“It’s sooo hot,” I complained, not for the first time, as I drained the last of my bottle of water. “I’m gonna dry out like this.” It was a month since Pierce’s death and we were still in Havana while Mom, Aunt Carmen, and Uncle Jack made some arrangements. Unfortunately, Cuba was going through a major heatwave, and it was hot to begin with. It was too hot for Naethari to spend a lot of time out of the water unless we were constantly hydrating.

Mom had managed to get the medical supplies that she thought we would need to be able to make the others’ transitions into Naethari safer and more comfortable. She had just finished the last purchase yesterday, in fact. Some of it, like the morphine, had been gotten through the black market. Most of it had been bought from the administrator of a private hospital though. He was trying to make some money on the sly by selling some of their old equipment that was recently replaced with more state-of-the-art stuff. Sure, it wasn’t new, but it worked, it was serviceable, and it would serve our purposes just fine.

Uncle Jack was close to closing an anonymous purchase for a large and lavish home that he found in Belize. The place was located in a secluded little cove and the closest town was a three-hour drive away. It was also well away from the usual spots that divers and tourists frequented, so he thought that we should have plenty of privacy there. Once he closed the deal, we would be back on our small yacht and on our way there. I couldn’t wait.

Sure, it would probably be just as hot in Belize, but Havana is a busy city, and all of the people were starting to make me nervous. There were too many smells, tastes, and sounds in the air and it made it hard to focus on one thing sometimes. It felt like we were being watched too, as Maddie and I shopped for supplies for our trip. My discomfort had only grown as we made our way across the blisteringly hot parking lot. “Sooo hot,” I complained again.

In my distracted state, it was Maddie who detected the danger first as we started loading our purchases in the black SUV. “Stop complaining, Naiya, we’ll be back at the villa soon and… look out!” She shouted the last as she tackled me and knocked me to the side. We had barely hit the ground when she pulled me behind the cover of the vehicle.

“What the hell?! Who’s shooting at me?! I’m, like, literally nobody!” The form that I was using at the moment was a face meant to blend into the crowd here in Cuba, modeled after various local young women that I had seen around the city since we got here. Maddie had been in a more mundane disguise with makeup and a black wig covering her bright red hair.

“Sniper, probably military training, and he was using a suppressor, I saw the sunlight reflecting off the scope,” my sister grunted beside me as she clutched her side. “I don’t think I’ve made any enemies since I started working with Mom and Dad, except Pierce, and he’s resting in pieces.”

If they’re after you, why shoot at me?” I asked with my heart racing as I looked at where she was clutching her side and the quickly growing red stain on her shirt.

“Military op would be my best guess,” she hissed in reply. “Might want me for questioning and don’t want any witnesses. But what…”

“Erica Winslow, or should I say, Madeline MacArthur? If you and the girl come out with your hands up and surrender, no harm will come to her, and you will be free to go after you answer some questions.” My eyes widened as I heard the voice in my earpiece. They had our comms frequency.

Damn, it was a good thing that we’d been mostly using encrypted phones to contact one another since Operation Pierce, or he would have known that I had an earpiece too. How the hell did they get our frequency though? And how had they connected Erica to Maddie? At least one question was answered though. If they knew about her cover as Erica, then they probably wanted me and the other Naethari.

“Bullshit,” Maddie muttered, not bothering to activate her earpiece to reply to our attacker. “This has black ops written all over it. I’m guessing a six-man team. They’ll kill you as soon as we’re out of the public eye, and me as soon as they get their answers. Seems that I’ve gotten sloppy. We probably passed a traffic cam or something on the way here. If someone was looking for me, knew the area that I was last seen in, and decided to do a facial recognition search, then some makeup and a wig wouldn’t keep them from finding me, especially if they have deep pockets. Military research has some pretty deep pockets, and I could think of a dozen reasons why they’d be interested in our aquatic friends.”

“Fuck,” the voice grumbled when Maddie failed to reply. “Of course, she would do this the hard way. Fucking mercs.” He went silent then, probably going back to their own frequency to plan.

I was still trying to figure out Maddie’s reference to the Naethari as ‘our’ friends as he spoke and Maddie started tapping my hand with her free one. It was Morse code. “U R nobody. Contact Kara. No comms. They come.”

