It hurt even in the dream, I moaned to myself as awareness came to me in the stroke of a knife.

I hissed as I sat up on the dock that #42 liked to meet me on when she invaded my dreams. “Kinda had a fight today. Got stabbed or something.”

Her laughter was like cool water over my skin, transiently soothing. “I can see, look at your limbs, little sister.”

I did as she asked and groaned anew. Lightning forked burns ran from my fingers up to as high as I could see on my shoulders, from toe to thigh and across the belly of the bikini I wore. I twitched then stared at my tendrils, each one scorched as well. “How in the world?”

“Not of this world,” she answered, full of sunshine and stardust. At my glare she went on. “All power has a cost, Gwen. It takes time to learn to wield without damage. You went from being able to shunt aside lightning and weather-waves with a minor in busting lightbulbs to flying on wings of lightning and scorching those useless twins to death. That’s a power jump.”

I tried to remain as still as possible, but motion and pain thumped through me in waves. Almost like… “I’m on the boat, aren’t I?”

“Yes,” #40 said, laying a hand on my cheek. The pain receded enough for me to breath normally. “Your current paramour seems to be are taking you to your home along with your new plus one. The corpses of the twins have been gathered up, what scraps they could find. You didn’t sink that boat, Gwen. THEY were on it, #42. You could have stopped them.”

“Shit,” I said, leaning into her and cursing a bit more. “So now they know my new tricks.”

“Not exactly,” she said with a Cheshire grin. “Turns out your little pyrotechnics show released an EMP that knocked out their observation equipment and they were too afraid to get close enough to watch visually. Took them quite a while to restart things.”

“Typical,” I snorted. “Though I’m not sure I could have hurt them unless they threatened Veronica or Peter. Why I feel that adamantly about Pete, I’m not sure.”

“Yeah, about that…”

I waited a moment for her to speak again before elbowing her. She flicked the back of my head with one of her own tendrils and went on. “I knew he was for one of us when I first saw him. Be kind to Peter, he’s been very lonely. Be gentle to yourself, Gwen. Take time to heal and mourn your loss.”

“I’ve been mourning,” I protested. “Screamed my mourning in blood. Just now.”

“No, you have been pushing ever onward,” #40 corrected me, forestalling anymore arguments with a tendril on my lips. “Gwen, you must allow yourself to feel what emotions are in you. You feel deeply, sister, and that is both a weakness and a source of power. That power will eat you alive if you are not careful. You live with your heart forward; you have ever been so. Give me a cute niece or nephew. I love you.”

Cascades of pain woke me as the boat bumped into the dock, the impact jarring me off the bench I’d been laid on. I fell into the damp bottom of the boat back first and landed on my tendrils. I gave a howling sob before rolling myself onto my knees. I felt my tendrils recoil in my backpack, the canvas scraping against them like harsh sandpaper. In the sharp new light of dawn, the marks on my skin looked like purple burns along my skin. As if I’d done some kind of new age tattoo along my power meridians.

I was shaking and flinched away from the hand that reached for my shoulder. I looked up to see Veronica reaching for me. “I’m sorry, Gwen, I’m not as good at driving one handed.”

Her left arm was in a sling that Peter must have pulled from the first aid kit. He was wearing a pair of sweatpants I’d thrown into the boat. Neon pink ones I didn’t mind getting trashed. It made the black bruises splashed across his ribs look darker. I guess the injury grew or shank as he did. My voice was ragged when I spoke. “It’s ok, V, I did most of this to my own damn self. You’re got us back to land. You rock, sweetass.”

She gave a tired chuckle. Almost a giggle. “You did pretty well yourself, water spider. Can you walk to the car?”

I said I could. That was a lie. I made it up onto the dock, tripped over my own feet and fell again. The pain of hitting the hard-wooden planks of the dock made me vomit, which lead to my vision clouding over in a hurricane of pain and static. I cried out again as Peter picked me up and cradled me against his chest, his gait jarring as he took me to the car. My condition wasn’t improved by the roughly paved streets and worsened over the cobble stones of a tourist area that was deserted on this off-season Wednesday morning. I realized Peter was still holding me when I felt him pull my arm away from my mouth to be replaced with his. I bit down on the forearm offered, using it as a gag against the screams shredding my throat. He grunted as I bit down harder when we turned a corner and my body rocked against my back. Against my burning tendrils.

