“You could come visit me instead of invading my dreams, sis,” I snarked in my dream, sitting atop a seamount next to #40. “I’ll even get you fancy tequila.”

She chuckled from her perch on the seamount next to me. Her tendrils slid along the sides of sharks that circled around us. “That is tempting. I do miss your presence, Gwen. And I am proud of how you left police confused as hell as to how that human died.”

That was the hard thing #40. She didn’t see herself as human, nor any human as the same as her. So killing one was not the ethical or moral issue for her that it was for me. I didn’t regret killing that CEO, a life for a life seemed fair to me. But I didn’t relish in it. I wouldn’t welcome causing others to meet their elder makers in the future. I’d do it though.

“I’m not proud but I’m not ashamed,” I told her. “It had to be done, I did it. Now to take on who caused that tsunami wave. Any clues?”

“You weren’t guarding against it, you were too concerned over your paramour,” #40 reminded me. “If you had been focused, you would know who attacked you with intent to kill your beloveds.”

“And you do?”

“Of course.” The smirk on her face made me want to throw something at her. Her tone had a haughty edge to it. “I know where all of you are when you use Father’s powers. He allows me that.”

Wha?

“You TALK to him? He answers?”

She laughed at my expression. “Yes, little sister, I have talked with our Sire. He likes you. And I am his Eldest, so he allows me certain liberties. I don’t talk to the twins though, 4Alpha is a snob and 4Bravo is, well, 4-fucking-Bravo.  Terrible conversationalist.”

The twins were the least friendly to be nice. Ok, they were co-dependent to the point of treating anyone outside their pairing as horribly as possible. That they would agree to hunt me down was no surprise. That they’d attempt to kill me with a wave while dragging outsiders into “family business,” well that was unforgivable.

“Will our Sire be upset if I have to kill the twins?”

#40 gave a murmur and thought for a moment. “I don’t imagine so. They are too different to blend in and care not for family, only one another. And if he did care, it wouldn’t be much. Do what needs doing, little sister. If it wreaks havoc and rains blood into the seas, our Sire will be pleased.”

Another dream chat, another headache. But this one gave me solid information. I rolled over to run a hand over Veronica’s nude back. Her voice was more awake than I felt.

“You were talking out loud, dear. So you know who attacked us?”

“Oh, yes,” I said, laying a kiss on her shoulder before checking the clock. Yeah, it five AM, might as well get up. “What’s stronger than one of me?”

“Two? Nintey-seven?”

“Well, yes, ninety-seven would be stronger, but I meant two. The woman that bore the #44 eggs carried markers for twins and #44 is a pair,” I explained with a smile over the small joke. Gotta take the laughs where ya can. “They’re not going to go down easy.”

“A superpowered genetically modified children of an Elder God, wouldn’t think they would,” Veronica said as she climbed from our bed to get dressed for the day. “But nothing worth doing is easy, Gwen. You got this.”

I watched her move, her body healed from the impact of the wave though bruises still bloomed in dark colors across her back. That quiet rage stoked again at the sight of her still injured even if it didn’t hurt her anymore. “Oh, I got this. But first things first.”

I threw my own clothes on for the day, shorts, a super loose billowy top and the ever present backpack, this one silver with a Spider-woman pin. I snagged my phone and walked out into the tiny living room-dining-room combo area and removing a card from my black bag, I hit a series of digets. I held the device to my ear as my tendrils started pulling things out to make breakfast.

“Do you know what damn time it is,” came the husky answer.

“The Elder ones do not process time as we mortals do,” I replied with a smirk. “How’s it going, doc?”

“YOU,” he nearly shouted and I heard a thump followed by a curse. “Gah can’t sit up that fast in my bunk.”

“On the water?”

“Yeah, buddy asked me to help him with a pinniped count.”

“I’ve hit my head on our bunk before too, so I know the feeling.”

“Why did you call?”

Why did I? “I need help, we need answers from one another, I said I would. Take your pic. I’m Gwen.”

“Dr Peter Zuule,” he answered after a moment. “Though I imagine you already knew that.”

“Yeah, Google is an amazing thing,” I said as I tore open a package of smoked bacon. The meat sizzled as it hit a hot skillet, filling the apartment with an amazing scent.

“Taunting me with bacon? Low blow, Gwen.” He laughed as he spoke and I could hear him getting out of his bunk without further head trauma. “So you’re a 40 Series, huh?”

“Yes, but what are you, Peter? I didn’t know there were other, um, blends? Series?”

“I’m a Ten Series, specifically 11.5,” he said, vocalizing the “.” as “point.” “Half of my series joined up and escaped a facility in Nova Scotia about fifteen years ago. I ran south, forged some documents, you know the deal.”

“You said you knew my womb bearer,” I asked. They that birthed me didn’t use traditional gender-oriented pronouns. “You knew them?”

“Yeah, I knew Doc MacLeod, you look a lot like them,” he sighed. “They were an intern on the Prime Series and assistant on the Ten Series. They must have been desperate to have volunteered their womb to have you.”