Short messages but I was able to get the gist of it. They didn’t know who, or what, I was and we could use that to our advantage. I also needed to contact Kara and tell her what was going down and to avoid using comms for the time being. The last part was fairly self-explanatory so I quickly focused my mind on Kara’s. Since we were mates, our minds were as synched to one another as our bodies, so our telepathic range with one another was a lot further than with other Naethari.

~ My love, Mads and I are in trouble. She’s been shot and we’re pinned down by some people, Maddie thinks black ops and seems to think they might be after us Naethari. They had our comms frequency, so they did their research. Tell the others to lay low and no comms until we can change to a more secure frequency. We might be late coming home since we need to kill some people and make sure we are not followed. ~ I tried to sound optimistic as I sent the last part but if these people were military then I had no idea how this would play out.

~ What?! Where are you?! ~ was my mate’s frantic reply.

~ Nowhere that any of you can get to fast enough to help us. Just tell the others what I said. Me and Mads can handle this. Gotta go, people incoming. Love you, Kara. ~ Three men were walking toward us, and I could hear and smell two others coming around the front and back of the vehicle. That just left our shooter. Maddie reached down to squeeze my hand before guiding it under the back of her jacket, where her sidearm was holstered.

I popped the release and felt the gun slide into my hand, taking a deep breath as Kara’s worried mind voice entered my thoughts. ~ Be careful, Babe. Don’t let them hurt you, or the baby. ~

I took a deep breath, trying not to think too hard about the life that was most likely growing inside of me. If we were both pregnant, we were little more than a month along. Naethari pregnancies last roughly thirteen months so neither Kara nor I were near showing yet, but Kieshala was fairly certain that we were from the signs.

For one thing, the rashes from our bellies hadn’t faded since we went into heat and if we hadn’t conceived, they would have faded a few days after our heat had ended. We were both also eating more than we had before. At first, I had thought that this might be because we were no longer in captivity and there was a lot more variety out here in the wider world. Jenny and Kieshala hadn’t shown any increase in appetite though.

When we had had lunch earlier on our shopping trip, Maddie had teased me about eating for two but neither Kara nor I had told any of the others that that might just be the case yet. We didn’t want to until we were sure, and Kieshala hadn’t gone through her third metamorphosis yet and was mostly going on what she had heard from others. If we told them without being certain they would probably start hovering and getting overprotective of us for no reason, especially our parents.

Aunt Carmen and Uncle Jack doted enough on Kara and Jenny as it was, and had adopted the sisters in all but name. They were super protective of the pair, even more so than they were of Maddie and me. They had also made it obvious that they were worried that the rashes hadn’t faded yet. Thankfully, Kieshala had agreed that it was better to not tell anyone about the possible babies-to-be until we were certain, so she hadn’t told anyone but the two of us about what it might mean.

Our elder Naethari said that in a couple of months the babies would probably be big enough to know for sure. We still wouldn’t be showing yet, but we should be able to sense them by then with sonar. That hadn’t been an ability that was of much use to us in a pool underground, but now that we were free and able to explore the open sea once in a while, Kieshala had been teaching us to use it.

As I slipped Maddie’s gun from behind her back and put it in her free hand, I let out a low whistle under my breath, not loud enough to be heard by human ears. I had to subtly shift my ears to get a picture of what the sonar was telling me, but not to their usual size and configuration, in case these guys were observant. It was enough to get a sense of what was in front of us though.

There were only a few cars in the parking lot since it was getting late, and we’d had to pause more than I would have liked on our trip to keep me hydrated. There weren’t any other people nearby though, at least not close enough to call for help. Just the guys in combat gear pointing the guns at us. Damn, we really were careless today.

“So, these guys are after our fishy friends?” I asked Maddie loud enough for our attackers to hear. If she had used Morse code on my hand to relay the important stuff, that meant she thought they might be listening to us, possibly with a parabolic mic or something. Meaning that she said that purposely, probably to make them think that I was another possible source of information and shouldn’t be killed. I wanted to remind them of that to make them hesitate before we killed them.