There was no hope of me walking and Pete pulled my carcass from the Bug, carried me as Veronica opened up the house. They spoke but their words had no meaning with so much agony screaming at me.

He carried me through the house and into the sprawling back yard. The sound of the sauna cover being retracted roused me from pain before Pete stepped into the heated small pool of sea-salt water. Not quite the same as ocean water but the heat seemed to suck the burning away from my tendrils bit by bit. The ragged screams faded in my throat and I let go of Peter with a sigh of relief.

There were bite marks moving up his left arm and ending on his shoulder. It took me three times to get out, “I’m s-s-s-sorry.”

He started to keep the bloody arm out of the water before realizing my leg had opened back up and the water was a loss anyway. He walked us into the 1.5m deep center of the pool, water lapping at our necks. “I’d rather you bite me up like that than yourself.”

I glanced at my arm and started to shrug before pain shut that movement down. “Still, thanks.”

“You could have screamed though,” he said, voice exhausted. “I wouldn’t think less of you, hell, even your tendrils were smoking earlier.”

“It might have been in Daddio’s language,” I whispered, unable to be louder. I curled into his body as if it could block the bad things out. “I could have driven Veronica mad.”

“That might have made driving harder,” I heard her say around a yawn. “Is the water helping?”

“Can I sleep here?”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said, coming into my line of vision. Lifting my head off of Pete’s shoulder seemed like too much effort. “I don’t think that’s wise, Gwen. Sunburns on freshly burned skin would not help anything.”

I flinched and hissed with the movement. She was right. “Fair enough. Get me some of Mauricio’s home-brew then. A double shot.”

She gave a small whistle. “That much? You only used a tablespoon after Star bit you.”

“This is realms beyond that,” I whispered. “And I need you to cauterize my leg. Gotta seal it.”

“I can sew it up,” Peter said with an exasperated voice. “This isn’t a Civil War tent, Gwen. And I’m not sure alcohol is a good idea, even moonshine.”

Veronica went to grab it anyway while I explained in the fewest words possible what was in that homebrew. I finished with, “One tablespoon made me not care about a shark bite but still able to walk. I should be able to tolerate you sewing me up with the double.”

A shot glass was held out to me and I eyed it with a jaded eye. It would certainly help dull the pain but gods, it tasted vile. Old school extraction on the herbs within but nothing could help the taste except to chase it. Veronica held the chaser in her other hand, this time a full glass of cola. I shot the lurid green tincture and slammed the chaser on its heels, wishing I could turn off my taste buds.

“I really wish that didn’t taste so awful,” I groaned, eyes watering again. I sank back into the water, floating away from Peter with a gentle push. “It should take about fifteen minutes to hit given that my belly’s empty.”

“I’ll go get prepped then,” he said and after nodding to Veronica where she sat on the edge of the sauna, climbed out. He dropped the sopping sweats on the concrete and walked inside. I guess Veronica had told him where things were. I was hurting but even through that, I admired the view of him heading inside.

She was talking for a moment before I realized it and paid attention. “… you really scared me Gwen. What was that? I know you said you talked to your dad but damn that was….”

“Like nothing you’ve ever seen,” I supplied, shrugging out of my backpack and tossing the canvas into a heap near the door inside. I drifted closer to her. “V, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to-“

“I’m ok,” she cut me off. “You woke up from whatever the fuck that was and came back to me. I don’t mind spraining a wrist to get you back. But why did it happen?”

“Big sis says its because I went from doing little tricks to big ass high level ones without enough practice,” I said, paraphrasing. I tried to remember what I had done and my brain seemed to shudder. I cringed with a moan of pain. “I won’t be doing anything like that again any time soon.”

“Good,” she said and pulled me into another topic before I could go back to apologizing. “What did Peter mean by ‘have my child,’ Gwen? Can you even have kids?”

“Fuck if I know,” I said, feeling a comforting haze start to creep over me. “I probably can, I mean #40 had a baby with a human. Even if they messed with it in vitro to make it stronger.”

“They got her pregnant?” How indignant she sounded over someone she’d never met, I noted.

