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Wrapped up in my head too much to notice you approach,” I admitted. “Annabella said she has a lead on the man that ordered He- my son taken.”

I couldn’t say his name. It made the loss more real, stoked the flames in my breast and burned my soul anew. Maria, her eyes filled with shadows of her past nodded. Her voice was ancient as she said, “I know that feeling, Gwen. Mine was taken too.”

I looked at her hand in mine, trying to cover my shock. She’d been pregnant before? The question seemed stupid once I thought about her past, where she’d been sold as a child to. She’d entered puberty in a brothel. The trail of logic was not difficult to follow. I pulled her into my arms, tendrils wrapping around both of us.

“I am so sorry,” I whispered into her hair as she shook with tears of her own in my embrace. “Losing a child is… there are no words.”

Her eyes held a fire like mine as she looked back up at me, the tears adding a shine to a deadly fury of her own. “Someday, when I am strong, I will go back and burn the brothel to the ground. Save the girls. Slaughter the men. Someday I will be as strong as you. Someday I will avenge the baby they made me lose.”

What do you even say to that? The was opening up to me, sharing her pain to show she knew what mine was. I said the only thing I could. “After I have avenged Helix and you are stronger, I will help you.”

“You really are a savior,” she buried her face in my shoulder and we sat there on the second story landing, both of us crying.

“Not for those that would harm us. I shall be their damnation brought to live.”

“As you normally do.”

I laughed at the phrase she’d recently picked up. It was weak and watery but a laugh. She smiled up at me, tiny in my arms. “See as long as we can plot the demise of our enemies and smile, we are not too broken, are we?”

“I think you may be right about that,” I said standing and helping her do so as well. “Come on, ass hole executives second, whoever caused the wave third. But first, a real meal.”

We went downstairs to the kitchen, the heart of our house. It was full of decadent smells, Annabella having outdone herself in an attempt to get me to eat. I’d dropped about fifteen pounds off my trim frame in my grief and I’d need to make that up.

Can’t murder one’s enemies on an empty stomach, right?

Mauricio, his arm in a sling, had also been busy and a stack of papers were at my customary seat at the table in the kitchen. We never used the grand dining room, it was too much for the five of us. On top of the documents was a business magazine with the man who’d ordered Helix’s shark-napping on the cover.

His amber brown eyes stared at me, and I stifled a growl in my throat, barely stopping myself from cussing at him in the language of my father’s people- things- beings (whatever.) The sound of the Eldrich language could drive mortals insane so I never spoke it aloud. The thought reminded me that one of my sisters, #44B could only speak in that maddening tongue because of her maw.

Was she the one who’d sent the wave?

First things first. Dinner.

I let Annabella load up my plate three times, dutifully shoving all that chili and spice laden calories into my stomach. My arm itched as it healed, body already on board with my plans to get myself back to normal for the tasks ahead. I leafed through the papers as the others talked of what they’d learned online. Even Maria had helped, using the voice to text feature on her TubeTube account to look up interviews and news stories.

“Thank you,” I said in a voice harsh with emotion. “This is the man who took him and I don’t know how to thank you enough.”

“You’re family,” Mauricio said from the head of the table. “That man hurt you, hurt us all. Helix saved me from that aggressive white two months ago.”

“He is the first shark I ever got a fin ride on,” Annabella added, eyes shiny with tears.

“We love you,” Maria added.

“We’re a team,” Veronica added, taking my uninjured hand in hers and raising it to her lips for a gentle kiss. “You’re a powerful, magical, wonderful woman and I praise God for bringing you into my life on the night we met. Helix, Star and Malcom, they’re special to all of us and to you. Of course we’ll help you avenge him.”

I was the only one of my sisters with a real family, but to hear them state that broke the dam I’d built around my feelings. I dissolved into tears again, held up by Veronica’s shoulder on one side, Mauricio, Annabella and Maria’s hands on the other. Grief shared can lessen the burden, like all those hands helped handle the load.

I couldn’t leave them. I would fight for all of them.

No matter what comes, I will never give up these people who have come together through some twist of fate to love me and be loved by me in turn.

“I am the luckiest of the Elder God’s daughters for I alone know what family is,” I said after the tears had slowed to a trickle. My eyes began to glow, that essential spark reignited by their shared grief and strength. “We’re going to bring them all down and salt the earth afterward.”

“Blood makes the grass grow, rah-rah-rah,” Veronica cheered, tears on face as well. “Let’s sow a crop of Macha’s Acorns.”

The heads of our enemies in a pile as a tribute to a Celtic Goddess? “As my beloved wishes.”