Or rather, before I killed them. Maddie didn’t look good; she was pale and clutching her side. I needed to get her to Jenny quickly. At least one of our attackers did possess basic powers of observation. His eyes lit up at my question just a moment before he looked at my sister and frowned. “Fuck, you shot the target, Perch, she’s bleeding out. Get down here and grab the first aid kit so we can patch her up. We’ll bring them both in for questioning, just in case the target doesn’t pull through.”

“Not my fault, Captain, she covered the bitch. It’s like she saw me,” I heard through their radios.

“She probably did, our intel says she’s a sniper. Her parents are mercs and she’s been training since she was a kid until she joined the family business. She’s a professional, probably as good as you are. Now get down here with that first aid kit and call in the cleanup crew,” the ‘Captain’ ordered.

“Yessir, on my way,” the voice on the radio chirped after a moment. “Cleanup crew is on the way, ETA fifteen minutes.”

Maddie laughed weakly, spitting a bloody gob onto the pavement and in the general direction of the man who seemed to be in charge. “Hah! Don’t compare me to him. I know better than to let anything reflective show, especially when facing the setting sun. And I would have been watching both targets to ensure that the one that I didn’t want dead didn’t get in the way.”

The captain glared down at my sister. “Big talk coming from a merc. You could be fighting for something important, but you fight for money.”

“Wow, apparently you don’t have nearly as much information on me and my family as you think. We fight to help people, and sometimes there’s a paycheck in it,” Maddie said, glaring right back before a coughing fit hit her. Shit that was a lot of blood. When she stopped coughing, she twisted the knife further. “Don’t act like you don’t get paid too. And how exactly is shooting and kidnapping innocent people important? Must be one hell of a cause you have.”

I’ll give him credit for self-control, the captain didn’t rise to the bait even though I could see that the comment stung. “Vega, Check these two for weapons and restrain the girl. She might be useful if the merc dies. Keep your eyes on the merc though, even injured she’s probably dangerous.” He kept his distance though, along with his comrades, maintaining a good twenty feet, with their assault rifles pointed in our direction, while one of them came to check us.

The distasteful way that he said the word ‘merc’ stoked a fire of rage inside me. These assholes had shot Maddie while trying to kill me just to not have any witnesses and they had the nerve to look down on us? If they wanted dangerous, I’d give them dangerous. I had fifteen minutes to take care of this, probably less from how bad Maddie was looking.

As much as I would have liked to use my Soulsinger ability, I wasn’t sure how long it would take to enforce my will on them, if I could at all. These were probably special ops people, and if they were then they were probably trained to resist things like torture and mind control. No, I needed to do this fast and dirty. Besides, they probably had bodycams and I didn’t want to give away my ace in the hole in case this didn’t work out. I was reluctant to use my shapeshifting for the same reason, but Maddie needed medical attention soon. I had also been holding this form for almost five hours and I would need to rest soon since my maximum so far was six hours.

I moved faster than any of them expected, far faster than a normal human would be capable of. I might have looked human at the moment, but I still had the strength, speed, and stamina of a Naethari, and by shifting to increase my muscle mass, I was able to make myself even faster and stronger. As the person assigned came close enough to pat us down and eyed my sister warily, I shot to my feet, punching him in the stomach hard enough to knock the wind out of him. I wasn’t sure if it was surprise or hesitation at shooting a target with possibly valuable intel, but they hesitated to shoot me just long enough for me to pull my victim into position as a meat shield and put him in a headlock that made it very difficult for him to breathe as he reached for his assault rifle.

“You were looking for this?” I fired four bursts from his pilfered weapon at the others, and while I wasn’t as good a marksman as Maddie was, and I had my captive squirming and making things difficult, I was able to hit my targets, concentrating on their upper thighs. Okay, so maybe a few shots hit a crotch or the armor instead, but that wasn’t bad for moving targets in this situation. I couldn’t go for the usual weak spots since they were wearing body armor and helmets with visors, which were probably meant to protect their most vital bits while the balaclavas underneath protected their identites.