“Not on purpose,” I answered. “It was a security guard and she’d been sedated after a training injury. She…” I stopped, the images of that night trying to return to the front of my mind like a cruel pop-up window. “It was bad, Veronica, bad. I’m surprised she didn’t slaughter them all when she escaped. They’d taken her up to the surface level to give birth. She got away as they worked to make sure the baby was breathing. #49 came out feet first, they said, with her tendrils around her neck. It nearly killed her. I don’t know if #40 cared though, she broke through the clinic doors, knocked down every other door and used the body of a guard to cushion her fall. We were told they’d killed her but I knew she’d escaped. I felt it.”

My voice was slurring ever so slightly as I finished, and Peter spoke. “I ran into her in Vancouver, after she’d escaped, you know.”

I stared at him, obviously surprised. “Say wha?”

“Greenland shark study,” he told me as he laid out bottles and little funny foil packets next to the hot tub pool. “She walked out onto our dock one morning as we were finishing up and asked for me. Come on, Gwennie, out of the water.”

“I don’t wanna.”

This went on for a bit before they coaxed me out of the water so Peter could stitch me up. I could feel the tug of the needle in my skin, even if I gave no fucks about the pain. I gave a running commentary on the sensations that made Veronica turn green and have to walk inside.

“Get me something to eat,” I yelled after her.

Peter gave a snort of laughter as he worked. “How are you hungry?”

“I used a lot of energy,” I said and added with a laugh, “literally.”

“Yeah, you did,” he agreed, dark head bent over my thigh. There was more tugging and pulling, thread chasing needle through flesh as he closed the wound. “You went ancient when you did that, Gwennie, you need to be careful.”

“What did you call it?”

“Ancient,” he repeated and set his tools aside. Those brown eyes met mine next. “You were drawing on ancient powers and they took over.”

“Have you done it?” I couldn’t argue with his explanation- I still barely felt like me. A very battered me.

He looked away from me and sighed. “Yeah, twice. Once on accident, the second on purpose. Both times were messy.”

“Anything I’ve heard of,” I asked before adding, “Can I go back in the water now?”

“Sure, it is already contaminated,” Peter answered. “And no, the news isn’t allowed to cover things like us.”

“You are not things,” Veronica snarled as she came back outside. I drifted over to reach for the plate she carried. She smiled down at me, handing me the plate. I was eating it before I realized it was fajita meat on a bed of rice with a side of beans. I kept shoveling it in as she went on. “I know you weren’t born out of normal methods, but you’re people, not things.”

I lifted a tendril out of the water. “Just with a few extras.”

“You two make it hard to feel less than human,” Peter said, standing up with garbage left from his repair work. I notice he’d managed to find time to throw on some shorts He tossed the bag in a trashcan next to the pool and walked over to sit on the edge with his feet in the water. “I’d forgotten what that felt like.”

“How’d you learn?” I had to ask, was curious to know what, or who, had humanized him.

Another sigh and then his words were soft but clear. “I’d been out a couple years, roaming the Canadian wilds and found a hiker who’d been hurt. She was alone and if I hadn’t helped her, she would have died. I brought her to an abandoned cabin I’d found, fed her and she didn’t treat me like anything other than just a man. Even after seeing the Galaxy Wolf in me when I had to kill a rabid bear. She had a thing for werewolves, thank you pop-romance books, and was frankly delighted with me.”

“She had?”

“Yeah, she’s the reason I went ancient the second time,” Peter looked up at the clear blue sky. “The company caught her in town and used her as bait to get me. I was willing to submit until they hit her hard enough to break her spine. The second her heartbeat died, so did part of me.”

I wrapped myself around Peter’s legs as Veronica curled around his shoulders. My voice was soft when I spoke. “I’m sorry Peter, I didn’t know.”

“You couldn’t have,” he said, running a hand over my hair. He leaned into Veronica, rubbing his cheek against her shoulder. “After that, I stopped hiding and moved to the coast, got my degrees after faking a normal life. I’ve run into company people a couple times but nothing’s come of it. I imagine they know I’m in Mexico and if they saw my wolf with you on the beach, they know I’m with you.”

“Do they know?” I paused and finished. “Do they know #40’s prophecy?”

“I don’t think so,” he said thoughtfully. “She sent it to me mind to mind and I don’t see why she would have told them about it. #40 didn’t strike me as the talkative type.”

“You have no idea,” I said before giving into the growing lethargy and sliding into the water. I was dimly aware of Veronica dragging me out of the water, Peter doing the lift work to get me clear and they dried me off together.

Warm towels. Warm hands. Safe in their embrace.