“I think it was overweening self-importance,” I snarked before I could catch myself. At his abrupt bark of laughter, I joined in. “They thought they were the gods’ gift to medicine; wouldn’t their spawn be as well?”

“That sounds like them. Why did you leave? Did they just let you walk out?”

“Combination earth quake, power outage and I was sick of being a test subject,” I answered honestly. The company already knew where and who I was. Hiding things now wouldn’t help. “Who’s the sire for the Ten Series?”

“Our paternal DNA was sourced from Ngirrth’lu,” he answered after a moment. Guess he reached the same conclusion I did. “In laymans terms, I’m a werewolf.”

I snorted at that. “Which universe?”

“LKH with some variances,” he said, laughing at my question. He laughed a lot, maybe it was a way of giving himself time to answer or hiding his true emotion. “I do shift with the moon, higher strength and endurance than a human, yada yada yada. But I have multiple wolf-related forms, from dog back through evolution to dire wolf; a giant cat-wolf thing and something older than both the size of a gopher. With the evolution of more aquatic adapted wolves, I’ve added those as well in the last fifteen years.”

“I can’t turn into anything else,” I said while thinking over what he said.

“Well, your Sire is, I presume, Cthulhu himself and as he cannot change shape, neither can you nor anyone else from the 40 Series. I have the widest shifting range last I knew from my Series but most of us have been killed through the years.” He was quiet a moment. “Are you going to kill me?”

“Wasn’t on my list of things to do,” I answered honestly, sliding cooked bacon onto paper towels and rinsing the pan out. The toaster popped up with frozen waffles (look, waffle irons hate me and I hate them) and V walked out, fresh from her morning ablutions. “Morning, sexy.”

“Didn’t think you knew me well enough for that,” Peter said with another chuckle. “Tell you your mate I send my greetings. Was she injured in the wave that dazed the shark?”

“Yes,” I said, bitterness and fury maring my voice. “I’m not sure if the intent was to kill her, my pups or both. I do not care. I’m going to kill the ones that caused the wave.”

“Can you cause waves?”

“Nope, tried, not in my tool kit,” I admitted, sitting down with my breakfast. I talked around my food, a bad habit, I know but I had things to do. “Weather and atmospheric tricks are more my thing.”

“Like the lights all dying at the aquarium,” he noted thoughtfully. “Haven’t seen that kind of fine-tuned power before.”

“If I killed the filtration systems, everyone there would die,” I countered. “I need fine control.”

“Sorry, my series is all ‘Hulk, SMASH!’ It lacks attention to detail but has its uses.” Another pause before he said. “Do you want help killing the one that caused the wave? I don’t like waves, they attract attention, little miss Lady of the Spiders.”

Apparently he didn’t like that kind of attention either. “I can’t let innocents die if I can save them. I didn’t mean to attract attention. There were babies that-“

He cut me off. “I am not bothered by that, Gwen. I’ve done similar things. Hell, I was on the ground at a couple major disasters acting as a scent dog because I couldn’t leave people to die under the rubble. But the wave, the squall that did so much property and environmental damage- that is unacceptable. If you require assistance correcting that kind of behavior, I can be on Isla Partida near where it joins with Isla del Espiritu Santo in twelve to sixteen hours.”

I hadn’t expected an offer of help so readily given. “Why help me?”

“You interest me,” he said, seemingly before he could stop himself. “I met #40 once when she was just a scrap of a girl. She terrified me when she looked at me, called me my donor’s child and said, well what she said doesn’t matter.”

Intrigued I asked around a gulp of orange juice, “What did she say? #40 can be obscure sometimes and I can’t imagine her as a young girl.”

“Not answering that,” he stonewalled and nothing would budge him on it. “When are you planning on moving against your foe?”

“Don’t have a set timeline yet,” I admitted. “I’m healed up and ready to step up though.”

“Hmm, I’ll brainstorm while I finish the count today,” he told me. “See ya at 2100?”

9 PM, hopefully enough time to convince Mauricio, Annabella and Maria to head further inland. Veronica would never go. “I’ll have my mate with me, she’s better with boats and I don't imagine you'll want to swim to the mainland.”

“I look forward to meeting her.” There was a click and the call ended.

“Did I get volunteered to go out tonight,” Veronica asked, eyes warm.

I gave her the reader’s digest version of the conversation. “I’m honestly not surprised to learn there were other experiment series, just didn’t think I’d ever meet one of them.”

“I don’t have siblings, so that’s not something I’m familiar with,” Veronica said, stirring her second mug of coffee. “But I do know that if we can bring a surprise element to the fight, that’s always a good thing. If you didn’t know about the Ten Series, would your sisters?”

“No,” I said with a wicked smile, plans forming in my head. “No, no they wouldn’t. I do have to say, I like calling them foe more than sisters. Makes me feel more objective about it.”

“Not sure I could kill a family member,” Veronica agreed, hand sliding into mine. “Foes it is. Or crazy bitches 1 and 2 works for me as well.”

“Crazy, dead, whatever.”

Or both, both is good, I decided as I flipped my hand over to hold hers. Both sounded just about right. Now to figure out how to call the twins out so I could kick their asses into the next life.