The point was to take them out of the fight, though I was sure that they could probably still fight with bullets in them if they were as trained as we thought. It would slow them down and make walking difficult though. I snapped my meat shield’s neck like a twig, picked him up, and tossed his corpse at two of his compatriots before running full tilt at the more valuable hostage. Three of them managed to get shots off, and one of them managed to hit, but my speed and the flying body threw them off so the hit was only a minor graze to my left shoulder. It was already starting to heal as I ran up to the captain.

The captain was aiming for another shot, but I closed the distance before he had the chance to shoot and knocked his gun arm aside with enough force to cause a painful-sounding crack. Maddie took advantage of the fact that their attention was now on me and shot the three others in their gun arms as well, making them drop their weapons. My sister wasn’t going to go down easy.

I wrapped the fingers of my right hand around the captain’s throat firmly enough to choke him and lifted him off the ground one-handed to face me, making his eyes go wide behind the clear visor of his helmet. I had to admit that it was impressive since he was almost a foot taller than my current form, a lot bulkier, and dead weight with his legs injured. “Wh-what are you?” he managed to choke out.

“Someone you don’t want to fuck with.” I told him simply before asking my own question. “Who sent you and why?” Somehow, he still thought he had the moral high ground here. He wasn’t going to answer, I could see it in his eyes, and I didn’t have time to wait. “You’re dead either way. So, since I imagine that whoever sent you is probably listening in, you can still send a message for me. Back. The fuck. Off. The beings that you’re after have suffered enough.”

I hoped that the way I worded it would make them believe that I was a mercenary like my sister and protecting the Naethari, rather than giving myself away as one of them. It probably wouldn’t help though, this smelled like greed to me and I knew that well enough from Pierce. When people like that wanted something, they wouldn’t stop until it was theirs, or they were dead. Ah well, maybe the thought of some other supernatural creature that looked more human would put them off our trail and on a wild goose chase.

While I had their captain in a chokehold and was using him as a meat shield against them, his men weren’t quite so eager to shoot me, especially since they would probably have to use their off-hands to do it. Unfortunately, that safety didn’t extend to Maddie. “Put the captain down and surrender or we shoot her now,” one of them said with a grimace. They were a good twenty feet away from her and would be shooting with their off-hands, but with automatic weapons I couldn’t take the risk. I needed to keep them focused on me.

“Umm… mercenary? Does that ring any bells here?” I asked with a shrug as I tried to look unconcerned. They faltered, and I thought that they probably had the same opinion of mercenaries as their leader, who was currently turning a lovely shade of blue. “But if you really want him back, here you go.” I tossed him casually at his comrades and before he even hit the ground I was on them with a savage ferocity, my fingernails shifted back into my usual claws. They had threatened my sister and she was dying. It took little more than a moment or two to tear their throats out in their current condition.

As for the captain, I removed his comm unit and body cam and crushed them in my hand. Those grenades at his waist were tempting, but I didn’t have time to stick around and wait for their sixth man to arrive from his perch to see him die for what he’d done to my sister. I quickly broke the captain’s jaw, his good arm, and both his legs just to be thorough, and then I left him lying there with a little message to give to his superiors.

With that done, I quickly put Maddie in the back of the SUV and drove out of that parking lot as fast as I could, leaving what groceries that hadn’t been packed behind. Maddie didn’t have time to waste, her breathing was shallow and haggard and she was losing a lot of blood. Three minutes after we tore out of that parking lot, an explosion rang out behind us. It looked like the sniper had arrived and found my message.

I didn’t drive all the way back to the villa, in fact, I drove in the opposite direction. As soon as I made sure that we hadn’t grown a tail, I hotwired the first older model car that we came across and switched vehicles. It was a piece of crap, but it got us to a motel, where I bandaged Maddie’s wound as best I could with the first aid kit and strips torn from my skirt and contacted Kara to let the others know where we were.

Jenny wasn’t going to be in time, it didn’t take long to realize that. I couldn’t lose Maddie, not like this. So I did the only thing that I could think of. I chugged down a couple of bottles of water to make sure I wouldn’t pass out, gave Maddie the barest nick from one of the poisoned spines of my vuhac, and forced her to swallow a few drops of my blood. Then I prayed to the Natrir that this would work as I laid on the bed beside my sister, allowed myself to return to my true form, and held her close in my arms.